Abstract
The question of whether ethics should be empirically informed has a rhetorical ring to it—how could it be better to be uninformed? Exciting developments in a number of disciplines studying human beings, from psychology and cognitive science to biology, offer hope that ethics, too, could make steady progress were it to hitch its wagons to the train of science. So it is no surprise that some want to erase what they see as outdated and old-fashioned disciplinary boundaries, and no bigger surprise that others react by reaffirming traditional methodologies or by retreating to the grand journals of old. My instinct is on the side of caution in this debate, but I will refrain from grand pronouncements. Disciplinary border skirmishes seem to invite the greatest sin in writing—being boring. In contrast, particular arguments that aim to make concrete progress with existing questions by exploiting a novel methodology can be stimulating even when they go wrong.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
When philosophers talk about non-cognitive states, they mean thoughts that do not purport to represent the way things are, and hence cannot be true or false. Paradigmatic examples are desires and affective states. Psychologists often use the term ‘cognition’ more broadly.
- 2.
Note that I do not claim that the term ‘seeing’ is ambiguous between an informational and a phenomenal reading. Sytsma and Machery (2010) consider the ambiguity hypothesis, which they regard as ad hoc in the absence of an explanation of why the folk would use a different sense than philosophers do, and reject on the basis of their data. The hypothesis that the folk speak more loosely than philosophers do has a high prior probability, so it isn’t ad hoc.
- 3.
This more modest goal is sometimes emphasized by Joshua Knobe (e.g. Knobe 2007).
- 4.
There is now some controversy about this; see Sinnott-Armstrong (2008b), Sinnott-Armstrong & Wheatley (2012) for an argument in favour of disunity of moral judgment.
- 5.
An anonymous referee pointed out that people who self-identify as witches do not think being a witch involves having supernatural powers. Alas, I do not think that believing that one is a witch gives one any special conceptual insight. Indeed, thinking that you are a witch without thinking that you have supernatural powers shows a rather poor grasp of the concept of a witch.
- 6.
Consider also a Supercynical Hypothesis: not only the states of mind we actually identify as moral judgments not intrinsically motivating, but they are also not in fact based on considerations like rights and well-being, but only what agents unconsciously take to be in their self-interest. Would we still feel the pressure to say that there are moral judgments, but we are wrong about their nature? Why not, if moral judgment is a natural kind whose nature we can identify a posteriori?
- 7.
Mark Alfano pointed out that there is a further possibility I do not consider in the text: reforming our concept as a result of an empirical discovery. I agree that this is a significant option. It might make more sense to modify our concept rather than stop using it, if the world does not cooperate, especially if there is another natural kind in the Boydian sense in the vicinity. Whether this is the case for philosophically interesting concepts remains to be seen.
- 8.
Granted, in extreme cases like this there generally is a reason to doubt and check the initial appearance, as Markus Christen pointed out to me. Nevertheless, perceptions do start out with initial credibility independent of coherence.
- 9.
To be sure, I do not mean to deny that there can be moral expertise in some meaningful sense—some people are better at articulating principles, more consistent, better informed about pertinent non-moral facts, and so on. Perhaps it is even the case that their judgments should be privileged in reflective equilibrium, as Musschenga argues (Chap. 11 this volume). But nonconsequentialists cannot defend intuitions* on these grounds.
- 10.
I argue elsewhere that we do have a non-question-begging way of evaluating whether certain kinds of intuitions are trustworthy. This involves appealing to the practical function of making moral judgments, roughly making peaceful social relations possible without a Hobbesian sovereign ruling by force, and noting that being guided by intuitions felt from the Common Point of View is reliably conducive to that goal.
- 11.
Following a lead from Robert Adams (2006), who in turn draws on the old distinction between imperfect and perfect duties, Alfano notes that some ‘low-fidelity’ virtues, such as generosity, require one to be responsive to some occasions in which giving is called for, while other ‘high-fidelity’ virtues, such as chastity or justice, require a high degree of consistency—to possess them one has to respond suitably nearly every time. I do not think this is the same dimension I am talking about. The degree of virtuousness is not identical with frequency of acting on a certain kind of reason. You do not have to be very chaste to refrain from sleeping with someone other than your partner 100 % of the time, because the reason to do so is strong. (Insofar as chastity is a virtue, the degree to which it is possessed is manifest in the subtle ways one interacts with attractive non-partners.) Hence, even a low degree of chastity explains and predicts full faithfulness in deed. At the other end, even the most perfectly generous person will not give on every occasion, as the contrary demands of justice, friendship, and other virtues intervene, and the strength of her reasons to give diminishes the less she has to give or more she deprivation she herself suffers.
References
Adams, R. 2006. A Theory of Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alfano, M. 2013. Character as Moral Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Allman, J., and J. Woodward. 2008. What are moral intuitions and why should we care about them? A neurobiological perspective. Philosophical Issues 18: 164–185.
Annas, J. 2011. Intelligent Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Appiah, K.A. 2008. Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Audi, R. 2004. The Good in the Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bealer, G. 2000. A theory of the a priori. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81: 1–30.
