Cognitive Science and Morality Workshop
9:30am Opening remarks: David Lightfoot
9:40am Jon Haidt, Psychology, University of Virginia.
The rationalist delusion in moral psychology
I will survey evidence indicating that thinking is for doing, not for knowing. More specifically, reasoning evolved and is well-designed to serve social functions such as reputation management and navigation within a complex world of accountability constraints. To maintain that moral reasoning is (or should be) more important or more trusted than moral intuition, in the absence of evidence that people can reason dispassionately about moral issues, meets Webster’s definition of a delusion: a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact.
10:30 am Darcia Narcaez, Psychology, Notre Dame University
The moral zone: using the whole brain to solve moral problems
Triune Ethics Theory proposes that moral functioning is rooted in biological processes that are shaped by early experience and evoked by situations. Each moral orientation influences perception, goals, and perceived affordances at the moment. The Security Ethic is a conditioned, reflexive response to a perceived threat. Typically studied by psychology, the Imagination Ethic is abstracted thinking (left brain), which can be emotionally disassociated or fueled by viciousness. The “moral zone” has two orientations. The simpler, here-and-now orientation is Engagement or Harmony Morality. It represents full (right brain) presence at the moment for intersubjectivity and resonance with the Other. Communal Imagination maintains a sense of emotional relatedness to the Other (right brain), while at the same time using abstraction capabilities (left brain) to solve moral problems.
11:15 am Bryce Huebner, Philosophy, Georgetown University
https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014TvEkAAK/bryce-huebner
But it still ain’t emotion
In Huebner et al. (2009), we argued that Haidt and others had been too quick to draw the conclusion that emotional processes played an integral role in the production of moral judgments. However, a recent conversation with Haidt made it clear to me that his view was far more sophisticated than this. It now seems to me that on most points the ‘cognitivists’ and the ‘Humeans’ can just agree that moral judgment is a largely reflexive and intuitive process. Yet, I still have the sneaking suspicion that many neo-Humeans are convinced that emotions—as such—play a crucial causal role in the production of moral judgments. I’ll present a series of data—ranging from attempted replications of well-known studies to new manipulations on clinical populations—to suggest that there is an important range of moral competence that dominates our moral judgments even in the face of emotional manipulations and emotional deficits.
12:00pm Jordan Grafman, NIH, NINDS
12:45 pm lunch
1:30 pm John Mikhail, Law Center, Georgetown University
https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014RfIfAAK/john-mikhail
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: Theory, Evidence, and Future Research
Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus renewed attention on the psychology and biology of human morality. One research program that has gained attention is universal moral grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky’s program in linguistics. This approach is thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate moral competence from computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological, and phylogenetic perspectives. In my talk, I first outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence supporting it. I then discuss some initial findings of a new related study in comparative law that seeks to determine how certain norms, such as the prohibition of homicide, are codified and interpreted in several hundred jurisdictions around the world. The study’s main finding, the apparent universality or near-universality of a specific and highly structured homicide prohibition, lends further support to UMG. It also raises novel questions for cognitive science, legal anthropology, experimental philosophy, and related fields.
2:15 pm Susan Dwyer, Philosophy, University of Maryland at College Park
https://philosophy.umd.edu/directory/susan-dwyer
Moral Psychology as a Branch of Cognitive Science
Philosophers and developmental psychologists no longer monopolize the study of moral psychology. The field is now the site of all manner of empirical investigation, from fMRI studies to moral judgment tasks in the lab and naturalistic settings. The burgeoning interdisciplinary study of the nature of human moral judgment will no doubt contribute to our knowledge of how we came to be moral creatures as well as to our understanding of how moral judgment actually works as a capacity of the human mind. Still, significant caution is in order with respect to the shape of the questions we ask in pursuing moral psychology as a branch of cognitive science. I will draw attention to two significant challenges—the explananda challenge and the acquisition challenge and argue that, because these challenges are not sufficiently recognized in a good deal of current work on moral judgment, skepticism is in order with respect to several allegedly key findings.
3:00 pm Kevin Fitzgerald, SJ, Georgetown University
Neuroscience, ethics and the need for philosophical anthropology
Neuroscientific research has generated new perspectives regarding human cognitive processes, and, consequently, new considerations regarding how humans know and choose goods or the Good. However, regardless of the pace and extent of advances in neuroscience, the question remains of how this new information intersects with traditional and current concepts of the human Good and how we come to know it. It is this intersection of neuroscience and ethics that is the focus of this presentation. Two arguments will be offered regarding how this intersection should be structured. First, it will be argued that philosophical anthropologies are best suited to explicate and bridge the gap between neuroscience and ethics. Then, secondly, the claim will be made that philosophical anthropology must be both broadly integrative and dynamic in order to adequately bridge this gap.
3:45 pm General discussion