Moral Psychology and Human Agency is yet another contribution to the rapidly expanding field of literature which combines empirical and experimental psychology with (theoretical) moral philosophy in order to provide an empirically informed understanding of human moral psychology. The book contains ten essays which approach this task in a number of different ways. Unfortunately I do not here have the space to discuss each of the ten essays in as much depth as they deserve. Instead I will briefly introduce each essay, focusing on some more than other, and conclude by a few remarks on some general lessons which these essays seem to point towards.

In the anthology’s first and (for me at least) most interesting essay, “Intuitive and Counterintuitive Morality” Guy Kahane focuses on and criticizes Joshua Greene’s well known claim that studies of people’s responses to different sorts of trolley-cases points toward a dual process model of moral judgement and support a broadly utilitarian understanding of morality. Against this claim Kahane raises a number of interesting and interrelated criticisms. Kahane points out that Greene’s conclusions are based on problematic generalizations and interpretations of the relevant studies; that Greene’s definition of utilitarianism is highly implausible and clashes with the best available versions of the theory within moral philosophy and that further studies (conducted by Kahane et al) seem to undermine some of Greene’s most important claims. Based on these points Kahane provide an alternative, and far more modest, interpretation of the available data: what the studies utilized by Greene shows is primarily a (quite understandable and hardly surprising) human tendency to be perplexed by and somewhat hesitant in reaching (counterintuitive) moral conclusions when faced with highly unusual moral scenarios.

In the second essay “Moral Psychology as Accountability”, Brendan Dill and Stephen Darwall argues that the conception of morality as accountability developed and defended by Darwall in a series of books and papers, is both supported by and can serve as a fruitful interpretive framework for explaining a number of empirical psychological studies of phenomena such as condemnation and conscience.

The third essay “Remnants of Character” provides David Shoemaker with an opportunity to further develop and elucidate his (Strawson-inspired) account of accountability and moral standing. Shoemaker tests and develops his theory by focusing on a specific type of “hard case”; people with dementia who are in the process of losing one or more of the basic mental competences, which are normally viewed as necessary prerequisites for being a morally accountable agent.

In fourth essay “Knowing what we are doing” Heidi Maibom discusses the epistemic conditions on accountability. More precisely she discusses the moral significance of (unconscious) situational factors which influence moral behavior and judgement. To what extent are we responsible for what we do when the factors that influence, perhaps even partly determine, how we act, are things which we are not, perhaps even cannot be, aware of?

Julia Driver’s contribution, “Meta-Cognition, Mind-Reading, and Humean Moral agency” discusses whether and to what extent different kinds of affective disorders undermine the capacity for moral agency. More precisely Driver maintains that a sentimentalist account of moral agency inspired by David Hume is capable of not only explaining why affective disorders compromises the capacity moral agency, but also why such disorders do not necessarily completely eradicate this capacity.

In “The Episodic Sense of Self” Shaun Nichols distinguishes a number of different types of self-representation discussed within literature on moral psychology, and provides an account of how a “thin” conception of the self, linked with episodic memory, is relevant for and connected with  moral judgements and moral emotions, in particular guilt.

“The Motivational Theory of Emotions” by Andrea Scarantino introduces a (radical) new theory of emotions. Based on the (perceived) failure of both cognitivist and perceptualist accounts of emotions to explain how emotions motive us to act, Scarantino proposes that emotions should be viewed as “action control systems designed to prioritize the pursuit of some goals over others” (p. 156). One implication of this view seems to be that emotions are clearly distinguished, indeed separated, from appraisals and feelings. In other words Scarantino’s proposal seems to imply that emotions do not necessarily have to involve either feelings or appraisals. This seems somewhat counterintuitive and a very high price to pay in order to be able to explain the motivating power of emotions. But Scarantino’s paper is undoubtedly an important contribution to the (philosophical and psychological) discussion of emotions.

In “The Reward Theory of Desire in Moral Psychology” Timothy Schroeder and Nomy Arpaly presents a novel and rather technical account of desires. Schroeder and Arpaly argue that intrinsic desires, desiring something for its own sake, are best understood using the (mathematical and scientific) notions of rewards and punishments as “variations on the strengthening and weakening of causal connections” (p. 191) based on a “calculation of the difference between actual and expected reward or punishment” (p. 194). They also argue that intrinsic desires constitute a (psychological) natural kind. Putting these two arguments together lead Schroeder and Arpaly to the claim that a reward theory of desire provides a coherent, plausible and potentially fruitful account of (intrinsic) desires “that might repay serious philosophical attention” (p. 211).

