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64 Ala. L. Rev. 867 (2012-2013)
Moral Psychology and the Law: How Intuitions Drive Reasoning, Judgment, and the Search for Evidence

handle is hein.journals/bamalr64 and id is 907 raw text is: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LAW: How INTUITIONS DRIVE REASONING, JUDGMENT, AND THE SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE Jonathan Haidt* My talk today is about a delusion that is stalking the halls of the academy. Delusion is defined by Webster's as a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact.' In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins used the word delusion in this way.2 He defined the God delusion as the belief in a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.3 He then argued that religious people are unconquerable by reason, because if they were reasonable, they would see the falsity of their belief. He argued that there is no such thing as a God defined in this way. Whether or not you agree with Dawkins' atheism, his book is a useful example of how one might go about arguing for the existence of a mass delusion. The mass delusion that I want to talk about today is the rationalist delusion in ethics. I define it like this: The belief in a reliable faculty of reasoning, capable of operating effectively and impartially even when self- interest, reputational concerns, and intergroup conflict pull toward a particular conclusion. The word rationalism has a variety of meanings in philosophy. I am using the term to indicate a fairly moderate position-the view that reason is the chief source of valid knowledge about ethics-not the more radical claim that it is the only source. So is reason the chief source of knowledge about ethical truths? In several review papers4 I have shown that there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating the deficiencies of human reasoning, and little or no evidence that reasoning can perform in the way that rationalist theories of * Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, Leonard N. Stem School of Business, New York University. Dr. Haidt delivered this lecture at The University of Alabama School of Law on September 9, 2012. 1. WEBSTER'S 3D NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 598 (1986). 2. RICHARD DAWKINS, THE GOD DELUSION (2006). 3. Id. at 52. 4. See especially Jonathan Haidt, The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology, 316 SCIENCE 998 (2007); Jonathan Haidt & Selin Kesebir, Morality, in 2 HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 797 (Susan T. Fiske et al eds., 5th ed. 2010). See also JONATHAN HAIDT, THE RIGHTEOUS MIND chs. 2-4 (2012).

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