Abstract
In this article, I provide a guide to some current thinking in empirical moral psychology on the nature of moral intuitions, focusing on the theories of Haidt and Narvaez. Their debate connects to philosophical discussions of virtue theory and the role of emotions in moral epistemology. After identifying difficulties attending the current debate around the relation between intuitions and reasoning, I focus on the question of the development of intuitions. I discuss how intuitions could be shaped into moral expertise, outlining Haidt’s emphasis on innate factors and Narvaez’s account in terms of a social-cognitive model of personality. After a brief discussion of moral relativism, I consider the implications of the account of moral expertise for our understanding of the relation between moral intuitions and reason. I argue that a strong connection can be made if we adopt a broad conception of reason and a narrow conception of expertise.
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Notes
Another topic that has dominated debates in moral psychology is the scope of morality. Haidt argues philosophers and psychologists have been mistaken to think of morality in terms of harm and fairness, the central concepts of traditional consequentialist and deontological theories. In this, he is joined by many virtue theorists, who tend to favour a plurality of ‘thick’ concepts and welcome the contribution of emotions to moral theory. This package—emotion, intuition, virtue, pluralism—is favoured by the discussion below.
That emotions involve considerable cognition of this kind is widely accepted in psychology (Lazarus 1991), although some question whether the mechanisms involved deserve the title ‘cognition’ (Prinz 2004). But this cognitivism should not be confused with, and does not entail, any form of metaethical cognitivism. The facts cognised in the psychological theories are social facts (motives, meanings, etc.); they are not truths about the objective value of features of situations. Metaethical cognitivists and non-cognitivists can agree on this even as they dispute the vexed question of whether moral intuitions and judgments are cognitions of distinct evaluative properties.
There is also a large body of literature implicating emotional involvement in moral motivation and action, but as our concern here is moral judgment, we may set that aside. It is notable, however, that Haidt does not always observe this distinction, inappropriately taking such evidence as supportive of his model.
Haidt oversimplifies, then, when he speaks of children having ‘crude and inappropriate’ evaluative emotional responses until they learn the ‘application rules for their culture’ (Haidt and Bjorklund 2008: 206). More than learning rules will be needed to ‘get it right’.
There are two qualifications here. First, our focus in discussing moral expertise will be in relation to moral judgment, rather than moral action (about which Haidt’s model has little to say). Second, we may wish to draw a distinction between moral expertise and virtue in terms of their sensitivity to objective questions of human flourishing—see note 17.
Prior to 2012, these received different names, viz. harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
While Haidt’s official commitment is only to ‘evolutionary preparedness’, he favours a modular account of foundations, using Sperber’s (2005) flexible concept of a module. On this view, the claim is that moral intuitions are generated by processes that are modular ‘to some interesting degree’, which may vary from one module to another. The processes underlying the five foundations may be more or less domain-specific and only partially encapsulated, and rather than generate outputs directly themselves, they can be thought of as ‘learning modules’—innate learning mechanisms that generate more specific modules over the course of development within a particular culture (disgust may operate like this, such that we learn to become automatically disgusted at certain things). Whether a modular interpretation of the structure of intuitions is right in the end is not something Haidt battles for, even allowing that what is learned are not specific modules but ‘bits of subcultural expertise’ (Haidt and Joseph 2007: 381), connections between perceptions of certain situations and emotional evaluative responses that cannot be easily controlled or revised.
Narvaez is sceptical about modules. While we have many specialized subcortical networks, many of which we share with other mammals, ‘there is no comparable evidence in support of highly resolved genetically dictated adaptations that produce socio-emotional cognitive strategies within the circuitry of the human neocortex’ (Panksepp and Panksepp 2000: 111). The idea of sophisticated cognitive modules has no basis in neuroscientific fact. The neocortex has a high degree of plasticity, even as it is grounded and structured by the propensities of subcortical processes (Panksepp 1998). Narvaez’s interpretation is to think of the innate pre-structuring of moral intuitions in terms of units resulting from experience structured by this combination of subcortical adaptations and neocortical plasticity.
Given how loosely Haidt is willing to use the term ‘module’ in this context, perhaps this alternative is really a matter of emphasis. As Panksepp (1998) shows, emotions and concerns are substantially underpinned by subcortical adaptations. Importantly, on either model, there is some innate structuring.
Many intuitions related to loyalty and authority relate to the ethics of security, while many intuitions related to care and fairness map onto the ethics of engagement. The ethics of imagination defends the role of moral reasoning about which Haidt is sceptical. It is interesting to note that it involves what we may characterise as balancing four of Haidt’s five foundations—Narvaez talks of reciprocity between the law and the individual (balancing fairness and care with authority) and coordinating community and individual interests (balancing fairness and care with loyalty).
Built into Narvaez’s model is a hierarchy of moral concerns and emotions, which she draws upon in her account of moral development. It is a hierarchy that Haidt repeatedly emphasises reflects the distinctive morality of educated liberals, and not one he believes can be grounded in fact. Of course, we needn’t accept the hierarchy along with the neuroscience, but Narvaez (2013c) provides evidence that connects the security ethic to poorer psychological functioning, in particular, insecure attachment and the use of aggression or withdrawal in social interaction, while Wright and Baril (2013) argue that it is connected to psychological defence.
