Dual Process Theories: Objections, Evidence and Significance

This week’s lecture builds on Lecture 07. Although you don’t need to understand everything in that lecture, most of this week’s lecture is about the loose reconstruction of Greene (2014)’s argument (see Greene contra Ethics).

Background

The essence of many debunking arguments is captured by Railton (who is offering considerations with which to counter them):

‘a better understanding of the [...]\ origin of “intuitive” moral judgments might show them to be something other than manifestations of underlying moral competencies or principles. [...]\ “moral intuitions” might therefore deserve less deference [...]\ than they characteristically receive in philosophical [...]\ moral thought’ (Railton, 2014, p. 832). \

The argument we are evaluating (see Greene contra Ethics) concludes that:

Not Justified Inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is to establish knowledge of their conclusions.

This argument differs from Railton’s sketch in that it is based on considerations which support, rather than undermine, the view that moral intuitions are manifestations of an underlying competence. That competence is, however, limited in ways which mean we should not always rely on it in philosophical arguments (Cognitive Miracles: When Are Fast Processes Unreliable?).

Significance

Why is the debunking argument we are considering (see Greene contra Ethics) significant?

One reason is that it creates complications for views about the value of moral intuitions in doing ethics. Consider Audi’s view:

‘Intuition is a resource in all of philosophy, but perhaps nowhere more than in ethics‘ (Audi, 2015, p. 57).

‘Episodic intuitions [...] can serve as data [...] ... beliefs that derive from them receive prima facie justification.’ (Audi, 2015, p. 65).

Audi also compares episodic intuitions to perceptions:

‘episodic intuitions evidence propositions in a non-inferential way that [... resembles] the way in which perceptions evidence propositions’ (Audi, 2015, p. 74).

The case of vertical motion illustrates that perceptions do not actually justify beliefs about unfamiliar situations, such as those involving spiral tubes or vertical motion (as we saw in Linking Ethics to Moral Psychology: Dual-Process Theories). Similarly, if the argument we are evaluating succeeds, and if Audi’s episodic intuitions are consequences of faster processes, then your knowledge of the limits of faster processes defeats any prima facie justification which moral intuitions might provide for beliefs about unfamiliar situations. Whatever your intuitions, they do not enable you to know that it is wrong to sacrifice one person to save five in Footbridge.