Abstract
Many arguments in ethics and bioethics, especially those in death and dying, appear to be driven by intuitions or what some authors claim is common sense. Very rarely questioned, if ever, are the tools from which many arguments and positions are built, unless by a person who has a different set of intuitions or notions of common sense. In this chapter, I evaluate intuitions and common sense to determine if they can have a role in the morality of death and dying. I contend that those who most closely reflect the moral platforms developed in our brains or minds by our genetic natures and environmental experiences generally serve as the best evidence that the intuition makes pragmatic sense, and therefore may be included in our reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
The work here sets up the pragmatic framework for the examination of death’s values. The reason I spend such a great deal of time with this foundational groundwork is because of its impact on how we should think about death and dying.
- 2.
See Mill’s Utilitarianism.
- 3.
I contend that they are paradigmatic cases on the grounds that the two philosophers could see that there was a serious problem between ideal morality and practical morality, but chose ideal morality although it was difficult if not impossible for most, if not all, people to use.
- 4.
In fact, deontic logic was a short-lived attempt to create a logic for morality. The ability to constantly generate contradictions using the axioms appears to be one main reason it was abandoned; another seems to be that the loss of content through abstraction lost the essence of what morality is.
- 5.
This is why Steven Hawking’s dismissal of philosophy’s value is contradictory. He is only able to argue for his position by using a philosophical argument.
- 6.
What is odd is that many folks never seem to notice that an intuition fails to bring new information to the person with the intuition; it is already what the person thinks, so why not call these biases rather than intuitions that provide some form of usable evidence? There appears to be far better evidence that they are merely what the person already thinks more than an “eureka” moment of revelation of some truth.
- 7.
I am subject to the same charge, although I am willing to change positions provided that such a change is justified on pragmatic grounds.
- 8.
More complicated intuitions, of course, will have fewer adherents because there are more conditions that have to be held in common.
- 9.
If we already know which answer is the right or wrong one, then we would not need intuitions as evidence. We would merely use the principle or decision procedure that gave us the correct information.
- 10.
Sterling (1994) argues that we use introspection, which cannot be checked against objective evidence, although we do check these against other people’s introspections. According to Sterling, intuitions should be treated similarly.
I think that Sterling’s position is too broad. The only introspections that should count as adequate evidence are the types examined by Panayot Butchvarov , viz, those in which it is impossible for the person introspecting to be mistaken about, such as being in pain or being appeared to redly.
- 11.
Scarre would be unlikely to agree with how I characterize his position.
- 12.
To be fair, the intuition evidentiary approach is so common that it has become habit; hence, there would be little reason to see a need to justify it.
- 13.
Paul Ekman’s faculty psychology on the universality of emotions and ability of others to recognize such emotions from an evolutionary perspective might help explain the universality of morality. See, for instance, Ekman’s “A methodological discussion of nonverbal behavior.” The same sort of faculty of the mind idea is seen in Pinker’s Swiss Army Knife analogy .
- 14.
Lisa Barrett’s psychological constructivism is closer to my final position. “Psychological construction relies on a similar kind of population thinking. Emotions are not physical (morphological) types, but are cognitive categories that contain a variety of unique instances.” (Barrett 2013, 381).
- 15.
Alva Noe argues that our minds cannot be identical or reduce to our brains because consciousness is something that we do rather than something internal to us (Noe 2009).
- 16.
Although Bloom calls these capacities and rejects the notion that we cannot improve on them, there is still a concern that too strong a position is being advocated. Just as we should never anthropomorphize animals, we could agree that these capacities exist in some nascent way, but we should not believe that they are more developed than they are. The judgments are relatively complex, and make sense if we are talking about an adult moral agent making them. Where the problem arises is saying that babies are making sufficiently similar distinctions and judgments.
- 17.
This standard is controversial but pragmatically plausible.
- 18.
Krebs argues that there are four moral senses, each of which is a dichotomy: evaluative feelings and thoughts; positive and negative aspects; pertaining to self or others; and thoughts and feeling agents have before and after they make a moral decision (Krebs 2011, 204).
- 19.
I earlier criticized Scarre for taking this approach, but will try to justify it here on pragmatic grounds. The more inclusive the definition without sacrificing intelligibility, then the more likely it is that the definition will be useful to more people.
- 20.
Bernard Campbell states that humans share 98.4 % of their DNA with chimps (Campbell 1995, 118).
- 21.
De Waal argues that other species recognizably share relevant human abilities.
- 22.
Zamulinski argues that altruism cannot be accounted for by adaptive evolution if individual organisms are the exclusive unit of selection (Zamulinski 2007, 5). He believes that altruism is an evolutionary by-product that is a free-rider on a gene that adaptive evolution can explain (Ibid., 21).
- 23.
