Pumps in

Moral Philosophy

Keith Dowding*

Presented at Political Studies Association Conference April 2015

Abstract

What are moral and what role do they play in moral theory? Rawls’s reflective equilibrium suggests that we test moral theories using our intuitions and then bring each into line to reach some equilibrium. Intuition pumps work by asking what are our immediate apprehensions about some story; they are then used to critique theories or principles. We can contrast them with thought experiments in science, which are often used to show our intuitions must be wrong. I critically examine the role that intuitions play in moral and political theory and suggest some principles for their systematic application.

* An earlier version of this paper was first presented at the MSPT seminar at the ANU. I thank Christian Barry, William Bosworth, Dave Estlund, Ben Fraser, Anne Gelling, Seth Lazar, Nick Southwood, Kim Sterelny and Brad Taylor for their comments.

1 Thought Experiments and Intuition Pumps

The use of imaginary cases to make philosophical and scientific points is widespread. As a class in both science and philosophy they are often called thought experiments (for example, Kuhn 1977; Wilkes 1998; Horowitz and

Massey 1991; Sorensen 1991). (1980; 2013) coined the phrase

‘intuition pumps’ for the use of imaginary cases that he suggests are more casual than thought experiments. I will stipulate a distinction here between thought experiments and intuition pumps. A thought experiment is a deduction from a set of assumptions that leads to a contradiction or puzzle that leads us to give up some of our assumptions. It leads to us giving up some previous theory or

‘common-sense’ expectation.

A good example is Galileo Galilei’s (2012/1632) Joining the Objects (see

Appendix for all examples discussed in the main text), designed to demonstrate a contradiction in Aristotle’s account of velocity. Thought experiments may also be used to demonstrate an important result. Virtually all of Einstein’s positive results emanated from thought experiments. His work in both special and general relativity used thought experiments both prior to and as part of his mathematical demonstrations. In his Train thought experiment, he shows that, given that relativity says that objects can only be said to be in motion relative to each other, two events can only be said to be simultaneous in relation to some location (Einstein 1961/1916). There is no absolute sense of simultaneity. As well as demonstrating an implication from relativity, Train also knocks down a

‘common-sense’ expectation.

My stipulation departs from what most previous writers have considered to be thought experiments that include a much broader class. In my account,

2 thought experiments are largely concerned with showing that our beliefs – perhaps based on previous theory – or our intuitions – based on common sense – are wrong. Intuition pumps are designed to do the opposite. They use intuitions as data to show a theory, or principle, or claim must be wrong. In that sense intuitions are used as data to disprove a theory or claim. In that sense they might be thought to be inductive.

Having made the sharp distinction between thought experiments and intuition pumps, we can quickly see that there is a class of cases, indeed some of the most important and interesting ones, that share features of both.

Schrödinger’s Cat does not show a contradiction in quantum theory, but demonstrates how just how bizarre the idea of superposition in the atomic world really is and forces a careful examination (over which there is still some controversy) over the interpretation of superposition.

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Violinist similarly straddles the thought experiment and intuition pump categories. It provides an analogy between two cases. If we think in the first case the right to life of the innocent foetus means abortion is wrong, then surely in the second case we think that the right to life of the innocent violinist means one has to stay hooked up to him for nine months.

The second conclusion is deduced from the first, but it bumps up against our intuitions. Thomson has not produced a logically deduced contradiction that demonstrates that one argument for abortion must be wrong, but has shown that if one wants to hold to that argument, then one must also agree that a person must remain hooked up to the violinist. We are forced to look for some dis- analogies between the cases in order to reach different judgements of wrongness.

3 Victoria McGeer (2003) constructs an argument that two intuition pumps,

Mary and Zombie, cannot be run together because they have inconsistent assumptions. So, according to McGeer, anti-physicalists cannot appeal to both

Mary and Zombie, since the possibility of zombies undercuts the knowledge account of Mary. This can be seen as providing a contradiction; but it is actually an argument that uses two intuition pumps, rather than being an intuition pump or thought experiment itself.

We can see therefore that there is a class of arguments that has features of both thought experiments and intuition pumps, and it might include some of the best and most interesting uses of intuition pumps in (moral) philosophy.

However, the subject of this paper is how intuitions are used within intuition pumps. It is relevant to that broader class only to the extent that they use intuitions in the manner described here. I am interested (1) in the evidential nature of those intuitions, and (2) the manner in which that evidence is subsequently used in inferences from the intuition pump. The main claim is that we need to be suspicious of intuitions used as data. And secondly we need to be very careful in the inferences we can draw from such intuition pumps. Often the only inferences we can draw are ones pertinent to the example itself, and to any wider class of similar problems. I do not claim that intuition pumps should not be used in moral philosophy. We can hardly imagine engaging in that subject without them. But I do claim that they often cannot bear the argumentative weight placed upon them.

4 What Are Intuitions?

Despite the ubiquitous use of intuitions in philosophy, philosophers themselves struggle to define them. David Lewis (1983, p. x) suggests they are ‘simple opinions’. Peter van Inwagen (1997, p. 309) agrees, saying they are ‘simply our beliefs’; whilst George Bealer (1998, p. 207) defines them as ‘intellectual seemings’. To the extent that intuitions are supposed to act as tests of theories or other beliefs, the fact that they are just beliefs or opinions might not seem to bode well. However, if it appears obvious that something must be the case, but this contradicts some other belief we hold, then at the least we should be led to re-examine that other belief. And that might be the role of intuitions: to lead us to re-examine our beliefs.

The term ‘intuition’, however, seems to imply more than mere belief or opinion. It seems to carry some authority. This implication may derive from the term’s original scholastic employment to mean a spiritual perception or immediate knowledge.1 An intuition is evidential in the sense that it is something that strikes one as ‘evident’, rather than being a (mere) expression of belief or opinion. In that regard intuitions might be thought to resemble visual perceptions. This is indeed how social psychologists view intuitions.

In standard psychological accounts, intuitions are recognitions of patterns in the data (for example, Simon 1992, pp. 155-6). Simon gives many examples of expert intuitions, including those of chess players. Grand masters see chess problems very differently from other chess players, even highly competent ones.

