Intelligent Automaticity in Moral Judgment and Decision-Making Asia Ferrin A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2016 Reading Committee: M. Alison Wylie, Chair Nancy Snow William J. Talbott Sara Goering Carole Lee Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Philosophy 1 ©Copyright 2016 Asia Ferrin 2 University of Washington Abstract Intelligent Automaticity in Moral Judgment and Decision-Making Asia Ferrin Chair of the Supervisory Committee: M. Alison Wylie, Professor Philosophy and Anthropology Is conscious reflection necessary for good moral judgment and decision-making? Philosophical attention to this question has increased in the last decade due to recent empirical work in moral psychology. I conclude that conscious reflection is not necessary for good moral judgment and decision- making, arguing that good moral intuition can develop from implicitly acquired and held moral values that bypass deliberative processes. I anchor my project in the now widely discussed work by Jonathan Haidt (2001) on moral judgment and decision-making. While many theorists think of moral judgment and decision-making as deliberative, Haidt argues that it is in fact more reactive: an individual has a gut response to a moral situation and immediately forms a judgment from that intuition. While Haidt’s work is empirically focused, he in large part intends for it to be a challenge to the traditional theory and norms in philosophy. I discuss two kinds of response in the philosophical literature to Haidt’s challenge. First, an empirical response: that Haidt’s data do not show that we largely fail to engage in deliberation. Second, a normative response: that Haidt’s empirical data do not challenge our normative ideals. I argue that both groups of arguments fail. This, then, warrants an exploration of the idea that the dominant normative view of moral judgment and decision-making in philosophy needs to be evaluated. I offer my own normative theory of moral judgment and decision-making, which I call “value-guided automaticity,” and argue that intuitive judgments motivated by implicitly held values make many of our automatic responses normatively evaluable. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Much thanks is due to the many people who helped my finish this project. First, I would like to thank my family—my parents, Emerald, Dennis, Dakota, Karen, and Mark—for believing in me and encouraging me to pursue my academic career. They have been unwaveringly supportive and positive—in both good times and bad. I am also grateful for my rock-star dissertation committee. Alison Wylie was one of the first faculty members to get excited about my project and has done an amazing job steering the helm. She has been a strong advocate for my work and career, has taught me much professionally and personally, and possesses fierce integrity and drive that I greatly admire. I have been incredibly fortunate to have her on my team. Alison has also served as a mentor and advisor beyond the dissertation. It was a true honor to work with her for three years at Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and she has always provided wise counsel which has helped me thrive professionally, earning positions like Graduate Assistant at the 2012 Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) and Faye Sawyier Predoctoral Teaching Fellow at Illinois Institute of Technology. I am eternally grateful for her guidance and privileged to be one of her students. Nancy Snow, Bill Talbott, Sara Goering, and Carole Lee have each brought unique expertise and perspectives to my project, for which I am grateful. My project is more diverse and strong because of it. These committee members have also been patient, thorough, and encouraging in approaching my work—I am lucky to have had their challenging, but supportive feedback and attention. They have also been a pleasure to work with as individuals, always brining engaging conversation and laughter to our discussions. I would also like to thank Ingra Schellenberg for turning me on to my dissertation topic and issues in moral psychology more broadly. I took Ingra’s moral psychology course in my first quarter as a graduate student at the University of Washington. She showed me how exciting the topic could be and served as a caring mentor and advocate as I pursued my first two years of coursework at UW. Other mentors who guided me through the ups and downs of the PhD include Barbara Mack and Karen Emmerman. Both took me under their wings and guided me professionally and personally, determined not only to see me succeed, but thrive during my time at the University of Washington and beyond. I truly would not have made it to this point without their love, wisdom, and compassion. I am grateful not only for their mentorship, but what I know will be life-long friendships. I would also like to thank the UW philosophy department for their continuous support and the UW Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program for a generous dissertation fellowship. Final thanks is due to my undergraduate mentors who encouraged me to pursue philosophy and graduate school—neither of which I had could have imagined as career paths. Special thanks goes to my undergraduate advisor Bridget Newell, Michael Popich, Mary Jo Hinsdale, and the McNair Scholars Program—a program designed to prepare first-generation, low-income college students for graduate studies. I was accepted into the McNair Scholars program the summer after my first year of college and have never looked back. Thanks to the multitude of support from folks over the years, I have achieved my goal and look forward to helping future students do the same. 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Shardae is visiting her grandparents, watching a news story about the Afghanistan War. After the story ends, Shardae’s grandfather (Steve) goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Shardae follows him in and asks whether he thinks the war is morally justified. He pauses to think for a moment, then says no, he does not think the war is morally justified and goes on to give a list of reasons, such as the cost of life and resources, and further loss of security in the US. When Shardae presses: “but why do these things matter?,” Steve replies that we should try to act in ways that minimize harm, and these consequences show that the war creates more harm than no war. Steve starts to make himself a sandwich, at which point Shardae goes back into the living room where her grandmother is still watching the TV. Shardae asks her grandmother (Debbie) whether she thinks the war is morally justified. Debbie immediately says no. When Shardae asks her grandmother why she thinks this, Debbie says “It’s just wrong. Isn’t it obvious?” Shardae presses her grandmother for reasons, but Debbie does not give any, again saying “I don’t know, it’s just wrong,” apparently unable to articulate the reasons for her judgment. In this scenario, both of Shardae’s grandparents make a moral judgment, the same moral judgment, about the war in Afghanistan, namely that the war is unjustified or morally wrong. However, even though Shardae’s grandparents make the same moral judgment, many are inclined to evaluate the quality of their judgments differently. Steve appears to have been more thoughtful and easily provided compelling reasons—based on some moral principles—for his judgment. Debbie, on the other hand, does noes not appear to put any thought into her judgment and seems either unable or unwilling to give reasons for her judgment. Does the process by which they arrived at their judgment make Steve’s judgment better? 5 Is conscious deliberation a necessary feature of good moral judgment and decision- making?1 This question has received significant attention in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and even more mainstream media in the last decade. For example, the John Templeton Foundation recently published “Does Moral Action Depend on Reasoning? Thirteen Views on the Question,” which includes contributions by Michael Gazzaniga, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Alfred Mele, Christine Korsgaard, Joshua Greene, and Antonio Damasio among others (2010). Much of this conversation about moral reasoning in philosophy has been generated by psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s controversial 2001 article, in which he argues that quick, automatic processes largely drive moral judgment while reflective processes play an ad hoc role (Haidt 2001). Haidt characterizes moral judgment and decision-making as reactive: an individual has a gut response to a moral situation and immediately forms a judgment from that intuition. We typically utilize reasoning or reflection, Haidt argues, only when asked to justify our judgments after the fact. In this dissertation, I engage with the current debate about nature and norms of good moral judgment-making. Haidt argues that moral reasoning and principles rarely guide moral judgments and decisions. Haidt takes his argument to be a critique of traditional views and standards of moral judgment-making in both philosophy and psychology. Haidt explains that for many centuries, Western philosophers—and more recently, psychologists—have mostly shared what Haidt calls a “rationalist” conception of good moral judgment-making, which emphasizes the importance of deliberation, impartiality, and appeal to universal truths in human moral psychology. Haidt describes this rationalism: 1 Note that I use almost interchangeably “judgment,” “decision,” and “action.” While they are obviously different, my and others’ analysis often applies to all three. “Judgment-making” and “decision-making” are often talked about as a kind of action. 6 Moral psychology has long been dominated by rationalist models of moral judgment…. Rationalist approaches in philosophy stress ‘the power of a priori reason to grasp substantial truths about the world’ (Williams, 1967, p.