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Type 1 Moral Cognition

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An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation

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Abstract

This chapter begins with a description of the inadequate state of current theories about Type 1 cognitions. It moves to develop a theory of Type 1 cognition by drawing upon the psychological and philosophical work of William James. Using his distinctions between fringe and focal consciousness and between experience and conceptualization, an aesthetic model of Type 1 cognition is developed, which subsumes notions of rationality, aesthetics, and ethics under one process. This model is then applied to specifically moral cognitions to develop an aesthetic model of moral cognition that portrays moral deliberation as a struggle regarding proper aesthetic sensibilities of rightness and wrongness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    J. S. B. T. Evans (2014) ‘Two Minds Rationality’, Thinking and Reasoning, 20, 131.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, N. Bunnin and J. Yu (2004) The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 358.

  3. 3.

    See, for example, J. S. B. T. Evans (2010) ‘Intuition and Reasoning: A Dual Process Perspective’, Psychological Inquiry, 21, 313–26.

  4. 4.

    D. Kahneman and S. Frederick (2005) ‘A Model of Heuristic Judgment’, in J. Holyoak and R. G. Morrison (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (New York: Cambridge University Press), 268; and H. Brighton and G. Gigerenzer (2012) ‘Homo Heuristicus: Less-Is-More Effects in Adaptive Cognition’, Malaysian Journal of Medical Science, 19, 7.

  5. 5.

    H. A. Simon (1956) ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’, Psychological Review, 63, 129–38.

  6. 6.

    K. G. Volz and G. Gigerenzer (2012) ‘Cognitive Processes in Decisions under Risk are not the Same as in Decisions Under Uncertainty’, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6, 1–6.

  7. 7.

    G. Gigerenzer and W. Gaissmaier (2011) ‘Heuristic Decision-Making’, Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 456.

  8. 8.

    Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, ‘Heuristic Decision-Making’, 463.

  9. 9.

    G. Lakoff (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), xi–xii.

  10. 10.

    M. Johnson (2007) The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 92.

  11. 11.

    Productive discussions on these issues can be found in M. Cuddly-Keane (2010) ‘Narration, Navigation, and Non-Conscious Thought: Neuroscientific and Literary Approaches to the Thinking Body’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 79, 680–701; D. Galin (2004) ‘Aesthetic Experience: Marcel Proust and the Neo-Jamesian Structure of Awareness’, Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 241–53; and R. B. Goodman (2004) ‘James on the Nonconceptual’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 28, 137–48.

  12. 12.

    W. James (1890) Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2 (New York: Henry Holt & Company), 325–6.

  13. 13.

    James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, 326.

  14. 14.

    James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, 329.

  15. 15.

    W. James (1890) Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt & Company), 224–43.

  16. 16.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 243.

  17. 17.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 281.

  18. 18.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 161–6; and A. Herwig and W. X. Schneider (2014) ‘Predicting Object Features Across Saccades: Evidence from Object Recognition and Visual Search’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1903–22.

  19. 19.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 243; and William James (1909) A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.), 329.

  20. 20.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 288–9.

  21. 21.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 260, 289.

  22. 22.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 218.

  23. 23.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 219.

  24. 24.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 244.

  25. 25.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 72–3.

  26. 26.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 73.

  27. 27.

    James, Pluralistic Universe, 113.

  28. 28.

    W. James (1912) The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.), 63.

  29. 29.

    James, Will to Believe, 64.

  30. 30.

    James, Principles, Vol. 1, 254, 261–2.

  31. 31.

    James, Will to Believe, 2.

  32. 32.

    James, Will to Believe, 9.

  33. 33.

    James, Will to Believe, 10.

  34. 34.

    James, Will to Believe, 25.

  35. 35.

    James, Will to Believe, 10–11.

  36. 36.

    W. James (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Experience (London: Longmans, Green, and Co), 189–94.

  37. 37.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 672.

  38. 38.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 675.

  39. 39.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 640.

  40. 40.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 365.

  41. 41.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 361.

  42. 42.

