Online research in philosophy

In folk psychology and some academic psychology, utilitarian thinking is associated with coldness and deontological thinking is associated with emotion. I suggest, mostly through personal examples, that these associations are far from perfect. Utilitarians experience emotions, which sometimes derive from, and sometimes cause or reinforce, their moral judgments.

Cognitive biases that affect decision making may affect the decisions of citizens that influence public policy. To the extent that decisions follow principles other than maximizing utility for all, it is less likely that utility will be maximized, and the citizens will ultimately suffer the results. Here I outline some basic arguments concerning decisions by citizens, using voting as an example. I describe two types of values that may lead to sub-optimal consequences when these values influence political behavior: moralistic values (...) (which people are willing to impose on others regardless of the consequences) and protected values (PVs, values protected from trade-offs). I present evidence against the idea that voting is expressive, i.e., that voters aim to express their moral views rather than to have an effect on outcomes. I show experimentally that PVs are often moralistic. Finally, I present some data that citizens’ think of their duty in a parochial way, neglecting out-groups. I conclude that moral judgments are important determinants of citizen behavior, that these judgments are subject to biases and based on moralistic values, and that, therefore, outcomes are probably less good than they could be. (shrink)

The heuristics-and-biases approach requires a clear separation of normative and descriptive models. Normative models cannot be justified by intuition, or by consensus. The lack of consensus on normative theory is a problem for prescriptive approaches. One solution to the prescriptive problem is to argue contingently: if you are concerned about consequences, here is a way to make them better.

Commitment to a pattern of altruism or self-control may indeed be learnable and sometimes rational. Commitment may also result from illusions. In one illusion, people think that their present behavior causes their future behavior, or causes the behavior of others, when really only correlation is present. Another happy illusion is that morality and self-interest coincide, so that altruism appears self-interested.

The methods of experiments in the social sciences should depend on their purposes. To support this claim, I attempt to state some general principles relating method to purpose for three of the issues addressed. (I do not understand what is not a script, so I will omit that issue.) I illustrate my outline with examples from psychological research on judgment and decision making (JDM).

Stanovich & West (S&W) have two goals, one concerned with the evaluation of normative models, the other with development of prescriptive models. Individual differences have no bearing on normative models, which are justified by analysis, not consensus. Individual differences do, however, suggest where it is possible to try to improve human judgments and decisions through education rather than computers.

Abstract Critical thinking about moral decisions considers the consequences of options for the achievement of people's goals. Attempts to think critically lead to error and bias, so intuitive rules are needed to guard against these errors and to save time. Intuitive rules, however, lead to errors and biases of their own. I propose that students be taught to approximate critical thinking itself and that they learn rules of thumb to guard against its pitfalls. In particular, students need to learn certain (...) powerful devices of consequentialist reasoning, such as consideration of precedent setting and of the possibility of error in thinking itself. They also need to learn about the common biases of thinking, especially the bias to favour what one already believes, or what is nearby in time and space. (shrink)