Moral Judgment, Sensitivity To Reasons, and the Multi-system View

Abstract

In this paper I attempt a critical examination ofthe multi-system or dual-process view of moral judgment. Thisview aims to provide a psychological explanation of moral sensitivity,and in particular an explanation of conflicting moral sensitivitiesin dilemma cases such as the crying baby scenario. I arguethat proponents of the multi-system view owe us a satisfactory accountof the mechanisms underlying \textquotedblleft{}consequentialist\textquotedblright responsesto such scenarios. For one thing, the \textquotedblleft{}cognitive\textquotedblright processes involvedin consequentialist reasoning only seem to play a subservingrole with respect to the final judgment (providing non-moralinputs to judgment, or exerting additional strength to overridethe immediate \textquotedblleft{}deontological\textquotedblright response). In this sense, Greeneand colleagues fail to identify a peculiar system of moral judgmentspecularly opposed to the affective \textquotedblleft{}deontological\textquotedblright one. Foranother, Greene and colleagues\textquoteright work on the emotion-cognitiondichotomy and the distinction between alarm-bell and currencyemotions, though promising, still falls short of providing an adequateand consistent picture of the psychological mechanismsunderlying \textquotedblleft{}cognitive\textquotedblright evaluations and verdicts in dilemma scenarios.It is suggested that alongside further experimental work,proponents of this view should pay more attention to the conceptualunderpinnings of their distinctions.