Does autonomous moral reasoning favor consequentialism?

This paper addresses an important issue that has been commonly debated in moral psychology, namely the normative and metaethical implications of our differing intuitive responses to morally indistinguishable dilemmas. The prominent example of the asymmetry in our responses is that people often intuitively accept pulling a switch and deny pushing as a morally permissible way of sacrificing an innocent person to save more innocent people. Joshua Greene traces our negative responses to actions involving “up close and personal” harm back to our evolutionary past and argues that this undermines the normative power of deontological judgments. I reject Greene’s argument by arguing that our theoretical moral intuitions, as opposed to concrete and mid-level ones, are independent of direct evolutionary influence because they are the product of autonomous (gene-independent) moral reasoning. I then explain how both consequentialist and deontological theoretical intuitions, which enable us to make important moral distinctions and grasp objective moral facts, are produced by the exercise of autonomous moral reasoning and the process of cultural evolution. My conclusion will be that Greene is not justified in his claim that deontology is normatively inferior to consequentialism.

A Teoria do Duplo Processo Cerebral de J. Greene

O presente texto tem como finalidade sumarizar o modelo cognitivo de Joshua Greene, que tende a perceber as decisões morais influenciados tanto pelos processos automáticos como também pelos processos manuais, que nos dizem o que fazer, mas que também tencionam entre interesses individuais e coletivos, ou seja, tribalistas. No geral, a pesquisa de Greene, segue e apoia a afirmação de que a razão não é causa suficiente para o juízo ou comportamento moral - a emoção jaz na estrutura.

Cognitive Science and Moral Philosophy

Can empirical work in cognitive science and moral psychology impact issues of general theoretical relevance to moral philosophy? Some think it can. They take it to underwrite debunking arguments against mainstream philosophical views. This chapter first critiques recent philosophical work by two prominent experimentalists, Joshua Greene and Shaun Nichols. The chapter argues that the cases they make for this sort of strong impact of experimental work on moral philosophy suffer from a problematic form of scientism and ultimately fail. Indeed, they fail for reasons that likely apply to other projects with similar ambitions as well. Second, the chapter clarifies the dialectical situation with respect to empirically driven attempts to debunk traditional philosophical views, which leads to a general challenge to such debunking projects going forward. It ends by suggesting a more modest and plausible role for experimental work in connection with moral philosophy that gives up the overreaching debunking ambitions.

Crítica a la naturalización del deontologismo en la teoría del proceso dual del juicio moral de Joshua Greene

En este trabajo me propongo cuestionar la tesis neuroética de Joshua Greene acerca del carácter esencialmente emocional de los llamados “juicios morales deontológicos”. Centrándome en su teoría del proceso dual del juicio moral cuestiono que solo y principalmente los juicios morales deontológicos sean intuitivos y no reflexivos. En segundo lugar, cuestiono que el juicio utilitarista pueda ser asimilable al cálculo matemático y que el juicio deontológico se reduzca al factor no reflexivo de la emoción. La principal objeción que planteo al naturalismo de Greene es pretender eliminar la justificación filosófica acerca de la validez moral que lleva a cabo el deontologismo en Kant, reduciéndolo exclusivamente a factores psicológicos y neurofisiológicos vinculados con la emoción.

Morality, Policy, and the Brain

The book Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them, by Joshua Greene, invites the reader to give a new look at the foundation of ethics and, by implication, to policy. Its specific strength is the systematic integration of new methods from neuroscience into a very old debate. Having something new and substantial to add in an investigation that has been at the center of the philosophical debate in Western civilization for twenty-five centuries is remarkable. While I invite everyone to read and enjoy this wonderful book, I take here the opportunity to invite economists to take the challenge. We are particularly interested in the question, “Is there a specific contribution that economics can give to this debate?” I believe there is and this insight is now in danger of being lost. This is my attempt to indicate where the research should look now. Maybe it is not too late. (JEL D12, D63, D87, Z13)

¿Conduce la neurociencia a una naturalización del deontologismo? «Juicios morales deontológicos» en perspectiva neuroética

A tenor de las investigaciones en el campo de la neuroética y más en concreto en la teoría del proceso dual del juicio moral en autores como Joshua Greene, nos planteamos la cuestión de si la neurociencia conduce necesariamente a una «naturalización del deontologismo». De este modo en nuestra comunicación ponemos en cuestión un modo de hacer neurociencia que pretenda reducir el deontologismo a un tipo de respuesta exclusivamente emocional. Frente a este modelo planteamos otra forma de hacer «neuroética» donde se consideren las estructuras psicofísicas de la moralidad sin incurrir en el reduccionismo miope naturalista. Se trata, por lo tanto, de descubrir la neurociencia de la ética, esto es, la naturaleza de la moralidad sin que eso implique reducir la moralidad a la naturaleza. Así entendida la neurociencia puede contribuir al trabajo interdisciplinar de comprender la vasta naturaleza humana en toda su amplitud.

Neuroscience and Ethics

A number of people believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. In particular, Joshua Greene has argued that evidence from neuroscience can be used to advance the long-standing debate between consequentialism and deontology. This paper first argues that charitably interpreted, Greene’s neuroscientific evidence can contribute to substantive ethical discussions by being part of an epistemic debunking argument. It then argues that taken as an epistemic debunking argument, Greene’s argument falls short in undermining deontological judgments. Lastly, it proposes that accepting Greene’s methodology at face value, neuroimaging results may in fact call into question the reliability of consequentialist judgments. The upshot is that Greene’s empirical results do not undermine deontology and that Greene’s project points toward a way by which empirical evidence such as neuroscientific evidence can play a role in normative debates.

Good Night and Good Luck: In Search of a Neuroscience Challenge to Criminal Justice

This article clarifies what a neuroscience challenge to criminal justice must look like by sketching the basic structure of the argument, gradually filling out the details and illustrating the conditions that must be met for the challenge to work. In the process of doing so it explores influential work by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, and Stephen Morse respectively, arguing that the former should not be understood to present a version of the challenge, and that the latter's argument against the challenge is unpersuasive. This analysis allows the article to flesh out the challenge, and demonstrate why it is currently non-completeable. However, the article argues that contrary to what is often assumed the burden of proof falls on the defenders of criminal justice, and that they will find meeting it a monumental task.