Inspired by the discussion above in another thread, here is a thread to discuss the question: Is there a place for sanctity in a modern society?
The TL,DR version of the above discussion, to get you caught up:
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) claims that there are a number of pillars that we all build our sense of morality around. Different cultures and groups that have different senses of morality prioritize different pillars (or avoid some entirely), but these pillars are the ‘menu’ that different cultures choose from.
Specifically with regards to American liberals and conservatives, the argument is that liberals care about Harm and Fairness, while Conservatives do care about those (though not as much as liberals) but also care about Ingroup, Authority, and Purity (which is often called Sanctity as well).
I plan to create another thread to discuss tribalism/ingroup, but for now, let’s talk Purity.
I’ll quote my original thoughts on both Haidt’s points about Sanctity and my own ideas below, to kickstart this thread.
I think the logical error is the assumption that it is considered “wrong” not just repulsive (or that considering it that way is a majority opinion). I may be overly optimistic about the level of nuance in the average person, but I think most people in Western countries* would nowadays distinguish between something that appears to them repulsive to them personally but does not harm anyone or anything, and something that is actually wrong. It may not be an overwhelming majority but I’d say it was a majority opinion.
not that people in non-western countries are less moral or nuanced but I wouldn’t feel knowledgeable enough to hazzard a guess about what a majority of their population thinks on the matter (in countries without a a tradition of abrahamic religion it could be larger)
I find the idea that liberals don’t care about purity to be odd, as there are plenty of liberal purity tests that occur, and often hinder.
But as for the chicken thing in particular, I agree that disgust isn’t the same thing as finding something immoral. It honestly seems odd to me to conflate the two. To me, they have nothing to do with each other.
The purity I find myself caring about is what I mention above (but am trying to not care as much about it).
So purity in that sense is nothing to do with purity in the sense of OP, as in “ritual purity” that can be made “impure” by doing something repulsive. The modern political purity test from the left wing is more closely related “ingroup” in the OP, as in “if you don’t have identical political aims as me, even if almost all our beliefs and aims are identical, you are the enemy and no better than a literal neo-nazi” (obligatory Monty Python clip)
Can you explain what you mean by this? When I think of “liberal purity tests” they still center around harm. The term “purity” is pejoratively borrowed to compare them to religious fanatics, but the things generally associated with being “impure” in this context are seen as harmful, not unholy. Racism, homophobia, etc.
That’s why I used the term Sanctity instead of Purity. It is more descriptive.
No, that makes sense. I was not understanding what the term meant. To me, there is a similarity in these two ideas of purity, but I can see how they are more different than similar, and that “ingroup” fits better.
Yeah, ingroup is definitely part of it too. The phenomenon is focused on people who are exiled from the ingroup due to the perception that they are doing something that violates the ingroup’s harm/care morality.
Go ahead and save this point for when I open a similar thread regarding Ingroup in the future although I notice that Ingroup does score slightly higher than Purity for liberals so maybe there’s something there!
Words like “sanctity” and “purity” to me have a very religious cast to them, and as such I am not interested in having them represented as one of society’s pillars of morality. “Purity” especially is way too wobbly a word to base anything serious on, because it raises the question of the standard by which the purity is to be measured. Is it sexual, emotional, behavioral, purity of thought, purity of belief, or what?
“Sanctity” to me just means holiness or saintliness, or being sacred, all religious terms. I do not wish to promote any of those things, as I regard them as irrational and divorced from reality.
So to answer the OP, not really. There are plenty of people who give lip service but are hypocritical (because such attitudes are divorced from reality), there are probably a few people who really try to be those things, but whose life is probably not working out well (because those goals are divorced from reality). A modern society requires from most people a fairly rational approach to life.
Please note that I have not said that people ought not to want to and try to be moral people, nor have I said (because I do not believe it) that a successful life is a materialistic one. I am just saying that my understanding of concepts of sanctity and purity have no bearing on living a moral life. One might, I suppose, be both moral and “pure” (whatever that is supposed to mean) but the two concepts are not connected.
The idea of Sanctity as defined in this thread — that certain things are considered wrong in and of themselves, aside from any measurable harm or violation of fairness — does not have any personal value for me. If there’s no identifiable real-world impact, then there’s nothing to be policed. To use the initial example, if the guy wants to have sex with a cooked chicken he has purchased himself in the privacy of his own residence, I might think that’s odd, but there’s nothing especially wrong with it.