The latter is generally found only in humans.
- 24.
Heim argues that imitation is possibly a unique ability in Homo sapiens, and might be fundamental to human culture and rationality (Heim 2004, 256).
- 25.
Laurie R. Santos and Venkat Lakshminarayanan argue that human babies and primate minds are remarkably similar in how they understand simple physical principles, such as “how space and time constrain object motion” and have an appreciation of goals and intentions (Santos and Lakshminarayanan 2007, 294).
- 26.
Intention, here, is not being used in a philosophically rigorous way.
- 27.
See Gabriel Dover's critique of Richard Dawkins self-imposed “Paradox of the Organism” and the “selfish” gene in “Anti-Dawkins”.
- 28.
Cultures do have a large impact on our thinking about morality, ourselves, and others; people from different cultures have different conceptions of individuals and others (Markus and Kitayama 1991).
- 29.
There are those who have attempted to explain social learning through adaptive evolution. The Information Learning Model states that social learning is adaptive because the information the individual can obtain through the group is valuable for survival and reproduction. The Strategic Learning Model, on the other hand, is intended to replace the Information Learning Model because the latter cannot explain the social learning of a groups values and conventions if that is not beneficial to the natural selection of the individual. The Strategic Learning Model states “that it’s often adaptive to adopt the prevailing practices of the group because the very fact that others engage in these practices makes it the case that doing what they do will be in one's long-term selfish reproductive interests.” (Sripada 2007, 313).
- 30.
Legrenzi and Umilta argue that neurophysiology is not even required for studying or explaining memories, emotions, and other higher-level mental states (Legrenzi and Umilta 2011, 51).
As I have argued, this position seems a bit too extreme because it fails to recognize that we must think in certain ways, which limits what is possible in our morality and why we have the morality we do have. That is, it is part of the story, but not the whole story.
- 31.
It should be acknowledged that the machinery might require thinking about the machinery in this way.
- 32.
Both F.M. Kamm and Selim Berker make similar points. Many of the conclusions drawn by Singer and Greene seem to be based on “arm-chair philosophy” rather than on any empirical data from the human participant studies. Moreover, the conclusions drawn by Singer and Greene go far beyond what the results can bear. (See Berker’s “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience” and Kamm’s “Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning.”)
- 33.
A more useful survey to establish this would ask participants what they thought about people who made decisions in these cases. That is, give the participants the results of the first surveys along with the information that the participants are reasonable people. Then ask the participants of this proposed study if they would blame the other participants for the decisions they made. For those in the minority group, did they do the wrong thing by selecting the minority answer? Are they worthy of blame, although we would not do anything about it, for choosing an alternative they should not have chosen? Given that each person from the first surveys was a reasonable person, it is likely that the answer is that they did not do the wrong thing by making the selection. It is not something the majority of people would select, but there is nothing unethical about it in these extreme situations.
- 34.
Perhaps we can limit survey respondents only to people who are so intelligent and have enough relevant information that they always get the matter right when they are voting democratically.
- 35.
Jeff McMahan also uses the term.
- 36.
Others will have different goals, but what I am striving for here is a plausible goal that other reasonable people can accept as a plausible goal. The aim is not to get universal agreement on what the end is, but rather to get consensus that a particular end is something an entity can reasonably pursue without, in general, being in error morally.
- 37.
This rather vague notion will receive further explication in the next chapter.
- 38.
Of course, at times there may be more stringent criteria needed. For example, in public policy or actions affecting a great number of people, then it might be most useful to adopt what the majority of reasonable people believe. If a majority opinion cannot be reached, then a plurality would be sufficient. However, in actions affecting only or primarily the agent of the action, where the consequences are minor to the flourishing of the agent, then the standard may be lower. At least one reasonable person, usually the agent, believing the argument works can be sufficient.
- 39.
There are limitations to what works here. Believing that women are inferior to men is impermissible on the grounds that women and men are persons, and it is personhood that gives moral dignity to a person. Our moral platform and reason prohibit such a belief from being true.
- 40.
Of course, how people have been defined over time has allowed societies to treat persons who did not fit the social definition in ways that those individuals should not have been treated. However, that is the fault of those who did not use their moral platform and reason in the correct way.
- 41.
BD is based upon Pascal’s Wager , which is a cost/benefit analysis of what a rational person should believe to be in her best interest.
- 42.
For example, an act is morally right if and only if the act is commanded, expressly permitted, or approved by God.
- 43.
For example, an act is morally right if and only if the agent of the action chooses that the act is morally right.
- 44.
For example, an act is morally right if and only if the agent of the action does not violate any of the conventions of the society in which the act would be done.
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Cooley, D.R. (2015). A Pragmatic Method. In: Death’s Values and Obligations: A Pragmatic Framework. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7264-8_1
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