PEA Soup

Personal Identity and Moral Change

Many of you are probably familiar with the story of Phineas Gage. He was widely regarded as a kind and generous man, but he suffered from a freak accident during his work on a railroad, and the result was that a railroad spike ended up entering his brain. After the accident was over, the person who remained was not a kind or generous man. He was impulsive, callous, and clearly lacked all of the moral virtues that Phineas had previously shown. 

Now, let's consider this case as a problem of personal identity. In particular, let's ask yourself whether the following sentence is correct: 

•  The original man named Phineas does not exist anymore; the man after the accident is a different person. 

Many people have the intuition that this sentence is correct. It might seem, then, that our intuitions conform to an approach to personal identity that emphasizes psychological similarity. Since the man after the accident is not sufficiently similar to the original Phineas, we conclude that they are not the same person. 

In a new paper in Analysis, Kevin Tobia make an incisive criticism of this interpretation. As he points out, it is indeed the case that the man after the accident is dissimilar in certain respects from the original Phineas, but there is also another quite salient fact about him. Specifically, he is morally worse than the original Phineas. That is, it is not just that he differs psychologically in some way; he specifically differs by lacking some of the original Phineas's moral virtues. Might that be the explanation of our intuitions here?

Philosophy of Happiness: The Video

Philosophers have long debated the nature of happiness, with some saying that happiness is just a certain kind of psychological state and others claiming that true happiness is not just a matter of having certain feelings but also requires genuine virtue.

The new field of experimental philosophy may not be able to help us arrive at a definitive resolution of this age-old debate, but at the very least, it does seem to have inspired a very funny interactive video!

(Note: To go through this interactive video, you have to click at the end of each segment to begin the next one.)

 

 

 

Moral Dimensions Meets the Empirical Data

Tim Scanlon's new book Moral Dimensions provides an elegant account according to which an agent's mental states are relevant to the question as to whether that agent is blameworthy but not to the question as to whether the agent's behavior itself is morally wrong. 

As the philosopher Kristen Bell points out to me, however, the empirical data indicate that people's actual judgments show exactly the opposite pattern. People's wrongness judgments actually depend more on the agent's mental states than their blame judgments do. 

The Inverted Experience Machine

One of the most influential arguments in the philosophical study of well-being is Robert Nozick's famous 'experience machine' thought experiment. Suppose that you had the opportunity to enter a machine that would give you the subjective experience of having an extraordinary life -- it would seem to you that you were a rock star and a great philosopher and a devoted spouse, all at the same time -- even though, all the while, you would really just be lying there inside the machine. Would you choose to plug in? Many people say no, and Nozick therefore infers that we not only value having positive subjective experiences but also having a life that is in reality a good one.

In a forthcoming paper, Felipe De Brigard challenges this conclusion by conducting an innovative series of experimental studies. At the heart of his approach is a new thought experiment, which we might call the 'inverted experience machine.'

Shoemaker on Moral Responsibilty and Moral Ignorance

It is often  supposed that people are not morally responsible for their behavior when that behavior is the product of non-culpable ignorance, but the issue becomes considerably more complex when the ignorance in question is concerned only with moral truths.  Suppose that an agent knows all of the relevant non-moral facts but simply fails to know the moral truths that would allow her to figure out that a particular action is wrong.  Is she morally responsible for her action? 

Unfortunately for those who think that this question admits of an easy answer, our own David Shoemaker has just conducted a dazzling experimental study that raises some very interesting and difficult new philosophical issues here. 

First, he presented subjects with a case modeled on Susan Wolf's story of JoJo:

JoJo is the favorite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of a small, undeveloped country, entirely cut off from the outside world. Because of his father’s special feelings for the boy, JoJo is given a special education and is allowed to accompany his father and observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, little JoJo, who worships his father (as most boys do), takes his father as a role model and develops values just like his dad’s. As an adult, JoJo does the same sorts of things his father did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture chambers on the basis of whim. He does these things because he sincerely believes they are morally right, and he is aware of no reason to think otherwise. One day, a peasant sneezes as JoJo walks by, so JoJo heads over to the peasant and punches him in the face, just like his father would have done. He feels no guilt afterwards.

Other subjects were presented with a case exactly like this one except that it described  JoJo  as having all of the relevant moral knowledge.  Just as one might expect, subjects thought that JoJo was less morally blameworthy when they were told that he suffered from moral ignorance than they were when they were told that he had the relevant moral knowledge.  So far, no surprises. 