That said, even from a somewhat utilitarian mindset, I do think there is a place for this concept of Sanctity in the modern world, specifically regarding the values of an inclusive democratic society. The collective dialogue about why we have freedom of expression, freedom of belief, broad suffrage, racial equality, etc., can become a thick and knotty ethical debate which, to be completely frank, a large sector of the population is simply too stupid to understand. It is therefore useful to raise those principles to a higher level, in a sense, in order to short-circuit the disingenuous arguments promoted by opponents of those values, and thereby immunize society, to some extent, from having ultimately self-destructive seeds planted by stealth authoritarians and their ilk.
So if, for example, some malicious ideologue starts trying to defend the idea of keeping some minority group segregated in ghettos by whipping up doubt and fear about that group’s effect on society, it would be nice if there were an immediate collective skepticism about the ideologue’s intentions based in the instinctive recognition that separating people on the basis of skin color and/or religious faith and/or preferred language violates a fundamental sense of purity about the definition of people, rather than appealing to fairness or other even more abstract principles as happens currently.
The Sanctity of a cooked chicken is irrelevant. The Sanctity of human dignity, however, is not.
I think it could be considered harmful to society if everyone stopped having sex with humans and started having sex with food instead.
I suppose your hypothetical example could revolve around a person who is perfectly happy having sex with humans and also perfectly happy having sex with food, but that seems like a kind of unlikely case to me.
That’s an interesting quote. I, too, reject loyalty, authority, and sanctity as moral values, but I find Haidt’s explanations for why they’re invalid to be somewhat straw men.
Loyalty is an attribute that can be good or bad, depending on how it’s practiced. A mobster’s loyalty to her boss may prevent her from testifying against his crimes, which may result in his continued freedom and continued reign of terror. There’s nothing positive about that loyalty. A police officer’s loyalty to the thin blue line may result in his support for a corrupt cop. That’s negative. A husband’s loyalty to his abusive wife may prevent him from leaving a bad marriage. That’s not good.
But loyalty can function positively. A mobster’s loyalty to her family may result in her willingness to testify against her boss in order to get her family out of a deadly situation. A police officer’s loyalty to his community may result in his reporting a corrupt cop. A husband’s loyalty to his children may result in his removing them from an abusive home.
Loyalty, then isn’t a moral pillar. It’s a secondary attribute, and whether it’s good or bad depends on its effects on an actual moral pillar like harm.
Similar arguments would hold true for authority and sanctity. These may be good or bad, but whether they’re good or bad depends on whether they’re promoting or preventing harm.
I admit I have no evidence for this, but my guess would be that there are more vibrator users who have healthy social relationships than foodosexuals who have healthy social relationships.
It’s an interesting question, for sure. All moral systems are axiomatic, reduced to a certain level. That includes my own, which I feel is self-evidently true: the best behavior treats others with fairness and kindness, reducing human suffering where reasonably possible.
“Why is that axiomatically true?” someone might ask. Because it benefits the most people, I might answer. “But why is that best? Isn’t it better that the strong, ruthless few thrive?” And so on.
So, if all moral beliefs are at some point unexplainable, just self-evident, I want to say that sanctity must have some place in society if people believe in a certain flavor of it. And I mean that philosophically, not legally, where of course if enough people say something is or isn’t prohibited, them’s the rules.
But that collides with my super-strong belief that acts that harm no one are nobody’s business but the person doing said act.
I can’t think of an example of a harmless act that I’d think it appropriate to restrict, including the chicken example (my revulsion is not a factor for me, not if he’s doing it behind drawn blinds). But that is, again, me enforcing my own beliefs. Dueling axioms, and all that.
Then what about homosexual sex? If everyone stopped having sex with the opposite sex in favor of the same sex, it would also be harmful to society. Is that a moral argument against homosexual behavior?
The “if everyone did it” doesn’t seem to work as a moral argument in the arena of procreation.
Ooh, this is an interesting point. I think I agree with that. I don’t think I have a rational reason for thinking that human beings have inherent value (and I can think of rational arguments that human beings on the whole shouldn’t be particularly valuable) – it’s just axiomatic for me, of course human beings have inherent value and human dignity is important.
I thought something similar when I read Brave New World many years ago. Rationally speaking, it seems to a large part of me like the society that’s been set up in that book is totally sensible and has a lot of upsides. Everyone’s happy, everyone has their own place and is happy with it. And yet…
although I notice that Ingroup does score slightly higher than Purity for liberals so maybe there’s something there!