The question that is not addressed in this blog or in the talk is levels of development. Whether or not you agree with the particular characterizations of Spiral Dynamics or Integral Institute's “Elevations,” the evidence for development of our values is critical to understand these issues.

Different levels of the developmental spiral relate to these moral sentiments radically differently, and different levels are attracted to each of them. For people who do not have a sufficiently advanced and abstract understanding of self/culture, fairness is not compelling to them. Purity, authority, and in-group give them guidance and principles that they can understand and implement. If you take them away as legitimate values, they are left with anarchy and fear. This is not good – danger Will Robinson, Danger.

Red can understand in-group and authority/power easily, perhaps purity in an ethnic/race sense, but not fairness, care, and purity. When might makes right, and fair/care is stupidity.

Blue can understand authority/obedience/loyalty, and extends “in-group” well, and purity in terms of dogma, but fair/care towards evil people makes no sense.

Orange understands fairness optimally – a nation of laws not men, all men are created equal, inalienable rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness according to our conscience. However, in-group, authority, care, purity all threaten fairness.

Green understands care well. At its best, it understands that fairness is the foundation of care, and lack of it undermines care. It finds authority, purity, and in-group to be threatening to care, and at worst, fairness also becomes a threat to care.

Yellow can appreciate the value of each of the sentiments, especially their relative value to people whose values “center” is at red, blue, orange, or green respectively. By understanding the value of each of these moral sentiments to different levels of moral development (and/or different levels of our brain processes – myth and symbols are powerful unconscious drivers of behavior), we can respect the real-world mental/emotional frameworks that people and cultures use to guide their behavior.

If, on the other hand, we de-legitimize the more unconscious, primal value sentiments (ingroup, authority, purity), we undermine the development people need to understand the more abstract and universal moral sentiments (fairness/care).

First, the sequence in which you apply these values is significant.
If you do 1) authority, 2) purity, 3) ingroup, 4) care, 5) fair you might get a group that is puts high value on those who are pure followers of a leader, offering them care as fairly as you can, but those who don't aren't worthy of consideration.

If you reverse the order, to 1) fair, 2) care, 3) ingroup, 4) purity, 5) authority you get people who want to be fair first and foremost – not to screw people. Then, to offer care within the boundaries of fairness (not to violate fairness to care). Then honoring those who agree to play by rules of fairness and caring above those who violate those standards. Then to especially honor those who most purely act consistent with fair/care, who embody those values most thoroughly, and then to honor the authorities we have authorized to adjudicate and enforce our social agreements around fairness, as well as the leaders we have entrusted to inspire caring.

Authority, In-Group, and Purity are absolutely useful as heurisms WHEN they are in service of fairness first, caring second. In fact, without them, liberal societies won't work. The key is the nature of the authority, the boundaries of in vs. out-group, and the principles that we strive towards purity around – namely fairness and caring within that fairness.

Still, it's easy to imagine a time in the previous million years of humanity when the conservative three conferred some selective advantage. If you boiled down what people consider the virtues of a warrior, it'd be authority and tribalism. So as much as I wish it weren't so, I doubt the conservative three are going away. I doubt that liberals will be able to reason them out of existence.

Haidt's correct to take the problem of anomie seriously. You've got to give the people who care about authority, tribe, and purity a way to exercise those morals, or someone else will.

Will, thanks for bringing Haidt to wider attention. Your BH episode with him was fantastic (I listened to it twice), and I'm happy to see you keep engaging with the subject.

Overall, this kind of binary analysis is interesting, but not very helpful.

Wouldn't revolutionary/reactionary better describe the insight that “order is really hard to achieve, it’s really precious, and really ready to lose.” Try to change for the better, but not so fast that things fall apart — sure, that's valid.

This seems to me to be distinct from the liberal/conservative divide, if by that Haidt means left wing/right wing. For the past couple of decades, the American right wing has been trying to change the established liberal order dating back to the New Deal (the “Reagan Revolution”).

Haidt's five foundations seem to be a third thing entirely. A social order can secure voluntary support from its citizens only by recruiting these five foundations to motivate that support. I'm with John C here; liberal politics regularly recruits the three “conservative” foundations. For example, FDR considered human rights sacred (purity foundation, violations being considered disgusting alongside other sentimental reactions).

bjk, Haidt seems to think of harm/care as being more or less equivalent to Benthamite Utilitarianism. If you see flood victims on TV, you feel empathy for them and want to help regardless of why they are suffering.

Berlin's understanding of the the divide between “conservative” and “liberal” seems more true and forceful to me than Haidt's. Already in 1950 Berlin is seeing the need for, and avenue of, a Third Way. He even begins to describe how it might be founded. This binary talk of Haidt, frankly, seems frozen in the past to me.

It's precisely this kind of regression that makes me more and more interested in some form of futarchy. I mean, come on, boys, it's the 21st century already! Even tho' I am aware, to quote Berlin, “Chronological frontiers are seldom landmarks in the history of ideas.”

A the beginning of his TED talk, Haidt tells us that personality tests show that openness to experience correlates to an affinity for left-wing politics. He further identifies the open personality as one in which education and culture have emphasized the first two of the five moral instincts and downplayed the other three.

Are liberals (in Haidt’s sense) really less concerned with in-group loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity? I suspect that the differences that show up in his personality tests are actually differences in the way these instincts are expressed and therefore measured by him, rather than fundamental differences in degree. My basis for this suspicion is strictly anecdotal, but consider a few examples: university “diversity” values associated with demands for political correctness that are as intolerant and closed-minded in their own way as the stereotypical insularity of small-town middle America; Obama (or Clinton) adored as a rock star or even a savior; and the quasi-religious aspects popular environmentalism.

Haidt’s fundamental mistake is to treat the concept of liberalism as though it has some kind of Platonic integrity, rather than as a mere description of actual policies and programs here in the real world. (Perhaps this appeals to his instinct for authority and respect?) I can identify at least four useful definitions of liberalism: (1) policies designed to maximize human freedom by restricting our freedom to interfere with others, developed in opposition to aristocratic, ecclesiastic, and mercantilist policies; (2) favoring change; (3) policies of the progressive movement and the FDR coalition; and (4) compassion, which I have heard a number of politicians claim is the essence of modern Democratic liberalism. The first of these describes a coherent program, the second a procedure, the third a partly ad hoc collection of policies, and the fourth a value. Although several of them might coincide in specific instances, these four concepts are not the same thing. If we use the word “liberalism” in political discussions without specifying which of the concepts we mean, it will be very difficult to escape from fuzzy thinking.

Although he tries to soften the tone of his partisanship with the yin/yang metaphor of a fruitful interplay between conservatives’ respect for existing institutions and liberals’ desire to do the right thing, Haidt’s fundamental political assumption is that the policies currently favored by those who consider themselves “on the left” are automatically good because they represent change. The great danger of this assumption is that it immunizes its holder against the need for analyzing the specific mechanisms and consequences of his political beliefs. As we argue over the degree to which the federal government ought to be involved in economic decisions, we ought to focus on the likely consequences of specific policies. Supporting a political program because politicians call it “liberal” (or “conservative”) might satisfy our instinct to demonstrate loyalty to a group we admire, but it is not careful analysis and is not likely to lead to optimal decisions.