Movatterモバイル変換

No categories

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Moralintuitions are generally understood as automatic strong responses tomoral facts. In this paper, I offer a metacognitive account according to which the strength ofmoralintuitions denotes the level of confidence of a subject. Confidence is a metacognitive appraisal of the fluency with which a subject processes information from a morally salient stimulus. I show that this account is supported by some empirical evidence, explains the main features ofmoral intuition and is (...) preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual views ofmoral intuition. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   4 citations  

The evidential value ofmoralintuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that theintuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on theintuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts (...) in these domains, we also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of themoral domain itself. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   15 citations  

Neil Levy (2011) argues that neuroethics as a new discipline distinct from bioethics provides methodological tools to evaluate the validity of ourmoralintuitions. This naturalistic claim that mor...

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Debate continues over the acts/omissions doctrine, and over the concepts of duty and charity. Such issues inform the debate over themoral permissibility of euthanasia. Recent papers have emphasisedmoral sensitivity, medicalintuitions, and sub-standard palliative care as some of the factors which should persuade us to regard euthanasia as morally unacceptable. I argue that these lines of argument are conceptually misdirected and have no bearing on the bare permissibility of voluntary euthanasia. Further, some of the familiar (...) slippery slope arguments against voluntary euthanasia compromise the principle of autonomy to which both supporters and opponents of euthanasia adhere. I discuss a model for doctor/patient relationships which can be applied to cases which would be seen by all disputants as strong prima facie cases for euthanasia. I argue that in certain cases it will be ordinary medical practitioners who are duty-bound to assist death. (shrink)

Direct download(9 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

A central and fundamental problem inmoral philosophy is that of understanding howmoral principles and theories can be justified. It involves finding rational solutions to both theoretical problems and to substantialmoral questions . According toMoral Intuitionism, some normative judgments, usually calledmoralintuitions, justifymoral principles and theories. Typically,moral intuitionists promise a method that is supposed to yield progress toward finding the answers to ethical disputes and controversies. ;I (...) argue, first, that all versions ofmoral intuitionism must assume that there aremoral facts and thatmoral judgments are descriptions of these facts. Next, I consider whether these assumptions are defensible. I focus on an argument based on a claim that we have no reason to believe that anymoral facts exist, because no such facts need to be postulated in our best explanations of anything. I analyze several recent replies to this line of attack, and I argue that none meets the challenge. ;Finally, I propose a reply which seems to meet a number of relevant theoretical requirements: it allows us to say that somemoral judgments are true because they correspond to facts, and those judgments are sometimes justified. I argue, however, that even this version ofmoral realism has serious flaws. It implies that the content ofmoral language is community relative. That is, such sentences as 'Jews ought to be exterminated' have to be treated as ambiguous, expressing several different propositions, some true and some false. In consequence, when a Nazi issues such a judgment, he may be making a claim that is neither false nor unjustified. ;I conclude thatMoral Intuitionism does not help to reach rational solutions tomoral disputes and disagreements. Therefore, this view should be rejected, and we should look elsewhere for a method that would solve both theoretical and substantial problems of justification in ethics. (shrink)

Export citation   Bookmark  

Moral heuristics are pervasive, and they producemoral errors. We can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentiousmoral view. To accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims aboutmoral truth. But the notion ofmoral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature ofmoralintuitions, especially those that operate (...) automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the possibility of altering suchintuitions through modest changes in context and narrative. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

