Home

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education

The Righteous Autistic Mind: Introduction

Submitted by Landon Bryce on Sat, 07/28/2012 - 10:51
Published in

For the last few moths I've been studying the ideas of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, especially his new book The Righteous Mind.  I've done one post already about how his concept of sacredness might help make sense out of the conflicts between the various autism communities.  After Joe Scarborough's comments linking autism and murder, I want to use Haidt's ideas as a framework for a lengthy discussion related to autism, morality, and scapegoating.

I will begin with a series of posts explaining the arguments that Haidt is making about morality and society, structured around a talk that he gave to the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.  Although I am highly skeptical of many of the things he says here, I am going to hold off on critique because these ideas are complex and need to be understood before they can be picked apart.

He is introduced by neuroscientist James Doty and his own talk begins at about seven minutes into the clip below.

Click here to watch.

Syndicate content