Situating Moral Psychology

Question 1

Distal psychological processes

Answer 1

evolved adaptations related to morality

Question 2

Proximal psychological processes

Answer 2

Social norms, both prescriptive and proscriptive

Question 3

Presently, how is the field of moral philosophy organized?

Answer 3

Into two groups: normative ethics and meta-ethics

Question 4

What is normative ethics?

Answer 4

The oldest tradition in moral philosophy

Deep inquiry and thorough analysis into what it means to live “the good life” (in a moral sense, not a hedonistic sense).

Concerned with deriving moral principles; is prescriptive and proscriptive.

Question 5

what are the 4 theories in normative ethics?

Answer 5

Utilitarianism
Categorical imperative
Social contract
Ethical egoism

Question 6

Normative ethics is characterized by three things:

Answer 6

1. Rationality
2. Impartiality towards individual/group interests
3. Emphasis on logical analysis, over descriptive or empirical analysis of actual behaviour

Question 7

Ethical egoism

Answer 7

Each person ought to do whatever will best advance their own interests.

This does precludes duty to others, but it does not necessarily mean instant gratification, constant hedonism, or being completely disinterested in others’ welfare. Things that may be immediately gratifying may be disastrous in the long run. Sometimes our self interests align with others’.

Dr. Ellard mentions in his notes that psychological egoism has deep roots in economics and psychology as well…

Question 8

Act utilitarianism

Answer 8

We ought to do whatever will promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number

Question 9

Categorical imperative

Answer 9

Argues for a completely rationale derivation of absolute moral rules, that one should never violate.

When acting, ask yourself if that act would be acceptable if it were to become a universal law (ie. if everyone did it).

Question 10

What is meta-ethics concerned with?

Answer 10

Meta-ethics is concerned with understanding the nature of moral phenomena, but not necessarily coming to moral conclusions.

Question 11

What are some examples of meta-ethical questions?

Answer 11

What do terms like “good”, “bad”, “right”, and “wrong” mean?

What is the nature of moral judgement, is it universal or relative?

How can we know when something is right or wrong?

Question 12

Social contract - what it is, basically, and who originated the theory

Answer 12

The right act is what people can agree on for their mutual benefit.
Thomas Hobbes

Question 13

What epistemological rift lies between moral philosophy and moral psychology?

Answer 13

People who study moral philosophy believe that we can’t derive knowledge about what SHOULD be, or how people ought to act, from merely our knowledge of what is, or how people already behave in their everyday lives. Essentially, the is/ought problem.

(@Laura, @Garrett, is this a good explanation? Thots? I asked “what epistemological rift” because it’s like…how do we derive our knowledge of what should be, or from what?)

Question 14

David Hume’s Is/Ought problem, aka Hume’s Guillotine

Answer 14

1: Sam is stealing money from work.
2: Losing money by theft causes harm to Sam’s employers.
3: (One ought to not cause harm to his employers.)
4: Therefore, Sam ought to stop stealing money from work.

Hume argues that we cannot just infer “ought” statements from “is” statements. In the above example, premises 1 and 2 don’t necessarily lead to premises 3 and 4, a jump was made. Hume argues that the the “ought” determinations must be severed from statements of fact, hence the guillotine metaphor.

This drives a wedge between normative ethics and science, including psychology, because sciences are usually abt drawing conclusions from facts

Question 15

G. E. Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy

Answer 15

The assumption that anything that is naturally occurring is good

concepts of good and bad are often constructs with no necessary links to the natural world.

Question 16

Arguments against naturalistic fallacy (by Stephen Pinker)

Answer 16

Naturalistic fallacy is the basis of social Darwinism

Social Darwinism = belief that helping the poor and sick hinders the process of natural selection
Belief that we shouldn’t help those people bc we want to promote natural selection

results in the fallacious belief that practices that have been natural to many cultures, in many eras, must be good. But examples of these things include adultery, infanticide, and cannibalism. Just because they occur in the natural world doesn’t mean that they’re good

Leads to romanticized beliefs about nature: dung beetles recycle dung to benefit the ecosystem, lions kill prey out of mercy, mice feel no pain when cats eat them

N.fal also leads to romanticized belief that humans can’t harbour desires to kill, rape, lie, or steal

Question 17

What was the consequence of the is/ought distinction??? For the study and development of normative ethics?

