In a previeous post, I promised to write about a rebuttal to Jonathan Haidt’s model of human morality. The one I found most interesting was from Norm Doering.

Haidt is trying to demonstrate that liberal morality is more contracted than conservatives. In particular, he describes five foundations of morality of which, liberals only concern themselves with two. Doering argues that Haidt’s five foundations are incomplete. In fact, he thinks that the five are only half the story – that each represent only one polar end of continuity. Thus according to Doering, Haidt did not discover three moral foundations exclusive to conservatives, but the conservative end of three continua. Here is Doering’s expanded moral foundations:

1) Harm/Care____________|________Punish/Judge
2) Fairness/Reciprocity___|________Privilege/Bully power
3) Inclusive/Expansive______|________Ingroup/Loyalty
4) Question authority_______|________Authority/Respect
5) Rights/Secular Freedom___|________Purity/Sanctity

The ones in bold represent Haidt’s original five. The left side represent the foundations of liberal morality and the right represents conservative foundations. Note, however, that Doering relabels the sides as ‘secular’ and ‘theocratic’ respectively, assuming that all conservative morality is religiously based.

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