The Psychology of Morality

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Psychology of Morality

"I do believe in vice and virtue and I think to denounce the sin but not the sinner just makes vice too easy for us all. But I'm actually quite amused by how our view of vice advice changes over a short period of time on things like homosexuality, divorce, single parenthood and I am amused too by how vehemently those who don't keep up with fashionable morality are condemned by the so called progressives...

You can see that those people who've got traditional ideas of morality are now branded as intolerant redneck religious bigots on the one hand and on the other hand we've got this kind of moral indifference or moral relativism of non judgmentalism and so. And then we've got the moral shallowness of virtue signaling...

Circumstances make a great effect on how altruistic you are. So for example when people are watching we are more altruistic. Now does that mean that we're just doing that to get the respect and social status that we derive from other people? Maybe. Or maybe it alerts us to our place in the world...

There's only one good way of virtue signaling - that's being virtuous...

This is something that's completely lost again I think in contemporary society between judgmentalism and making judgments. So on the one hand making judgments is something that is absolutely unavoidable for a human being. We are rational creatures, we have to make judgments. Every time I wake up in the morning I'm making a judgment...that's different from being judgemental which is to say making judgments on the basis of insufficient evidence...

What was the one sin that Jesus hated? No not sex, not money. Not all the other things that we get self righteous about but self righteousness itself so obviously this attitude that this survey is throwing up is at least two thousand years old and presumably a lot older than that...

'The New Testament seems to be very judgmental. I mean there are the Pharisees, the money lenders in the temple, the rich men who cannot pass through the eye of the needle. Lots of judgmentalism going on, isn't there?... I thought you just said that Christ didn't like judgmentalism'

'Yes that's exactly what I said is the sin he hates is the self righteousness of the Pharisees and the people who think they're ok.'

'Yeah but he's making a judgment'

'He is but he's god, I mean he is entitled to'

'Ah. But we're not. I thought we were made in his image... so we shouldn't judge Pharisees?... Should Christian churches condemn or condone homosexuality or divorce?'...

The reason we love to hate pedophilia is most of us are not tempted by pedophilia. So it may go on being that something wicked. But what is much more interesting Michael is to second guess what in fifty or a hundred years time you know if things reverse. So for instance it is possible to imagine that in a hundred years time we might be as shocked by abortion as we are by slavery...

When people in good conscience try and be I think rightly judgemental because by the way if you don't judge somebody morally what you're actually doing is treating them with indifference. I mean if you don't care what they think I mean and you are also treating your own ideas with indifference. If you believe something in good conscience you don't want to keep it to yourself, you have to go out and persuade. That's part of being accountable as a human being... we confused that with moral grandstanding which is to condemn people for their good faith"