moral theory meets cognitive science how the cognitive sciences can transform traditional debates

1. 1 Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates Stephen Stich Dept. of Philosophy & Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University sstich@ruccs.rutgers.edu

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3. 3 Introduction Psychological (?) Egoism & Psychological (?) Altruism offer conflicting accounts of the nature of human motivation The debate between ? Egoists & ? Altruists has been raging since Hobbes �some would say since Plato In the last � of the 20th century, the debate was joined by a growing number of psychologists & biologists

4. 4 Introduction I think work in psychol-ogy, particularly the work of Daniel Batson & his colleagues, has made more progress toward resolving the debate than philosophers have made in the last 400 years

5. 5 Introduction I don�t agree with Batson�s contention that he has shown altruism to be true But that�s a topic for another occasion

6. 6 Introduction The biological arguments, in my view, have contributed little to the resolution of the debate But one recent biological argument for altruism has made a rather different sort of contribution

7. 7 Introduction It has made it clear that the traditional debate has assumed a far too limited view of the sort of cognitive architecture that might underlie human motivation When that restrictive assumption is abandoned, it undermines the traditional debate � by challenging the pervasive assumption that moral philosophers need to worry about psychological egoism

8. 8 Introduction It is this �deconstruction� of the debate that I want to develop in this talk But before doing that, I�ll need to devote a fair amount of time justifying my claim that the biological arguments have not resolved the debate

9. 9 Overview ? Egoism vs. ? Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Can Evolutionary Theory Resolve the Debate? Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism: A Crucial Distinction Evolutionary Arguments Against Altruism An Evolutionary Argument For Altruism Should Moral Philosophers Worry about ? egoism?

10. 10 Overview ? Egoism vs. ? Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Can Evolutionary Theory Resolve the Debate? Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism: A Crucial Distinction Evolutionary Arguments Against Altruism An Evolutionary Argument For Altruism Should Moral Philosophers Worry about ? egoism?

11. 11 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care

12. 12 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care What Hobbes is claiming is that all human motivation is egoistic Of course people sometimes help others But they do this only because they believe that it will result in some benefit for themselves If they did not believe this, �benevolence� and �mutual help� would come to an end

13. 13 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Other philosophers take a less pessimistic view of human motivation They grant that people are often motivated by self-interest But they insist that people sometimes act altruistically i.e. people are sometimes motivated only by a desire to promote the well-being of someone else



16. 16 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care This is, it seems, a debate about the nature of human motivation. It is an interesting psychological question But why should moral philosophers care which side is right?

17. 17 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Some philosophers maintain that altruism is central to, or necessary for, or even identical with morality �Moral behavior is, at the most general level, altruistic behavior, motivated by the desire to promote not only our own welfare but the welfare of others.� (Rachels, �Naturalism�)

18. 18 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care �[O]ne central assumption motivating ethical theory in the Analytic tradition is that the function of ethics is to combat the inherent egoism or selfishness of individuals. Indeed, many thinkers define the basic goal of morality as �selfless-ness� or �altruism�.� (Schroeder, �Continental Ethics�)

19. 19 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care This is a extreme view of the relation between altruism & morality for which I have been unable to find any serious argument Some influential thinkers � most notably Kant � deny that altruistically motivated behavior has �true moral worth�

20. 20 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care The quote from Hobbes suggests a more plausible reason for moral philosophers to be interested in the debate


22. 22 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Similar concerns were high on the agenda of both Bentham & Mill

23. 23 Egoism vs. Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Both Bentham & Mill were ? Egoists As Utilitarians, they believed that people should chose the action that will lead to the greatest good for the greatest number But ? Egoism entails that people are only motivated to chose the action which they believe will lead to the greatest good for themselves This led them to propose some draconian measures to insure that people were motivated to do what Utilitarian moral theory said they should do




27. 27 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism The sort of altruism that moral philosophers are concerned with is psychological altruism To say that behavior is psychologically altruistic is to make a claim about the motivation for the behavior

28. 28 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Behavior is psychologically altruistic if it is motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of others Two bits of jargon need to be explained



31. 31 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Behavior is psychologically altruistic if it is motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of others Though there is a lot to be said about this notion, in this talk we can safely rely on some intuitive examples

32. 32 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Behavior is psychologically altruistic if it is motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of others Desires to save someone else�s life alleviate someone else�s pain cure someone else�s illness make someone else happy are all desires for the well-being of others