In all ethical discussion there is an implicit assumption that in our everyday experience we are often able to recognize, as if by direct perception, that the situation confronting us is indubitably bad or unquestionably good in an ethical sense. If, e.g. , on a bright afternoon we meet a capable Scout leader with a troop of healthy-minded boys on a hiking expedition through a beautiful district, sharing with one another as they go botanical information, and all obviously happy together, (...) we know without question that the situation, as we see it, is good. We are as certain about that fact as we are that the sun is shining and the grass green. If, however, on another occasion we witness an act of wanton cruelty perpetrated on a small boy by a bully, we immediately and indubitably see that the situation presented to us is bad. Here again we are as certain of the ethical character of what we see as we are of the fact that two people are involved in the mischief. It would be superfluous to quote illustrations to show thatmoral philosophers, in seeking to establish their conclusions, invariably rely on their judgment regarding the ethical character of situations such as these, the ethical character of which is so perspicuous that, to deny it would be, in Bishop Butler's phrase, “too glaring a falsity to need being confuted.”. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Recently psychologists and experimental philosophers have reported findings showing that in some cases ordinary people'smoralintuitions are affected by factors of dubious relevance to the truth of the content of the intuition. Some defend the use of intuition as evidence in ethics by arguing that philosophers are the experts in this area, and philosophers'moralintuitions are both different from those of ordinary people and more reliable. We conducted two experiments indicating that philosophers and non-philosophers (...) do indeed sometimes have differentmoralintuitions, but challenging the notion that philosophers have better or more reliableintuitions. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   117 citations  

This chapter articulates a standard practice inmoral theory: elicitingintuitions and adjusting one’smoral theory to accommodate them. It then critically discusses different views about the nature ofmoralintuitions, and different views about the epistemic role ofmoralintuitions. Along the way, it examines various philosophical and empirical concerns that inform the current debates.

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

This paper discusses an influential view ofmoral intuition, according to whichmoral intuition is a kind of intellectual perception. The core claim of this quasi-perceptualist theory is thatintuitions are like perceptual experiences in presenting propositions as true. In this work, it is argued that quasi-perceptualism is explanatorily superfluous in themoral domain: there is no need to postulate a sui generis quasi-perceptual mental state to account formoral intuition since rival theories can explain (...) the salient mental features ofmoral intuition. The essay is structured into three main sections. In a first one, I introduce the quasi-perceptualist view ofmoral intuition. In the second, I show that ordinary accounts can explain the salient psychological features ofmoral intuition without referring to intellectual perceptions. Finally, in the third section, I discuss whethermoralintuitions have presentational phenomenology like perceptual experiences. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

In the last twenty years, there has been an enormous growth of scientific research concerning the process of humanmoral reasoning andmoralintuitions. In contemporary descriptive ethics, three dominant approaches can be found – heuristic approach, dual-process theory, and universalmoral grammar. Each of these accounts is based on similar empirical evidence combining findings from evolutionary biology,moral psychology, and neuroethics. Nevertheless, they come to different conclusions about the reliability ofmoralintuitions. (...) The aim of this paper is to critically investigate each of these approaches and compare them with recent scientific findings. Last chapter addresses implications of these findings formoral epistemology and normative ethics. The aim is to show that despite different interpretations of available data, we can reach a satisfying pragmatical conclusion which would be in compliance with the empirical evidence, yet it would not necessarily depend on it. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Moralintuitions are strong, stable, immediatemoral beliefs.Moral philosophers ask when they are justified. This question cannot be answered separately from a psychological question: How domoralintuitions arise? Their reliability depends upon their source. This chapter develops and argues for a new theory of howmoralintuitions arise—that they arise through heuristic processes best understood as unconscious attribute substitutions. That is, when asked whether something has the attribute ofmoral (...) wrongness, people unconsciously substitute a different question about a separate but related heuristic attribute (such as emotional impact). Evidence for this view is drawn from psychology and neuroscience, and competing views ofmoral heuristics are contrasted. It is argued thatmoralintuitions are not direct perceptions and, in many cases, are unreliable sources of evidence formoral claims. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   20 citations  

We develop an argument for a novel version ofmoral intuitionism centered on the claim thatmoralintuitions are trustworthy. Our argument employs an epistemic principle that we call the Trustworthiness Criterion, a distinctive feature of which is its emphasis on oft-neglected social dimensions of cognitive states, including non-doxastic attitudes such as intuition. Thus our argument is not thatmoralintuitions are trustworthy because they are regress-stoppers, or because they are innocent until proven guilty, or (...) because denying their epistemic contribution would be self-defeating, or because they are presupposed in rational inference, or because they are analogous to perceptions, or because they are based on understanding—individualistic claims that have elsewhere been used (controversially) in defense of the thesis thatmoralintuitions are in good epistemic standing. Rather, our argument appeals to the idea thatmoralintuitions are trustworthy because they are the outputs of a cognitive practice, which has epistemically-fecund social elements, that is in good working order. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   9 citations  

