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Cognitive Miracles: When Are Fast Processes Unreliable?

1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.

2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.

3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.

4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.

5. We have reason to suspect that the moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider involve unfamiliar* situations.

6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.

‘genetic transmission,
cultural transmission,
and learning from personal experience
[...] are the only mechanisms known to endow [fast] processes with the information they need to function well’

(Greene, 2014, p. 714)

unfamiliar* problems = ‘ones with which we have inadequate evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience’

20,000 generations hunter-gatherer lifestyle 240 generations cities exist <2% live in cities 232 generations 8 generations
Think about the trolley problem. Not many of us are tram drivers. (GPT says maybe 15k ish; certainly the number is in the tens of thousands only; so one in a million of the ~8B humans).
Aim, then, is to show that this is an unfamiliar situation ...

‘Frank is a passenger on a trolley whose driver has just shouted that the trolley's brakes have failed, and who then died of the shock. [...] Frank can turn the trolley, killing the one; or he can refrain from turning the trolley, letting the five die’ (Thomson, 1976, p. 207).

May Frank turn the trolley?

‘it would be a cognitive miracle if we had reliably good moral instincts about unfamiliar* moral problems’

‘The No Cognitive Miracles Principle:

When we are dealing with unfamiliar* moral problems, we ought to rely less on [...] automatic emotional responses and more on [...] conscious, controlled reasoning, lest we bank on cognitive miracles.’

Greene, 2014 p. 715

The No Cognitive Miracles Principle is tricky to apply
ethical vs physical Compare processes underlying representational momentum Driven by principles So correct in at least two kinds of unfamiliar* cases

Compare the physical case.

Fast processes are characterised by principles of Impetus mechanics

which yield correct predictions in some unfamiliar* cases, including

point-light displays, and

(principles still work, despite unfamiliarity*)

cartoons

(stimuli are reverse-engineered to make the processes work)
Are these really unfamiliar?

unfamiliar problems (or situations): ‘ones with which we have inadequate evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience’

Inadequate for what? If we mean, ‘inadequate’ for learning about situations of that type, then the argument works formally, but it becomes a nontrivial issue whether the situation of Drop really is unfamiliar.
Challenge: Can we characterise ‘unfamiliarity’ independently of knowing how the faster processes operate, and in such a way that cartoons and point-light displays come out as familiar?
Or should we think that cartoons are actually unfamiliar situations? They are not situations in which our faster processes function reliably; it’s just that artists select those particular cases where the faster processes give the result they want even though, in a sense, the faster processes are giving an incorrect answer (cartoons are illusions).
But does this mean we must reject the No Cognitive Miracles Principle altogether?

‘The No Cognitive Miracles Principle:

When we are dealing with unfamiliar* moral problems, we ought to rely less on [...] automatic emotional responses and more on [...] conscious, controlled reasoning, lest we bank on cognitive miracles.’

Greene, 2014 p. 715

unfamiliar* problems = ‘ones with which we have inadequate evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience’

1. Unfamiliarity* depends on inadequacy [by definition]

2. We do not know which evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience is inadequate (unless we know how the faster processes work)

3. Therefore, we do not know which problems are unfamiliar [from 1, 2]

4. Therefore, we can make no practical use of the No Cognitive Miracles Principle

How can we make progress? By considering how researchers have considered this problem.
I do not personally see how this works but there might be something to it. (I don’t understand why we are supposed to think that disagreement stems from differences in the outputs of faster processes.)
∞todo: link this back to the arguments from McGrath (2008) considered in the seminar (about CONTROVERSIAL CLAIMS)?
Need to think about whether the argument is then adding anything to the simpler argument that McGrath (2008) already offers.

?

fully-informed disagreement about what to do
as a proxy for unfamiliarity

(Greene, 2014, p. 716)

Greene argues that it is reasonable to suppose that where there is fully informed disagreement about what to do, we are likely to be in an unfamiliar situation:
> ‘we can use disagreement as a proxy for lack of familiarity*. If two > parties have a practical moral disagreement--—a disagreement about what > to do, not about why to do it---it’s probably because they have conflicting > intuitions. This means that, from a moral perspective, if not from a > biological perspective, at least one party’s automatic settings are going > astray. (Assuming that both parties have adequate access to the relevant > nonmoral facts.) Absent a reliable method for determining whose > automatic settings are misfiring, both parties should distrust their > intuitions’ > (Greene, 2014, p. 716).

1. Unfamiliarity* depends on inadequacy [by definition]

2. We do not not which evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience is inadequate (unless we know how the faster processes work)

3. Therefore, we do not know which problems are unfamiliar [from 1, 2]

4. Therefore, we can make no practical use of the No Cognitive Miracles Principle [from 3]

wicked learning environments

‘When a person’s past experience is both representative of the situation relevant to the decision and supported by much , trust the intuition; when it is not, be careful’

(Hogarth, 2010, p. 343).

This is based on situations where statistical inference is possible.
Essentially the same idea ....
‘The recognition model implies two conditions that must be satisfied for an intuitive judgment (recognition) to be genuinely skilled:
First, the environment must provide adequately valid cues to the nature of the situation.
Second, people must have an opportunity to learn the relevant cues.’
(Kahneman & Klein, 2009, p. 520)

action at a distance

weapons of mass destruction (Thomson, 1976)

...

Why is Hogarth (2010) likely correct?
Hogarth (2010)’s advice is based no observing people in business situations and measuring how successful they are.
But we can also give a theoretical explanation for Hogarth (2010)’s advice ...

speed vs accuracy trade-offs

Any broadly inferential process has to make a trade-off between speed and accuracy

1. Unfamiliarity* depends on inadequacy [by definition]

2. We do not not which evolutionary, cultural, or personal experience is inadequate (unless we know how the faster processes work)

3. Therefore, we do not know which problems are unfamiliar [from 1, 2]

4. Therefore, we can make no practical use of the No Cognitive Miracles Principle [from 3]

So where are we?

1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.

2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.

3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.

4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.

5. We have reason to suspect that the moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider involve unfamiliar* situations.

6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.