In part, what they see are patterns in play recognized from previous matches, which enable them to concentrate upon specific lines of play beyond the rule-

1 In some accounts, revelations come from God, intuitions from angels.

5 based consideration of lesser players. Gary Klein’s (1999) recognition-primed decision (RPD) model experts see a pattern through an automatic function of associative and then consciously deliberate to check the evidence against the view that has come to mind. They see these patterns through experience. As something non-conscious as a perception, intuitions seem non- rational or unreasoned. They are a function of what Kahnemann (2011) calls fast thinking that experts can sometimes struggle to cognitively justify. Simply, they are everyday unconscious inductions.

Such inductions are often considered to be non-rational or unreasoned – which we might simply take to mean they are not deductions. Indeed, in much of the psychological literature, a strong contrast is drawn between intuitions and reasoned justification. This literature uses the idea of dual-track reasoning, for which there is a great of evidence. Fast thinking unconsciously produces our intuition, slow thinking is a conscious reasoned cognitive process. Neural imaging techniques provide evidence of how different parts of the brain are utilized for intuitive (fast) thinking and reasoned (slow) thinking. This is often presented in Humean terms to contrast emotional fast thinking and reasoned slow thinking.

People with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) clearly have impaired emotional responses, but are still able to perform straightforward cognitive tasks (Damasio 1994; 2003). However, they also make bad decisions in their lives and make choices that seem to demonstrate the radical intransitivity of preference that in formal theory is considered an important aspect of rationality. The contrast is thus not best made in terms of emotion versus reason. As Jonathan Haidt (2012, p. 55) has remarked:

6 Emotions are not dumb, Damasio’s patients made terrible decisions

because they were deprived of emotional input into their decision

making. Emotions are a kind of information processing. Contrasting

emotion with cognition is therefore as pointless as contrasting rain with

weather, or cars with vehicles … The crucial distinction is really between

two different kinds of cognition: Intuition and reasoning. Moral emotions

are one type of moral intuition, but most moral intuitions are more subtle:

they don’t rise to the level of emotions.

Nevertheless we can contrast intuitive (fast) thinking with conscious considered

(slow) thinking. Of course we can be conscious of thinking fast. However, the immediate apprehension we reach through fast thinking comes to us and is not itself consciously represented. In that sense it is like perception. What we see comes to us; we are not conscious of all that we see. Slow thinking is more like an internal dialogue; and certainly when we think about or to try justify our conclusions, we do so semantically.

I will define an intuition as an immediate apprehension of fast thinking.

And certainly the immediate reaction that sometimes comes to us when we first hear an intuition pump narrative can be thought of as an intuition in this fast- thinking sense. However, we should note several points. First, our reaction is to the intuition pump, a story, not to actual experience. People might say in Bridge I that they will push the fat man, but would they actually do so in that situation?

No one really knows until they face it. In that sense, already our intuitions are verbalized responses and not straightforward reactions. Second, whilst the ‘aha function’ can be experienced when intuition pumps are discussed in the seminar room, when intuition pumps are discussed in philosophical literature it is in a

7 process of a slow reasoned thinking. Whilst intuitions are used in evidence, they are still part of considered judgements.

The argument of experimental philosophers and psychologists who conduct intuition pump experiments on a wide variety of subjects is that these considered reasoned judgements are attempts to rationalize the fast-thinking immediate apprehension. Their evidence is that many people struggle to justify their intuitions. Greene (2013) reports that everyone understands utilitarian judgements such as killing one to save five in Trolley and Bridge, but often struggle to explain why they do not think it right to push the fat man off the bridge, sometimes saying things like “I know it is irrational, but…”. One can encourage utilitarian responses by removing time pressures and discouraging reliance on intuition by giving subjects maths problems where they discover the intuitive answer is wrong (Paxton et al. 2011). Nevertheless, philosophers’ responses to intuition pumps are considered judgements and not simply the reporting of immediate apprehensions. Despite this caveat, the challenge of the psychologists remains. As we shall see, intuitions are used as data to challenge moral theories and conventional thinking. We have therefore to examine the epistemic worth of those data as a challenge.

Intuitions as Data

We can see a number of problems with intuition pump narratives that might lead people to have some intuitions rather than others, or perhaps might determine the strength of an intuition. I will discuss these briefly.

Framing

It is well known that attitudes can be affected by the way in which narratives are

8 framed. Equivalency framing occurs when an issue is presented in a different but logically equivalent manner and the frame has an observable effect on individuals’ attitudes (Kahnemann and Tversky 2000; Tversky and Kahnemann

1981; 1986). One can also emphasize certain aspects rather than others, use more or less positive or negative terms, associate the issue with another issue by the language used (Brewer and Gross 2005; Chong and Druckman 2007). Such framing does not have to be deliberate. The issue for the use of intuition pumps in moral philosophy concerns precisely what leads us to have certain intuitions rather than others. Unless intuition pumps evidence is used carefully and systematically we might not discover what is really leading the intuitions.

Affect

Relatedly, affect is a general psychological term that covers a causal process that seems to lead attitudes without agents’ conscious awareness. More negative attitudes are induced in the presence of nasty smells or other factors inducing disgust (Schaller and Park 2011; Haidt 2012, pp. 82, 172-3) and more positive attitudes and behaviour in the presence of a more pleasant aroma (Liljenquist et al. 2010). Affect can also be induced through the ordering of narratives, such as the order in which one might present Trolley, Trolley Loop and Bridge (Hauser

2006; Otsuka 2008).

Missing Details

Any intuition pump narrative will have missing details. In most Trolley stories, the people are identified only as people, but people’s ages, gender, ethnicity and perhaps their clothes might send signals about them. The logic of intuition

9 pumps is that such details are not important for the purpose of the intuition that is being engendered. They are not relevant to the purpose for which the analyst is posing their moral question. Dancy (1985) suggests that this means that the moral lesson is underdetermined, since these missing details might matter. The other issue for our use of whatever intuition is pumped is that we cannot be sure that these missing details have not unconsciously been filled, perhaps differently, by different people.