    Many have struggled with this incongruity. See, for example, J. M. Kress (2000) ‘Contesting Metaphors and the Discourse of Consciousness in William James’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 61, 263–83.

  43. 43.

    James, Principles, Vol. 2, 365.

  44. 44.

    ‘Review of H. R. Marshall’s Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics’, (1894), Nation, 59, 50.

  45. 45.

    Review, p. 50.

  46. 46.

    James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 405.

  47. 47.

    James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 382–3.

  48. 48.

    James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 421.

  49. 49.

    W. James (1916) Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.), 78–9.

  50. 50.

    James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 95.

  51. 51.

    James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 95–6.

  52. 52.

    W. James (1891) ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’, International Journal of Ethics 1, 335.

  53. 53.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 335–6.

  54. 54.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 336.

  55. 55.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 336–8.

  56. 56.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 349.

  57. 57.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 350.

  58. 58.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 349.

  59. 59.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 350.

  60. 60.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 346–7.

  61. 61.

    James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 348.

  62. 62.

    The range of perceptions available through the human senses are difficult to comprehend. The human sense of smell can detect 1 trillion different odors. See C. Bushdid, M. O. Magnasco, L. B. Vosshall, and A. Keller (2014) ‘Humans Can Discriminate More than 1 Trillion Olfactory Stimuli’, Science, 343, 1370–2. Human hearing can discriminate between audio frequencies ranging between 20 and 20,000 Hz and differing in volume and timbre. Human sight can perceive at least 200 different colors, each with varying brightness. The sense of touch distinguishes an innumerable range of intensities, pressures, vibrations, textures, pains, heat, cold, and body orientations. See E. B. Goldstein (2010) Sensation and Perception, 9th edn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning), 268, 201, and 337–59.

  63. 63.

    Antonio Damasio argues that James gets a lot right about the bodily character of emotions, but that he doesn’t do enough with his ideas. In particular James fails to consider anything but the most primitive emotions, and does not consider how emotion may be involved in cognition. A. Damasio (1995) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Avon Books), 129–30.

  64. 64.

    B. Mangan (1993) ‘Taking Phenomenology Seriously: The “Fringe” and Its Implications for Cognitive Research’, Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 93–8. Mangan has also noted the commonalities that James’s notions of the flux and the fringe have with Gestalt psychology. Moreover, research in cognitive linguistics, feeling-of-knowing experiences, and change blindness, all discussed by James, have received some significant empirical support in the last 30 years. See B. Mangan (2007) ‘Cognition, Fringe Consciousness, and William James’, in M. Velmans and S. Schneider (eds) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.), 678–9.

  65. 65.

    Mangan argues that this sense of meaningfulness is the marker for when organization of perception in consciousness matches organization in the nonconscious. See Mangan, ‘Taking Phenomenology Seriously’, 99.

  66. 66.

    M. McGuire (1977) ‘Mythic Rhetoric in Mein Kampf: A Structuralist Critique’, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 63, 1–3. McGuire recognizes this point, even though I believe his structuralist approach obscures the reasons that it applies so well. See also K. Owens (2007) ‘Myth Making as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement’, American Communication Journal, 9, http://ac-journal.org/journal/2007/Fall/3MythMakingasaHumanCommunicationParadigm.pdf, date accessed 22 July 2015.

  67. 67.

    J. Campbell (1991) The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Compass), 4.

  68. 68.

    J. Campbell (1991) The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Penguin Compass), 12.

  69. 69.

    The notion of ‘rightness and wrongness’ is Bruce Mangan’s elaboration on James’s notions of harmony and disharmony. Mangan, ‘Taking Phenomenology Seriously’, 99. This provides some insight into why people’s ethical judgments may not match their moral behavior. The judgments are made on the basis of Type 2 processes, but decisions about behavior are made by Type 1 cognitions. See N. Gold, B. D. Pulford, and A. M. Colman (2015), ‘Do as I Say, Don’t Do as I Do: Differences in Moral Judgments Do Not Translate into Differences in Decisions in Real-Life Trolley Problems’, Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 50–61, for a description of the discrepancy, although the authors do not entertain a dual process explanation.

