Abstract
Originally identified by Hume, the validity of is–ought inference is much debated in the meta-ethics literature. Our work shows that inference from is to ought typically proceeds from contextualised, value-laden causal utility conditional, bridging into a deontic conclusion. Such conditional statements tell us what actions are needed to achieve or avoid consequences that are good or bad. Psychological research has established that people generally reason fluently and easily with utility conditionals. Our own research also has shown that people’s reasoning from is to ought (deontic introduction) is pragmatically sensitive and adapted to achieving the individual’s goals. But how do we acquire the necessary deontic rules? In this paper, we provide a rationale for this facility linked to Evans’s (Thinking twice: two minds in one brain, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) framework of dual mind rationality. People have an old mind (in evolutionary terms) which derives its rationality by repeating what has worked in the past, mostly by experiential learning. New mind rationality, in contrast, is evolutionarily recent, uniquely developed in humans, and draws on our ability to mentally simulate hypothetical events removed in time and place. We contend that the new mind achieves its goals by inducing and applying deontic rules and that a mechanism of deontic introduction evolved for this purpose.
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Adapted from: Elqayam et al. (2015)
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Notes
Wason’s original normative model was the material conditional of classical logic, and more indirectly, Popperian philosophy of science. Normative choices may change under different semantic theory, such as Oaksford and Chater’s (1994) Bayesian information gain. For a review of different normative interpretation of the selection task, see Evans and Over (2004, Chap. 5).
We thank Gerhard Schurz for this reference and for introducing us to the literature on the defeasibility of deontic logic.
For further analogies between linguistic capacity and the psychology of norms, see Sripada and Stich (2007)
Based on information released on Boots website, www.boots.com, March 2018. If you think this is silly, we dare you to imagine taking a capsule from the pink package in order to relieve back pain, identical active ingredient or not.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the editors of this special issue as well as two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. SE thanks Gerhard Schurz for many interesting conversations and inspirational ideas over the years.
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Evans, J.S.B.T., Elqayam, S. How and why we reason from is to ought. Synthese 197, 1429–1446 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02041-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02041-4