Irrelevant Details

Narratives often have details in them. Characters have names or might be identified by their profession, there might be details of injuries suffered by victims, and so on. The author of the narrative might consider that some of these details are not strictly necessary for the point being made: they are irrelevant details. However, the details might create some affect in the listener that is not recognized. In that sense the detail is not irrelevant for the intuition that is pumped, or perhaps for the strength of the intuition. To check which details are truly irrelevant and which create some affect would require large-n experimental analysis with many cases differing in details in order to observe any statistical effects.

Trusting the Narrative

One of the dangers of intuition pumps is that our intuitions might not abide by stipulations in the story. No matter how the analyst tries to direct us, to cover all the bases, one cannot constrain one’s intuitions. Take Sibling Sex, quoted verbatim from Haidt (2012) (see Appendix). As Haidt tells it, when the story is

10 told, people say the act was wrong, but then find it very difficult to justify why they think so. One of the reasons people think sex between siblings is wrong is an issue about inbreeding. But the way the story is told, inbreeding cannot be the issue. People suggest that the act might cause problems in the future for Julie or

Mark, or both, but the story has been carefully constructed to entail that neither is negatively affected. We are left with the idea that we are expressing some

‘natural’ revulsion; and that the usual justifications for siblings not having sex do not hold in this particular case.

However, why should the reader accept what they are told in a story?

Often we do not believe what our friends tell us about such situations. People say, ‘it doesn’t bother me at all’; but you suspect, simply because they told you about it, that it does bother them. And even if Julie and Mark are fine with the situation now, why should we believe that will always be the case? We might believe that the ‘closeness’ they say they feel could damage other relationships, or hides problems that the siblings are not aware of. One of the problems with intuition pumps is that one cannot sanction off some responses as not being correct, because the ‘story’ has covered that aspect. People are too instinctive and too clever simply to buy whatever they are told. And finally, even if Julie and

Mark are fine with the situation for the rest of their lives, should we be bounced into accepting that it is okay here when this might be a very unusual case? Why should we be forced to change our moral views because of outlier cases? Indeed, the treatment of unusual intuition pumps in moral and political philosophy is very different from the way outliers in empirical political science are treated.

One of the most problematic cases of such stipulations in intuition pumps is the use of certainty. In most of them we are told that the outcomes are certain;

11 in Sibling Sex we are expected to believe that. In real life nothing is so certain, and it is from real life that our intuitions are drawn. We might conclude that any intuition pump that stipulates certainty is one from which we cannot use intuitions as data. I label this the Certainty Problem.

Uniqueness

One of the issues that arise from intuition pumps is their uniqueness. I consider below how intuition pumps are used in different contexts, but if indeed all the details matter to the particular strength and nature of an intuition duly pumped, we can query how far, if at all, we can generalize from any given intuition pump.

Can we conclude anything from Surgeon other than that hospitals should not remove organs from healthy patients simply to save other patients? Does it tell us anything more general about rights or constraints on welfare? How far do our intuitions in Trolley cases extend to other cases?

Albin (2005) uses Surgeon and Trolley to examine sham surgery, where surgical interventions with no benefits are carried out, despite the inherent risks of any surgical intervention, in order to conduct rigorous trials of experimental surgical procedures. Albin asks how far sham surgery resembles Surgeon or

Trolley as part of a query about the rights of patients and general harm.

However, the extent his topic benefits from the lessons learned depends on the uniqueness of sham surgery in relation to the two standard intuition pumps. My point is not that Albin uses the intuition pumps inappropriately, nor that they cannot bring lessons to the case in point. Rather, I am querying the role of intuitions here. Why use intuitions developed from Surgeon and Trolley to bear on our attitude to sham surgery, when we can use our intuitions directly from

12 the sham surgery case itself? One standard response is that intuition pumps are utilized because they get down to the bare bones. They provide simple examples from which we can draw lessons to apply to the more complex cases where details (irrelevant details?) can confuse the issue.

The problem with the assumption that intuition pumps are useful because they strip out irrelevant or confusing details is the claim that those details are irrelevant or confusing. We cannot have a test of irrelevancy that sees which intuitions are robust over a series of intuition pumps differing only in details, to then be applied to a case where we have different intuitions. By the test, these other details cannot be irrelevant. We might call this the Shifting Story Problem.

We cannot assume details are irrelevant, unless we argue that they affect our beliefs about the case in ways that are morally irrelevant. We might, for example, say that details inducing disgust are irrelevant, since disgust is an evolutionary design that promotes individual health. We might argue that, morally speaking,

(where our health is not affected) the affect role of smell, for instance, is irrelevant. But then we are inducing intuitions experimentally only to argue that they should not be taken into account.

Structural Features

Rhetoric has different meanings in different literatures. Defenders of rhetoric see it as an important part of argument (Garsten 2006; 2011); and indeed metaphor and analogy might form the basis of original thinking (Hofstadter and Sander

2013). Intuition pumps used comparatively, as in Albin (2005), might simply be extending our views through analogy. In that sense they are rhetorical devices.

But rhetoric can also imply unconscious persuasion through emotional and other

13 affect appeals. One way of trying to judge whether an intuition pump is being used in the correct argumentative manner is how good an analogy it is to the case to which it is being applied. Again, we cannot use the robustness of intuitions as data; rather, we might look to the structure of the cases. How far are they structurally similar and is it the structure that is morally important or other details? I consider David Estlund’s recent use of intuition pumps to interrogate this issue below.

As Data

How should such intuitions or moral reflections be used? If we are to take seriously the idea of intuitions as empirical data, then we ought to use them properly. Empirical evidence needs to be systematically collected and studied.

This is indeed the programme of social psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt and

Joshua Greene. They examine the attitudes of people from different cultures and classes to examine the different intuitions they have over the right course of action in many of the classic intuition pumps. Their main research programme is to explore cross-cultural variation and also to examine the social and neurological bases of fast thinking. It is an interesting and important programme, albeit not one of moral philosophy.

There are two problems or challenges for moral philosophy in considering intuitions as data in the manner of social psychology. First, human intuitions are psychological facts in the sense that we have them and the fact we have them is an element of our psychological makeup. However, when we reconsider moral theories in the light of our intuitions, these psychological facts about our moral assessments of such specific cases are not the same as evidence

14 about the moral assessment of what is the right thing to do (Williamson 2007, ch.