33. 33 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism More needs to be said about what it is for behavior to be motivated by a particular ultimate desire The intuitive idea is that a desire is ultimate if the object of the desire is desired for its own sake rather than because the agent thinks that satisfying the desire will lead to the satisfaction of some other desire This can be made more precise by appeal to one interpretation of the traditional notion of practical reasoning

34. 34 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Practical reasoning is a causal process via which a desire + a belief give rise to or sustain a new desire E.g. If I want a great sorbet, and believe Berthillon makes the best sorbet in the world, then I will form a desire to go to Berthillon If I believe the best way to get to Berthillon is to take the Metro then I�ll form a desire to take the Metro Etc.

37. 37 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Desires formed or sustained by practical reasoning are instrumental desires But if we are to avoid circularity or infinite regress, not all desires can be instrumental Desires that are not the product of practical reasoning are ultimate desires



44. 44 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism A behavior (or behavioral disposition) is evolutionarily altruistic iff it decreases the inclusive fitness of the organism exhibiting the behavior and increases the inclusive fitness of some other organism Inclusive fitness is (roughly) a measure of how many copies of an organism�s genes exist in future generations

45. 45 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Thus an organism can increase it�s inclusive fitness either by reproducing or by helping kin to reproduce So behaviors that help kin to reproduce are typically not evolutionarily altruistic �Behavior� is interpreted broadly; paramecia & even plants can behave

46. 46 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Evolutionary altruism & psychological altruism are logically independent � neither entails the other Evolutionary altruism without psychological altruism It is (logically) possible for an organism to exhibit evolutionary altruism even though it has no mind at all, and thus can�t have any ultimate desires Plants and paramecia can be evolutionary altruists

47. 47 Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism Evolutionary altruism & psychological altruism are logically independent � neither entails the other Psychological altruism without evolutionary altruism If an organism has ultimate desires for the well-being of it�s offspring, it is a psychological altruist But the helping behaviors these desires lead to will typically not be evolutionarily altruistic, since they will increase the parent�s inclusive fitness



50. 50 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Many theorists believe that evolutionary altruism is biologically impossible �Scratch an �altruist� and watch a �hypocrite� bleed.� Michael Ghiselin (1974) And some have claimed that if this is right then psychological altruism is biologically impossible as well

51. 51 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism But since the two concepts are logically independent, there is no easy or obvious way to go from facts about evolutionary altruism to conclusions about psychological altruism

52. 52 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism It has also been suggested that evolutionary considerations impose important limits on the scope of psychological altruism in humans The argument is usually developed along the following lines

53. 53 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Psychological altruists are disposed to help others even when their helping behavior lowers the likelihood of their own reproductive success There are only two ways in which such a disposition can evolve Kin selection Reciprocal altruism

54. 54 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Kin selection Hamilton showed how genes leading to costly helping behavior could spread thru a popula-tion, provided that the recipients of help are kin

55. 55 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Reciprocal altruism Trivers showed how dispositions to help can evolve when episodes of helping are part of a longer term reciprocal strategy in which the organism that is the beneficiary of helping behavior is disposed to help its benefactor on some subsequent occasion

56. 56 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism So it is biologically possible for organisms to have ultimate desires to help their kin, and to help non - kin with whom they engage in ongoing reciprocal altruism But apart from these special cases, psychological altruism can�t evolve

57. 57 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Though remarkably influential, this argument is far from convincing



60. 60 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism It has long been recognized that group selection, in which one group of individuals leaves more descendants than another group, can lead to the evolution of helping behavior Until recently the reigning orthodoxy in evolutionary biology has been that group selection is very unlikely to occur in species like ours This view has been boldly challenged by Sober and Wilson While their view is very controversial, I think that the extent to which group selection played a role in human evolution is very much an open question

61. 61 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Much less controversially, Boyd and Richerson have developed models demonstrating that helping behavior (and, indeed, just about any sort of behavior) can evolve if informal punishment is meted out to individuals who do not help in circumstances when they are expected to

62. 62 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Sripada has argued that ultimate desires for the well-being of others could evolve via a different route There are many situations in which people are better off if they act in a coordinated way, but where no specific way of acting is best. In these situations several different �coordination equilibria� may be equally adaptive. To deal with this problem, natural selection may well have led to the evolution of a psychological mechanism that generates ultimate desires to adhere to locally prevailing customs or practices Since some of those locally prevailing customs may require helping others, some of the ultimate desires produced by that psychological mechanism might well be psychologically altruistic

