Abstract
We review several instances where cognitive research has identified distinct psychological mechanisms for moral judgment that yield conflicting answers to moral dilemmas. In each of these cases, the conflict between psychological mechanisms is paralleled by prominent philosophical debates between different moral theories. A parsimonious account of this data is that key claims supporting different moral theories ultimately derive from the psychological mechanisms that give rise to moral judgments. If this view is correct, it has some important implications for the practice of philosophy. We suggest several ways that moral philosophy and practical reasoning can proceed in the face of discordant theories grounded in diverse psychological mechanisms.
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Notes
Here, we do not attempt to define the scope of the moral domain, but instead rely on an intuitive sense of the sorts of judgments that have moral content. To paraphrase the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, “we know it when we see it”.
As noted by one of our reviewers, it may also be possible for a dilemma to arise when a single system yields contradictory demands. For instance, consider a system that prohibits any behavior that leads to the death of one’s child. Now consider a dilemma in which one’s children are held captive, and the captor explains that he will kill your son unless you tell him to kill your daughter. In this case, any behavior you perform stands in violation of the proposed psychological system. See also Tetlock’s discussion of “tragic tradeoffs” (2003).
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Richard Joyce, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and several reviewers for their valuable comments on this essay.
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Cushman, F., Young, L. The Psychology of Dilemmas and the Philosophy of Morality. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 12, 9–24 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9145-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9145-3