Contemporary ethical theory of Haidt - Essay Example

In Haidt’s paradigm, intuitions are primary in making human moral judgments; moral reasoning only does the labor of a lawyer, which provides justification for an already taken point of view. In other words, moral judgments are taken without a judge who could have weighed all considerations impartially. And, the only ones who are capable of making moral judgments based on moral reasoning are professional philosophers and such ilk. Needless to say, it is more than an elitistic argument as ordinary people too face many ethical challenges in their lives but attend them with considerable force of moral reasoning.

The purpose the paper is to weigh the arguments of Haidt in favor of social intuitionism and counter-arguments by Pizarro and Bloom against each other to have better understandings of the ways moral judgment functions. Intuitions, Reasoning and Moral Judgments Haidt introduced and formulated the social intuitionist model as an alternative to the rationalist model of moral thought. He considers that intuitions as paramount in moral judgments as they are automatic affective reflexes. Moral reasoning is a chicken and egg question that attempts to find what determines moral judgments.

Haidt argues that judgments are based on spontaneous intuitions while moral reasoning has only the role of justifying. In other words, moral reasoning is just the spokesperson of the moral judgments. . Since it is social model, it cannot “deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences” (Haidt, 814). More than moral reasoning, moral judgment takes place as a result of spontaneous intuition based evaluations. A moral judgment is often immediate and spontaneous; moral reasoning just follows it.

It means after reaching at a moral judgment only, people look forward for moral reasons. Many of the laboratory researches have shown that human beings are actually governed by the forces of their unconscious when they pronounce moral judgments. Still, it is necessary to look at the role played by rational deliberations and the cognitive abilities in directing moral judgments. Moreover, people actually engage in moral reasoning while they confront ethical dilemmas. No moral judgments are taken all of a sudden and forever.

The rationalist model, according to Haidt, portrays that “moral knowledge and moral judgment are reached primarily by a process of reasoning and reflection” (814). Here, moral emotion could play only a lesser role by adding some inputs to the process of moral reasoning. Simply speaking, the rationalist model assumes that every human being plays a role of judge while pronouncing is/her own moral judgments. Social intuitionism has many philosophical underpinnings as it is at the core philosophical thought.

Haidt asserts that “[i]ntuitionism in philosophy refers to the view that there are moral truths and that when people grasp these truths they do so not by a process of ratiocination and reflection but rather by a process more akin to perception” (814). Here a person sees a thing and adopt a position without critically engaging