In this paper we argue thatmoralintuitions, understood as non-doxastic mental states, should not be reduced to emotions. We reject themoral-intuition-as-emotion view by arguing that having an emotion is neither necessary nor sufficient to have amoral intuition. In particular, we deny the necessity claim by stressing the existence of dispassionatemoralintuitions, which lack emotional phenomenology, and by claiming that somemoralintuitions have no corresponding emotions, as no emotion (...) apprehends objects in terms of the samemoral features. We then argue thatmoralintuitions and emotions consist of different mental attitudes towards theirmoral contents, a difference which explains why experiencing an emotion is not sufficient to have amoral intuition. Our arguments have significant implications for current debates on the epistemic function ofmoralintuitions and the roles of emotions inmoral lives, and we take our view to be able to explain important features of these mental states without neglecting their differences. (shrink)

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

According to the quasi-perceptualist account of philosophicalintuitions, they are intellectual appearances that are psychologically and epistemically analogous to perceptual appearances.Moralintuitions share the key characteristics of otherintuitions, but can also have a distinctive phenomenology and motivational role. This paper develops the Humean claim that the shared and distinctive features of substantivemoralintuitions are best explained by their being constituted bymoral emotions. This is supported by an independently plausible non-Humean, (...) quasi-perceptualist theory of emotion, according to which the phenomenal feel of emotions is crucial for their intentional content. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   57 citations  

Are themoralintuitions of philosophers more reliable than theintuitions of people who are not philosophically trained? According to what has become known as ‘the expertise defence’, the answer is in the affirmative. This answer has been sustained by drawing on analogies to expertise in other fields. However, in this article it is argued that the analogies presuppose two assumptions – the causal assumption and the quality assumption – which are not satisfied in relation to philosophical (...) expertise. Thus, it is suggested that there are reasons to be sceptical with regard to the expertise defence. (shrink)

Direct download(8 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   23 citations  

Imagine that an anthropologist returns from her study of a group of people and reports the following:They refuse to kill one person even to avert the death of all involved—including that one person;They won’t directly push someone to his death to save the lives of five others, but they will push a lever to kill him to save five others;They punish transgressors because it feels right, even when they expect the punishment to cause far more harm than good—and even when (...) the harm done by the punishment exceeds the harm done by the transgression being punished.The anthropologist’s report might lead us to conclude that these people are at least confused, and perhaps even dangerous.Here’s some bad news. Those people are us. Or so suggests recent research in experimental psychology and the neurosciences. This research indicates that ourmoralintuitions have a vaguely deontological character and they prompt us to make any number of judgments that appear arbitrary or otherwise unjustified, such ... -/- I contend that Greene partly misunderstands the practical implications of his own principles. If our ordinarymoral judgments are to do the strategic work Greene wants them to do, he needs to endorse fullfledged Sidgwickian self-effacement for at least some areas of micro-level decision making. By the lights of some of Greene’s own arguments, people must accept the correctness—and not simply the usefulness—of the relevantintuitions in their personal conduct to satisfy utilitarian standards. I argue that removing utilitarian reasoning from micro-level decision making is consistent with Greene’s preferred strategy of using utilitarianism as a Bcommon currency^ for resolvingmoral conflict at the institutional level. To clarify upfront: the aim of this paper is to offer an internal criticism rather than to defend (e.g.,) the relevant empirical research, utilitarianism, self-effacement, and so on. I’m making an argument about where Greene’s own psychological and philosophical commitments should take him. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

This chapter articulates a standard practice inmoral theory: elicitingintuitions and adjusting one’smoral theory to accommodate them. It then critically discusses different views about the nature ofmoralintuitions, and different views about the epistemic role ofmoralintuitions. Along the way, it examines various philosophical and empirical concerns that inform the current debates.

