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Cognitive Miracles: When Are Fast Processes Unreliable?

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1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.

2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.

3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.

4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.

5. The moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider involve unfamiliar* situations.

6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.

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‘it would be a cognitive miracle if we had reliably good moral instincts [intuitions] about unfamiliar* moral problems’

Greene, 2014 p. 715

unfamiliar* problems = ‘ones with which we have inadequate evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience’

why?

Why, if at all, should we think that fast processes are generally unreliable in unfamiliar situations?
Hogarth (2010)’s advice is based no observing people in business situations and measuring how successful they are.
But we can also give a theoretical explanation for Hogarth (2010)’s advice ...

speed–accuracy trade-offs

Any broadly inferrential process must make a trade-off between speed and accuracy.

Henmon (1911, table 2)

I do not want to get into it now, but more than a century of work has upheld the idea of a speed–accuracy trade-off.
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‘it would be a cognitive miracle if we had reliably good moral instincts [intuitions] about unfamiliar* moral problems’

Greene, 2014 p. 715

why?

an objection

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The No Cognitive Miracles Principle is tricky to apply
ethical vs physical Compare processes underlying representational momentum Driven by principles So correct in at least two kinds of unfamiliar* cases

Compare the physical case.

Fast processes are characterised by principles

which yield correct predictions in some unfamiliar* cases, including

point-light displays, and

(principles still work, despite unfamiliarity*)

cartoons

(stimuli are reverse-engineered to make the processes work)
Are these really unfamiliar?

unfamiliar problems (or situations): ‘ones with which we have inadequate evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience’

Inadequate for what? If we mean, ‘inadequate’ for learning about situations of that type, then the argument works formally, but it becomes a nontrivial issue whether the situation of Drop really is unfamiliar.
Challenge: Can we characterise ‘unfamiliarity’ independently of knowing how the faster processes operate, and in such a way that cartoons and point-light displays come out as familiar?
Or should we think that cartoons are actually unfamiliar situations? They are not situations in which our faster processes function reliably; it’s just that artists select those particular cases where the faster processes give the result they want even though, in a sense, the faster processes are giving an incorrect answer (cartoons are illusions).
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But does this mean we must reject the No Cognitive Miracles Principle altogether?

‘it would be a cognitive miracle if we had reliably good moral instincts about unfamiliar* moral problems’

We need to be careful in understand what a cognitive miracle is.
It is not a cognitive miracle that we are so good with point light displays.
It would be a cognitive miracle if we had an intuitive understanding of every unfamiliar situation, or if we could generally rely on our intuitive physical understanding to do all kinds of unfamiliar things.

not a cognitive miracle

Fast processes are reliable in one particular kind of unfamiliar* case

a cognitive miracle

Fast processes are reliable in all kinds of unfamiliar* cases

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So where are we?

1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.

2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.

3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.

4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.

5. The moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider involve unfamiliar* situations.

6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.