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Quick Objections to Greene’s Argument
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The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles.
1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.
2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.
3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.
4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.
5. We have reason to suspect that the moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider are unfamiliar situations.
6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.
The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles.
‘To say that a particular psychological process
does not [invariably] track moral truth is to say that the process generates judgments which are not subjunctively sensitive to *certain* moral properties.
We cannot say this without making some moral judgments ourselves’
(Rini, 2016, p. 682, my emphasis).
The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles.
Rini’s Regress Objection
‘nearly any attempt to debunk a particular moral judgmenton grounds of itspsychological cause risks triggering a regress, because a debunking argumentmust involve moral evaluation of the psychological cause---and this evaluationis itself then subject to psychological investigation and moral evaluation,and so on’
(Rini, 2016, p. 676).
Against Consequentialism
We should not Drop.
Consequentialism* implies we should Drop.
Therefore:
Consequentialism* is wrong.
Drop
Mary [...] notices an empty boxcar rolling out of control. [...] anyone it hits will die. [...] If Mary does nothing, the boxcar will hit the five people on the track. If Mary pulls a lever it will release the bottom of the footbridge and [...] one person will fall onto the track, where the boxcar will hit the one person, slow down because of the one person, and not hit the five people farther down the track.
Pulling the lever is: [extremely morally good:::neither good nor bad:::extremely morally bad]
1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.
2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.
3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.
4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.
5. We have reason to suspect that the moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider are unfamiliar situations.
6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.
Rini’s Regress Objection
‘nearly any attempt to debunk a particular moral judgment
on grounds of its psychological cause risks triggering a regress,
because
a debunking argument must involve moral evaluation of the psychological cause---
and this evaluation is itself then subject to psychological investigation and moral evaluation, and so on’
(Rini, 2016, p. 676).
The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles.
Königs’ Objection
background
‘the normative significance of experimental moral psychology is somewhat underwhelming.
The use of experimental methods to construct arguments from moral irrelevance is at worst counterproductive and at best helpful but not game-changing’
(Königs, 2020, p. 2618).
The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles.
objection
debunking arguments ‘are dialectically useless if we assume that case-specific intuitions are, as a rule, subordinate to intuitions at a higher level of generality’
(Königs, 2020, p. 2607).
‘A deontologist who accepts that case-specific intuitions are less reliable than general intuitions need not be too concerned about the finding that case-specific deontological intuitions are responsive to morally irrelevant factors’
(Königs, 2020, p. 2615).
1. Ethical judgements are explained by a dual-process theory, which distinguishes faster from slower processes.
2. Faster processes are unreliable in unfamiliar* situations.
3. Therefore, we should not rely on faster process in unfamiliar* situations.
4. When philosophers rely on not-justified-inferentially premises, they are relying on faster processes.
5. We have reason to suspect that the moral scenarios and principles philosophers consider are unfamiliar situations.
6. Therefore, not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios, and debatable principles, cannot be used in ethical arguments where the aim is knowledge.
objection:
the loose reconstruction is unacceptably sceptical
background
‘Intuition is a resource in all of philosophy, but perhaps nowhere more than in ethics‘
(Audi, 2015, p. 57).
‘Episodic intuitions[...] can serve as data [...] ... beliefs that derive from them receive prima facie justification’ (p. 65).
‘self-evident propositions are truths meeting two conditions: (1) in virtue of adequately understanding them, one has justification for believing them [...]; and (2) believing them on the basis of adequately understanding them entails knowing them’ (p. 65).
objection
The loose reconstruction implies that we cannot use not-justified-inferentially ethical judgements.
But ethics depends on such judgements.
So the loose reconstruction implies that ethics is impossible.
The loose reconstruction
does not depend on moral principles;
does not create a regress;
is not limited to not-justified-inferentially judgements about particular moral scenarios;
is not unacceptably sceptical.