Abstract
This chapter considers the possible ways of developing a model whereby Type 1 and Type 2 moral cognitions may interact in moral deliberation. The model of reflective equilibrium of John Rawls, Martha C. Nussbaum’s version of perceptual equilibrium, and William James’s notion of the mediating attitude are explored and criticized. Then a dual process model of moral deliberation is proposed that provides roles for both Type 1 and Type 2 processes through a narrative bridge. The functioning of the model is illustrated through a brief example, and then attention is given to the importance of aesthetic sensibilities for the functioning of the model.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition to the discussions in Chap. 4, see two discussions that pose an interaction between the two processes but do not detail how it occurs: S. Seiler, A. Fischer, and Y. P. Ooi (2010) ‘An Interactional Dual-Process Model of Moral Decision Making to Guide Military Training’, Military Psychology, 22, 490–509; and A. Ronkainen (9 September 2011) ‘Dual-Process Cognition and Legal Reasoning’, in M. Araszkiewicz et al. (eds) Argumentation 2011: International Conference on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law, Masaryk University, Brno, CZ, 1–32, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2004336, date accessed 5 July 2015. Also, Jonathan Haidt’s dual process moral theory provides valuable general insight about why moral arguments are intractable, but his suggestions are ultimately too sketchy to discern a practical shape for moral deliberation. See J. Haidt and J. Graham (2007) ‘When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions That Liberals May Not Recognize’, Social Justice, 20, 111–12.
- 2.
N. Daniels (1979) ‘Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics’, The Journal of Philosophy, 76, 258–60.
- 3.
J. Rawls (1951) ‘Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics’, The Philosophical Review, 60, 183.
- 4.
Rawls, ‘Outline of a Decision Procedure’, 178–80.
- 5.
Rawls, ‘Outline of a Decision Procedure’, 184.
- 6.
J. Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press), 46–7. Rawls does not use the language of ‘deep structural elements’, but he does reference Noam Chomsky in a footnote in the text, which makes this usage legitimate.
- 7.
I should note that Leland F. Saunders does make an effort to combine dual process theory with reflective equilibrium, but as use of the word justification in the title of his article indicates, he retains a focus on analytic goals rather than embracing the qualitatively different goals of Type 1 processes. See L. F. Saunders (2009) ‘Reason and Intuition in the Moral Life: A Dual-Process Account of Moral Justification’, in J. Evans and K. Frankish (eds) In Two Minds: Dual Process and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 335–54.
- 8.
M. C. Nussbaum (1990) Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press), 174; and M. C. Nussbaum (1986) The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 240–1.
- 9.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 174. Also see Nussbaum, Fragility, 245–6.
- 10.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 174 and 186.
- 11.
Nussbaum, Fragility, 248.
- 12.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 175 and 182–3.
- 13.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 175–6.
- 14.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 52 and 190.
- 15.
Nussbaum, Fragility, 251.
- 16.
Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 45.
- 17.
Nussbaum, Fragility, 252.
- 18.
Nussbaum, Fragility, 245–6.
- 19.
W. James (1916) Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.), 65 and 97.
- 20.
W. James (1909) A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.), 235, 244, and 250–51; and James, Some Problems, 73–4.
- 21.
James, A Pluralistic Universe, 261.
- 22.
James, A Pluralistic Universe, 251–2.
- 23.
James, Some Problems, 74.
- 24.
James, Some Problems, 57–8.
- 25.
R. Root-Bernstein and M. Root-Bernstein (2003) ‘Intuitive Tools for Innovative Thinking’, in L. V. Shavinina (ed.) The International Handbook on Innovation (Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.) 377–9; and D. Abbott (2013) ‘The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics’, Proceedings of the IEEE, 101, 2147–53.
- 26.
In spite of the intense interest in both narrative and deliberative democracy in the last 30 years, there is little empirical research on the benefits of perspective taking in deliberation. What little research there is may be found in discussions of international or business negotiations. See, for example, A. D. Galinsky, W. W. Maddux, D. Gilin, and J. B. White (2008) ‘Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent: The Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Negotiations’, Psychological Science, 19, 378–84.
- 27.
