David Sloan Wilson poses this question to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. Jonathan’s answer might surprise you.
Nina Witoszek, Atle Midttun, David Sloan Wilson
November 30, 2022
David Sloan Wilson poses this question to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. Jonathan’s answer might surprise you.
Published On: April 29, 2012
Hi david and jonathan,
‘Reason is the slave of the passions’. Hume has wrapped it up. Yes, we are blind to reason against our passions and our reason blindly follows them. But there is a way hold to this principle and still be scientific, so long as one has a passion for science.. and in this case, evolutionary thinking, and this means not to lean to the left or right. In this way I ‘side’ with David.. it’s not a problem for science but a leaning problem.. a politically-winged traditional pseudo-scientific problem that is blind to multi-level selection. Both collectivism and individualism are only consistent when incomplete. Godel as well as Hume is useful here… both ‘agree’ with Darwin.. and David(Sloan Wilson). I would love some feedback. Thanks for your time.
Richy.
i haven’t seen it yet
To resist changing one’s opinion is neither a conservative nor a liberal trait, it is a human trait and a valuable one. It is probably share by other species as well. In fact to change your mind about anything and everything whenever a conflicting opinion is expressed or some piece of evidence seems odd would surely make survival difficult.
But that is not quite the same thing as a total unwillingness to listen to alternative opinions or to refuse to ever consider other possibilities. It is this rigid attitude of refusal that seems so much more common with conservatives than with liberals, though surely there are exceptions in both camps.