What I’ve learnt from The Righteous Mind By Jonathan Haidt

The origins of morality in societies

What is morally wrong varies for every society, with each collectively choosing through time, to structure itself in two ways — socio-centric (group needs above one), individualistic (one’s needs above the group’s).

Is morality innate?

He attempts to answer the age-old question about the origins of morality — where does morality come from? Is it innate, or is it learnt in childhood. He brings up a a third source — a rationalist source, that morality is ‘self-constructed by children on the basis of their experiences with harm’. He later rejects this rationalist explanation because he observes similar questions answered similarly in cultures with very different conceptions of morality. He says that morality evolves innately and has a certain ‘learning component’ based on the experiences of children.

Intuition was here before reasoning

On an evolutionary time-scale, our intuitions and instincts were shaped long before reasoning (Fight or Flight). One important and oft-cited theory in this books is Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Intuition can be a gut-feeling of disgust and moral/strategic reasoning can be a post-hoc fabrication of…