7). Unless, that is, the right thing to do is constituted by the intuitions ‘we’ have.

That would make the process inherently conservative, as Peter Singer (1974;

2005) suggests of reflective equilibrium. Moral philosophy, after all, is supposed to guide our thoughts and actions and not simply mirror them.

We might argue that intuition pumps can lead us to pursue out-of- equilibrium reasoning to reach a new moral equilibrium; that is, we need to fight against our intuitions of today in order to create other and (by our argument) superior intuitions for tomorrow. The wide’ interpretation of reflective equilibrium allows us to countenance rejecting all ordinary beliefs to overcome the conservatism inherent in the process (Daniels 1979; 1996). However, allowing us to throw out any intuition after reflection on consistent moral theory might simply return us to the foundational methods that construct a rational morality from first principles that was Rawls’s target in the use of the reflective equilibrium strategy in the first place (Singer 2005, p. 347). It also throws doubt on moral intuitions being data at all. So the first challenge is precisely how we are to go about using intuitions in relation to theories that the intuitions bump up against. How far are they data that need to be accommodated in a theory, and how many can then be discounted as being wrong because they do not fit that theory?

The second challenge is to think about reflective equilibrium itself. Why does Rawls use the singular? If we have a theory or theories of what is right, and we have a set of intuitions that we reflect upon to bring into equilibrium, why would we imagine there is only one such equilibrium? Within the class of toy games, there are many structures that yield multiple equilibriums; when we

15 move to complex games, multiple equilibriums balloon. We might have sets of cases where all agree precisely what the morally correct action is, but have multiple theories that can be brought to bear in that equilibrium to explain why.

We might further have sets of cases over which we disagree about the morally correct action, though our theories agree in many other cases. If reflective equilibrium is the process by which we bring intuition and theory together, there is absolutely no reason at all to think we will find there is a single equilibrium.

Indeed, theoretically, a bigger challenge might be to explain why there are so few competing equilibriums in moral theorizing. Both of these issues will emerge in different forms in the next sections.

Varieties of Intuition Pump Usage

Intuition pumps are used in a variety of ways. I examine four ways in which they are used in the construction of arguments, suggesting that some are better than others, and outlining how they might each be used more systematically and methodically.

Crucial Case Studies

Intuition pumps are often used in the same way as crucial case studies in the social sciences (Gerring 2004; 2007, pp. 115-16). They provide knockout deliveries to theories or prior claims by showing that a given theory has a consequence that simply seems wrong in the case of a particular intuition pump.

This was the purpose of Searle’s (1980) intuition pump that was the object of criticism when Dennett (1980) coined the phrase ‘intuition pump’.

In Surgeon we are invited to say, ‘aha, of course the Surgeon should not take the

16 vital organs from one person to save five, so utilitarianism must be wrong!’ Or in

‘Shoot the One’ we are invited to conclude, ‘aha, we would feel bad about shooting the one person, so utilitarianism cannot be the basis of morality since then we would have no reason to feel bad’.

The first problem is that crucial case studies do not perform that knockout blow. Whilst examples of such crucial case studies in the social sciences are claimed, none of them stands up to much scrutiny. Finding a black swan will disconfirm the generalization that all swans are white – but only once we have confirmed that, for example, Australia’s black swans genuinely are swans. It takes more than a simple observation. In more complex social situations involving more than simple generalization, the task is more problematic. In political science, for example, Arend Lijphart’s (1968) study of the Netherlands is often cited as an example of a crucial case study. He argued that cross-cutting cleavages are not required for political stability as previous democratic theory claimed. Lijphart claims that elite accommodation can overcome conflict without social cross-cutting cleavages. However, his case study did not apply very widely or for very long, with conflict in the Lebanon, deadlock in Belgium – and arguably it no longer holds in the Netherlands

(Pennings and Keman 2008). Case studies can only bring evidence to bear; they rarely, if ever, deal a knockout blow. Theories can often be modified without much damage to accommodate such cases.

Indeed, in the social sciences outliers from a general trend are often treated with great caution. If some cases lie off a regression that correlated two factors, they are not immediately considered to disconfirm the general finding.

Rather, they are treated attentively and the confounding factors examined to see

17 why these cases look somewhat different. Often researchers look for the mechanism that underlies the general empirical finding to see how that mechanism plays out in the outlier cases in contrast to those on the regression line (Bäck and Dumont 2009). We might see that as the strategy utilitarians adopt to explain why Surgeon-type examples are not crucial disconfirmations of utilitarianism. Such strategies can be critiqued, of course, but single cases cannot perform the crucial disconfirmation function.

A second, and perhaps more pertinent, reason for discounting our intuitions particularly in crucial case studies lies in the nature of intuitions themselves. If intuitions are the pattern-finding perceptions that psychologists claim, then we should be more sceptical about their veracity in the sorts of cases that are created in intuition pumps. Typically, intuition pumps are notable because they are unusual. They concern situations that we rarely, if ever, face. In that case our pattern-finding abilities should be at their worst. We should trust our intuitions much less in such cases. We should interrogate the intuitions to see what it is in the case that is suggestive of one pattern rather than another.

Again, a theory should not be abandoned too quickly.

Indeed it might be suggested that the greater the disagreement over what the right thing to do is in a moral intuition pump, the less well those intuitions can stand as data to examine a theory. To push the empirical analogy further, the less agreement we have in our intuitions, the noisier the signal and the less reliable the measuring device. By that argument, our analysis should look for intuitions that are robust across similar cases, and develop moral theories from those to apply to the hard cases where intuitions are less secure.

18 Confirmatory Illustrations

Sometimes narratives are used to illustrate a general claim. Here the intuition pump might be thought of as ‘confirmation’ of normative theory. Examples of killing someone in self-defence as an instance of when killing is justified could be cited. Whilst such illustrations are frequently used, they are not often considered as thought experiments or intuition pumps. Again, a single case cannot do much to confirm a theory, and confirmatory crucial cases do not exist in science either

(cases cited, such as Eddington’s astronomical observations to confirm Einstein’s relativity theory, do not withstand close scrutiny (Dowding 2015, ch. 4)). Indeed if intuitions are to be used as data, the class of cases that prove to be most robust across people with regard to their intuitions about the right thing to do should actually form the best evidence for our general moral theories and conventions.

