:Analogies for Sustainable Development/Brain as moral tongue

“ Moral principles please the mind as

beef, and pork, and mutton please the mouth.

” — Mencius, Chinese Philosopher C.A. 300 BCE

“ The righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. ” — Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Overview

This analogy of our moral

Discussion

"In this analogy, morality is like cuisine: it’s a cultural construction, influenced by accidents of environment and history, but it’s not so flexible that anything goes. You can’t have a cuisine based on tree bark, nor can you have one based primarily on bitter tastes. Cuisines vary, but they all must please tongues equipped with the same five taste receptors. Moral matrices vary, but they all must please righteous minds equipped with the same six social receptors."

Quote Bank

Haidt (2012):

"We humans all have the same five taste receptors, but we don’t all like the same foods.... Just knowing that everyone has sweetness receptors can’t tell you why one person prefers Thai food to Mexican, or why hardly anyone stirs sugar into beer. It takes a lot of additional work to connect the universal taste receptors to the specific things that a particular person eats and drinks."

"It’s the same for moral judgments. To understand why people are so divided by moral issues, we can start with an exploration of our common evolutionary heritage, but we’ll also have to examine the history of each culture and the childhood socialization of each individual within that culture. Just knowing that we all care about harm can’t tell you why one person prefers hunting to badminton or why hardly anyone devotes their waking hours primarily to serving the poor. It will take a lot of additional work for us to connect the universal moral taste receptors to the specific moral judgments that a particular person makes."

Haidt (2010):

''"I think taste offers the closest, the richest, source domain for understanding morality. First, the links between taste, affect, and behavior are as clear as could be. Tastes are either good or bad. The good tastes, sweet and savory, and salt to some extent, these make us feel "I want more." They make us want to approach. They say, "this is good." Whereas, sour and bitter tell us, "whoa, pull back, stop."

Second, the taste metaphor fits with our intuitive morality so well that we often use it in our everyday moral language. We refer to acts as "tasteless," as "leaving a bad taste" in our mouths. We make disgust faces in response to certain violations.

Third, every culture constructs its own particular cuisine, its own way of pleasing those taste receptors. The taste analogy gets at what's universal—that is, the taste receptors of the moral mind—while it leaves plenty of room for cultural variation. Each culture comes up with its own particular way of pleasing these receptors, using local ingredients, drawing on historical traditions.

And fourth, the metaphor has an excellent pedigree. It was used 2,300 years ago in China by Mencius, who wrote, "Moral principles please our minds as beef and mutton and pork please our mouths." It was also a favorite of David Hume"

"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. And [...] moral systems are like cuisines that are constructed from local elements to please these receptors."

"So, I'm proposing, we're proposing, that these are the five best candidates for being the taste receptors of the moral mind. They're not the only five. There's a lot more. So much of our evolutionary heritage, of our perceptual abilities, of our language ability, so much goes into giving us moral concerns, the moral judgments that we have. But I think this is a good starting point. "

Further Resources

• Baumard, N. (2011) Mèng Zǐ (372 – 289 BCE) on the moral organ. International Cognition and Culture Institute.
• McNerney, S. (2011). Jonathan Haidt and the Moral Matrix: Breaking Out of Our Righteous Minds. Scientific American Guest Blog.
• http://moralfoundations.org/
• http://yourmorals.org

Analogies for Sustainable Development