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

No categories

Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

I address Sinnott-Armstrong's argument that evidence of framing effects inmoral psychology shows thatmoralintuitions are unreliable and therefore not noninferentially justified. I begin by discussing what it is to be epistemically unreliable and clarify how framing effects rendermoralintuitions unreliable. This analysis calls for a modification of Sinnott-Armstrong's argument if it is to remain valid. In particular, he must claim that framing is sufficiently likely to determine the content ofmoral (...) class='Hi'>intuitions. I then re-examine the evidence which is supposed to support this claim. In doing so, I provide a novel suggestion for how to analyze the reliability ofintuitions in empirical studies. Analysis of the evidence suggests thatmoralintuitions subject to framing effects are in fact much more reliable than perhaps was thought, and that Sinnott-Armstrong has not succeeded in showing that noninferential justification has been defeated. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   44 citations  

Is the epistemology ofmoralintuitions compatible with admitting a role for emotion? I argue in this paper thatmoralintuitions and emotions can be partners without creating an epistemic threat. I start off by offering some empirical findings to weaken Singer’s (and Greene’s and Haidt’s) debunking argument againstmoral intuition, which treat emotions as a distorting factor. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the standard contrast between intuition and emotion is (...) a mistake.Moralintuitions and emotions are not contestants if we construemoral intuition as non-doxastic intellectual seeming and emotion as a non-doxastic perceptual-like state. This will show that emotions support, rather than distort, the epistemic standing ofmoralintuitions. (shrink)

Export citation   Bookmark  

Psychologists and philosophers use the term 'intuition' for a variety of different phenomena. In this paper, I try to provide a kind of a roadmap of the debates, point to some confusions and problems, and give a brief sketch of an empirically respectable philosophical approach.

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   4 citations  

We use the phrase "moral intuition" to describe the appearance in consciousness ofmoral judgments or assessments without any awareness of having gone through a conscious reasoning process that produces this assessment. This paper investigates the neural substrates ofmoral intuition. We propose thatmoralintuitions are part of a larger set of socialintuitions that guide us through complex, highly uncertain and rapidly changing social interactions. Suchintuitions are shaped by learning. The (...) neural substrates formoral intuition include fronto-insular, cingulate, and orbito-frontal cortices and associated subcortical structure such as the septum, basil ganglia and amygdala. Understanding the role of these structures undercuts many philosophical doctrines concerning the status ofmoralintuitions, but vindicates the claim that they can sometimes play a legitimate role inmoral decision-making. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   23 citations  

Export citation   Bookmark  

In this article, I provide a guide to some current thinking in empiricalmoral psychology on the nature ofmoralintuitions, focusing on the theories of Haidt and Narvaez. Their debate connects to philosophical discussions of virtue theory and the role of emotions inmoral epistemology. After identifying difficulties attending the current debate around the relation betweenintuitions and reasoning, I focus on the question of the development ofintuitions. I discuss howintuitions (...) could be shaped intomoral expertise, outlining Haidt’s emphasis on innate factors and Narvaez’s account in terms of a social-cognitive model of personality. After a brief discussion ofmoral relativism, I consider the implications of the account ofmoral expertise for our understanding of the relation betweenmoralintuitions and reason. I argue that a strong connection can be made if we adopt a broad conception of reason and a narrow conception of expertise. (shrink)

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   7 citations  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

In recent years, the epistemic reliability ofmoralintuitions has been undermined by substantial empirical data reporting the influence of cognitive biases. This paper discusses and elaborates upon a promising strategy in response to the reliability challenge tomoralintuitions. The considered argument appeals to the fact thatmoralintuitions are experienced with different levels of strength and agents accept only strongintuitions, not vulnerable to bias under realistic circumstances. This essay aims to (...) reconstruct this defense from the reliability challenge in its most promising form and to evaluate the plausibility of the argument in light of the available empirical evidence. What emerges from the discussion is that the vindication ofmoralintuitions fundamentally depends on two distinct premises: first, the hypothesis that agents acceptmoralintuitions proportionally to their level of confidence, and second, the hypothesis that intuitive confidence is epistemically reliable. While there is consistent evidence for the first hypothesis, there is still no conclusive evidence for the second. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, one key challenge is ensuring that AI aligns with certain values. However, in the current diverse and democratic society, reaching a normative consensus is complex. This paper delves into the methodological aspect of how AI ethicists can effectively determine which values AI should uphold. After reviewing the most influential methodologies, we detail an intuitionist research agenda that offers guidelines for aligning AI applications with a limited set of reliablemoralintuitions, each (...) underlying a refined cooperative view of AI. We discuss appropriate epistemic tools for collecting, filtering, and justifyingmoralintuitions with the aim of reducing cognitive and social biases. The proposed methodology facilitates a large collective participation in AI alignment, while ensuring the reliability of the consideredmoral judgments. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Export citation   Bookmark  

