Moral reasoning and decision making 2017 Course Organiser: Dr. Matteo Colombo Email: [email protected] Office: D 236 Website: https://mteocolphi.wordpress.com/ Course Description Why do we tip at restaurants, but never at shoe shops? Why do we find repugnant to have sex with siblings? Why don’t people wear shorts when they get married? Why do we get angry if somebody jumps a queue? Why is it more likely that people throw an empty can of coke on the street when the street is already dirty? Why, when we get up in the morning, don’t we even consider to be nudist for the day? Why did women and children aboard the Titanic were more likely to survive than males? What if a person had no social contact during the first years of her life? In this course we shall explore these types of questions by intermingling philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. Our focus will be on the psychological and philosophical foundations of judgement and decision-making in the moral/social domain. Background Prior familiarity with the material discussed during the course is not assumed. However, students will benefit from having the following background: (1) A previous philosophy course with a substantial ethics component. (2) A previous philosophy course with a substantial component in philosophy of science. (3) At least one course in psychology or a related human science. Learning Goals Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able: 1) To summarize, explain and compare (using specific examples) the central theories and arguments in the field of contemporary moral psychology, in particular about the relationship between moral behaviour, expectations, judgement, emotion and reason; 2) To apply your understanding and insight about current theories of social norms (e.g. Bicchieri’s Elster’s, etc.) to make sense of how people make moral decisions; 3) To formulate simple explanatory hypotheses about ordinary social behaviour and to critically analyze them; 4) To design and carry out a simple experiment to test an original hypothesis about social norms; 5) To evaluate the normative implications, if any, of findings in the cognitive sciences for problems in ethics; 6) To bring together knowledge from different sources in philosophy and cognitive science to critically unravel some topic of research in moral psychology. Methods of assessment There are four methods of assessment for this course. Preparation. You are expected to complete the assigned readings before class, to bring the texts under discussion to class, and to be prepared to discuss them. In particular, each week you should come to class with at least one question about the reading. You will peer mark at least two assignments by one of your class mates. You will present the results of your breaching experiment in front of the class. Short Q-A. Every week, you must think about and formulate an interesting short question about some potentially puzzling, social/moral behaviour, in which people around them routinely engage—e.g. “Why do people shake hands?”; “Why do people pay taxes?”; “Why do people at the airport wait standing in queue at the gate for a long time before their flight is actually ready for boarding?” This question should be emailed to me by the Saturday before the class. Every week I will select one question. You are required to propose an answer to it in no more than 400 words. This answer should be emailed to me at least 48 hours before the next class. IMPORTANT The point of this exercise is to engage you to think through, and write about ordinary social phenomena (preferably issues they find interesting, important and puzzling) in a clear, precise, concise and structured way. I shall provide details about how to approach this exercise at the beginning of the course. Breaching experiment. You are required to write one report on a breaching experiment in no more than 2,000 words. One class in the course will be devoted to explain how you should approach this exercise. Final essay. You are required to write an essay of no more than 2,500 words at the end of the course. The essay will be written on a topic covered during the course after my approval. Final mark/Weight of assessment components - participation in class (15%), - the weekly short questions and answers (20%), - the report on the breaching experiment (25%), - the final essay (40%). 1 Schedule and readings There is no official textbook. We shall work on articles, and excerpts from books. If you have troubles finding any of the readings, please email me. 31.01 Class I What’s moral psychology about? This class introduces the topic, requirements, and goals for this course. Required reading: * Doris, J.M. & Stich, S.P. (2006). Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-psych-emp/ OR * Alfano, M. & Loeb, D. (2016). Experimental Moral Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/experimental-moral/>. Further readings Hume, D.A. Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2007. (Book 3, Part 1, Section 1 – Pay special attention to the last two paragraphs). Available in the library and online (e.g. URL: < http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4705>). Prinz, J.J. (2007). The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Preamble: Naturalism and Hume’s Law, pp. 1-10. Available in the library. Stich, S. & Doris J. (2005). As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics. In F. Jackson and M. Smith, (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 114-152. 07.02 Class II What are norms? And how do they explain? What are norms? Is there any difference between moral and social norms? And how can we tell? In this lecture we tackle these questions by examining three accounts. Required readings [email me in case you cannot find them] * Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar Of Society, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (Ch. 1) Available in the library. * Elster, J. (2009). Social norms and the explanation of behavior. In P. Hedström and P. Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 195-217 Available in the library. Further readings Beebe, J. (forthcoming). The Empirical Study of Folk Metaethics. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jbeebe2/Beebe%20The%20Empirical%20Study%20of%20Folk%20Metaethics.pdf Brennan, G., Eriksson, L., Goodin, R. E., & Southwood, N. (2013). Explaining norms. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1 Nado, J., Kelly, D. & Stich, S. (2009). Moral Judgments. In P. Calvo & J. Simons (Eds). The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Routledge., pp. 621-633. Preprint available online at: URL: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/Publications/Papers/Moral%20Judgment%20- %20FINAL%20DRAFT%20-%20web.pdf 2 Turiel, E. (1979). Distinct conceptual and developmental domains: Social convention and morality. In H. Howe & C. Keasey (Eds) (1979). Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1977: Social Cognitive Development, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 25:77-116. 14.02 Class III How can we experiment on norms? The breaching experiment Conceptual analysis and thought experiments have been the traditional methods of philosophical inquiry into the foundations of morality. Over the past decade or so, unabashedly interdisciplinary/empirical methods to the study of moral cognition have been used. This lecture introduces this “experimental wave”, with a focus on a methodology known as “breaching experiment,” which students will have to employ to design and carry out a simple study of how social norm compliance works. Read at least one of the following: * Bicchieri, C. & Xiao, E. (2008). Do the Right Thing: But Only if Others Do So. Journal of behavioural decision making, 21: 1-18. Available online – from the UvT Library WorldCat. * Lisciandra, C., Postma-Nilsenová, M., & Colombo, M. (2013). Conformorality. A study on group conditioning of normative judgment. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(4), 751-764. Available online – from the UvT Library WorldCat. * Milgram, S., Liberty, H. J., Toledo, R., & Wackenhut, J. (1986). Response to intrusion into waiting lines. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 683-689. Available online – from the UvT Library WorldCat Further reading Garfinkel, H. (1964). Studies of the Routine Grounds of Every- day Activities, Social Problems, 11, 225-250. Available online – from the UvT Library WorldCat 21.02 Class IV Existential moral psychology: Managing norm violations What maintains meaning in the face of norm violations? This lecture will focus on the ways that we find and maintain meaning in our moral experience, including the ways that meaning frameworks allow us to make sense of our social world. Required reading * Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2010). The Frog in Kierkegaard’s Beer: Finding Meaning in the Threat- Compensation Literature. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4/10, 889–905. Further readings Maddux, W. W., Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). When in Rome . learn why the Romans do what they do: How multicultural learning experiences facilitate creativity. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 731–741. Kierkegaard, S. (1997a). The concept of anxiety. In H. Hong & E. Hong (Eds.), The essential Kierkegaard (pp. 138–156). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1844) Markman, K. D., Karadogan, F., Lindberg, M. J., & Zell, E. (2009). Counterfactual thinking: Function and dysfunction. In K. D. Markman,W. P. Klein, J. A. Suhr, K. D.Markman,W. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.), Handbook of imagination and mental simulation (pp. 175–193). New York, NY: Psychology Press Proulx, T.