Moral Intuition, Moral Reason
By Charles Rush
April 29, 2012
Lk. 15: 1-10
[ Audio
(mp3, 6.4Mb) ]
en people speak of the most elevated part of the Christian tradition, reconciliation is usually at the top of the list. I should suppose it is the near universal experience of couples that you find yourself at some point alone, in different dimensions in your own home, at an impasse. How divine it is when something happens that breaks that impasse.
Reconciliation
is critical. It lets us go forward, both changing together. It makes
individuals into a team. As our world grows in population and complexity, the
value of this virtue will grow exponentially.
I've been
reading a book about how we actually reason morally, written by the social
psychologist Jonathan Haidt at the University of
Virginia[i],[ii].
He's been interviewing people for a couple decades trying to get a handle on
how we actually think morally, not the way we are supposed to think. It turns
out that almost all of us are a good deal less principled than we were taught
by Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill. It turns out that the way we actually
reason morally probably accounts for why we get into many of these arguments to
begin with.
Professor Hiadt observed that we
actually make moral judgments quickly, intuitively. And then we start to search
for reasons to back up our judgments. Morally speaking, we are less like
scientists and more like lawyers, building a case after the fact that makes
better sense than the opponent. It is good news/bad news. Let's start with the
bad news first.
He did it, using college students all around him. He thought
up a number of moral stories that were designed to elicit a strong judgment.
Then the experimenter, pressed the students to explain themselves. The result
was painful as I can attest from teaching Ethics to our undergraduates at
Rutgers University for 8 years. Here is one story. I can just hear the Terry
Gross from National Public Radio posing this scenario.
Julie and Mark,
who are sister and brother, are traveling together in France on summer vacation
from college. One night they are alone on a beach in a cabin. They decide that
it would be interesting and fun to have sex together. At the very least it
would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth
control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it,
but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret
between them, which makes them feel even closer to
each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex.”
The questioner
then pushed the students to articulate why it was wrong. I decided to take the
test myself just to illustrate the contrast. Why is it wrong? Three reasons 1) Since every western civilization not only condemns it, but
makes it illegal, it strongly suggests a history of bad consequences from the
past. 2) since every major religion condemns it, it
suggests that it is damaging to your person beyond the social consequences. And
number 3) while it might be natural to want to experiment sexually at that age,
why would brother and sister find each other more appealing than the thousands
of other available kids at a French beach. It suggests an unhealthy back story
that you are not filling in.
Clear enough,
right.
Well when our
researchers actually asked the students, only 80% of them were willing to make
a moral judgment. 20% of them thought it was okay, probably not okay, but they
couldn't think of a good reason to say it was wrong.
As a professor,
I just used to hang my head. Here is a typical exchange
Experimenter: So what do you think about this, was it wrong
for Julie and Mark to have sex?
Student: Yeah, I think it is totally wrong to have sex. You
know, because I'm pretty religious and I just think incest is wrong anyway.
But, I don't know.
Experimenter: What's wrong with incest, would you say?
Student: Um, the whole idea of, well, I have heard- I don't
even know if it's true, but in the case, if the girl did get pregnant, the kids
become deformed, most of the time, in cases like that.
Experimenter: But they used a condom and birth control pills-
Student: Oh, okay. You did say that.
Exprimenter: So there's no way their going to have a kid.
Student: Well, I guess the safest sex is abstinence, but um, ud… um, I don't know, I just think that's wrong. I don't
know, what did you ask me?
Student: Was it wrong for them to have sex?
Experimenter: Yeah, I think it's wrong.
Experimenter: And I'm trying to find out why, what you think
is wrong with it.
Student: OK, um… well… let's see, let me think about this.
How old were they?
Experimenter: They were college age, around 20 or so.
Student: Oh [looks disappointed]. I don't know, I just… it's
just not something you're brought up to do. It's just not- well, I mean I
wasn't. I assume most people aren't [laughs]. I just think that you shouldn't-
I don't- I guess my reason is um…. Just that, um… you're not brought up to do
it. You don't see it. It's not um- I don't think it's accepted. That's pretty
much it.
Experimenter: You wouldn't say that anything you're not
brought up to see is wrong, would you? For example, if
you're not brought up to see women working outside the home, would you say that
makes it wrong for women to work?
Student: Um… well… oh, gosh. This is hard. I really- um, I mean, there's
just no way I could change my mind but I just don't know how to- how to show
what I'm feeling, what I feel about it. It's crazy!