But now comes the surprising part.  In another condition, Shoemaker presented subjects with a story in which JoJo's action is morally praiseworthy:

 

JoJo is the favorite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of a small, undeveloped country, entirely cut off from the outside world. Because of his father’s special feelings for the boy, JoJo is given a special education and is allowed to accompany his father and observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, little JoJo, who worships his father (as most boys do), takes his father as a role model and develops values just like his dad’s. As an adult, he does the same sorts of things his father did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture chambers on the basis of whim. He does these things because he sincerely believes they are morally right, and he is aware of no reason to think otherwise. One day, a peasant sneezes as JoJo walks by, so JoJo heads over to the peasant to punch him in the face, just like his father would have done. As he’s pulling back his fist, though, he suddenly feels compassion and discovers that he can’t bring himself to punch the peasant, even though he still believes it’s the right thing to do. He thus backs away and lets the peasant go free, even though he believes that doing so is immoral, and he feels quite guilty afterwards.

Here again, the intuitions of  subjects who received this story could be compared with intuitions of subjects who received a story that was almost exactly the same except that JoJo had all of the relevant knowledge.  But this time, there was no difference in moral judgments.  Subjects thought that JoJo was no less praiseworthy when he didn't know he was doing the right thing as when he did know.   

In other words, there seems to be an asymmetry such that moral ignorance makes people think an agent is less blameworthy but does not make people think the agent is less praiseworthy.  I actually find myself having the very same intuitions, but it's hard to see exactly why this asymmetry is arising.  Is there some more general principle from which all of the intuitions we see here can be derived?

Moller on Love and Death

Think of the person who loves you more than anyone else in this world does.  And now think about how that person would feel if you suddenly died.  Would he or she be utterly heartbroken?  Filled with despair?  Or would the person perhaps be deeply unhappy but somehow manage to make it through the next year or so? 

As it happens, there has been a great deal of  systematic psychological research on this topic, and the overwhelming preponderance of  data supports the conclusion that most people simply aren't that disturbed when their loved ones die.  People appear to be upset for a relatively short time  and then -- after that brief interval is over -- they feel more or less the same as they did before.  Thus, one recent study showed that people sometimes felt more depressed immediately after their loved ones died but that even two months after the death of their loved ones there was no  significant increase in depression. 

Psychologists sometimes suggest that we should be happy and inspired to find that people show such 'resilience' in the face of hardship.  They suggest that it is a good thing that people are able to get over their problems and simply move on. 

But in a forthcoming paper (titled, appropriately enough, 'Love and Death'), the philosopher Dan Moller argues for a more bittersweet conclusion.  Although there is surely something good about the fact that people are able to avoid sadness in these difficult straits, he claims that there is actually something to be regretted about our surprising resilience.  The problem, he suggests, is that our lack of emotional response shows a failure to properly appreciate the importance of those we care for most. 

I think his paper is fantastic, and I would encourage you all to read it... but whether you read it or not, I would love to hear your thoughts on the basic thesis.  Is there something of value in the despair and suffering we sometimes experience when bad things happen to those we love?  Even if no good consequences come from this feeling, might there be something of value in the feeling itself? 

The doing/allowing distinction: An experimental study

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and I are running a series of experimental studies on the doing/allowing distinction, and we'd love to have your input on some of the results. 

In essence, we want to show that people's moral judgments can sometimes determine whether they classify a given case as 'doing' or 'allowing,' and we then want to gain a better understanding of how this effect arises.  So we put together two cases that are extremely similar in most respects but which differ in their moral status. 

In both cases,  a patient is suffering from a cancer that would normally kill him, but he is attached up to a machine that prevents the cancer from having its normal effect.  Then the doctor comes in and shuts off the machine.  The patient immediately dies.

In the 'morally good' case, subjects were told that the patient wants to die and the doctor is acting in accordance with his wishes.  In the 'morally bad' case, subjects were told that the patient does not want to die but the doctor hates him and therefore detaches the machine anyway.  (If you'd like, you can read the original questionnaires.) 

The results showed a striking asymmetry.  Subjects said the doctor killed the patient in the morally bad case but not in the morally good case.   

We also asked subjects a question about causation.  Here again, we found an asymmetry. Subjects said that the doctor caused the death in the morally bad case but not in the morally good case. 

Moreover, further statistical analyses showed that people's causation judgments predicted their judgments about killing even controlling for their judgments about whether the action was morally right or morally wrong.

These results suggest a hypothesis about the way in which moral judgment feeds into the doing/allowing distinction.  Perhaps the connection is an indirect one. Moral judgment might play a role in the concept of causation, and the concept of causation might in turn play a role in the doing/allowing distinction itself.

Does that seem like a plausible view?