Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates

1. Jean Nicod Lectures 2007 Moral Theory Meets Cognitive ScienceHow the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates Stephen Stich Dept. of Philosophy & Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University sstich@ruccs.rutgers.edu

2. Jean Nicod Lectures 2007 Lecture 4Stephen StichDaniel KellyJoshua Knobe Debunking Moral Intuition A Hodgepodge of Multipurpose Kludges

3. Jean Nicod Lectures 2007 Lecture 4Stephen StichJoshua Knobe Daniel Kelly Debunking Moral Intuition A Hodgepodge of Multipurpose Kludges

4. Introduction • Philosophers – and more recently cognitive scientists – have offered many accounts of the psychological mechanisms & processes underlying intuitive moral judgment • Moral philosophers have always insisted that sometimes the outputs of those processes – people’s “moral intuitions” – are not to be trusted • though they disagree about whenskepticism is warranted

5. Introduction • Our goal in this talk is to sketch a newly emerging perspective on the mechanisms underlying moral intuition … • and to explore its implications for the hotly debated issue of whether and when intuitions should be relied on

6. Introduction • Philosophers have typically assumed that those mechanisms were well designed for … something • But we now have reasons to think that many of theses mechanisms are not well designed for ANYTHING

7. Introduction Moral Psychology is a Kludge A hodgepodge of multipurpose kludges!

8. Introduction • Before explaining and defending this claim it will be useful to consider some of the reasonsthat philosophers – both classic & contemporary – have offered for discounting moral intuitions

9. Philosophical Background • When should we be skeptical about moral intuitions? • The “Moral Sense” & “Ideal Observer” traditions • Reflective Equilibrium • Evolutionary arguments debunking intuition

10. Philosophical Background • The “Moral Sense” & “Ideal Observer” traditions • Ideal observer theorists maintain that our moral intuitions are correct (or justified) when made under ideal conditions • When conditions are not ideal – e.g. when we have false beliefs about relevant non-moral matters, or we are irrational – our intuitions are not to be trusted

11. Philosophical Background • The “Moral Sense” & “Ideal Observer” traditions • For Hutcheson – an important precursor of this tradition – moral judgments are the product of a “moral sense” implanted in us by “the Author of Nature” • Thus it can be relied upon when doing its job properly • But, like other senses, it can mislead when conditions are unfavorable

12. Philosophical Background • Reflective Equilibrium • Rawls’ “Decision Procedure for Ethics” (1951) • Narrow Reflective Equilibrium • Bring intuitions about • particular cases • moral principles into accord • To do this, sometimes an intuition about a particular case must be rejected

13. Philosophical Background • Wide Reflective Equilibrium • Bring intuitions about • particular cases • moral principles into accord with the rest of our beliefs • including beliefs about scientific matters, history, politics – even metaphysics & semantics • Even more of our intuitions about particular cases will have to be rejected

14. The Expanding Circle Ethics and Sociobiology Peter Singer FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX New York 1981 Philosophical Background • Evolutionary arguments debunking intuition • Perhaps the most influential writer in this tradition is Peter Singer Updated in “Ethics & Intuition (2005)

15. Philosophical Background • In The Expanding Circle, Singerfocuses on nepotistic intuitions which maintain that, in various domains, we ought to value the welfare of our kin and tribesmen more than the welfare of people outside these circles • The psychological processes leading to judgments of this sort were adaptive in ancestral environments (and perhaps they still are) • But once we see why we have these nepotistic & tribal intuitions, Singer suggests, we can also see that there is no good reason to use them in a “decision procedure for ethics”

16. Philosophical Background • In “Ethics and Intuition” (2005) Singer develops the argument by focusing on the sort of “trolley problems” that have loomed large in recent philosophical and empirical studies

17. Philosophical Background • Singer (following Greene) maintains that the neuroscientific evidence suggests that intuitions about the “footbridge” case are the result of our emotional reaction to cases in which harm is caused by the sort of interaction that would have occurred in ancestral environments

18. Philosophical Background “The salient feature that explains our different intuitive judgments concerning the two cases is that the footbridge case is the kind of situation that was likely to arise during the eons of time over which we were evolving; whereas the standard trolley case describes a way of bringing about someone’s death that has only been possible in the past century or two…. But what is the moral salience of the fact that I have killed someone in a way that was possible a million years ago, rather than in a way that became possible only two hundred years ago? I would answer: none….