The robustness of judgements should be the most direct empirical route to what sorts of moral principles and considerations guide us.

To Interrogate Our Intuitions – Comparative

A third way in which intuition pumps are used is to provide narratives of situations which are similar but induce different intuitions. Here the narratives are interrogated in order to try to elucidate precisely what the different intuitions in the narratives proceed from. Thus the nature of the intuition can be interrogated. Here the different intuition pumps are compared and contrasted.

This is one of the recommended strategies for using intuitions given by Dennett

(2013). He suggests that we need to change a story word by word, line by line, to see how that might affect our views. One can compare and contrast Trolley I to IV in the appendix as an example.

19 The major problem, philosophically, with this approach is that it suffers from many of the problems discussed above. In order to interrogate our intuitions like this, we need to treat intuition pumps far more systematically and methodically than tends to be the case in philosophy. The precise order of changes also needs to be taken into account – does it matter which end of a series of changes one begins with? This can only be dealt with experimentally with a large-n of case subjects. Again, it is interesting from a social-psychological viewpoint to discover the robustness of intuitions over cases, variations in details, and across social classes or cultures. If it is discovered that different social classes have different intuitions, perhaps that has something to do with underlying interests. Or it may tell us something about upbringing. It does not necessarily tell us much about what morally correct behaviour is, nor the consistency or validity of different moral theories.

To Interrogate Our Intuitions – Structural

A fourth, more subtle, use is designed to interrogate precisely which aspects of the case induce our intuitions. The usual process is to first induce our intuitions in one case, but then to preclude one possible explanation of that intuition by bringing in a second case, where we have the same intuition but the relevant detail that might seem explanatory is missing. Thus we are invited to conclude that our intuition in the first case must derive from elsewhere. There must be a different moral quality inherent in the narrative. Argument is then provided to suggest what that inherent quality must be. In other words, we look for the structural similarities between the cases. If we think that another ‘irrelevant’ detail has provoked the intuition, another case is offered where that detail is

20 absent. If the intuition is still there, albeit more weakly, then the detail is not thought to be relevant.

However, when using such intuition pumps one ought to concentrate upon the structural forms of the examples to see how they differ. After all, if the structure is what is important, then we should expect to see the intuition being led from there. For example, presented with the story of the two prisoners in toy

Prisoners’ Dilemma game, people often suggest that the prisoners ought to be able to reach their jointly preferred outcome rather than the suboptimal one. On interrogation, such intuitions about the game are revealed to be about factors that are not contained in the structure of game. Rather, they are expectations engendered by the illustrative story. When doing game theory we learn to discount those intuitions, because it is the structure that is carried to applications and not the story.

So here intuition pumps are used to try to persuade us to take a particular attitude to a class of cases. To the extent that any particular example can fulfil this function, then we need to be clear what aspect of the narrative drives the intuition. If the intuition is stimulated by a specific detail or the interaction of details within the narrative, then it can only stand as an exemplar of the class and be allowed to drive views over the whole only so far as those details apply in all cases. One frequent justification for using simplified examples as intuition pumps is that, shorn of all details, we can be sure that the fundamental characteristic of the class of cases is captured and irrelevant details are not creating ‘noise’ for our intuitions. In other words, the claim is that the important structural features that should be driving our moral attitudes in all such cases reside in the intuition pump, and nothing else is there.

21 On this justification, what should drive our intuitions in any narrative is the underlying structure of the story. We need to ignore extraneous narrative details that might hide or confuse our perception of the basic structure. If this is indeed so, then for any narrative intuition pump we should break the story down into its structural features. Oneway of doing that is to formalize or semi- formalize the story. I illustrate the way structural accounts should be utilized with David Estlund’s puzzle about wrongs that seem to have no one who fails in their obligations.

In Estlund’s (2014) Slice and Patch, two doctors working together could save a patient’s life, one by slicing the patient up and performing an operation, the other by patching the patient up afterwards. If they do not work together, the patient will die. If Slice operates without Patch sewing up afterwards, the patient will die more painfully. If Patch just sews the patient without an operation being performed, the patient will suffer pain before death. Estlund uses the example to inform a puzzle about plural requirements. Patch is not required to sew up the patient if Slice does not perform the operation; and Slice is not required to perform the operation if Patch is not going to sew up afterwards. Estlund asks us whether either doctor does wrong to go golfing because the other is not going to perform their part of the operation. He suggests that many will believe there is a moral violation here, but it is difficult to pin it down. Estlund’s discussion is long and subtle, but the key point the intuition pump is used to make is that in this case, (a) we have a moral failure – it is wrong if the patient is left to die, (b) if something is morally wrong, then at least one person had an obligation they did not fulfil, and (c) there was no agent who was morally required to act.

22 Let us look at the structure of the intuition pump shorn of all narrative detail. The fundamental structure of the story is a game with two equilibriums where one of the equilibriums is superior to the other. The superiority of the best equilibrium in Estlund’s example is much greater than that of the lesser

(though arguably that should not matter in a formal representation). We might represent the structure in a simple normal form game.

S+P Coordination Game

Agent B

y ∼y

Agent A x α β

∼x β 0

Where α >> 0 > β

In this pure form we might say that we have a simple coordination game, where the agents merely need to coordinate to ensure that the superior equilibrium (x, y) is chosen over the inferior equilibrium (∼x, ∼y). The basic structure of the game is the superiority of the one equilibrium over the other. We can note that

(∼x, ∼y) involves neither agent doing anything, so could mark this as the status quo equilibrium (which is why I make that the 0 outcome).

Estlund utilizes this structure with Slice (Agent A) and Patch (Agent B).

Working together, they could save a patient’s life (α), but if they do not work together the patient dies (0). Each one working independently produces an

23 outcome slightly worse than just the death of the patient, because here the patient in even more pain (β). In common interpretations of such games the payoffs are usually considered to be the utilities of the two players A and B.