  70. 70.

    E. P. Wigner (1960) ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13, 3.

  71. 71.

    R. Heath (2012) Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), 156–59; and R. Cialdini (2001) ‘The Science of Persuasion’, Scientific American, 284, 76–81.

  72. 72.

    V. Kuzichkin (1990) Inside the KGB: My Life in Soviet Espionage, translated by T. B. Beattie (New York: Pantheon Books), 55; and M. Alexander and J. R. Bruning (2008) How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (New York: Free Press), 128–38.

  73. 73.

    C. G. Lord, L. Ross, and M. R. Lepper (1979) ‘Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098–109.

  74. 74.

    See G. Kirkebøen, E. Vasaasen, and K. H. Teigen (2013) ‘Revisions and Regret: The Cost of Changing Your Mind’, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 26, 1–12.

  75. 75.

    What I am talking about here are self-initiated forms of self-transformation. This is distinct from efforts to transform character by states and institutions as discussed in Chap. 3. One can argue that those who seek out mental health assistance are self-directed for change, but the choice of treatment is usually at the behest of the mental health professional. And whether the treatment is in the form of drugs or psychotherapy, interventions at their best may alleviate symptoms only about 40 to 60 % of the time, and even then the alleviation of psychological symptoms is not necessarily the same thing as a transformation of values. See E. Anthes (2014) ‘Depression: A Change of Mind’, Nature: An International Weekly Journal of Science, 515, 185–7.

  76. 76.

    B. Nyhan, J. Reifler, S. Richey, and G. L. Freed (2014) ‘Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial’, Pediatrics, 133, E835-42; B. Nyhan, J. Reifler, and P. A. Ubel (2013) ‘The Hazards of Correcting Myths about Health Care Reform’, Medical Care, 51, 127–32; and P. S. Hart and E. C. Nisbet (2012) ‘Boomerang Effects in Science Communication: How Motivated Reasoning and Identity Cues Amplify Opinion Polarization about Climate Mitigation Policies’, Communication Research 39, 701–23.

  77. 77.

    See U. K. H. Ecker, S. Lewandowsky, O. Fenton, and K. Martin (2014) ‘Do People Keep Believing Because They Want to? Preexisting Attitudes and the Continued Influence of Misinformation’, Memory and Cognition 42, 292–304.

  78. 78.

    Maria Konnikova (16 May 2014) ‘I Don’t Want to Be Right’, The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want-to-be-right, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  79. 79.

    A. W. Kruglanski and E. Orehek (2011) ‘The Role of the Quest for Personal Significance in Motivating Terrorism’, in J. Forgas, A. Kruglanski, and K. Williams (eds) The Psychology of Social Conflict and Aggression (New York: Psychology Press), 153–66. Other research indicates that as people are less willing to tolerate diverse points of view the likelihood of violent confrontations increase. See P. Suedfeld (2010) ‘The Scoring of Integrative Complexity as a Tool in Forecasting Adversary Intentions: Three Case Studies’, Contract report, Defence R&D Canada-Toronto, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/, date accessed 22 July 2015.

  80. 80.

    C. Buxant, V. Saroglou, and J. Scheuer (2009) ‘Contemporary Conversion: Compensatory Needs or Self-Growth Motives?’ in R. L. Piedmont and A. Village (eds) Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 20 (Leiden: Brill), 47–67.

  81. 81.

    While Richard Posner uses Thomas Kuhn’s phrase of ‘gestalt switch’, he makes note of the matrix of technological innovations and change in public relationships that have been behind the spreading acceptance of ‘women’s equality’. See R. A. Posner (1993) The Problems of Jurisprudence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 419. Of course, relationships are also points of exploitation. Military interrogators recognize that the central mechanism by which to get information from a source is to establish a relationship with the source whereby the source believes that he or she will gain something. See C. McCauley (2007) ‘Toward a Social Psychology of Professional Military Interrogation’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 13, 299–410.

  82. 82.

    James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 78–9.

  83. 83.

    James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 95.

