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Linking Ethics to Moral Psychology: Dual-Process Theories

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Lecture 07:

Moral Psychology

[email protected]

Why is this animation here today?

Appearances are not always a good guide to how things are ...

Lots of cartoons illustrate this, but this one is special. It’s a recreation of a famous one from the 1950's that Heider and Simmel used to study how people attribute goals and emotions to shapes.

Appearances are not always a good guide to how things are. Think about the physical aspects. There appears to be objects and movements, but of course there are not really either of these, just patterns of light that are designed to create these appearances.

When humans create novel situations and technologies, appearances are not a reliable guide to truth.

But nearly every ethical theory is based on appearances or, as we say, intuitions—that is, claims we accept independently of whether they are justified inferentially.

We do not rely on appearances in the same way in physics or chemistry. But somehow in ethics appearances remain central.

Why? Is this justified? That, in essence is our question for today.

Let’s think a bit more about physical appearances ...

McCloskey, Caramazza, & Green (1980, p. figure 2B)

McCloskey et al. (1980, p. figure 2D)

Kozhevnikov & Hegarty (2001, figure 1)

Vertical motion: super high conviction about this, but also clearly wrong.

[skip experimental details, just interested in (i) appearances mislead, (ii) because of fast processes]

‘Two metal balls are the same size, but one weighs twice as much as the other. Both are thrown straight up with the same initial velocity. The time it takes the balls to reach a certain height H will be:’

Fix shape and size. Also fix initial velocity. How would increasing the object’s mass affect how quickly it decelerates when launched vertically? Impetus: larger mass entails greater deceleration (so slower ascent). Newtonian: larger mass entails lower deceleration (so faster ascent) if considering air resistance; otherwise size makes no difference.

Why? not on the basis of observation (you could not see this happen, it is physically impossible)

why?

simplified from Kozhevnikov & Hegarty (2001)

two kinds of process

one dominates rapid responses, gives rise to appearances and is little modified by academic study

the other dominates reflective consideration and is flexibly shaped by academic study.

simplified from Kozhevnikov & Hegarty (2001)

But even more convincingly, the prediction generated by Kozhevnikov and Heggarty’s conjecture about the computational description of the system underpinning representational momentum has been directly confirmed.

So while not decisive, I take this to be strong evidence for a \textbf{vertical distinction} between two systems for physical cognition.

reliable

unreliable

physical intuitions

straight tubes

horizontal motion

curved tubes

vertical motion

Why do physical intuitons have these limits? They are largely a product of evolution, and evolution focusses on getting things right in situations that were frequent and significant in human experience.

It makes sense that physics would be limited in this way.

Descartes is widely taught as if he cared about scepticism. In fact his arguments are so bad he apologised, in writing, twice for them ...

This means that physical intuitions are a source of knowledge in a limited range of cases only. First point: we don’t base our understanding of the physical on common-sense.

‘In putting forward an account of light, the first point I want to draw to your attention is that it is possible for there to be a difference between the sensation that we have of it, that is, the idea that we form of it in our imagination through the intermediary of our eyes, and what it is in the objects that produces the sensation in us, that is, what it is in the flame or in the Sun that we term ‘light’’

(Descartes, 1998, p. 81 (AT XI:3))

Descartes, The World (AT 3)

Note that this is Descartes’ starting point (in an early work that was never published because of fear of religious repression.)

Further illustration (not from The World). Descartes’ explanation of why the rainbow is a bow. Relevant because of the gap between sensory perception and the things which cause it. And shows Descartes examines sensory perceptions.

physical intuitions
are a source of knowledge
but only within limits

reliable

unreliable

physical intuitions

straight tubes

horizontal motion

curved tubes

vertical motion

ethical intuitions

food sharing in small bands

cooperative breeding

trolley problems

climate change

‘When I have an intuition it seems to me that something is the case, and so I am defeasibly justified in believing that things are as they appear to me to be. That fact [...] opens the door to the possibility of moral knowledge.’

(Kagan, 2023, p. 167)

Kagan is here as the main opponent (this is the main target for the whole lecture)

Ok, so it’s about intuitions. But which intuitions?

Kagan mentions all kinds of intuitions, and on his view there are intuitions about relatively abstract matters as well as about particular cases.

Kagan’s focus is mostly on case-specific intuitions. So let’s consider a case.

[Can’t say this yet, but since Kagan compares intuitions to observations, it’s natural to focus on case-specific intuitions]

The sceptic needs to show there is ‘something especially problematic about moral intuitions, as distinct from others.’

(Kagan, 2023, p. 170)

Here’s the response I am aiming to defend: Kagan is wrong about this. Moral intuitions are not more problematic than physical intutions; but also not less. And once you recognize that they are not less problematic, you would not rely on them in the way Kagan does.

This is a rough division (handout has a longer list).

We will consider arguments that even the modest aim is impossible.

Discoveries about moral psychology can ...

[modest] inform decisions about which intuitions to keep

[bold] undermine some uses of reflective equilibrium

[ambitious] support/undermine some normative ethical theories (via extra premises)

So far you have had the story but no argument at all.

???

So far I am just painting a picture. No arguments at all. (I want you to see where we are going.)

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Structure of this course

Course Structure

Part 1: psychological underpinnings of ethical abilities

Part 2: political consequences

Part 3: implications for ethics

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Could scientific discoveries undermine, or support,
ethical principles?

Phase 2

Phase 1

The key contrast is this: in Lecture 06, we were concerned with the use of empirical claims about moral psychology *within* ethical arguments. We considered attempts to show that moral psychology is relevant to ethics which rely on some philosophers’ approaches being broadly correct. In this lecture, our concern is with whether discoveries in moral psychology can undermine the case for accepting non-empirical premises of ethical arguments *from the outside*. We will consider attempts to show that moral psychology is relevant to ethics which rely on some philosophers’ approaches being substantially misguided.

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Linking Ethics to Moral Psychology: Dual-Process Theories

Lecture 07:

Moral Psychology

[email protected]

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