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Reason and Atrocity: Hindriks’ Observation

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One compelling reason for studying moral psychology is that ethical abilities appear to play a central role in atrocities

‘The massive threats to human welfare stem mainly from deliberate acts of principle, rather than from unrestrained acts of impulse’ (Bandura, 2002, p. 116).

‘The executioners, who face the most daunting moral dilemma, [...] adopted moral, economic, and societal security justifications for the death penalty’ (Osofsky et al., 2005, p. 387).

‘If we ask people why they hold a particular moral view [their] reasons are often superficial and post hoc. If the reasons are successfully challenged, the moral judgment often remains.’

Hilariously, Prinz (2007) goes so far as to offer five candidate explanations for the results of the dumbfounding experiment. Which he does not appear to have actually read.

‘basic values are implemented in our psychology in a way that puts them outside certain practices of justification [...] basic values seem to be implemented in an emotional way’

(Prinz, 2007, p. 32).

Let me try to sharpen this.

An inconsistent dyad

1. ‘moral reasoning is [...] usually engaged in after a moral judgment is made, in which a person searches for arguments that will support an already-made judgment’ (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008, p. 189).

We’ll come back to this in Part II of the course because this is a component of Moral Foundations Theory.

Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008 figure 4.1

There is some confusion in my mind about their model. For while A’s judgement is supposed to be barely if ever affected by reasoning (dotted arrow 5), it seems B’s reasoning is supposed to reliably affect B’s judgement.
Based on the text of their article, I think the arrow there is a mistake.
‘Links 5 and 6 are hypothesized to occur rarely but should be of great interest to philosophers because they are used to solve dilemmas’ (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008, p. 188)

An inconsistent dyad

1. ‘moral reasoning is [...] usually engaged in after a moral judgment is made, in which a person searches for arguments that will support an already-made judgment’ (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008, p. 189).

2. Moral reasoning can overcome (i) affective support for judgements about not harming and (ii) affective obstacles to deliberately harming others.

significance?

Observations of the role of reason in enabling inhumane acts
appear to provide grounds sufficient to reject the view that
moral intuitions are always, or even characteristically, entirely consequences of feelings.

Further significance: We also have evidence for the 'sometimes' part

puzzle

Why are moral intuitions sometimes, but not always, a consequence of reasoning from known principles?

Can strengthen this by considering moral disengagement.