In this article I examine the consequences of the dominance of intuitive thinking inmoral judging and deciding for the role ofmoral reasoning inmoral education. I argue that evidence for the reliability ofmoralintuitions is lacking. We cannot determine when we can trust our intuitivemoral judgements. Deliberate and critical reasoning is needed, but it cannot replace intuitive thinking. Following Robin Hogarth, I argue that intuitive judgements can be improved. The expertise (...) model formoral development, proposed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, not only teaches us how we acquire intuitivemoral judgements, it also shows the interconnectedness of intuitive thinking and deliberate reasoning. Analysing the expertise model in more detail, I show that it cannot do justice to the importance of reasoning skills. Reasoning skills are needed because we expect people to be able to argue for their standpoints. I conclude thatmoral education should not only aim at improving intuitivemoral judgements, but also at acquiring reasoning skills. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   10 citations  

The book contends that contrary to accepted interpretation,moral intuition, rather than any other form of reasoning, least of all formal logic, is themoral method found in the ethics of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant and Dewey - the first four chapters of the book. These four thinkers represent a dialectical selection of ethical relativism and absolutism as well as a chronological succession from ancient to contemporary thought. The fifth and concluding chapter is a major presentation of the author's (...) thesis onmoral intuition as the exact antidote against the dilemma ethics approach, which is widely used today with rapidly diminishing effect and interest. This chapter is a detailed illustration of howmoral intuition works out concretely in the lived world. It stresses the unity ofmoral experience even as this is clouded over by our relatively fewer, but overdramatized, confrontations on somemoral issues. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Research into cognitive biases that impair human judgment has mostly been applied to the area of economic decision-making. Ethical decision-making has been comparatively neglected. Since ethical decisions often involve very high individual as well as collective stakes, analyzing how cognitive biases affect them can be expected to yield important results. In this theoretical article, we consider the ethical debate about cognitive enhancement and suggest a number of cognitive biases that are likely to affectmoralintuitions and judgments about (...) CE: status quo bias, loss aversion, risk aversion, omission bias, scope insensitivity, nature bias, and optimistic bias. We find that there are more well-documented biases that are likely to cause irrational aversion to CE than biases in the opposite direction. This suggests that common attitudes about CE are predominantly negatively biased. Within this new perspective, we hope that subsequent research will be able to elaborate this hypothesis and develop effective de-biasing techniques that can help increase the rationality of the public CE debate and thus improve our ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   15 citations  

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

There is an ancient, yet still lively, debate inmoral epistemology about the epistemic significance of disagreement. One of the important questions in that debate is whether, and to what extent, the prevalence and persistence of disagreement between ourmoralintuitions causes problems for those who seek to rely onintuitions in order to makemoral decisions, issuemoral judgments, and craftmoral theories. Meanwhile, in general epistemology, there is a relatively young, and (...) very lively, debate about the epistemic significance of disagreement. A central question in that debate concerns peer disagreement: When I am confronted with an epistemic peer with whom I disagree, how should my confidence in my beliefs change (if at all)? The disagreement debate inmoral epistemology has not been brought into much contact with the disagreement debate in general epistemology (though McGrath [2007] is an important exception). A purpose of this paper is to increase the area of contact between these two debates. In Section 1, I try to clarify the question I want to ask in this paper – this is the question whether we have any reasons to believe what I shall call “anti-intuitivism.” In Section 2, I argue that anti-intuitivism cannot be supported solely by investigating the mechanisms that produce ourintuitions. In Section 3, I discuss an anti-intuitivist argument from disagreement which relies on the so-called “Equal Weight View.” In Section 4, I pause to clarify the notion of epistemic parity and to explain how it ought to be understood in the epistemology ofmoral intuition. In Section 5, I return to the anti-intuitivist argument from disagreement and explain how an apparently-vulnerable premise of that argument may be quite resilient. In Section 6, I introduce a novel objection against the Equal Weight View in order to show how I think we can successfully resist the anti-intuitivist argument from disagreement. (shrink)