Bengson, J. 2010. The intellectual given. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Bengson, J. 2013. Experimental attacks on intuitions and answers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86(3): 495–532.
Berker, S. 2009. The normative insignificance of neuroscience. Philosophy and Public Affairs 37(4): 293–329.
Björnsson, G., and R. Francén Olinder. 2013. Internalists beware – we might all be amoralists! Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91(1): 1–14.
Boyd, R. 1999. Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In Species. New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. R.A. Wilson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Boyd, R. 2010. Realism, natural kinds, and philosophical methods. In The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, ed. H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary. London: Routledge.
Cappelen, H. 2012. Philosophy Without Intuitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Waal, F.B.E. 1996. Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Doris, J.M. 2002. Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Doris, J.M., and S.P. Stich. 2005. As a matter of fact: empirical perspectives on ethics. In The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, ed. F. Jackson and M. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foot, P. 1972. Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. The Philosophical Review 81(3): 305–316.
Goldman, A.I. 1979. What is Justified Belief? In Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology, ed. G. Pappas, 1–23. Dodrecht: Reidel.
Greene, J. 2008. The secret joke of Kant’s soul. In Moral Psychology, vol. 3, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Greene, J.D. manuscript. Notes on ‘The normative significance of neuroscience’ by Selim Berker. Online at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Notes-on-Berker-Nov10.pdf. Accessed 14 Nov 2012.
Greene, J.D., R.B. Sommerville, L.E. Nystrom, J.M. Darley, and J.D. Cohen. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral Judgment. Science 293: 2105–2108.
Greene, J.D., F.A. Cushman, L.E. Stewart, K. Lowenberg, L.E. Nystrom, and J.D. Cohen. 2009. Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment. Cognition 111(3): 364–371.
Huemer, M. 2001. Skepticism and the Veil of Perception. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Joyce, R. 2006. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kahane, G., K. Wiech, N. Shackel, M. Farias, J. Savulescu, and I. Tracey. 2012. The neural basis of intuitive and counterintuitive moral judgment. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 7(4): 393–402.
Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: MacMillan.
Kahneman, D., and G. Klein. 2009. Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist 64(6): 515–526.
Kauppinen, A. 2007. The rise and fall of experimental philosophy. Philosophical Explorations 10(2): 95–118.
Kauppinen, A. Forthcoming. Intuition and belief in moral motivation. In Moral motivation: Evidence and relevance, ed. G. Björnsson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Klein, C. 2011. The dual track theory of moral decision-making: a critique of the neuroimaging evidence. Neuroethics 4: 143–162.
Knobe, J. 2007. Experimental philosophy and philosophical significance. Philosophical Explorations 10(2): 119–121.
Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kripke, S. 1981. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacFarlane, J. 2005. Making sense of relative truth. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105(3): 321–339.
Machery, E. 2010. The bleak implications of moral psychology. Neuroethics 3(3): 223–231.
McGuire, J., R. Langdon, M. Coltheart, and C. Mackenzie. 2009. A reanalysis of the personal/impersonal distinction in moral psychology research. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45: 577–580.
Nadelhoffer, T. 2006. Bad acts, blameworthy agents, and intentional actions. Some problems for juror impartiality. Philosophical Explorations 9(2): 203–219.
Nozick, R. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Prinz, J.J. 2007a. Is morality innate? In Moraly psychology, vol 1: Evolution of morals, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong, 367–406. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Prinz, J.J. 2007b. The Emotional Construction of Morals. New York: Oxford University Press.
Prinz, J.J. 2009. Summary. Analysis 69(4): 701–704.
Pryor, J. 2000. The Sceptic and the Dogmatist. Noûs 34(4): 517–549.
Putnam, H. 1975. Mind, Language and Reality, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Railton, P. 1984. Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs 13: 134–171.
Russell, D. 2009. Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shafer-Landau, R. 2003. Moral Realism: A Defence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Singer, P. 2005. Ethics and intuitions. The Journal of Ethics 9: 331–352.
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2008b. Is moral phenomenology unified? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7(1): 85–97.
Sloman, S.A. 1996. The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 119: 3–22.
Smith, M. 1987. The Humean theory of motivation. Mind 96(381): 36–61.
Sosa, E. 2007. A Virtue Epistemology I: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sreenivasan, G. 2002. Errors about errors: virtue theory and trait attribution. Mind 111(441): 47–68.
Sytsma, J., and E. Machery. 2010. Two conceptions of subjective experience. Philosophical Studies 151(2): 299–327.
Williamson, T. 2007. The Philosophy of Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wood, A. 2011. Humanity as an end in itself. In Derek Parfit: On What Matters, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kauppinen, A. (2014). Ethics and Empirical Psychology – Critical Remarks to Empirically Informed Ethics. In: Christen, M., van Schaik, C., Fischer, J., Huppenbauer, M., Tanner, C. (eds) Empirically Informed Ethics: Morality between Facts and Norms. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01369-5_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01369-5_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-01368-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-01369-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)