Quotes from Jonathan Haidt

principle of utility, which he defined as "the principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question."16 Each law should aim to maximize the utility of the community, which is defined as the simple arithmetic sum of the expected utilities of each member. Bentham then systematized

These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions.

Los seres humanos necesitamos desafíos físicos y mentales y estresores para no deteriorarnos.

And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.49

But in psychology our goal is descriptive. We want to discover how the moral mind actually works, not how it ought to work, and that can't be done by reasoning, math, or logic. It can be done only by observation, and observation is usually keener when informed by empathy.

In French, as in other romance languages, speakers are forced to choose whether they'll address someone using the respectful form (vous) or the familiar form (tu). Even English, which doesn't embed status into verb conjugations, embeds it elsewhere. Until recently, Americans addressed strangers and superiors using title plus last name (Mrs. Smith, Dr. Jones), whereas intimates and subordinates were called by first name.

people invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the entire issue more fully and evenhandedly."22

As Western societies became more educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, the minds of its intellectuals changed. They became more analytic and less holistic.26 Utilitarianism and deontology became far more appealing to ethicists than Hume's messy, pluralist, sentimentalist approach.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with

Me parece irónico que los liberales acepten a Darwin y rechacen el -diseño inteligente- como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo natural, pero no aceptan a Adam Smith como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo económico. Algunos países a veces prefieren el -diseño inteligente- de las economías socialistas, que en ocasiones suele acabar en desastre desde un punto de vista utilitarista.

I didn't want to make the classic mistake of amateur evolutionary theorists, which is to pick a trait and then ask: "Can I think of a story about how this trait might once have been adaptive?" The answer to that question is almost always yes because reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.

the most likely candidates. In the rest of this book I'll try to explain how morality can be innate (as a set of evolved intuitions) and learned (as children learn to apply those intuitions within a particular culture). We're born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about.

Nos adaptamos a nuestras nuevas y mejores circunstancias y después bajamos el listón de los niveles de incomodidad y riesgo que consideramos intolerables.

The psychologist Mark Schaller has shown that disgust is part of what he calls the "behavioral immune system"—a set of cognitive modules that are triggered by signs of infection or disease in other people and that make you want to get away from those people.40

I do not want to suggest that utilitarianism and Kantian deontology are incorrect as moral theories just because they were founded by men who may have had Asperger's syndrome. That would be an ad hominem argument, a logical error, and a mean thing to say.

Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide you to the study that's right for you.

El asesinato a menudo les parece virtuoso a los revolucionarios.

But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual & ideological diversity.

This book is about why it's so hard for us to get along. We are indeed all stuck here for a while, so let's at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.

Atrocities committed in the name of religion are almost always commited against out-group members, or against the most dangerous people of all: apostates (who try to leave the group) and traitors (who undermine the group).

Intuition is the best word to describe the dozens or hundreds of rapid, effortless moral judgments and decisions that we all make every day.

I'll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Hume's pluralist, sentimentalist, and naturalist approach to ethics is more promising than utilitarianism or deontology for modern moral psychology. As a first step in resuming Hume's project, we should try to identify the taste receptors of the righteous mind.