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Is Deontology a Moral Confabulation?

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Abstract

Joshua Greene has put forward the bold empirical hypothesis that deontology is a confabulation of moral emotions. Deontological philosophy does not steam from "true" moral reasoning, but from emotional reactions, backed up by post hoc rationalizations which play no role in generating the initial moral beliefs. In this paper, I will argue against the confabulation hypothesis. First, I will highlight several points in Greene’s discussion of confabulation, and identify two possible models. Then, I will argue that the evidence does not illustrate the relevant model of deontological confabulation. In fact, I will make the case that deontology is unlikely to be a confabulation because alarm-like emotions, which allegedly drive deontological theorizing, are resistant to be subject to confabulation. I will end by clarifying what kind of claims can the confabulation data support. The upshot of the final section is that confabulation data cannot be used to undermine deontological theory in itself, and ironically, if one commits to the claim that a deontological justification is a confabulation in a particular case, then the data suggests that in general deontology has a prima facie validity.

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Notes

  1. For critical analyses of the claim that deontological judgments are predicted by emotional factors see Kahane and Shackel [5], Mihailov [6], Kahane [7].

  2. Greene has changed his concept of personalness from being up close to the action to exerting personal force [8]. More recently he admitted that deontological judgements are sensitive to the distinction between intended and foreseeable consequences [9]. See Berker [10] for a critique of Greene’s argument from irrelevant features.

  3. When Richard Dean argues that deontological theories are not just “rationalizations” of emotional reactions, he assumes that emotional reactions are troubling, not the rationalization itself [13: 49]. Berker also takes Greene to be objecting to deontology because of its emotional basis, but he is reluctant to attribute the argument on a more charitable interpretation [10: 315]. Moreover, Wielenberg suggests that Greene’s argument implies the need for better deontological rationalization [14: 126]. They have in mind the sense of rationalization as summarizing intuitive responses, whereas Francis Kamm also points out Greene’s usage of rationalization as confabulation, in the debunking sense of lacking objective merit in itself [15].

  4. My reconstruction uses some features from Hirstein’s model of confabulation [17] and departs from how Wielenberg [14] reconstructs Greene’s argument.

  5. Greene emphasizes this when he says that the lesson to be drawn from cognitive neuroscience is that „we are all confabulators, and those of us with healthy brains are just better at it.” [16: 300]

  6. Note that some examples misrepresent in part the deontologists’ views. For instance, Thomson’s main argument for the permissibility of sacrifice in trolley cases but not in footbridge cases appeals to the distinction between deflecting a threat and bringing about a new threat [27].

  7. Though I take these findings at their face value, there are objections that they do not meet adequate criteria for awareness assessment. For example, the pantyhose experiment fails the relevance criterion which states that assessments of awareness should target only information relevant to the behaviour [34].

  8. This explains why the case of sexual attraction confabulation, which involves an alarm-like emotion, can be misleading. The confabulation occurs because the fear experienced on the scary bridge is an implausible cause of heighten sexual attraction.

  9. Curiously, even though Nisbett and Wilson [21] present such cases, Greene does not mention them.

  10. Deontologists are well aware of this, having criticized the abusive appeal to rights and, even, the inflation of rights [45].

  11. The appeal to consequentialist principles of maximizing the general utility can also function as an intellectual free pass. Authoritarian regimes often justify questionable policies by appealing to the priority of the overall good.

  12. Although Kahneman is rather sceptical about intuitive impressions, he endorses similar lines: “Judging probability by representativeness has important virtues: the intuitive impressions that it produces are often – indeed, usually – more accurate than chance guesses would be.” [47: 151]

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Acknowledgments

I thank Guy Kahane, Gulzaar Barn and Bogdan Olaru for insightful comments and advice. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for thoughtful comments which helped to improve the manuscript. This paper is supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme Human, Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under contract number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/133675.

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  1. Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch, T. Codrescu, no. 2, 700481, Iasi, Romania

    Emilian Mihailov

  2. Research Center in Applied Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Splaiul Independentei no. 204, 060024, Bucharest, Romania

    Emilian Mihailov

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Mihailov, E. Is Deontology a Moral Confabulation?. Neuroethics 9, 1–13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-015-9244-5

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