Direct download(10 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   11 citations  

There is not agreement amongmoral intuitionists on the nature ofmoralintuitions: some favor a doxastic interpretation, others a non-doxastic interpretation. This paper argues that although both interpretations have legitimacy, the doxastic interpretation is preferable. The paper discusses three salient roles formoralintuitions:Role 1: To serve as a test formoral theories.Role 2: To provide a particularist grounding formoral judgment.Role 3: To stop a vicious infinite regress of justifiedmoral (...) belief.The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 1, given the greater justificatory weight rationally accorded intuitivemoral beliefs over intuitivemoral “seemings,” upon which we may place little if any justificatory weight: intuitive beliefs provide firmer ground for judgingmoral theories to be correct or incorrect, adequate or inadequate, etc., than mere seemings. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 2, in that particularist intuitional belief warrants greater confidence in apparentmoral truth than intuitive seemings; and given thatmoral particularists commonly allot great epistemic authority tointuitions about particular cases, this counts heavily in favor of intuitional belief. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 3 because (i) the greater agential justificatory burdens attendant to believing that p as opposed to merely being appeared to (or its seeming) that p, warrants that a higher degree of epistemic weight be given doxasticintuitions; and (ii) they are less vulnerable to doxastic ascent-type arguments, which would undermine their basicality as justification providers. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

Despite the widespread use of the notion ofmoral intuition, its psychological features remain a matter of debate and it is unclear why the capacity to experiencemoralintuitions evolved in humans. We first survey standard accounts ofmoral intuition, pointing out their interesting and problematic aspects. Drawing lessons from this analysis, we propose a novel account ofmoralintuitions which captures their phenomenological, mechanistic, and evolutionary features.Moralintuitions are composed of (...) two elements: an evaluative mental state and a feeling of rightness (FOR). We illustrate the phenomenology of the FOR with examples of non-moral andmoral cases, and provide a biological and mechanistic account: the emergence of human reasoning capacities created a need for the co-evolution of a psychological system producing the feeling of rightness (the FORs). This system is triggered when we experience conflicting evaluations. The FORs renders evaluations resulting from rational deliberation less compelling than the evaluations produced by simple evolved systems. It thus facilitates optimal decision-making, preventing excessive interference by rational deliberation. Our account sheds light on whymoralintuitions are so frequently experienced and why they are so compelling and resistant to argument. In addition, the account fuels interesting speculations about common metaethicalintuitions. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

In this essay, after first briefly reviewing the literature on experimental philosophy and how and why it is important especially for contemporary analytic philosophy, we focus on two earliest experimental research papers on free willintuitions. We also present psychological mechanisms that try to explain why both philosophers and ordinary people have incompatibilist and compatibilistintuitions and free will andmoral responsibility. We then move on to another experimental research onmoralintuitions and develop a (...) dual process model based on the model to explainmoralintuitions. However, our dual interacting-process model is not intended formoralintuitions but free willintuitions. Finally, we critically examine other mechanism and briefly defend our model. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

본 논문의 목적은 덕윤리가 도덕직관을 일관성 있게 해명할 수 있는지 검토하는 것이다. 도덕직관은 도덕추론과 빈번히 충돌하는 경향이 있다. 여기서는 여덟 가지 유형의 트롤리딜레마를 간략하게 소개했고, 각각의 딜레마에 대한 행위 중심 윤리학의 행위정당화 과정을 살펴보았다. 그 결과 행위 중심 윤리학의 행위정당화는 각각의 사례들에 대해 설명하는데에는 유용하지만 여덟 가지 유형의 딜레마 모두를 일관성 있게 정당화기 위해서는 도덕직관과의 충돌을 피할 수 없다는 점이 드러났다.BR 반면 덕윤리는 여덟 가지 트롤리 딜레마 유형에서 드러나는 행위자의 도덕직관에 대한 설명을 제공할 수 있다. 덕윤리는 행위의 정당성을 유덕한 행위자의 (...) 성품으로부터 도덕적 정서, 동기 그리고 결과에 이르기까지 포괄적 요인들로부터 이끌어내기 때문이다. 이와 같은 덕윤리의 다원적 성격은 일원적인 행위 중심 윤리학의 이론들을 포괄하고 조정할 수 있으며, 우리의 도덕적 경험을 보다 적합하게 설명해줄 수 있는 조건이 된다.BR 덕윤리는 도덕직관에 대해 설득력 있는 해명을 할 수 있을 뿐만 아니라 상호 불가통약적인 토대 위에 서 있는 다양한 도덕 원칙들을 포섭할 수 있는 대안적 윤리가 될 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