19. Philosophical Background “At [a] more general level …this … casts serious doubt on the method of reflective equilibrium. There is little point in constructing a moral theory designed to match considered moral judgments that themselves stem from our evolved responses to the situations in which we and our ancestors lived during the period of our evolution as social mammals, primates, and finally, human beings. We should, with our current powers of reasoning and our rapidly changing circumstances, be able to do better than that.” (348)” What I am saying, in brief, is this. Advances in our understanding of ethics … undermine some conceptions of doing ethics …. Those conceptions of ethics tend to be too respectful of our intuitions. Our better understanding of ethics gives us grounds for being less respectful of them.” (349)

20. Philosophical Background • We agree with Singer’s skepticism about intuition • But we also think his skepticism is not radical enough!

21. Philosophical Background • Assumptions that Singer and the friends of intuition share: • The psychological system underlying our moral intuitions is well designed • Thus there is some point to – or reason for – the intuitive moral judgments people make when the system is working properly • Though Singer (unlike the friends of intuition) insists that the function the system is designed for is of dubious moral importance, and thus that the intuitions are not to be taken seriously

22. Philosophical Background • We believe that the engine of moral intuition is not well designed at all • Far from being the sort of “elegant machine” celebrated in the writings of some evolutionary psychologists, we think that it is a kludge • a cluster of mechanisms cobbled together rather awkwardly from bits of mental machinery most of which were designed for functions that have noting to do with morality

23. Claude Lévi-Strauss François Jacob Philosophical Background • To use a term that may be more common in Paris, we maintain that the engine of moral intuition is the result of bricolage

24. Philosophical Background • This explains many of the quirks of moral intuition … • And provides yet another reason to be skeptical of their use in moral deliberation

25. Overview of the Rest of the Talk

26. Overview of the Rest of the Talk • Two examples of the “kludginess” of the mechanisms underlying moral intuition • Dan Kelly’s work on Moral Disgust • Joshua Knobe’s work on intentionality judgments & unconscious moral judgments • From kludginess to skepticism

27. Daniel Kelly Kelly on Disgust • Kelly has constructed a rich, nuanced, empirically supported account of the psychological mechanisms underlying the uniquely human disgust system and how that system evolved • In this talk I’ll only have time to for a brief sketch of two central themes

28. Kelly on Disgust • The Entanglement Thesis • Disgust is itself a kludge – a uniquely human emotion produced by the merger of two distinct systems • The Co-Optation Thesis • After the merger, disgust was co-opted by • the norm system • the ethnic boundary system which were central elements in the emergence of human ultra-sociality

29. Kelly on Disgust • Kelly assembles a vast array of evidence for these theses, drawn from • neuroscience • social psychology • cognitive psychology • developmental psychology • evolutionary psychology • gene-culture co-evolution theory • As usual, the devil is in the details • So I join Paul Rozin in urging that you read the work as it appears in print

30. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • Disgust exhibits a puzzling array of elicitors which evoke an equally puzzling cluster of responses

31. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects

32. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects • Substances associated with the body: feces, vomit, spit • Organic decay • People and objects associated with illness: a shirt once worn by a person with leprosy • Sexual practices: necrophilia, incest • Some moral transgressions & transgressors: rape, torture, child molestation • Members of low status outgroups: untouchables, Jews

33. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis Some elicitors are pan-cultural • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects • Substances associated with the body: feces, vomit, spit • Organic decay • People and objects associated with illness: a shirt once worn by a person with leprosy • Sexual practices: necrophilia, incest • Some moral transgressions & transgressors: rape, torture, child molestation • Members of low status outgroups: untouchables, Jews

34. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis Others are culturally local (or idiosyncratic) • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects • Substances associated with the body: feces, vomit, spit • Organic decay • People and objects associated with illness: a shirt once worn by a person with leprosy • Sexual practices: necrophilia, incest • Some moral transgressions & transgressors: rape, torture, child molestation • Members of low status outgroups: untouchables, Jews

35. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • The disgust response includes • Gape face (occasionally accompanied by retching) • Feeling of nausea • Sense oral incorporation • Quick withdrawal • A more sustained & cognitive sense of offensiveness • A more sustained & cognitive sense of contamination

36. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • How are all of these connected? • The Entanglement Thesis maintains that the human emotion of disgust is the result of the fusion of two distinct mechanisms • each of which has homologous counterparts in other species • though they have combined only in humans

37. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • One mechanism (“the poison avoidance mechanism”) is directly linked to digestion • It evolved to regulate food intake and protect the gut against ingested substances that are poisonous or otherwise harmful • It was designed to expel substances entering the gastro-intestinal system via the mouth • And to acquire new elicitors very quickly • As John Garcia famously demonstrated, ingested substances that induce gut-based distress often generate acquired aversions

38. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • The other mechanism (“the parasite avoidance mechanism”) • Evolved to protect against infection from pathogens and parasites, by avoiding them • Not specific to ingestion, but serves to guard against coming into close physical proximity with infectious agents • This involves avoiding not only visible pathogens and parasites, but also places, substances and other organisms that might be harboring them

39. These elements of the disgust response are traceable to the poison avoidance system Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • The disgust response includes • Gape face (occasionally accompanied by retching) • Feeling of nausea • Sense oral incorporation • Quick withdrawal • A more sustained & cognitive sense of offensiveness • A more sustained & cognitive sense of contamination

40. and these are traceable to the parasite avoidance poison system Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • The disgust response includes • Gape face (occasionally accompanied by retching) • Feeling of nausea • Sense oral incorporation • Quick withdrawal • A more sustained & cognitive sense of offensiveness • A more sustained & cognitive sense of contamination

41. These elicitors are traceable to the poison avoidance system Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects • Substances associated with the body: feces, vomit, spit • Organic decay • People and objects associated with illness: a shirt once worn by a person with leprosy • Sexual practices: necrophilia, incest • Some moral transgressions & transgressors: rape, torture, child molestation • Members of low status outgroups: untouchables, Jews

42. and these are traceable to the parasite avoidance system Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • Elicitors include • Foods: dog meat, grubs, insects • Substances associated with the body: feces, vomit, spit • Organic decay • People and objects associated with illness: a shirt once worn by a person with leprosy • Sexual practices: necrophilia, incest • Some moral transgressions & transgressors: rape, torture, child molestation • Members of low status outgroups: untouchables, Jews

43. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • One bit of evidence supporting the Entanglement Thesis is that different components of that response are on different developmental schedules • Distaste & gape are present within the first year of life • Contamination sensitivity emerges significantly later • Once the full system in in place, the components of the response are produced together – they form a nomological cluster • Any elicitor of disgust will reliably produce all or most of those clustered components

44. Kelly on DisgustThe Entanglement Thesis • A puzzle: • Why should the sight of a festering sore or a person with leprosy evoke a gape face and a feeling of nausea? • The solution: Disgust is a kludge! • But it is kludge with features that could be readily co-opted and put to other uses as humans began living in larger groups and human ultrasociality emerged

45. Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis

46. Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis • The Gape Face as a Signal • As group size increased, there was an increasing need for a perspicuous signal warning of dangerous foods and risk of infectious disease • In humans, the face and facial expressions provide a rich source of such social information • The gape face, which clearly has roots in the facial motions that accompany retching, was co-opted as a signal, warning others not just against toxic foods, but also against the presence of parasites and contagious pathogens

47. Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis • Co-Optation by the Norm System • As group size increased, there was increased need for complex social coordination • The norm system – whose structure we considered briefly in the 2nd Lecture – played an important role in facilitating this co-ordination • And the disgust system had features that made it an obvious candidate to be co-opted by the norm system as it evolved

48. Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis • The S&S model suggests that compliance motivation & punitive motivation are linked to “the emotion system”

49. Acquisition Mechanism Execution Mechanism compliance motivation beliefs norm data base r1---------- r2---------- r3---------- …… rn---------- infer contents of normative rules identify norm implicating behavior punitive motivation other emotion triggers emotion system judgment Rule-related reasoning capacity explicit reasoning Proximal Cues in Environment post-hoc justification Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis

50. Kelly on DisgustThe Co-Optation Thesis • But psychological & neurological evidence indicates that there are several separate emotion systems – the disgust system being one of them