Periodically, I become a bit disoriented in the swirl of life, which gives rise to the question: “Who am I?” We aren’t static beings, of course. We are complex adaptive systems, communities of relatively simple cellular life that number in the trillions. Many of “our” cells (in fact, the great…
I've studied moral philosophy for many years, mostly in frustration. Though many philosophical theories of morality have offered tantalizing glimmers, they ultimately fail to account for the “moral” decisions people make in the real world. Traditional philosophical accounts of morality have appeared especially feeble in light of the ongoing and volatile American culture wars. For instance, some of us claim that torture is OK while others feel that we have a moral duty to impeach the President and Vice-President for failing to stop the torture. Starting with the assumption that both sides to this controversy are sincerely, no philosophical moral system begins to account for both of those positions. Luckily, we are in a new era with regard to understanding morality. Cognitive scientists such as psychologist Marc Hauser and primatologist Frans de Waal are studying morality with new sets of tools. Recently, I had the opportunity to read an extraordinary article by Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") and Jesse Graham: "When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions That Liberals May Not Recognize." This article is written in an easily accessible style and its 16 pages are packed with ideas that bridge Haidt’s theories to the real world. If you're in the mood to watch rather than read, sit back and view this video of Haidt describing his approach (the 30-minute video moves right along--Haidt is an eloquent speaker as well as a talented writer). I’m not going to try to hide my excitement at Haidt’s approach. The more I learned about it, the more I thought of the words T. H. Huxley spoke upon learning of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection: "How stupid of me not to have thought of it." If you want to test your own moral foundations before proceeding, go to Haidt’s site and take a short test to determine your own moral foundation. Then read on (either read Haidt’s article or come back here).
All my life I’ve been suspicious of the alleged power of syllogisms. Here is an often-cited syllogism:
• All men are mortal
• Socrates is a man
• Therefore Socrates is mortal
Syllogisms can be expressed in this logical form:
• All B’s are C
• A is a B
• Therefore, A is C
The above example is a perfect syllogism: the conclusion naturally follows from the premises. Syllogisms constitute deductive reasoning (from a given set of premises the conclusion must follow).
Many excellent thinkers and writers have stressed the need to present one’s arguments in terms of syllogisms. For example, in his excellent book on legal writing, The Winning Brief, Bryan Garner advises lawyers to frame every legal issue as a syllogism (see p. 88).
But what is really behind the power of syllogisms? It turns out that they are actually based on a metaphor—the metaphor of objects in a box. Consider this diagram in tandem with the classic syllogism (“All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal”)
As Judge Posner points out (in “The Jurisprudence of Skepticism,” 86 Mich L. Rev 827, 830 (1988)), the first premise presents a box labeled “all men,” in which each of the contents are each labeled “mortal” and one of those objects is labeled “Socrates.” Posner notes,
…“The second premise tells us that everything in the box is tagged with a name and that one of the tags says “Socrates.” When we pluck Socrates out of the
