Dual Process Theories: Objections, Evidence and Significance

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Dual Process Theories: Objections, Evidence and Significance

While lots of lectures are self-standing, today’s lecture builds on lecture 07. And in particular on the loose reconstruction of Greene’s argument.

continues Lecture 07

Dual Process Theory of Ethical Abilities (core part)

Two (or more) ethical processes are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.

One process makes fewer demands on scarce cognitive resources than the other.

(Terminology: fast vs slow)

Ok, that’s what the theory says. But what does it mean?

Image source: bing-ai

Dual-process theory of moral judgement helps us in two ways.

First, it will resolve the reasonsing–emotion stuff from the first lecture.

Second, it provides a powerful argument which appears to generate objections to many ethical theories.

‘Intuition is a resource in all of philosophy, but perhaps nowhere more than in ethics‘

(Audi, 2015, p. 57).

‘Episodic intuitions [...] can serve as data [...] ... beliefs that derive from them receive prima facie justification’ (p. 65).

Always gotta ask what it means. Audi explains it in terms of self-evidence (if you understand it you know it).

‘self-evident propositions are truths meeting two conditions: (1) in virtue of adequately understanding them, one has justification for believing them [...]; and (2) believing them on the basis of adequately understanding them entails knowing them’ (p. 65).

We understand why someone might think there were such things. But there aren’t.

The essence of anti-intuition arguments is captured by Railton (who is offering considerations with which to counter them):

‘a better understanding of the [...] origin of “intuitive” moral judgments might show them to be something other than manifestations of underlying moral competencies or principles.

“moral intuitions” might therefore deserve less deference [...] than they characteristically receive in philosophical [...] moral thought’

(Railton, 2014, p. 832).

As Railton makes clear, there are several ways of developing this idea. Here in outline is the development this paper will defend:

Which comparison?

Not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.

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Dual Process Theories: Objections, Evidence and Significance

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