General Project Description

The Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University, hosts the NWO-funded research program, “Morality Beyond Illusions: Re-assessing the Philosophical Implications of Empirical Studies of Moral Agency.” The program leader is Prof.dr. Pauline Kleingeld.

• Short Description of the Program
• Background: Empirical Findings and Their Alleged Philosophical Implications

Short Description of the Program

There is a rapidly growing body of empirical studies in cognitive neuroscience and moral psychology that show how our judgments and actions are unconsciously influenced by emotions and situational factors. Many philosophers claim that these findings imply that the notions of free will, character, and moral deliberation are illusions. Yet these notions play a central role in our self-conception as agents and in our social practices of attributing moral and legal respon­sibility for actions. If the claim that these notions are illusory is correct, this would have significant implications for the legal system and for public policy.

This program aims to develop a novel account of the philosophical implications of the empirical findings. It aims to assess the possibility of integrating these findings into a strong account of freedom, character, and moral deliberation, and to assess whether (and how) the perspective of the empirical sciences can be reconciled with that of humans as agents who deliberate, act, and hold each other responsible. The program consists of three complementary projects, focussing on the implications of empirical studies of moral agency for the debates about (1) free will, (2) character, and (3) moral reasoning, respectively.

Background: Empirical Findings and Their Alleged Philosophical Implications

The past fifteen years have seen a surge of interest in the philosophical implications of empirical findings in cognitive neuroscience and moral psychology. The empirical research shows that much of our behaviour is due to unconscious impulses and situational factors. In the philosophical discussion, these empirical results are alleged to have unsettling implications for our ordinary assumptions about free will, character, and moral reasoning: 

1.The illusion of free will: Recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience have been taken to undermine the notion of free and conscious will. For example, when subjects are asked to flick their wrist at a time of their choosing and to report at which time they decided to do so, their physiological brain states seem to indicate that their decision is reached well before subjects are conscious of it. Other studies are said to show that reasoning, if it occurs, occurs after a choice has been made, and that subjects reach flawed assessments about their own mental causation. These different results are said to show that free will is an illusion.

2.The illusion of character: Psychological studies have been taken to undermine familiar con­ceptions of moral character: behaviour in morally charged situations appears to be influenced more by situational factors than by character traits. For example, the overwhelming majority of otherwise generous subjects fail to help a person in severe distress when they are told they are in a hurry: Small changes in situational context can cause great moral failures. One prominent philosopher concludes that, therefore, “there is no empirical basis for the existence of character traits” and that our belief in character derives from “illusions.”

3.The illusion of moral reasoning: Studies in psychology and cognitive neuroscience of moral reasoning have been taken to show that decisions are automatic affective responses driven by unconscious biases and that moral reasoning is rationalization post hoc. For example, when test subjects are confronted with a case that conflicts with their moral intuitions, e.g., incest, they confabulate to invent reasons for why it is wrong, even if these reasons were explicitly ruled out in the wording of the case (e.g., they may reject incest arguing that it may lead to birth defects, even if the case description stated that birth control was used).

Do such findings indeed show that our decisions are driven by unconscious mechanisms, that character in the ordinary sense does not exist, and that reasoning about moral issues is a matter of gut feelings?

Much is at stake here besides the philosophical importance of this question and the implications for our self-understanding. Since moral responsibility presup­poses freedom, showing that free will is an illusion could have profound implications for our social practices of holding one another morally and legally accountable, as well as for public policy and the legal system. Showing that character is typically misconceived would have radical im­plications for moral education, and showing that moral reasoning is an illusion would undermine the possibility of moral critique of despicable practices. But, many have argued, if the empirical findings conflict with our moral, legal, and other social practices, it is the practices that should change.
Aim and Working Hypotheses:
The aim of the proposed program is to examine whether it is possible to develop a radically different assessment of the implications of the relevant empirical findings, according to which the empirical results are compatible with a strong defense of free will, character, and moral reasoning.

One hypothesis behind the research program is that what is driving the claim that free will, character, and moral reasoning are illusions is not the empirical findings themselves, but, rather, a set of widely shared underlying assumptions. Indeed, most of the philosophers currently contributing to this debate work in the empiricist tradition, taking the results of the empirical research to confirm David Hume’s assessment that reason is the ‘slave of the passions’ and that moral judgments are expressions of sentiment. Thus, it seems necessary to problematize empiricist assumptions that are often taken for granted in this discussion and examine whether an alternative approach might lead to different conclusions. In particular, the prospects for a broadly Kantian approach are worth examining. So far, this approach has been absent in the debate over the implications of empirical findings regarding moral agency. Thus, the aim of the program, in some ways, is to revive what could be called the "Hume versus Kant" debate for current purposes, viz., in order to assess the viability of a broadly Kantian approach of the subject matter of each of the three debates (free will, character, moral reasoning). Researchers: Hanno Sauer (PhD student) Tom Bates (PhD student, starting September 1st, 2009) Markus Schlosser (Postdoc, starting October 1st, 2009) Pauline Kleingeld (Program director)