Mindless Judging?

Mindless Judging? Moral Reasoning and Intuitive Reflexes

Are moral judgments based on reason or emotion, or both, and if so, how? Recent empirical findings have been viewed by many as showing that moral reasoning is an illusion, or that it involves merely a rationalization of sentiment or gut feelings.

Recent psychological research on automaticity and research in neuroscience has been taken to show that moral reasoning is merely the post hoc rationalization of automatic, affective responses that are driven by unconscious biases (Haidt), or that moral reasoning is a "hodgepodge of emotional responses and rational (re)constructions" (Greene).

Confronting test subjects with case studies involving acts generally deemed immoral or disgusting, Jonathan Haidt found that subjects judge first, in an intuitive reflex, and justify later, struggling to come up with reasons for their pre-given judgments and confabulating if necessary. Haidt claims the real function of reason-giving is social: to influence others, to defend oneself, etc. The social discourse, in turn, over time causally influences the intuitions of individuals.

Functional MRI technology, which allows scientists to see which brain areas are active in subjects while they are performing certain tasks, has been used to study moral reasoning. Joshua Greene, for example, in his much-discussed studies of moral dilemmas involving runaway trolleys, finds that the overwhelming majority of subjects approves of switching a lever that will save five people but kill one person, while disapproving of pushing a person in front of a trolley to save five. He explains the difference as stemming from the scenarios’ different engagement of subjects’ emotional system.

The task of this project is to examine whether and, if so, how (or: if not, why not) a present-day broadly Kantian approach might enable one to provide an alternative account of moral reasoning as reasoning. This involves an examination of the relevant empirical studies, examining the theoretical assumptions regarding morality and moral reasoning; a study of the existing philosophical debate about the wider implications of this empirical work; a philosophical examination of the prospects of a ‘two standpoints’ theory (such as developed within the Kantian tradition) in dealing with these questions concerning moral reasoning; and an analysis of the proper impact of knowledge about pre-reflective influences on one’s self-understanding as a deliberating moral agent.