The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism

Libertarians no longer argue, as they once did in the 1970s, about whether libertarianism must be grounded on moral rights or on consequences; they no longer act as though they must choose between these two moral views. In this paper, the author contends that libertarians need not choose between moral rights and consequences because theirs is a political, not a moral, philosophy, one that can be shown to be compatible with various moral theories, which is one source of its appeal. Moral theories based on either moral rights or on consequentialism purport to be comprehensive, insofar as they apply to all moral questions to the exclusion of all other moral theories. Although the acceptance of one of these moral theories entails the rejection of all others, libertarian moral rights philosophers on the one hand, and utilitarians on the other, can embrace libertarian political theory with equal fervor. The author explains how can this be and why it is a strength rather than a weakness of libertarian political theory. Conservatives, neoconservatives, and those on the left who seek to impose by force their comprehensive conception of the good neglect the problem of power—an exacerbated instance of the twin fundamental social problems of knowledge and interest. For a comprehensive moralist of the right or left, using force to impose their morality on others might be their first choice among social arrangements. Having another\u27s comprehensive morality imposed upon them by force is their last choice. The libertarian minimalist approach of enforcing only the natural rights that define justice should be everyone\u27s second choice. A compromise, as it were, that makes civil society possible. And therein lies its imperative

Agent-based Social Psychology: from Neurocognitive Processes to Social Data

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 C codes, to appear in Advances in Complex System

The Three Great Errors of Most Libertarians: a Concise Philosophical Analysis

Libertarians are mistaken to seek foundations, to take sides over moral approaches, and to have no proper theory of liberty

Signatures of the neurocognitive basis of culture wars found in moral psychology data\ud

Moral Foundation Theory (MFT) states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations on a subset of issues. With the introduction of functional imaging techniques, a wealth of new data on neurocognitive processes has rapidly mounted and it has\ud become increasingly more evident that this type of data should provide an adequate basis for modeling social systems. In particular, it has been shown that there is a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information.\ud Furthermore this spectrum is correlated to political affiliation. Here we use methods of statistical mechanics to characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model society whose interindividual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions, are in qualitative agreement with neurocognitive and psychological data. The main conclusion derived from the model is\ud that the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies yields different statistics for the sets of moral foundations and that these arise from the cognitive interactions of the agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data about moral dynamics, presents statistical signatures\ud consistent with those that characterize opinions of conservatives and liberals. The higher the difference in the treatment of novel and corroborating information the more agents correlate to liberals.\u

Doing without Deliberation: Automatism, Automaticity, and Moral Accountability,

Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account

The Moral Foundations of Ethical Leadership

Hester and Killian stress that principled leadership does not necessarily require discarding past practices; rather, they emphasize the importance of using what is good about the past, eliminating self-interest, and injecting passion into contemporary, valuesbased leadership. Passion, as used by the authors in this sense, refers to neither rage nor anger; rather, it is an excitement and enthusiasm that comes from leading with vision, integrity, and respect for others. Subsequently, when such passion is coupled with moral purpose, the idea of serving others, and building and sustaining relationships, the organization will inevitably experience positive growth — one person at a time

Transgressions and expressions: Affective facial muscle activity predicts moral judgments

Recent investigations into morality suggest that affective responses may precede moral judgments. The present study investigated, first, whether individuals show specific facial affect in response to moral behaviors and, second, whether the intensity of facial affect predicts subsequent moral judgments. Muscle activity relating to disgust (levator labii), anger (corrugator supercilii), and positive affect (zygomaticus major) was recorded while participants considered third-person statements describing good and bad behaviors across five foundations of morality (purity, fairness, harm, authority, and ingroup). Facial disgust was highest in response to purity violations, followed by fairness violations. In contrast, harm violations evoked anger expressions. Importantly, the extremity of subsequent moral judgments was predicted by facial affect, such that judgments about purity and fairness correlated with facial disgust, harm correlated with facial anger, and ingroup correlated with positive facial affect. These results demonstrate that individuals spontaneously exhibit domain-specific moral affect that allows inferences about their moral judgments. </jats:p

A Theory of Moral Persistence: Crypto-Morality and Political Legitimacy

Why, how, and under what conditions do moral beliefs persist despite institutional pressure for change? Why do the powerful often fail to promote the morality of their authority? This paper addresses these questions by presenting the role of crypto-morality in moral persistence. Crypto-morality is the secret adherence to one morality while practicing another in public. A simple overlapping generations model is developed to examine the conditions under which crypto-morality is practiced, decays and influences the direction of moral change. We demonstrate the empirical relevance of crypto-morality by discussing the moral foundations of political legitimacy in various historical episodes.crypto-morality, political legitimacy

Disgust sensitivity relates to moral foundations independent of political ideology

Moral judgments seem related to the emotion disgust. Evolutionary considerations might illuminate the psychological processes underlying this relation. Several studies have noted that individuals who are more disgust sensitive condemn moral violations more strongly. However, this association could result from both disgust sensitivity and moral judgment being correlated with political ideology. To clarify the relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment, we analyzed data from multiple published and unpublished datasets that included the Three-Domain Disgust Scale, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, and a measure of ideology (total N = 2,478). Results showed that associations between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment remained when controlling for ideology. Each of the 3 types of disgust sensitivity uniquely predicted at least 1 of the 5 moral foundations. Moral disgust predicted scores for all moral foundations (largest effect for fairness/reciprocity). Sexual disgust predicted scores for all moral foundations except fairness/reciprocity (largest effect for purity/sanctity). Pathogen disgust had small predictive effects for ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. All effects were positive (i.e., higher levels of disgust sensitivity were associated with greater moral foundation endorsement). These findings suggest specific relations between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment that are not explained by ideology, shedding further light on the functions of disgust and morality