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The Wrong Kind of Mistake: A Problem for Robust Sentimentalism about Moral Judgment

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Notes

  1. I will explain later what distinguishes robust forms of sentimentalism from softer ones.

  2. See Egan, A. (2007). “Quasi-Realism and Fundamental Moral Error.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85(2): 205–219. Egan criticizes expressivist theories of moral judgment on grounds which are similar to mine. His argument, however, is based on semantic considerations, whereas mine starts from more broadly psychological ones. And although Egan and I agree that expressivist and sentimentalist theories of moral judgment, respectively, have to struggle with infallibility, there are important differences when it comes to where this infallibility stems from. In the case of my argument, as we will see below, it stems from the close connection sentimentalists establish between subjects’ moral judgments and the response-dependent moral properties their judgments literally bring into existence. Egan argues that the way quasi-realist expressivists have devised for dealing with attributions of moral error to other subjects or one’s own past or future selves does not work equally well for cases of self-directed epistemic modesty, in which a subject concedes that a moral judgment of her present self might be wrong. If A attributes to B the moral judgment that p, whilst expressing herself that not-p, then the quasi-realist’s analysis of this judgment amounts to: “B approves of p, and I (=A) disapprove of p”. However, in the case of one’s present self, this type of analysis yields an unacceptable result, because it turns worries about whether one is right into worries about whether one knows what one presently (dis)approves of. This charge, though legitimate, makes two claims at once which I prefer to make separately: firstly, it mirrors what I call the infallibility-problem, and secondly, it resembles my observation that introspective mistakes about what emotional dispositions one has or not are the “wrong” kind of mistake.

  3. See Railton, P. (1986). “Moral Realism.” Philosophical Review 95: 163–207 and Smith, M. (1994). The Moral Problem. Malden, MA, Blackwell. In fact, this version of moral realism is so unrobust that many authors refuse to classify it as realist at all. See Street (2006, 137) for this.

  4. See Huemer, M. (2005). Ethical Intuitionism. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan and Enoch, D. (2011). Taking Morality Seriously. A Defense of Robust Realism. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

  5. For the sake of brevity, I use the term ‘constitution’ in this working definition of sentimentalism. Elsewhere, I have explained why in the case of sentimentalism’s psychological thesis, the best reading of this constitution-relation is that emotional responses are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment (Sauer, H. (2012). “Psychopaths and Filthy Desks. Are Emotions Necessary and Sufficient for Moral Judgment?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1), 95–115). The details of this do not matter here, however, as I am not concerned with the problems PT or MT might have individually, but merely with the problems that arise from their relation to each other. For the purposes of this discussion, the precise meaning of what it means for a moral property to be constituted by emotion need not be cashed out, and would unnecessarily distract from the main argument.

  6. See D’Arms, J. and D. Jacobson (2000). “Sentiment and Value.” Ethics 110: 722–748, McDowell, J. (1985). “Values and Secondary Qualities.” Morality and Objectivity. T. Honderich. Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul: 110–129, Gibbard, A. (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. A Theory of Normative Judgment. New York, Oxford University Press, Wiggins, D. (1998). A Sensible Subjectivism? Needs, Values, and Truth. Oxford, Clarendon Press: 185–214.

  7. The same point, by the way, applies to Shaun Nichols’ naturalistic account of moral cognition. See Nichols, S. (2004). Sentimental Rules. On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment. New York, Oxford University Press.

  8. See Haidt, J. (2001). “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail.” Psychological Review 108: 814–834 and Uhlmann, E. L., D. A. Pizarro, et al. (2009). “The Motivated Use of Moral Principles.” Judgment and Decision Making 4(6): 476–491.

  9. See Prinz, J. (2006). “The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgment.” Philosophical Explorations 9(1): 29–43 and (2007). The Emotional Construction of Morals. New York, Oxford University Press.

  10. D’Arms, J. and D. Jacobson (2000). “Sentiment and Value.” Ethics 110: 722–748, 729.

  11. See Kahane, G. (2012). “Must Metaethical Realism Make a Semantic Claim?” Journal of Moral Philosophy (forthcoming) and Roeser, S. (2011). Moral Emotions and Intuitions. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

  12. See Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London, Penguin.

  13. See Nichols, op. cit., and Prinz, op. cit. (2007).

  14. Haidt, op cit.

  15. See Evans, J. S. B. T. (2003). “In Two Minds: Dual-Process Accounts of Reasoning.” Trends in Cognitive Science 7(10): 454–459 and Evans, J. S. B. T. (2008). “Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment, and Social Cognition.” Annual Review of Psychology 59: 255–278.

  16. See Haidt, J., S. Koller, et al. (1993). “Affect, Culture, and Morality, or is it Wrong to Eat Your Dog?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 613–628 and Haidt, J., P. Rozin, et al. (1997). “Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship Between Disgust and Morality.” Psychology and Developing Societies 9: 107–131.

  17. See Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. London, Penguin Books.

  18. See Hare, R. D. (1999). Without Conscience. The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. New York, London, The Guilford Press and Blair, J., D. Mitchell, et al. (2005). The Psychopath. Emotion and the Brain. Oxford, Blackwell.

