Moral Intuitions and an Affect Heuristic

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Moral Intuitions and an Affect Heuristic

Q1. How, if at all, do emotions influence moral intutions?

Hypothesis

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2010

The ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’ (Sinnott-Armstrong, Young, & Cushman, 2010).

So on this Hypothesis, emotions are everything as far as moral intuitions are concerned.

So I’m going to explain this—but in a way that will make it seem more complicated, not less. (And also in a way that isn’t quite like Sinnott-Armstrong et al. (2010). Because even though their work is already very good, we can improve on it.)

This is because it is more complicated.

But if you are already feeling that it is complicated enough, you can switch off for a little bit.

What do adult humans compute that enables their moral intuitions to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

I am working with a contrast between tracking and computing. To say that a state tracks an attribute is to say ...

For a process to track an attribute is for the presence or absence of the attribute to make a difference to how the process unfolds, where this is not an accident.

Simple example (1) [old]: toxicity/feeling of disgust

Simple example (2) [new]: motion sensor tracks presence of a human by computing infared energy (say).

[Important because shows that the distinction can be understood in a way that does not hinge on consciousness, nor on any particularly deep notion of representation.]

So this is a way of setting up Sinnott-Armstrong et al’s 2010 ‘unconscious attribute substitution’ idea in a way that makes it easier to operationalise.

Hypothesis:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2010

The ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’ (Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2010).

consider an analogy

What do adult humans compute that enables their intuitions to track toxicity?

device	What is tracked?	What is computed?
motion sensor	human movement	infared energy
poison detector	toxicity	how encountering it makes me feel
moral intuition	right and wrong	how it makes me feel

Q2. What do adult humans compute that enables their moral intuitions to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

Hypothesis [re Q2 & Q1]:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2010

The ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’ (Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2010).

What evidence could bear on the issue?

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Moral Intuitions and an Affect Heuristic

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