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Linking Ethics to Moral Psychology: Dual-Process Theories

 

Lecture 07:

Moral Psychology

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.

‘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)

I admire Kagan because he’s so clear. He’s been going at this for at least a couple of decades. Although I don’t do ethics, I understand that he’s a significant ethicist.
Ok, so it’s about intuitions. But which intuitions?
Kagan mentions all kinds of intutions, and on his view there are intutions about relatively abstract matters as well as about particular cases.
Kagan’s focus is mostly on case-specific intutions. 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]
Ok, so we have a sense that Kagan is interested in case-specific intutions, that is claims which you accept independently of having any inferential justification for them.
Next question: How do intuitions enable ethical knowledge?

How do intuitions enable ethical knowledge?

You might have a model on which you’re supposed to just know the claims that are your intutions, where you know them in virtue of these claims being intutions.
But that‘s not quite Kagan’s view. Here’s what he used to think ...

previously

‘it won't suffice if all we can do is organize these intuitions into systematic patterns.

Instead, [...] we need [...] a moral theory that goes below the surface and [explains] the moral phenomena that are the subject matter of our moral intuitions.’

(Kagan, 2001, p. 10)

Compare the animation I started with. The phenomena that are the subject matter of those intuitions are the movements of objects as well as the goals and emotions of the shapes.

now

‘moral intuitions function as inputs into our moral theories in something very much like the way that observations function as inputs into our empirical theories’

(Kagan, 2023, p. 159)

The reason I think these are different (but maybe Kagan does not): empirical theories are not about the phenomena of intuitions; they can be used to make systematic sense of the phenomena of intutions but this is not a primary concern, nor a requirement of a successful physical theory.
What Kagan now has in mind does seem quite different from explaining the phenomena that are the subject matter of intutions ...

1. ‘If I have the intuition that P, then [...] my belief that P [...] will be justified [until such time (a time which may never come) as] I find reason to reject it.’

(Kagan, 2023, p. 166)

2. ‘what it is to confirm an intuition:

checking it against other intuitions to see if they harmonize in the appropriate ways.’

(Kagan, 2023, p. 172)

Aside: compare Rawls’ on reflective equilibrium

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

(Kagan, 2023, p. 170)

Structure of this course

Course Structure

 

Part 1: psychological underpinnings of ethical abilities

Part 2: political consequences

Part 3: implications for ethics

Could scientific discoveries undermine, or support,
ethical principles?

Phase 2

Identify general arguments against the use of intuitions in doing ethics.

Consider implications for Rawl’s method of
reflective equilibrium.

Phase 1

Find places where a particular philosopher’s ethical argument relies on an empirical claim, and where knowledge of this claim depends on scientific discoveries.

Can be supportive rather than debunking. However, practically speaking, it’s easier to show that knowledge of the claim depends on scientific discoveries when the science contradicts the ethicist’s claim. (Otherwise it’s hard to show that the ethicist knew the claim was true all along.)

✓

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.
I’m going to explain that later, not here.
For now, I do not expect you to know what reflective equilibrium is.