Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency
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BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2018), Page 1 of 75 doi:10.1017/S0140525X16002016, e36 Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency John M. Doris Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, Philosophy Department, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130 [email protected] http://www.moralpsychology.net/jdoris/ Abstract: Does it make sense for people to hold one another responsible for what they do, as happens in countless social interactions every day? One of the most unsettling lessons from recent psychological research is that people are routinely mistaken about the origins of their behavior. Yet philosophical orthodoxy holds that the exercise of morally responsible agency typically requires accurate self-awareness. If the orthodoxy is right, and the psychology is to be believed, people characteristically fail to meet the standards of morally responsible agency, and we are faced with the possibility of skepticism about agency. Unlike many philosophers, I accept the unsettling lesson from psychology. I insist, however, that we are not driven to skepticism. Instead, we should reject the requirement of accurate self-awareness for morally responsible agency. In Talking to Our Selves I develop a dialogic theory, where the exercise of morally responsible agency emerges through a collaborative conversational process by which human beings, although afflicted with a remarkable degree of self-ignorance, are able to realize their values in their lives. Keywords: agency; character; confabulation; deliberation; ethics; morality; psychology; reasoning; reflection; responsibility; the self; self- knowledge; value If you haven’t already despaired of politics, consider Ballot about what to think and do, and why to think and do it Order Effects: candidates topping the slate may enjoy a (cf. Frankish & Evans 2009, p. 15), while the “quick and several point advantage in vote share (Krosnick et al. dirty” of automatic processing seems scarcely worthy of 2004, pp. 61–68; cf. Lutz 2010; Marcinkiewicz 2014; Mer- the honorific reasoning (p. 50). edith & Salant 2013; Webber et al. 2014). The data don’t Many of the most philosophically trenchant instances of reveal the thinking of individual voters, but I doubt it’s any- incongruence occur when the automatic bests the analytic thing like this: and prompts people to do things they wouldn’t endorse ’ ’ ’ fi (or do things from motives they wouldn t endorse). Here, I ll vote for her because she s rst on the ballot. the causes of a person’s behavior would not be regarded Political discourse ranges shamelessly over the daft and by her as justifying reasons for that behavior (pp. 43–44, deplorable. But you don’t often hear a voting rationale pp. 64–65). That is, she would be unwilling to cite in like that. defense of her behavior the factors figuring in the most Ballot Order Effects illustrate the phenomena animating Talking to Our Selves (Doris 2015b),1 which I call incon- gruent parallel processing (“incongruence” for short), “ ” JOHN M. DORIS is a Professor in the Philosophy–Neuro- where two (or more) cognitive processes (with cognitive – understood capaciously) deliver divergent outputs regard- science Psychology Program and Philosophy Depart- – ment at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the ing the same object (pp. 51 52). I interpret incongruence author of Lack of Character: Personality and Moral under the rubric of “dual process” theories that are cur- – Behavior (Cambridge, 2002) and Talking to Our rently ubiquitous across the sciences of mind (pp. 49 51). Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency (Oxford, The approach has its critics, and the details are debated 2015). With his colleagues in the Moral Psychology (Evans & Frankish 2009), but my purposes require only Research Group, he wrote and edited The Moral Psy- the broadest – and least doctrinaire – of brushes. On one chology Handbook (Oxford, 2010). Doris has been familiar characterization, automatic processing is supposed awarded fellowships from Michigan’s Institute for the ’ to be effortless (sometimes “mandatory”), fast, and associ- Humanities, Princeton s University Center for Human ated with emotional and other functioning exhibiting com- Values, the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced paratively little cognitive elaboration, while analytic Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the National processing is supposed to be effortful (sometimes “discre- ” “ ” Endowment for the Humanities. He is a winner of the tionary ), slow, and associated with higher cognition Society for Philosophy and Psychology’s Stanton Prize (e.g., Stanovich 2004, pp. 37–47; Wilson 2002, pp. 52– for excellence in interdisciplinary research. 53). Analytic processing, on such accounts, supports ratioci- nation of the sort celebrated in philosophy – reflection © Cambridge University Press 2018 0140-525X/18 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. NYU School of Medicine, on 30 Mar 2018 at 20:26:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17000814 Doris: Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency perspicuous psychological explanation of her behavior, they do mark important differences between puppies and were she aware of these factors (as she very often might Pop-Tarts. Lots of critters – honeybees, for example – not be). In such cases, the person’s reasoning is somehow exhibit perception, communication, and goal-directedness, bypassed (p. 52; Nahmias 2011, pp. 560–563): if your without engendering serious temptation toward subjecting vote gets decided by ballot order, it seems as though your them to morally important responses; fine to be angry that preferences and judgment – assuming you’re not of the you were stung by a bee (one damn thing after another!), improbable opinion that your vote should be so deter- but inapposite to be angry at the bee (which is, after all, mined – have been left out of the decision. only a bee). I’ve no interest in disparaging the sort of Bypassing raises doubts about the extent to which human agency displayed by agentive blobs and honeybees – an beings exercise morally responsible agency – roughly, the important fact, if detecting this kind of agency is prominent way human beings order their own behavior in a fashion in the human cognitive repertoire. It is not, however, suffi- that merits the distinctively ethical responses they direct cient for morally responsible agency; that notion, as I try to at one another (pp. ix, 7, 23–33). Admiring the kindness show, requires rather more. While I sometimes drop the of your friend is different from appreciating the beauty of modifier “morally responsible,” it is, unless otherwise a rainbow; your friend’s act of kindness is a doing, or some- noted, a morally responsible agency at issue whenever thing they accomplished, while the emergence of a spine- “agency” appears here (and in the book). tingling rainbow is a happening for which nobody is due At this juncture, I should also provide methodological ori- credit (unless you’re inclined to credit divine agency). I entation, and say something about the status of the empirical want to make good theoretical sense of this difference; material on which my remorselessly interdisciplinary human beings exercise morally responsible agency, while approach relies. As the twenty-first century sputters less intelligent natural systems like rainbows don’t. The toward its third decade, numerous replication failures occurrence of bypassings intimate that human beings are attending iconic studies, particularly in experimental social not, contrary to appearances, in fact so distinguished – or psychology, have – as they should – occasioned much soul- at least not so distinguished as one might have wished. searching by producers and consumers of the social sciences, In considering the variety of disconcerting phenomena, and have – as they should – encouraged greater methodolog- like Ballot Order Effects, that intimate the existence of ical scrupulosity in social scientific practice. The “RepliGate” bypassing incongruence, Talking to Our Selves articulates, controversy is not yet concluded (and involves controversy and then attempts to ameliorate, skepticism about morally about whether there should even be a controversy2), responsible agency. Skepticisms about agency sourced in which means that Talking to Our Selves includes some of empirical psychology have been stated – and perhaps over- my own soul-searching about interpreting science in condi- stated – before (e.g., Wegner 2002), and these skepticisms tions of uncertainty (pp. 44–49; cf. Machery & Doris 2017). themselves invite a healthy skepticism (e.g., Bloom 2014). RepliGate, and the inevitability of scientific controversy Nevertheless, I agree with the skeptics, in as much as I more generally, dictate taking one’s science with a healthy think that when the science is properly appreciated, there dose of caution. But it should be stressed that empirical find- is cause for deep concern about the prospects for morally ings intimating the existence of incongruence are not “one responsible agency. This appreciation makes the work of off” curiosities, but are part of established trends, and the the book’s first part. But I also agree with the anti-skeptics, dual process perspective in which I situate the phenomena because I think there’s a good answer to the skeptical prov- have been proposed for most everything