Abstract
Recent empirical work in moral psychology has shown that moral judgments, like many other kinds of judgments, arise from two (somewhat) distinct systems: an automatic intuitive system that produces most of our moral judgments, and a controlled reasoning system that can be, though usually is not, engaged in the production or revision of moral judgments. This chapter is premised on the assumption that being a morally good person requires engaging both of these neural systems. I situate this assumption within a loosely Aristotelian virtue ethics framework, where being a good or virtuous person requires both reasoning and the habituation of virtues; when virtues are successfully habituated, the virtuous person is able to respond automatically in morally praiseworthy ways.
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Notes
Here I borrow from C. Gowans (1994) Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
The relevant brain areas are discussed and illustrated in J. Greene and J. Haidt (2002) “How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?” TRENDSin Cognitive Sciences 6: 517–523.
There are different ways in which affect could be connected to moral intuitions. One plausible model describes intuitions as a form of heuristics and then posits an “affect heuristic.” See W. Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter L. Young, and R Cushman (2010) “Moral Intuitions”, in John Doris (ed.) The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 246–271.
There is much additional evidence to support the hypothesis that reasoning takes place post hoc to rationalize intuitive moral judgments; see J. Haidt (2001) “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment”, Psychological Review 108: 814–834
H. Mercier (2011) “What Good is Moral Reasoning?” Mind & Society 1(2): 131–148
The first trolley (or “tram”) case appeared in P. Foot (1978) “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell), 19–32
J. Thomson (1985) “The Trolley Problem” The Yale Law Journal 94: 1395–1415.
As William Casebeer argues”, the moral psychology required by virtue theory is the most neurobiologically plausible” (W. Casebeer (2003) “Moral Cognition and its Neural Constituents”, Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 4: 841–846, at 841)
J. Haidt and C. Joseph (2004) “Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues” Daedalus 133: 62
J. Haidt and R Bjorklund (2008) “Social intuitionists answer six questions about moral psychology” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.) Moral Psychology, Vol. 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 181–217.
The idea of a moral “remainder” — which indicates that a moral requirement has not been eliminated and retains its normative force — comes from B. Williams (1973) “Ethical Consistency”, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 166–186.
On the “moral dilemmas debate” see, for instance: C. Gowans, ed. (1987) Moral Dilemmas (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
C. Gowans (1994) Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
H.E. Mason, ed. (1996) Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
W. Sinnott-Armstrong (1988) Moral Dilemmas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
M. Stocker (1990) Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
R. Hursthouse (1999) On VirtueEthics (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
See L. Tessman (2009) “Feminist Eudaimonism: Eudaimonism as Non-Ideal Theory”, in L. Tessman, ed., Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal (Dordrecht: Springer), 47–58
L. Tessman (2005) Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles (New York: Oxford University Press)
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© 2013 Lisa Tessman
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Tessman, L. (2013). Virtue Ethics and Moral Failure: Lessons from Neuroscientific Moral Psychology. In: Austin, M.W. (eds) Virtues in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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