Hence both should have an incentive to coordinate on (x, y) to give α, rather than coordinate on (∼x, ∼y) to give 0. In the simple coordination game we would expect α as the result. To the extent that there is any coordination problem in the game as structured this simply, it would involve a story about the difficulty of coordinating. Though note by the payoffs, as usually understood, the agents are better off coordinating so that is what they should do. In other words, in the simple game we need an account that gives us a reason why α is not simply chosen by the two players, what problem there is that is not captured in the game form as set out.

In the Slice and Patch game the payoffs might not be the utilities of the two agents. Instead, we can think of them as the payoffs of the patient, or the payoffs of the game’s observers, or some objective moral payoffs. It is the last which might create the obligation of A and B to coordinate despite their own preferences. That is, even if they have good personal reasons not to coordinate, the moral payoff might oblige them to. However, as Estlund sets the example up, if A does not slice, then B is obliged not to patch; and if B is not available to patch, then A is obliged not to slice. To slice or to patch in the absence of the other is to make matters worse for the patient. Thus Estlund asks us where the obligations are in this game. Neither has an obligation to slice or to patch unless the other carries out their role in the operation.

It is certainly true that in the S+P Coordination game as laid out, neither

Agent A nor B are obliged to coordinate on the superior equilibrium. If it is in

24 their interests do so, we might feel it strange, daft, or even irrational that they have not done so, but there is nothing in the structure that obliges them. We can also create another narrative that includes conditional obligations where neither is actually obliged to coordinate on (x, y). Say two neighbours agree that it would be nice if they could get together and clear the mess up between their houses, which includes moving a large item neither could shift on their own. They both promise to help the other to clear the mess one day. However, neither ever suggests a date on which to do it. Of course, there is no puzzle of moral obligation here because there is no moral obligation. There is no moral failure if they do not clear the mess together.

The structure of the coordination game does not itself generate the puzzle of moral obligation. It requires an aspect of the story to generate that obligation.

One aspect in Slice and Patch is that agents A and B are doctors, and their failure to coordinate means they fail a patient. How we judge that coordination failure, given their roles as doctors, might determine how we view such case. Estlund discuss coordination failures but does so in terms of the character of the agents.

With doctors and a hospital we might be more interested in institutions and procedures. Estlund’s main claim is that it is simply a fact of the case that neither doctor is obliged to act, because each is only obliged to act if the other does, and the antecedent is not met.

I would suggest that in a real case where such a patient died, the question asked of each doctor would not concern their conditional obligations, but why the antecedent was not met. Why were they not able to coordinate? I think that whether we concluded the patient’s death was unavoidable, an avoidable but unfortunate occurrence, or a serious failure in the doctors’ obligations to conduct

25 their profession properly would depend on that answer. The puzzle would be why they failed to coordinate when coordination was clearly in both their interests and both knew that. A great deal of empirical effort in political science and sociology goes into trying to answer such questions. (One starting point for perusing that literature is the work of Elinor Ostrom (1990; 2005). Some answers might lead us to think the failure to coordinate was unavoidable, some avoidable but unfortunate, and others a failure in rationality or sense.

Estlund avoids that route by stipulation. However, if it is the case that our intuition is that it is wrong because the doctors failed to coordinate (as I claim), then whatever Estlund concludes by stipulating that is not the issue utilizes the intuition incorrectly. If the fact we think there is something wrong because we intuit the doctors should have coordinated, then that that intuition should only be used to interrogate failures in coordination, not other aspects of the structure.

Estlund tries to avoid the issue of coordination by suggesting coordination involves group agency and then gives another example – Stranded

Ambulance – where he argues that group agency cannot be involved. (The idea of group agency here is, I think, the idea that it is the job of doctors to save patients.). We might think that doctors ought to coordinate because they are group agents, but he suggests that this cannot be the reason because ‘the’ puzzle can arise where group agency is less plausible. I note the ‘the’ with regard to the puzzle here. Because a first response is that, if this example involves coordination (and to some extent it does), it is only ‘the’ same puzzle if the coordination problem is the same. As Estlund’s second example involves more than two agents, it does not have quite the same structure. Coordinating more than two agents is not the same coordination problem as with two, especially if

26 the optimal solution does not involve all the agents or is not an equilibrium solution, or not a stable equilibrium, which the optimal equilibrium in the S+P coordination game surely is.

In other words, Estlund’s Stranded Ambulance intuition pump does not have the same structure as his Snip and Patch intuition pump. Hence whatever intuitions are pumped by the Stranded Ambulance are only relevant to the intuitions pumped by Snip and Patch insofar as both cases involve coordination problems, since the rest of the narration is not the same. Here we are using the shifting story to discount hypotheses about where the intuitions lie. Having said that, we might still blame the layabouts for not helping the stranded ambulance; we do so because we feel they should have acted, and that means they should have coordinated their actions. Estlund argues the intuition survives even where facts are stipulated to make coordination pointless or dangerous, but stipulations only serve to make us agree that there is less blame the harder it is to coordinate. It does not follow that we have to agree that coordination should not be attempted. As argued above one does not have to believe narrators and some things cannot simply be stipulated away. It is true that there is no one person who can be blamed for not taking the lead in coordinating, but it is only by stipulation that we cannot think the blame in that regard cannot be shared. It can further be noted that Stranded Ambulance also suffers from the Certainty

Problem.

As indicated, many have the intuition that the doctors are obliged to slice and to patch. One reason that might be given for them to be obliged to coordinate their actions onto the superior equilibrium is the mere fact they are doctors. In order to overcome that intuition we will need to tell some story that lets the

27 doctors off the hook on such a coordinative obligation. What that might mean for

Estlund’s account is one thing, but I am not using this example to challenge or support Estlund. All I want to draw out of the example is that the extent to which we have intuitions over the case is given by the specifics of the story. It is not given by the structure of the game. One of the problems of intuitions pumps, I believe, is that it is the narration, the specifics of the story that tends to pump an intuition, but that intuition is then attached to the structure. The structure is then carried to another story for which we do not have an intuition, or do not have as a strong an intuition, or even have an opposite intuition but we are charged on the point of contradiction that we must carry the original intuition because the new example has the same structure as that carried in the intuition pump. What is important in these examples is that they seem to have the same structure, but our attitudes belong as much to the specifics of the narration as the structure. There is no reason to carry the intuition over to the new story even it if is structurally identical. Our intuitions here should be pumped by the details of the second story.