Haidt discusses individual differences in moral judgment, emphasising not what is learned, but what is innate. Twin studies have shown monozygotic twins are more similar than dyzygotic twins, and that monozygotic twins reared apart are almost as similar as those reared together (Bouchard 2004). Given this, we can expect innate temperament to play an important role in moral psychology. So Haidt speculates that the strength of intuitions deriving from the five foundations will differ between the foundations within one person and will differ between people for the same foundation. Again, given that children are differentially responsive to reward and punishment (Kochanska 1997), they will respond differently to attempts to ‘tune up’ their intuitions through socialisation. Some may be more prone to social persuasion than others. Differences in cognitive ability will be reflected in differential use of the four forms of moral reasoning (post-hoc, reasoned persuasion, reasoned judgment, private reflection). All this gives us difference, but not in expertise.
The model derives from the work of Mischel and Shoda (Mischel 1968; Mischel and Shoda 1995; Cervone and Shoda 1999), and has become widely accepted in the wake of the situationism-character debate. That debate considered evidence that people’s behaviour is so malleable by situational influences that the existence of traits of character is called into question. Social-cognitive models have been a popular solution, holding that behaviour is the result of a dynamic interaction between genuine features of the person and the situation. Once situations are categorised by how the subject interprets them, then there is strong evidence of stable and predictable individual behavioural responses across diverse situations with similar meaning. For an account of the debate and detailed defence and elaboration of the model, see Snow (2010).
For example, aggressive people are more likely to automatically notice and recall hostile cues (Zelli et al. 1995), authoritarian people are more likely to automatically infer others are authoritarian from prompts that are ambiguous (e.g. enjoying military parades) (Uleman et al. 1986), and how one understands a moral narrative is strongly influenced by one’s chronically available moral schemas (Narvaez 1998; see also Narvaez et al. 2006).
Narvaez (2013c) relates moral development to her three ‘ethics’. I have left out this additional detail to avoid over-complication. In brief, she argues that whether an individual acquires a dominant security ethic or a dominant engagement and/or imagination ethic is heavily influenced by interpersonal relations in early childhood. The former is the ‘default’ when nurturance is poor, while the latter develops when children receive warm, responsive care. On her account, experts will, of course, need to develop an imaginative ethic. This line of evidence relates to remarks made at the end of Sect. 4 and the discussion of defence (which is correlated with insecure attachment) in Sect. 5.4.
Haidt’s views on the relation between moral development and the self have shifted. Haidt and Joseph (2007) hold that what is learned are the skills of perception and response. Haidt et al. (2009) and Graham et al. (2013) adopt McAdams (1995) three-level model of the self, but, as noted, accept that their account requires development. Level I is very abstract traits (the ‘Big Five’). Level II involves ‘personal concerns’—the kind of thing McAdams has in mind (1995: 376) maps closely on to the specific contents of schemas and social-cognitive units, demonstrating that Narvaez’s account can, to a significant extent, be made compatible with that of McAdams’. Level III concerns autobiographical narrative. However, McAdams’ levels are defined epistemologically (the terms in which we may know a person), while Narvaez provides an account of how personality functions. For this reason, I would argue that her account is more satisfactory.
Part of the reason for Haidt’s reticence on the development of expertise is his general reluctance to talk of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ in the domain of moral psychology.
Narvaez is thus mistaken when she accuses Haidt of adopting moral relativism. At times, he does appear to define virtue in these terms, e.g. ‘a fully enculturated person is a virtuous person’ (Haidt and Bjorklund 2008: 29)—as though it were sufficient for virtue to adopt whatever norms one’s culture holds. But his official position is one of pluralism, not simple relativism.
At this point, we may wish to make a distinction between moral expertise that is expertise only in terms of the local culture’s values, and virtue, which is additionally sensitive to truths about human flourishing. Narvaez and Haidt don’t draw this distinction, and equate the two as we have done thus far. Even allowing for the distinction, epistemologically it is the more helpful to take the case of moral expertise as virtue as the basic case, and explain why moral expertise does not amount to virtue in the instances in which it falls short.
He also suggests that if one were to claim this that would entail that any intuitions could be teachable. But this doesn’t follow: what can be acquired from experience may nevertheless be shaped and constrained by what is innate, so that not any intuition can be developed.
Compare: a similar ability to imagine future positions in chess is necessary for chess expertise, its development requires a great deal of practice not mere teaching, and it does not transfer to a general ability to imagine future scenarios in other domains.
Given the difficulties of developing moral expertise, there is a further question of how best to encourage moral behaviour (education? public dialogue? manipulating situations?). But that is a further question, and should not be confused for an account of the nature of moral intuitions and expertise.
Chen and Chaiken (1999) identify three motives that drive cognitive processing: accuracy, defence, and impression management, and argue that accuracy is frequently overridden by the other two. Haidt discusses ‘impression management’ at length, but says little about defence and its impact on our moral intuitions. In raising the matter of defence here, we will have covered all three motives.
This is, however, complicated by IQ—see Cramer (2006: Chap. 8).
Vaillant (1993: 132, Table 4) notes that of those in the top 20 % on a scale of psychosocial adjustment at 65 years old, 50 % still use less than mature defences, and the percentage for those lower on the scale is considerably higher. Cramer (2006: 204) notes that neurotic defences are likely to survive into adulthood, and remarks on the widespread distribution in ‘normal’ samples of characteristics defining psychological disorders, e.g. depressive tendencies, phobias, pathological aggression, antisocial traits, etc. that are associated with the use of defence (224, 235).
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Thanks to Jonathan Haidt and Darcia Narvaez for comments, corrections, and the provision of additional references, including forthcoming work. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for comments and corrections.