The difficulties of reaching a consensus in moral deliberation are recognized by major moral philosophers, but their solutions require either overly optimistic commitments to Type 2 processes or the abandonment of deliberation altogether. Alasdair MacIntyre admits that deliberations between rival moral narratives may be incommensurable, but he characterizes such conflicts as epistemological crises that may be resolved if one account can solve the epistemological problems of the other account better than its own tradition can. See A. MacIntyre (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 362. In fact, one tradition can actually ‘defeat another in respect of the adequacy of its claims to truth and to rational justification, even though there are no neutral standards available by appeal to which any rational agent whatsoever could determine which tradition is superior to which’. A. MacIntyre (2007) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory 3rd edn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), xiii. John Rawls proposes an overlapping consensus whereby even though deliberating parties may have different basic comprehensive doctrines they can discover intersections between their comprehensive beliefs regarding common political interests. See J. Rawls (1996) Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press), 15 and 24n27. This assertion, however, requires a commitment to Western ideals of individualism and rationality that many people, particularly in other parts of the world, do not have as part of their comprehensive or political beliefs. It appears unclear then how there can be any hope of an overlapping consensus unless one is already a Western political liberal. See M. G. Barnhart (2004) ‘An Overlapping Consensus: A Critique of Two Approaches’, The Review of Politics, 66, 259–62. Jürgen Habermas asserts that when deliberation, which he considers to be the discovery of reasons that are convincing to all the parties involved, cannot reach a consensus then deliberation must be abandoned for a different process that he calls bargaining, which seeks a constructed compromise that salvages as much of each party’s narrow self-interests as possible. J. Habermas (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 166.
- 28.
These suggestions obviously owe much to non-Western approaches to conflict resolution. See R. Cohen (1997) Negotiating Across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World, revised edn (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press), 36–7; and K. Peng and R. E. Nisbett (1999) ‘Culture, Dialectics, and Reasoning about Contradiction’, The American Psychologist, 54, 741–54.
- 29.
Engaging or representing relevant parties in moral deliberation is a major contemporary challenge. The expansive size of most contemporary societies and the global character of interactions between different societies effectively remove the logistical possibility of providing a significant voice for hardly any of the parties who have a stake in the discussion. Habermas attempts to overcome this problem by requiring that moral discourse deal only with those norms that all the possibly ‘affected persons’ would agree to. See Habermas, Facts and Norms, 107. Such a discourse principle is quite reductionist, however, both in that it considers as the relevant norms only those most common to all and in that it treats individuals’ perspectives as significant only to the extent to which they are similar. The model offered here encounters the same challenges of representation but confronts them not with reductionism but with its own challenge for complexity. Moral deliberations must reflect the complexity found among the relevant actors who are related to the issue, and this means not just reflecting differences of moral conviction but also the differences of personality and ability existing among the deliberating parties.
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R. Cohen (26 August 2014) ‘USTA Conflict of Interest Controversies at US Open Tennis Tournament’, http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/08/26/usta-conflict-of-interest-controversies-at-us-open-tennis-tournament/, date accessed 5 August 2015.
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‘Equal Work for Equal Pay?’
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K. Badenhaousen (25 August 2014) ‘Roger Federer Leads 2014 List of the World’s Highest-Paid Tennis Players’, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/08/25/roger-federer-leads-2014-list-of-the-worlds-highest-paid-tennis-players/, date accessed 5 August 2015; and M. L. Corbett (17 June 2013) ‘Anna Kournikova is the Best and Worst Thing to Ever Happen to Women’s Tennis’, http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1671532-anna-kournikova-is-the-best-and-worst-thing-to-ever-happen-to-womens-tennis, date accessed 5 August 2015.
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D. Keltner, D. H. Guenfeld, and C. Anderson (2003) ‘Power, Approach, and Inhibition’, Psychological Review, 110, 265–84; and S. Sachdeve, R. Iliev, and D. L. Medin (2009) ‘Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners: The Paradox of Moral Self-Regulation’, Psychological Science, 20, 523–8. One of the most famous examples is former US President Richard Nixon’s statement in an interview with David Frost, ‘Well, when the president does it, it’s not illegal’. ‘I Have Impeached Myself’ (7 September 2007) http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/07/greatinterviews1, date accessed 2 August 2015.
- 44.
This sensibility has received recent endorsement from unexpected sources and for unexpected reasons. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, has advocated tolerance because social conservatives and social liberals have different mixtures of different moral intuitions that cause them effectively to see the world in different ways. John Hibbing, along with others, argues that there are physiological trait differences between liberals and conservatives that correlate to their different political outlooks. The conclusion is that elements of human political and moral attitudes are beyond one’s conscious volition to choose or change, and that recognition demands that one be more tolerant of the positions of those with whom one disagrees. See J. Haidt and J. Graham (2007) ‘When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions That Liberals May Not Recognize’, Social Justice Research, 20, 98–116; D. R. Oxley, K. B. Smith, J. R. Alford, et al. (2009) ‘Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits’, Science, 321, 1667–70; and J. R. Hibbing, K. B. Smith, and J. R. Alford (2014) ‘Differences in Negativity Bias Underlie Variations in Political Ideology’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 307.
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Tillman, J.J. (2016). Dual Processes Interacting in Moral Deliberation. In: An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49022-3_8
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