Using Intuitions in Moral Philosophy

There are major problems with using intuitions as data in moral philosophy.

First, if they are to be so used then it needs to be done more systematically than is generally the current practice. Second, using them like this tells us more about the psychology of humans than it does about moral theory. That said, we cannot help but use our intuitions. A set of moral principles that do not seem right cannot act as a set of moral principles, even if they could act as a set of

28 enforceable legal ones. The feeling would be that such principles are unjust or immoral.

In other words, we cannot help but utilize something like reflective equilibrium. It might be that reflective equilibrium cannot be philosophically justified. Given that using intuitions in moral theory is an inductive process, we might compare the problematic quality of the reflective equilibrium method with that of induction. Arguably, induction cannot be rationally justified – which is just to say that induction is not deduction (Howson 2000). Moral arguments using intuitions are not deductive (or not fully deductive) and so perhaps they cannot be rationally justified either. The problem with reflective equilibrium is deeper than for induction. When dealing with predictive empirical theories there are independent tests of the veracity of the claims, but there are none when dealing with moral theories.

We might think that expertise could help. If philosophers tend to converge on agreements in hard cases, then surely that shows expertise.

Intuitive judgements can be trained. However, we cannot be sure such convergence resulted from the right way of reasoning. It might be the unconscious affect that leads to trained convergence. Faced with new, cleverly constructed, intuition pumps, philosophers immediately see answers that provoke problems for careful reasoned theories. This intuition is then trained into them and taken to other cases. The fast thinking might mislead. Without independent ways of ascertaining how correct intuitive thinking is, it might seriously mislead (Morris 2008).

Should we think of the judgements of moral philosophers even when led by intuition pumps as ‘fast thinking’? After all, philosophers reflect upon and

29 debate intuition pumps in relation to moral principles and theories. This fact does not completely avoid the problem alluded to. Even if we reflect upon such intuition pumps, those first impressions might weigh more than they ought to.

However, the fact that philosophers do reflect and do not simply accept intuitions provides some expectation that it is not simple feelings that lead to conclusions.

Intuitions should be seen as mere challenges to theory. No single intuition pump should be considered a crucial case study that disconfirms some moral theory. Rather, we should track the robustness of our intuitions across a variety of cases. Where we find disagreement, we should see the case as one, not that confirms or denies any moral theory, but where several moral principles or moral judgements conflict. It might be how we weigh different considerations, or which particular qualities of the case stand out for different people. We need to check whether ‘irrelevant’ details are leading some to one conclusion; or whether it is the indeterminacy in the description of the case that leads to differing views. We should not discount intuitions by stipulation. Our intuitions do not deal well with certainty, and we do not need to believe the narrator.

Intuition pumps that use certainty, and for which we stipulate all reasons that can justify an intuition, cannot pump intuitions. We should look for the reasons for the intuition that lie outside the story. But in that case the story itself is not the intuition pump.

The comparative use of intuition pumps enables observation of the robustness of intuitions across cases. Finding that different social classes, groups or cultures have different intuitions about the same cases is interesting, not only for moral psychology but also for moral philosophy. At the very least,

30 understanding one’s own biases in relationship to others can lead to a deeper understanding of our own reason for our beliefs. We might find the need to establish stronger foundations for our beliefs. Or we might learn to understand the room needed for moral plurality in some areas of life. Robustness across social groups or cultures is also revealing. We might feel any moral theory needs to take account of such robustness.

We cannot entirely discount intuitions in moral theory. We cannot expect ethical theory to provide demonstrations in the manner of mathematics.

However, counter-intuitive results are usually lauded in the mathematical and physical sciences if they stand up to analytic and empirical scrutiny. Counter- intuitive results in moral theory should not be discarded simply because they are counter-intuitive. Reflective equilibrium is the idea that we stand our moral theories and principles up to the light of our intuitions and considered judgements. There is no reason to think, however, that there should only ever be a single equilibrium. Different theories might justify the same considered moral judgements once brought into line with competing intuitions. We can reach equilibrium by modifying theories and judgements differentially to achieve a great deal of overlapping consensus about many moral judgements, with opposing judgements over a few cases.

Indeed the question here is why are there so few theories and disagreements? The answer most certainly relies upon evolutionary and cultural forces that restrict the class of potential equilibriums; but also on reasoned argument. The real hope for reasoned judgement in moral philosophy comes not from contemporary debates where aging philosophers are unlikely to shift their positions, but from the best arguments being recognized over the generations. If

31 we do not feel that reasoned argument can win out over the long term, then there really is no place for moral philosophy as opposed to moral psychology.

32 Appendix:

Thought Experiments and Intuition Pumps

(Ordered by mention in text)

Joining the Objects

Galileo Galilei’s often-referred-to thought experiment involves showing that two objects passing through a medium of the same resistance will fall at approximately the same speed (dependent on resistance), and hence at the same speed in a vacuum, contrary to received wisdom from Aristotle, who suggested bodies of different weights had different natural velocities. Galileo demonstrates this through a dialogue that involves Salvador leading Simplicio into a contradiction.

Salvador asks Simplicio whether he admits that falling bodies acquire a definite speed fixed by nature that cannot be increased except by force or resistance.

Salvador then asks what happens when two bodies whose natural speeds are different are united: will the more rapid be retarded by the slower and the slower hastened by the more rapid? Simplicio agrees that is indeed what will happen. Salvador then points out that the two objects united weigh more than the heavy one alone, hence the new object should fall more rapidly than either of the initial two, a direct contradiction. Simplicio admits, ‘I am all at sea because it appears to me that the smaller stone when added to the larger increases its weight and by adding weight I do not see how it can fail to increase its speed or, at least, not to diminish it.’

Source: Galilei 2012/1638 (see First Dialogue)

33 Train

Suppose a very long train is travelling along a railway line with constant velocity v.