Those are my sophmore's. I got a lot of papers like that… Um… oh… I
don't know… Mostly what this experiment shows is that we make snap judgments and
look for reasons to support those judgments after the fact. That is the bad
news, trying to get our kids to think morally in this environment.
But, some good news too. When you listen to sophomores like
this, you can tell he was raised with values, abstinence was mentioned. Like so
many of our boys, his fall back is just “I wasn't brought up that way”. His
moral intuitions came from his upbringing.
Professor Haidt realized that this was the value of the church
because they talk about values and put them into practice. It is the deeper
grammar that gives our kids these moral intuitions to start with. By the way,
this compliment comes from an avowed Athiest. But it
turns out that modeling, patterning is critical for embedding values in the
rising generation.
We do that
because we support a structure that brings a diverse group of people together
to lift up these values in worship, teach them to our kids in Sunday school and
our youth groups, celebrate them in our holidays, create a community that lives
them out in our lives together, and makes service happen. It isn't perfect but
children need organic communities that they can be part of because that is the
way that they are shaped.
Professor Haidt doesn't mention the 20% that sort of refuse to engage
morally… It isn't so worrisome until you picture your own child doing the
‘whatever'. But I'm pretty sure what doesn't work so well. I've had more than a
few friends who've reported on their experiment to raise their children in a
religiously neutral environment. Open minded, moral people that exposed their children
to the world, educated at Bennington College…
I only get the
calls a few years later, when their children have decided that their parents
were flaky and they've gone and become- God forbid, orthodox Jews, practicing
Catholics, and Evanglical Christians… I get this
question over the phone, “Chuck, how did this happen?” And I have to explain,
you've been preparing them for years.
All along,
getting more important when our kids are teens, our primary job is to give them
some values, like a backboard they can bounce their ball off. Of course, they
will reject some of those values. Of course, they will modify some of those
values to fit their personality and the challenges of their generation. But we
do them no service if we pretend that there are no serious values that we stand
for. Left to their own, they are likely to rebel against this vast openness
with more security in a system of answers, practices, and structure, click,
click, click.
No, the
community is important. We are people embedded with other people. Social
Psychologists like Professor Haidt are realizing that
moral character is not optional, it is constitutive of who we are as humans,
lived out with others that shape us.
He has a bit of
a corrective the
“New Athiests” like Christopher Hitchens,
Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins all critique the supernatural belief system of
Christianity but they miss the point. The genius of the church is not about
what we believe, it is about belonging to each other,
developing lives of reciprocal altruism, accepting each other as children of
God and working together to realize our higher selves.
Jesus said,
“The Kingdom of God is like a shepherd that loses a sheep and he searches for
it and searches for it until it is found. I tell you there is more joy…” Hey,
welcome home, we're glad you are here. Let's share our lives together,
hopefully develop some integrity with a dose of some deeper joy that comes from
being related to people of substance.
Belief? We can dialogue about that. These “New Athiests” are right that the Church should have always been
more open on belief than they have been. But belonging? Don't throw the baby
out with the bath. We need each other to become deeper, more profound, better
people.
I couldn't help
but think about that last week when we had our Confirmation class. I love
looking out at the families and thinking about the way that the generations
pass down their support and blessing and occasionally I know the Grandparents, the
parents, and what our kids will become. You can see how the values get
imprinted.
And our mentors. And our Aunts, Uncles, Godparents. We need
them all to play their part.
Last week, when
we walked in, I was reminded that one of our Confirmands lost her Dad a couple
years ago, cut down really in the prime of live, and such a big, smiling
personality, our Congressman Bob Franks.
And I think of
the Godmother's, and the Godfather's that step up in a way that they never
hoped they would have to- you know all the time that you sure can't take Dad's
place- but it is important to do what you can.
It is true of
us all, we don't know what we are getting into when we are starting out and
that is probably a good thing. I think of that most of the time when we have
baptisms and make promises about the future.
We can't say
what we will encounter ahead, but we have each other. With the Spirit of God,
the magic of love, and the hope that meaning will be woven in the fabric of
what we weave together, we head out. May we grow one another, heal one another,
strengthen those who are weak. May we become a
reconciling presence in our community. Welcome Home!
Amen.
Gracious God, bring us together and transcend our
differences. Bless the person to my right. Bless the person to my elf.
Strengthen them, inspire them, that together we might
build more substantive lives together. Amen.
