Last journal, I said I would continue delving into The Moral Foundations Theory but as you can tell by the title of this journal, that’s not going to happen. With the help of Mr. Bott, I realized that I won’t be able to cover that much by the January midterm. The tying into politics aspect of this topic should and will manifest later into the year.
Basically, for the January midterm, I will be focusing on the first third of Haidt’s book—”Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second.” To prepare for it, I will create a “temporary thesis” that will serve as an outline as well as an experiment whose results I plan on presenting.
So what is this temporary thesis? As of right now, it is: “To what extent is morality determined by intuition when compared to rational reasoning?” I would be interested in including something along the lines of if culture impacts the moral domain but that might not work in our GHS environment (most people have adapted to the individualistic culture of America).
Now, I already believe that yes, morality is dominated by intuition and not reasoning. But before I read this book, I believed it was the “rationalist” (the historic option w/ Plato) approach where we reason to find the truth. I think this is the common answer most people have and my goal for the January midterm is to disprove that. I plan on mentioning Hume’s idea, the fascinating concept of “post-hoc reasoning” as well as how Haidt mentions we morally reason to persuade others to get on our side because in the ancient days through natural selection, reputation was much more important than finding the truth.
Regarding an experiment, I think it would be very interesting and worthwhile to compile the harmless taboo stories Haidt included in The Righteous Mind and interview some fellow GHS students. Of course, I anticipate very similar results to what Haidt published but I still think it would be interesting to see it face-to-face and it would further corroborate what I’m saying to the panel. The stories I’m thinking of including off the top of my head are the flag-cutting one, roach juice, eating the dog, incest story (will this be too sensitive?), etc. I think I’ll be able to find more too if I dig around in Haidt’s other research papers. However, I probably won’t create my own because I lack the insight Haidt and other researchers had when they designed these clever stories; ie. will I accidently introduce another factor that will change the results? I think I talked about this with Mr. Bott already too.
Personally, I think this is a decent plan and I’m definitely looking forward to hear people’s responses to the harmless taboo stories that will inevitably make them squirm. I’ll consult Mr. Bott on another day on how I can choose my sample/how to conduct it so the procedure will be a proper experiment.
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