  19. See Blair, R. J. R. (1995). “A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath.” Cognition 57: 1–29.

  20. See Greene, J. D., B. D. Sommerville, et al. (2001). “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment.” Science 293: 2105–2108, Greene, J. D., L. E. Nystrom, et al. (2004). “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment.” Neuron 44: 389–400 and Greene, J. D., F. Cushman, et al. (2009). “Pushing Moral Buttons: The Interaction Between Personal Force and Intention in Moral Judgment.” Cognition 111(3): 364–371. See also Foot, P. (1967). “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect.” Oxford Review 5: 5–15 and Thomson, J. J. (1976). “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem.” The Monist 59(2): 204–217.

  21. See Berker, S. (2009). “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37(4): 293–329 and Sauer, H. (2012b). “Morally Irrelevant Factors. What’s Left of the Dual-Process Model of Moral Cognition?”, Philosophical Psychology 25 (6), 783–811.

  22. See Prinz, op. cit. (2006) and Sauer, op. cit. (2012a).

  23. Valdesolo, P. and D. DeSteno (2006). “Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment.” Psychological Science 17(6): 476–477.

  24. See Eskine, K. J., N. A. Kacinik, et al. (2011). “A Bad Taste in the Mouth: Gustatory Disgust Influences Moral Judgment.” Psychological Science 22(3): 295–299 and Schnall, S., J. Haidt, et al. (2008). “Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34: 1096–1109.

  25. See Ayer, A. J. (1952). Language, Truth, and Logic. New York, NY, Dover and Stevenson, C. L. (1937). “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind 46: 14–31.

  26. Prinz, op. cit. (2006), 37.

  27. Prinz, op. cit. (2007), 88.

  28. Ibid., 89.

  29. Prinz, op. cit. (2006). On recalcitrant feelings, see Brady, M. S. (2008). “The Irrationality of Recalcitrant Emotions.” Philosophical Studies 145(3): 413–430.

  30. See Alfano, M. (2009). “A Danger of Definition: Polar Predicates in Moral Theory.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 3(3): 1–13.

  31. There are modified forms of sentimentalism that incorporate such an endorsement requirement (see, for example, Jones, K. (2006). “Metaethics and Emotions Research. A Response to Prinz.” Philosophical Explorations 9: 45–53). These views are not the target of this paper.

  32. See Millgram, E. (1999). “Moral Values and Secondary Qualities.” American Philosophical Quarterly 36: 253–255.

  33. Prinz, op. cit. (2007), 97f.

  34. In principle, the instability of moral values is something that a relativist about moral value can be happy to accept. It is a far cry, however, from the claim that moral requirements are valid only relative to a subject (or culture or society) to the claim that those relative values can change from one moment to the next for no non-extraneous reason whatsoever. The latter claim ought to be unwelcome even for proponents of relativism.

  35. See Timmons, M. (1999). Morality Without Foundations. A Defense of Ethical Contextualism. New York, NY, Oxford University Press, p. 84.

  36. Ibid., p. 83.

  37. Prinz, op. cit. 2007, p. 96.

  38. This last point could be thought to hold for constructivist theories as well. These theories, however, do not aim to offer an account of the psychology of moral judgments or the metaphysics of value, and thus do not have to struggle with the problem of moral error in the same way. Take Rawls’ ((1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press) theory of justice: his theory does not hold that subjects make moral judgments by employing the veil of ignorance procedure. Nor does it claim that moral facts (whose existence constructivists deny) are constituted by the procedure.

  39. Prinz, op. cit. (2006), p. 35.

  40. See Stevenson, C. L. (1966). Ethical Fallibility. Ethics and Society. R. T. GeGeorge. Garden City, NY, Doubleday and Moody-Adams, M. (1997). Fieldwork in Familiar Places. Morality, Culture, and Philosophy. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

  41. See, for example, Nussbaum, M. (2001). Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions. New York, Cambridge University Press.

  42. See Scarantino, A. (2010). “Insights and Blindspots of the Cognitivist Theory of Emotions.” British Journal of the Philosophy of Science 61: 729–768.

  43. Prinz, op. cit. (2007), p. 61.

  44. Ibid., p. 76.

  45. See Street, S. (2006). “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” Philosophical Studies 127: 109–166.

  46. Prinz, op. cit. (2007), p. 88.

  47. Prinz, J. (2011). “Against Empathy.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 49: 214–233, p. 223.

  48. Ibid., p. 223.

  49. See Singer, P. (1973). “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(3): 229–243 and Singer, P. (2005). “Ethics and Intuitions.” The Journal of Ethics 9: 331–352 for this.

  50. Campbell, R. and V. Kumar (2012). “Moral Reasoning on the Ground.” Ethics 122(2): 273–312, p. 296.

  51. Ibid., p. 291.

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    Hanno Sauer

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Sauer, H. The Wrong Kind of Mistake: A Problem for Robust Sentimentalism about Moral Judgment. J Value Inquiry 48, 247–269 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9421-5

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