[MD] Tastey morality

[plattholden at gmail.com]

All:

Here's a new one for you -- morality is intuitive, like taste.

To quote from the article in question:

 "The five most important taste receptors of the moral mind are the following . 
. . care/harm, fairness/cheating, group loyalty and betrayal, authority and 
subversion, sanctity and degradation. Moral systems are like cuisines that are 
constructed from local elements to please these receptors."

Is your curiosity aroused? If so, the full article (12 pages) is at:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.haidt.html

Some further assumptions of the author:.

. "Morality" is limited to social behavior. (No moral order throughout the 
universe as Pirsig suggests.)

. The purpose of reason is to win arguments. It cannot independently seek out 
moral truth.

, By its very nature, morality binds us into groups, in order to compete with 
other groups. Nearly all of us doing this work are secular Liberals. And that 
means we are at very high risk of misunderstanding those moralities that are 
not our own -- like Conservatives.   

Oh, by the way, the title of the article is, "The New Science of Morality."
Trouble is, I found very little science in it. 

Platt