Models and Moral Deliberation

Abstract

It is clear that models embody or encode information about moral values and moral conduct that is frequently important in moral deliberation, that is, the process of solving moral problems . However, there is a diversity of views on how models perform this function. In part, this diversity is due to the well-known diversity of views on the concept of model itself. Naturally, scholars with different views of what a model is produce different accounts of their place in moral deliberation. As a result, the shared involvement of models in these accounts has been largely unnoticed. The purpose of this chapter is to review the main, varying accounts of models and model-based reasoning in moral deliberation. These accounts include models as rules, as mental models, schemata, analogies, empathy, and role models. These accounts emphasize different aspects of moral deliberation. Rule-based accounts tend to emphasize morally generalized information concentrated in a set of rules and a cognitive style based on calculation. Other accounts, such as analogies, empathy and role models, tend to emphasize morally particular information spread out throughout a large set of source analogs, and reflect the emotional aspects of moral deliberation. Most accounts concentrate on information originating with the deliberators, although role models, conversely, emphasize models that originate outside the deliberators themselves. Hopefully, this chapter invites further work on the relationships among the accounts reviewed within.