Two events at points A and B on the embankment will appear to occur at particular points (A and B) along this very long train. So simultaneity can be referenced relative to the train in terms of the embankment. Are two events that are simultaneous with reference to the embankment also simultaneous with reference to the train?

v$

Mj" Train"

Embankment" A" Mi" B"

If lightning bolts strike the embankment at A and B and observer Mi halfway between them sees them as simultaneous, the bolts will also be events at A and B on the train.

Will person Mj on the train also see those flashes as occurring simultaneously?

Whilst person Mj coincides with Mi just when, from Mi’s viewpoint the lightning strikes simultaneously, Mj is moving towards B and away from A with velocity v, and so he will see the flash from B before he sees the flash from A. From the point of view of the embankment, flashes A and B are simultaneous; from the point of view of someone on the train, they are not. So events that are simultaneous with respect to the embankment are not simultaneous with respect to the train.

Relativity says there is no way to decree that the embankment is at rest and the train in motion, only that they are in motion relative to each other. Thus there is no means

34 by which to say that two events are absolutely simultaneous, only that they are simultaneous relative to some point.

Source: Einstein 1961/1916, pp. 25-7

Schrödinger’s Cat

A cat, a flask of poison gas and a small quantity of a radioactive substance are put in a sealed box. There will be a period of time at which it will be equally probable that either one atom or none will have decayed. If one decays, a monitor will detect it and will break the flask, releasing gas that will kill the cat. Under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, there will be a time when the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet when one looks inside the box, the cat will be either alive or dead, but not both.

Source: Schrödinger 1935

Violinist

Every person has a right to life. So if a foetus is a person, then abortion is wrong.

Mothers might have rights to decide what happens to their bodies, but the right to life outweighs that. So consider waking up to find you have been hooked up to the unconscious body of a famous violinist who is suffering kidney failure. This has been done by a society of music lovers who have discovered that you alone have the right genetic makeup so your kidneys can extract the poisons from his blood. It will take nine months, and then you will be free to carry on your life as before. If you unhook sooner, you will kill him. All persons have a right to live and violinists are persons.

His right to life outweighs your right to do as you please with your body.

Source: Thomson 1971

35

Mary

Mary is confined to a world with only black and white experiences. She becomes a brilliant scientist who learns all the physical facts about perception. One day she leaves her world and experiences colours for the first time. She sees red for the first time. Clearly she has learned something new. Since she already knew all the physical facts about colour, she must have learned something non-physical when she first experienced colour. Physicalism must be wrong.

Source: Jackson 1982

Zombie

We can conceive of exact physical and functional replicas of human beings except for the fact they have no inner or mental life. Such zombies are not phenomenally conscious. If zombies are conceivable they are possible, hence physicalism, which maintains that the physical and functional properties of conscious human beings are logically sufficient to ensure , must be false.

Source: Block 1990

Chinese Room

A person in a locked room who knows no Chinese has a set of commands written in

English allowing him to correlate a set of formal symbols with another set of formal symbols. These rules allow him to respond in written Chinese to a set of questions written in Chinese so that the Chinese question posers are convinced the man understands Chinese. Thus any computer program that enables a computer to have a conversation with someone in Chinese would not understand the conversation.

36 Without understanding the machine cannot be thinking and thus does not have a mind.

Source: Searle 1980

Shoot the One?

A madman is going to shoot twenty people, but says that he will spare nineteen of them if you shoot one. Should you shoot the one?

Source: Williams 1973

Surgeon

You are a surgeon with five patients who will soon die if you cannot provide transplants. Two need a lung each, two need a kidney each, and one needs a heart.

Luckily another patient has just arrived for a yearly check-up, who is a perfect genetic match for all your patients; you could whip out his lungs, kidneys and heart to save the five, though of course he would die as a result. Should you kill the healthy patient to save the five others?

Source: Thomson 1985, suggested by comments in Foot 1968

______

Trolley I

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five people on the track unless you pull a lever beside you that will send it down a spur. However, there is another person on the spur track and by diverting the trolley you will kill that person. What should you do?

Source: initially Foot 1978; Thomson 1985

37

Trolley II

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five workmen on the track unless you pull a lever beside you that will send it down a spur. However, there is a tourist on the spur track and by diverting the trolley you will kill that tourist.

What should you do?

Trolley III

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five workmen on the track unless you pull a lever beside you that will send it down a spur. However, there is a child on the spur track and by diverting the trolley you will kill that child.

What should you do?

Trolley IV

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five tourists on the track unless you pull a lever beside you that will send it down a spur. However, there is a workman on the spur track and by diverting the trolley you will kill that workman. What should you do?

Trolley Loop

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a looping track. It will hit and kill five people on the track unless you move a lever beside you that will send the trolley down a loop where it will hit and kill a fat man. Without the fat man the trolley would continue along the loop and kill the five from the other direction. Similarly, without the five there, the trolley would kill the fat man coming from its original direction.

The fat man is large enough to stop the trolley on his own, but it will take five thin people to stop it hitting him. What should you do?

38

Bridge I

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five people on the track unless you push the fat man just in front of you off the bridge to impede the trolley. Only someone that fat could stop it. What should you do?

Bridge II

A trolley (or tram) is out of control down a track. It will hit and kill five people on the track unless you pull a lever that will make a fat man drop from the bridge to impede the trolley. What should you do?

Slice and Patch

Two doctors working together could save a patient’s life, one by slicing the patient up and performing an operation, the other by patching the patient up afterwards. If they do not work together, the patient will die. However, for Slice just to operate without

Patch sewing up afterwards will cause a more painful death. Similarly for Patch just to sew the patient without an operation being performed will simply cause pain before death. Slice is not obliged to operate if Patch is not there to sew; and Patch is not obliged to sew if Slice is not there to operate. Each, in the absence of the other, has no obligations to the patient, but if the patient dies then surely there is a wrong. But how can there be a wrong is no one has failed in their obligations?

Source: Estlund 2014

The Stranded Ambulance

A group of layabouts are standing around together when an ambulance crashes.

39 Working together, the layabouts could free the ambulance so its patient could get to hospital in time. On their own, no single person could do it. But none is willing to help, so the ambulance is stranded and its patient dies.

Source: Estlund 2014

Sibling Sex

“Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are travelling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they stay alone in a cabin near the beach.

They decide it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love but decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?”

Source Haidt 2012

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