In this paper I problematize the use of appeals to the commonintuitions people have about the morality of our society’s current treatment of animals in order to defend that treatment. I do so by looking at recent findings in the field of cognitive science. First I will examine the role that appeals to common intuition play in philosophical arguments about themoral worth of animals, focusing on the work of Carl Cohen and Richard Posner. After describing the (...) theory ofMoral Disengagement—which has been used to explain how people live with themselves when they commit acts that they themselves believe are wrong—I will review the recent empirical research that details the nature of themoral disengagement that accompanies animal treatment. This includes studies that reveal that those who eat animals engage in the following behaviors: They minimize the nature of the harm of killing animals by casting the practice in a positive light; They obscure personal responsibility by blaming others for harms; They minimize the effect of the conduct on the animals by avoiding reference to the animal origins of meat; They derogate vegetarians as a way of avoiding feelings of guilt for their own practices. Perhaps most importantly, a number of empirical studies have shown that people’sintuitions about themoral worth of animals are shaped by their practice of eating animals—and not the other way around. In addition to the studies onmoral disengagement, there is another body of research that has attempted to discover what accounts for the individual differences in attitudes people have toward themoral worth of animals. These studies have linked masculinity and traits like Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation and Right Wing Authoritarianism to the tendency to disregard themoral worth of animals. I will briefly summarize this body of research and will then conclude by arguing that this data should cause us to be highly skeptical of the value that the common intuition that people who eat animals have about themoral status of animals may have in helping us understand the actualmoral worth of animals. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   5 citations  

This dissertation is a contribution to the field of empirically informed metaethics, which combines the rigorous conceptual clarity of traditional metaethics with a careful review of empirical evidence. More specifically, this work stands at the intersection ofmoral psychology,moral epistemology, and philosophy of action. The study comprises six chapters on three distinct (although related) topics. Each chapter is structured as an independent paper and addresses a specific open question in the literature. The first part concerns the psychological (...) features and cognitive function ofmoral intuition. Chapter 1 (“Moral intuition, strength, and metacognition”) is focused on the concept of intuitive strength, which is one of the defining features ofmoral intuition. I provide a metacognitive account of intuitive strength and show why such a view is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual accounts. Then, in Chapter 2 (“Dual process reflective equilibrium”), I will discuss the interplay between intuition and reflection inmoral reasoning. I will contend that the influential “default-interventionist” model of reasoning, theorized by Greene, is insufficiently supported by the evidence. In light of some recent studies, I outline an account ofmoral reasoning in which intuition and reflection are not in conflict but cooperate to reach a reflective goal. I call this model dual process reflective equilibrium. The aim of the first part is descriptive, i.e., it argues for an accurate understanding ofmoral intuition and reasoning in light of the available empirical evidence. In contrast, the second part addresses a normative question: is a subject epistemically justified in forming a belief on the basis of amoral intuition? Skeptics ofmoral intuition argue that acceptingmoralintuitions should be the exception rather than the rule to the extent that epistemically defective processes determine the content ofmoralintuitions. Chapter 3 (“Moral intuitionism and the reliability challenge”) introduces the recent empirical challenges to the reliability ofmoralintuitions and elaborates a promising strategy for defending intuitionism. In short, I consider whether subjects can track the reliability of theirintuitions with their confidence. In Chapter 4 (“The argument from limited cognitive resources”), I evaluate a different strategy to defendmoral intuitionism. Specifically, I develop an argument according to which acceptingmoralintuitions is legitimate because it is the most rational option that a subject has, given her limited resources. The third and final part of the dissertation concerns the role ofmoralintuitions in action. The influence of automatic processes onmoral conduct raises different challenges tomoral philosophy. The first challenge is to explain how a subject can be motivated by certain values without the mental effort of deliberation. Chapter 5 (“Caring,moral motivation, and automatic conduct”) tackles this issue. Chapter 6 (“Moral sensitivity as skillful automaticity”) aims to explain howmoral agents can be sensitive to good reasons through automatic mental processes. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   12 citations  

