Online research in philosophy

Sunstein argues that heuristics misguide moral judgments. Principles that are normally sound falter in unusual cases. In particular, heuristics generate erroneous judgments about regulation of risks. Sunstein's map of moral reasoning omits some prominent contours. The simple heuristics he suggests neglect a reasoner's attempt to balance the pros and cons of regulating a risk.

Preferences for options that do not secure optimal outcomes, like the ones catalogued by Sunstein, derive from two sources: cognitive heuristics and deontological rules. Although rules may stem from automatic affective reactions, they are deliberately maintained. Because strongly held convictions have important behavioral implications, it may be useful to regard cognitive heuristics and deontological rules as separate sources of nonconsequential judgment in the moral domain.

In narrative contexts, people often find themselves mentally rooting for “bad guys.” These circumstances lead to questions about how Sunstein's moral heuristics function during narrative experiences. In particular, must people undertake explicit moral analysis for the heuristics to apply?

The nature and diversity of moral codes can be understood in terms of a few basic propensities honed by diachronic dialectics between what people do and what they are supposed to do in the culture in question. Many of the moral heuristics presented by Sunstein can be seen as by-products of these processes.

What is the nature of moral behavior? According to the study of bounded rationality, it results not from character traits or rational deliberation alone, but from the interplay between mind and environment. In this view, moral behavior is based on pragmatic social heuristics rather than moral rules or maximization principles. These social heuristics are not good or bad per se, but solely in relation to the environments in which they are used. This has methodological implications for the study of morality: Behavior needs to be studied in social groups as well as in isolation, in natural environments as well as in labs. It also has implications for moral policy: Only by accepting the fact that behavior is a function of both mind and environmental structures can realistic prescriptive means of achieving moral goals be developed.

Sunstein aims to provide a nonsectarian account of moral heuristics, yet the account rests on a controversial meta-ethical view. Further, moral theorists who reject act consequentialism may deny that Sunstein's examples involve moral mistakes. But so what? Within a theory that counts consequences as a morally weighty feature of actions, the moral judgments that Sunstein points to are indeed mistaken, and the fact that governmental action at odds with these judgments will be controversial doesn't bar such action.

Sunstein's characterization of moral blunders jointly indicts an intuitive process and the structure of heuristics. But intuitions need not lead to error, and the problems with moral heuristics apply also to moral principles. Accordingly, moral development may well involve more, rather than less, intuitive responsiveness. This suggests a novel trajectory for future research into the development of appropriate moral judgments.

Sunstein is right that poorly informed heuristics can influence moral judgment. His case could be strengthened by tightening neurobiologically plausible working definitions regarding what a heuristic is, considering a background moral theory that has more strength in wide reflective equilibrium than “weak consequentialism,” and systematically examining what naturalized virtue theory has to say about the role of heuristics in moral reasoning.

Moral heuristics are pervasive, and they produce moral errors. We can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentious moral view. To accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims about moral truth. But the notion of moral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature of moral intuitions, especially those that operate automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the possibility of altering such intuitions through modest changes in context and narrative.

With respect to questions of fact, people use heuristics – mental short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that generally work well, but that also lead to systematic errors. People use moral heuristics too – moral short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that lead to mistaken and even absurd moral judgments. These judgments are highly relevant not only to morality, but to law and politics as well. Examples are given from a number of domains, including risk regulation, punishment, reproduction and sexuality, and the act/omission distinction. In all of these contexts, rapid, intuitive judgments make a great deal of sense, but sometimes produce moral mistakes that are replicated in law and policy. One implication is that moral assessments ought not to be made by appealing to intuitions about exotic cases and problems; those intuitions are particularly unlikely to be reliable. Another implication is that some deeply held moral judgments are unsound if they are products of moral heuristics. The idea of error-prone heuristics is especially controversial in the moral domain, where agreement on the correct answer may be hard to elicit; but in many contexts, heuristics are at work and they do real damage. Moral framing effects, including those in the context of obligations to future generations, are also discussed.