Wallach on the role of reason in moral decisions

“Beyond Reason: Are emotions, consciousness, and being embodied in a world with other people necessary to make moral decisions?”

Can a disembodied entity without emotions, empathy, consciousness, the ability to read facial expressions and other non-verbal cues, or the capacity to infer the intentions of others make moral decisions.  Sure, in some situations.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine an agent capable of handling the array of decisions humans confront without most of these faculties. For this reason, some people argue that computers and non-human animals are not the kinds of entities capable of making moral decisions.

The roles emotional intelligence, consciousness and being embodied play in moral decision making are far from clear. Moral philosophers have played down the importance of psychology in ethics as they emphasize the centrality of reasoning about consequences or duties. David Hume famously warned against “deriving an ought from an is.”  Moral philosophers take this to mean that one cannot determine what is right and good from moral psychology, from the way people make decisions. However, cognitive scientists are demonstrating through a host of fascinating experiments that evolution, inherent biases built into the structure of the mind, and unconscious heuristics determine much of what people believe to be right and good. They are forcing philosophers to revisit the is/out distinction in ethics.  A comprehensive understanding of human decision making will require a clarification of the relationship between reason and our supra-rational faculties.

While there are no readings for this meeting, those interested in looking at Chapters 4 and 8 of Moral Machines, Teaching Robots Right From Wrong will have a leg up on the discussion.

Wendell Wallach
Author of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong
Interdisciplinary Center For Bioethics
Yale University

Venue: Walton Room, 2nd floor of the Trinity College Library
Directions: http://library.trincoll.edu/about/hours.cfm

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The Hartford Ethics Group is a monthly discussion group on bioethics themes coordinated by James Hughes and Miller Brown of Trinity College. For more information, or to submit a topic, please contact James Hughes at: james.hughes at trincoll.edu
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