Themoral status of human brain organoids (HBOs) has been debated in view of the future possibility that they may acquire phenomenal consciousness. This study empirically investigates themoral sensitivity in people’s intuitive judgments about actions toward conscious HBOs. The results showed that the presence/absence of pain experience in HBOs affected the judgment about themoral permissibility of actions such as creating and destroying the HBOs; however, the presence/absence of visual experience in HBOs also affected the judgment. (...) These findings suggest that people’s intuitive judgments about themoral status of HBOs are sensitive to the valence-independent value of phenomenal consciousness. We discuss how these observations can have normative implications; particularly, we argue that they put pressure on the theoretical view that themoral status of conscious HBOs is grounded solely in the valence-dependent value of consciousness. We also discuss how our findings can be informative even when such a theoretical view is finally justified or when the future possibility of conscious HBOs is implausible. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

A recent study ofmoralintuitions, performed by Joshua Greene and a group of researchers at Princeton University, has recently received a lot of attention. Greene and his collaborators designed a set of experiments in which subjects were undergoing brain scanning as they were asked to respond to various practical dilemmas. They found that contemplation of some of these cases (cases where the subjects had to imagine that they must use some direct form of violence) elicited greater activity (...) in certain areas of the brain associated with emotions compared with the other cases. It has been argued (e.g., by Peter Singer) that these results undermine the reliability of ourmoralintuitions, and therefore provide an objection to methods ofmoral reasoning that presuppose that they carry an evidential weight (such as the idea of reflective equilibrium). I distinguish between two ways in which Greene's findings lend support for a sceptical attitude towardsintuitions. I argue that, given the first version of the challenge, the method of reflective equilibrium can easily accommodate the findings. As for the second version of the challenge, I argue that it does not so much pose a threat specifically to the method of reflective equilibrium but to the idea thatmoral claims can be justified through rational argumentation in general. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   43 citations  

Export citation   Bookmark   52 citations  

Moral reasoning proceeds largely through the systematization ofintuitions aboutmoral problems or cases. Recent empirical research seems to reaffirm some traditional criticisms of this form of reasoning. The critics hold thatintuitions are unreliable: they seem to vary inappropriately with factors such as culture, religion and framing. This chapter investigates the role of this kind of empirical higher-order evidence in the debate concerning the reliance onintuitions inmoral epistemology. It distinguishes between higher-order (...) evidence about an intuition in a particular case and such evidence about reliance onintuitions as amoral epistemic practice. The chapter argues that the unreliability objection is better understood in the latter sense and that mere "bracketing" is no appropriate response to cases of higher-order evidence about a practice. The chapter discusses some of the available evidence about the robustness ofmoralintuitions to morally irrelevant factors. It concludes that we have little reason to trust in our capacity for intuiting, because it seems to go wrong in surprising ways. Higher-order evidence about relying onintuitions as amoral epistemic practice thus suggests that this practice is an instance of wishful thinking. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Various studies showmoralintuitions to be susceptible to framing effects. Many have argued that this susceptibility is a sign of unreliability and that this poses a methodological challenge formoral philosophy. Recently, doubt has been cast on this idea. It has been argued that extant evidence of framing effects does not show thatmoralintuitions have an unreliability problem. I argue that, even if the extant evidence suggests thatmoralintuitions are fairly (...) stable with respect to whatintuitions we have, the effect of framing on the strength of thoseintuitions still needs to be taken into account. I argue that this by itself poses a methodological challenge formoral philosophy. (shrink)

Direct download(9 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   18 citations