  84. 84.

    George Lakoff develops this idea but with considerable lingering reference to reason. See G. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, 56 and 200.

  85. 85.

    A. I. Jack and A. Roepstorff (2003) ‘Why Trust the Subject?’ in A. I. Jack and A. Roepstorff (eds) Trusting the Subject, Vol. 1 (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic), v–xx.

  86. 86.

    See S. Shoemaker (1986) ‘Introspection and the Self’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 10, 101–20.

  87. 87.

    There is a broad diversity of approach here, ranging from Eugene T. Gendlin’s highly linguistic form of introspection, see E. T. Gendlin (2009) ‘We Can Think with the Implicit, As Well as with Fully Formed Concepts’, in K. Leidlmair (ed.) After Cognitivism: A Reassessment of Cognitive Science and Philosophy (Dordrecht, NI: Springer), 147–61, to Wayne Dyer’s transreligious spirituality. See W. W. Dyer (2007) Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.).

  88. 88.

    James recognized this, but believed that the only thing to do with experience was to make assertions about it. ‘The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity … are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own sake. The nobler thing tastes better and that is all we can say’. James, ‘The Moral Philosopher’, 187.

  89. 89.

    S. K. Langer (1957) Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), 91. I say very close to this view, because Langer often references structures, concepts, symbols, and logic as involved in the appreciation of art. At times her writings suggest an inherent compatibility between rational structures and the experiences art communicates.

  90. 90.

    S. K. Langer (1962) Philosophical Sketches (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press), 84.

  91. 91.

    Langer, Problems of Art, 25.

  92. 92.

    Langer, Problems of Art, 26.

  93. 93.

    S. K. Langer (1954) Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (New York: The New American Library), 176.

  94. 94.

    Lavazza and Manzotti make a similar point about art eliciting an experience of unity in those who participate in viewing, hearing, or reading it. See A. Lavazz and R. Manzotti (2011) ‘A New Mind for a New Aesthetics’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 67, 523.

  95. 95.

    Aristotle and Plato explicitly ascribe to music the ability to educate the emotions and judgment. See Politics, 1340a14–25, and The Republic, 401,d-e. See also Martha Nussbaum’s remarks on tragedy in M. Nussbaum (1988) The Fragility of Goodness (New York: Cambridge University Press), 390.

  96. 96.

    M. Proust (1981) Remembrance of Things Past, Vol. 3, The Captive, The Fugitive, Time Regained, Trans. by C. K. S. Moncrieff, T. Kilmartin, and A. Mayor (New York: Random House), 932.

  97. 97.

    Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 926.

  98. 98.

    Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 906 and 925.

  99. 99.

    Susan L. Feagin’s assertion that one can listen to music or read literature without having feelings about it represents the dispassionate and, I believe, unrealistic approach of much of analytic philosophy. See S. L. Feagin (2010) ‘Affects in Appreciation’, in P. Goldie (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (New York: Oxford University Press), 642–3.

  100. 100.

    Bruce Mangan refers to an interview with Georgia O’Keeffe in which she noted that in making copies of her paintings she judged the colors in the copies not by whether they were ‘absolutely right’, but whether or not ‘they seem right when you are finished’. B. Mangan (2008) ‘Representation, Rightness and The Fringe’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, 78.

  101. 101.

    J. Owens (1981) ‘The ΚΑΛΟΝ in the Aristotelian Ethics’, in D. J. O’Meara (ed.) Studies in Aristotle (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press), 261. Richard Kraut argues that in many places, but not all, Aristotle is referring to beauty rather than a nonaesthetic rendering of moral goodness. See R. Kraut (2013) ‘An Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics’, in V. Harte and M. Lane (eds) Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 231–50.

  102. 102.

    Aristotle (2009) Nicomachean Ethics, translated by D. Ross, Revised by L. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1120a24–5.

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  1. Wayland Baptist University, Texas Wichita Falls, Texas, USA

    J. Jeffrey Tillman

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Tillman, J.J. (2016). Type 1 Moral Cognition. In: An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49022-3_6

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