“Does Evolutionary Psychology Show that Normativity is Mind-Dependent?” by Selim Berker is a critical discussion of the (skeptical) argument that acknowledging the influence of evolutionary forces on the development of our normative judgements, intuitions and commitments should lead us to draw substantial (metaphysical) conclusions concerning the grounds and nature of moral normativity. Berker focuses Sharon Street’s version of this argument, and shows that a) her definition of normative realism and anti-realism is somewhat idiosyncratic and leads her into serious taxonomical troubles; b) that the most adequate version of Streets argument is merely a variant of the well-known and basic problem of how to validate our basic cognitive capacities in a non-circular and non-question-begging way; and c) that Street’s solution to this problem is neither new nor convincing.

(Somewhat irrelevant comment: Berker’s critical comments against Street are (to my mind at least) both relevant and quite convincing. But one could argue that this paper is only tangentially related to the main theme of the anthology, in so far as the basic skeptical problem Berker discusses could quite easily be framed in non-psychological and non-evolutionary terms. As Berker himself acknowledges: “evolutionary considerations adds little to this old problem” (p. 215.)

The final essay “Sentimentalism and Scientism” by the anthology’s editors Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson provides a healthy anti-dote to the widespread pessimism concerning the role of reason and rationality in moral judgement, which often seem to characterize current empirical psychological approaches to morality. D’Arms and Jacobson acknowledge that reason and reasoning probably cannot play the crucial, indeed foundational, role for moral reasoning, which many philosophers have traditionally assumed. But they also believe that it is not only possible, but also plausible, perhaps even necessary, to acknowledge that certain forms of emotional moral responses are, and should be viewed as, rationally defensible and justified. This form of “rational sentimentalism”, so  D’Arms and Jacobson argue, provides a middle ground between on the one hand the radical universalism of hyper-rationalists such as Peter Singer and on the other hand the relativism of social intuitionists such as Jonathan Haidt. Morality is a human enterprise, and as such is dependent on the emotional constitution of human beings. But the authors convincingly argue that such an admittedly anthropocentric view does not collapse into relativism: there are, they show, good reasons for judging certain practices, emotional responses and moral viewpoints as better or worse than others, no matter how widespread or generally accepted they are.

Looking at Moral Psychology and Human Agency as a whole, there are at least two important lessons to be learned from the ten essays that make up the book. First of all the essays confirms that there clearly is great potential in combining rigorous philosophical analysis with empirical work on moral psychology. The most interesting essays in the collection (by Kahane, Dill and Darwall and D’Arms and Jacobson) do precisely this. As these essays show both philosophy and psychology gain by such collaborative (or at least inter-disciplinary) efforts. Empirical psychology at its best both challenges and informs the conceptual frameworks and theoretical ideas proposed by moral philosophers. And moral philosophy at its best provides systematic and highly sophisticated theoretical structures which can both guide and explain empirical psychological studies.

Secondly the collection highlights the dangers of overgeneralization and hyperbole when interpreting and trying to make sense of empirical work on moral psychology. There is an understandable tendency among both (moral) philosophers and (moral) psychologists to overestimate the importance as well as the scope of particular empirical experiments and studies, typically those experiments and studies which are directly related to one’s own particular field of study. Joshua Greene and his collaborators for instance have developed a comprehensive and substantial account of not simply human moral psychology but of moral theory as such, based (not exclusively, but to a large extent) on studies of how people respond to imagined trolley-cases. And Jonathan Haidt et al have drawn radical and highly controversial conclusions concerning the role of reasoning and rationality in moral judgement based on studies in which test persons are asked to judge and subsequently justify their views on specific moral questions e.g. questions concerning incest.

However, several of the essays in Moral Psychology and Human Agency are, either implicitly or explicitly, concerned with correcting and delimiting the validity of such attempts to develop general and substantial accounts of morality based on a limited number of experiments and studies. As the essays by e.g. Kahane, Dill and Darwall and D’Arms and Jacobson show such attempts face at least three problems. They draw quite general and substantial conclusions based on insufficient empirical date. They are empirically underdetermined in the sense that the data they appeal to can typically be interpreted in more than one way. And they are conceptually promiscuous in the sense that they often reinterpret, choose among and selective employ elements from the best available theoretical models of morality based on controversial and occasionally ad hoc considerations.

The general lesson to be learned from Moral Psychology and Human Agency thus seems to be the continued need for hopeful modesty. We have reason to be hopeful that further interdisciplinary work at the intersection of (moral) philosophy and (moral) psychology will provide new and interesting insights into the development, structure and content of human moral psychology. But at the same time we also have good reason to be modest in our expectations. We are still very far from having a plausible general, substantial empirically informed and conceptually coherent account of the moral psychology of human beings. And it is going to take time, and a lot more work, before we are anywhere close to this goal.

 

© 2015 Carsten Fogh Nielsen

 

Carsten Fogh Nielsen, Ph.D., post graduate student, University of Aarhus. Main interests: Kant, moral philosophy and the philosophy of popular culture.