Answer 17

Normative ethics, for a long time, ignored developments in the natural sciences including psychology

although this is less and less the case now!!!!

(IDK IF THIS WAS A USELESS CARD I JUST THOUGHT IT WAS NEAT TO KNOW)

Question 18

Our more modern interpretation of Hume and Moore

Answer 18

They were right to an extent—evidence from the natural world is unlikely to result in /optimal/ universal moral principles

but they both rested their arguments about moral principles on their assumptions about psychology and human nature

Also, apparently on the ethical behaviour of moral philosophers has been conducted. They tend to endorse moral principles more than non-moral philosophers, but the rate at which they abide by those principles is no different than anyone else
(Wonder what study this was? Lol)

Question 19

When can moral psychology, and our knowledge of how humans behave, inform meta-ethics? We discussed these examples in class, I’ll list them here.

Answer 19

Meta-ethical question: what is good/bad/right/wrong?
- humans have instinct about disgust, eg. Incest taboo

Meta-ethical question: is moral judgement universal or relative?
- certain principles appear more universal than others, eg. Reciprocity!!!

Meta-ethical Q: How could we know if something is right/wrong?

• psychology has made many contributions here
• we know that moral judgements are relatively made in a vacuum, most judgements are in some sense relative.
• for example, social psych tells us that a critical source of comparison is the actual, or assumed behaviour of others.
• is it wrong to cheat? Yes, but lots of people do it. Some people may think “it’s stupid not to when others are obviously doing so” eg speeding 10km

Question 20

Therefore, moral psychology can be viewed as a type of ethical naturalism. [this is not a question, nothing on the back of this card]

Answer 20

:)

Question 21

Ellard’s lecture notes first examine Latimer’s death from a moral philosophy perspective and then from a moral psychology perspective.

First, name 3 arguments against Latimer’s murder from a moral /philosophy/ perspective.

Answer 21

1. Sanctity of life
2. Discrimination against handicapped people
3. Slippery slope argument

Descriptions of arguments:

Question 22

Latimer case and moral psychology:

Name the meta-ethics issues and normative ethics issues that the moral psych perspective raises

Answer 22

Meta-ethics:

1. Problem of suffering of children
2. Frame of reference phenomenon - which includes the problems of empathy and just deserts

Normative ethics:

1. normative ethics’ assumptions of rationality and impartiality are challenging from a psych perspective
   - this includes the problems of counterfactual thinking and emotions as datalink

Question 23

Latimer case and moral psychology:

/Describe/ the meta-ethics issues and normative ethics issues that the moral psych perspective raises

Answer 23

Meta-ethics issues:

1. Suffering of children
   - witnessing of, or knowing about, the suffering of innocents is extremely upsetting to people. This visceral reaction makes inevitably influences people’s judgements.
   - would people react as strongly if he had killed his wife, say if she had ALS? Would people react as strongly if he killed an old person?
   - or if the person was a criminal on death row? Many people are opposed to abortion but believe in the death penalty
   - when it comes to sanctity of life, everyday moral judgement suggests that sanctity depends on WHO’s life we’re talking about.
2. Frame of Reference
   - the trial judge gave Robert Latimer a very lenient sentence, then the Supreme Court judge overruled it and gave him a 25 year prison sentence!
   - Why did this happen? Probably because of the emotional distance from the evidence!
   - trial judge and jury had direct in-person experience at Robert Latimer’s trial. Supreme Court judge did not
   - empathy and just deserts: psych research has demonstrated that the extent to which we identify, and feel empathy for, both victims and perpetrators significantly affects our moral reactions.

Normative ethics issues:

• normative ethics aims to arrive at conduct principles through rationality and impartiality, but bias research shows that impartiality is unattainable!
• psych can shed light on how irrational factors affect our judgements
• emotionally charged features of situations: people tend to use their emotions as data. Do people empathize and identify more with Tracy or Robert
• counterfactual thinking: what hypothetical alternatives to Robert Latimer’s actions can people think of? The extent to which people consider these counterfactual alternatives affects their judgements
• Those who judged Latimer harshly probably imagined that the alternative of managing Tracy’s pain was better

Question 24

Define deontological ethics and consequentialism

Answer 24

Deontological ethics: following rules such as “do not lie” or “do not kill”, and rules must be followed at all times.
Consequentialism: more focused on consequences of events rather than following any rule to the letter

Question 25

Trolley problem vs. Footbridge problem

Answer 25

Trolley problem: you have to stop the train from killing five people, and cause it to kill one instead, by pulling a lever on the train. The person you kill instead is spatially far away.

Footbridge problem: to stop the train from killing five people, you have to push another man onto the train track!

Question 26

How do the trolley and footbridge problems relate to consequentialism and deontological ethics?

Answer 26

The choice to kill five people opposed to one is usually interpreted as a dilemma btwn deontological ethics vs consequentialism. If one prefers deontological ethics’ categorical imperatives, one will not take any action. If one prefers consequentialism, one will kill the one to save the five!

However, empirical research shows that those aren’t the only deciding variables…..

Question 27

What does empirical research show us about the choices most people make, when presented with the trolley and footbridge problems? (Just generally)

Answer 27

• people choose the deontological choice of “don’t kill” when presented with having to push someone
• people prefer the consequentialist choice of “save 5 over 1 death” when presented with the lever

Question 28

What does Joshua Greene’s brain research show us about the footbridge vs trolley problem?

Answer 28

during brain imaging analysis of people making their decisions, the footbridge problem resulted in more activation of emotional circuits

Question 29

How does Daniel Kahneman’s “systems” analysis interpret the footbridge vs trolley problem?

Answer 29

Daniel Kahneman’s “systems” analysis:

• Footbridge = up close and personal = Kahneman system 1
• System 1 = automatic, quick, little to no effort, more likely to include emotion, no sense of subjective agency or voluntary control
• when having to push someone, system 1 is activated, so people become more emotionally involved and don’t want to push the human
• Trolley = impersonal stance = Kahneman system 2
• System 2 = less emotional, more conscious processing, more subjective experience of agency, able to exert deliberate, mental effort
• when people only have to press a lever, and the person is far away, they are less emotionally engaged. They’re able to assess the situation more objectively and conclude on killing 1 person to save 5.

Question 30

The study on mice in trolley-style dilemmas: What was the general procedure?

Answer 30

• participants were measured pre-testing on preferences for consequentialism
• participants had to choose between shocking one mice or allowing five mice to be shocked
• participants made these choices in both a hypothetical situation, and in a situation where they were tasked with actually choosing to shock or not shock the mouse

Question 31

Mouse-trolley study: What were the results?

Answer 31

When presented with the HYPOTHETICAL choice, participants were more likely to choose deontological choice of “don’t shock the one mouse, but allow 5 others to be shocked”

But when presented with a REAL choice, participants were twice as likely to make a consequential choice! (Shock 1 to prevent shocking of 5 mice)

Also, the pre-test measures on consequential preferences did not predict people’s actual decisions, at all.

Question 32

What does the mouse study mean for moral dilemma research in general?

Answer 32

Hypothetical dilemmas are useful for examining people’s idealized moral judgements, but are less effective in examining people’s actual moral judgements.

Question 33

What system of morality long predates moral philosophy and psychology?

Answer 33

Religion!
Before moral philosophy and moral psych, most people deferred to religion. It provides a strong authority and takes away the need for naturalistic justifications. Which is good because naturalistic justifications often feel unsatisfying. People desire moral simplicity.
Even today, most moral systems are based on religion and authority

Question 34

Religions use…

Answer 34

Pre-existing belief systems, that require no naturalistic justification from humans.

Question 35

Flanagan (2008) on religion vs naturalistic ethics

Answer 35

Most people prefer non-naturalistic ethics, even scientists!
That is because people like to see their moral codes valued in very strong ways. And because naturalistic explanations often feel unsatisfying.

Question 36

Mouse study results - hypothetical vs actual shocking situation

Answer 36

Hypothetical: 34% P’s shocked deontologically; 66% P’s shocked consequentially

Actual shocking: 16% P’s shocked deontologically; 84% P’s shocked consequentially

Deontological = no shocky under any circumstance
Consequential = shock 1 to save 5 mice

[ just another way of framing the study results ]