63. 63 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism If Boyd & Richerson and Sripada are right, (and I think they are) then evolutionary theory gives us no reason to suppose that psychological altruism must be restricted to kin and individuals involved in reciprocal exchanges


65. 65 Evolutionary Arguments Against Psychological Altruism Psychological altruists are disposed to help others even when their helping behavior lowers the likelihood of their own reproductive success



68. 68 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism

69. 69 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism The focus: Parental care An excellent strategic choice, because human parental care is surely importantly shaped by natural selection, and one mechanism that natural selection might exploit is an ultimate desire for one�s children�s welfare Since parental care is not evolutionarily altruistic concerns about evolutionary altruism can be put off to the side

70. 70 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Sober & Wilson�s game plan �We conjecture that human parents typically want their children to do well � to live rather than die, to be healthy rather than sick, and so on. The question we will address is whether this desire is merely an instrumental desire in the service of some egoistic ultimate goal, or part of a pluralistic motivational system in which there is an ultimate altruistic concern for the child�s welfare. We will argue that there are evolutionary reasons to expect motivational pluralism to be the proximate mechanism for producing parental care in our species.� (301) �We will focus � on hedonism as the main competitor that the altruism hypothesis must confront�. By pitting altruism against hedonism, we are asking the altruism hypothesis to reply to the version of egoism that is most difficult to refute.�(297)

71. 71 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Would natural selection prefer altruism or hedonism? S&W maintain that 3 factors influence which sort of solution will evolve Availability � trait must be present in the population Reliability Energetic efficiency

72. 72 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism There is, S&W argue, no reason to think hedonism & altruism differ in energetic efficiency availability But they maintain that an altruistic mechanism would be more reliable And thus it is more likely that the altruistic mechanism would be the one that evolved

73. 73 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Are they right? In debates about cognitive mechanisms, the devil is in the details So let�s look at some of those details

77. 77 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Sober & Wilson offer a total of four arguments for the greater reliability of altruism � focusing on Current Pain Hedonism Three of these arguments are easily refuted For details, see Stich, �Evolution, Altruism & Cognitive Architecture: A Critique of Sober & Wilson�s Argument for Psychological Altruism, Biology & Philosophy, 2006 Since time is short, I�ll focus on their 4th argument, from which there is much to learn

78. 78 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism The Argument: �Suppose a hedonistic organism believes on a given occasion that providing parental care is the way for it to attain its ultimate goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. What would happen if the organism provides parental care, but then discovers that this action fails to deliver maximal pleasure and minimal pain? If the organism is able to learn from experience, it will probably be less inclined to take care of its children on subsequent occasions. Instrumental desires tend to diminish and disappear in the face of negative evidence of this sort. This can make hedonistic motivation a rather poor control device.� (314) The �instrumental desire will remain in place only if the organism �. is trapped by an unalterable illusion.� (315)

81. 81 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism S&W are making an important point Both versions of Hedonism rely on specific (& prima facie empirical) beliefs Those beliefs, like other beliefs, might be undermined by evidence (including misleading evidence) or by more theoretical beliefs (rational or irrational) that a person could acquire by a variety of routes All of this makes the process underlying parental care look quite vulnerable to disruption and suggests that natural selection would likely opt for some more reliable way to get this crucial job done

85. 85 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism So has altruism been vindicated? I am not persuaded To explain why, we�ll need to take a more careful look at the account of ultimate & instrumental desires that S&W (and much of the rest of the altruism literature) rely on and at the assumptions about cognitive processing and cognitive architecture that this account presupposes

86. 86 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism An instrumental desire was defined as desire that is produced or sustained by a process of practical reasoning like this one:

87. 87 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Nothing was said about the notion of belief involved in this process; it was simply taken for granted Like others in this area, including S&W, I tacitly adopted the standard view that beliefs are inferentially integrated representational states that play a characteristic role in an agent�s cognitive economy To say that a belief is inferentially integrated is to say (roughly) that it can be both generated and removed by inferential processes that can take any (or just about any) other beliefs as premises

88. 88 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism But the psychology, cognitive science & philosophy literature often discuss belief-like states that are �stickier� than this Once acquired, these �stickier� belief-like states are harder to modify by changing other beliefs In a paper written a zillion years ago, I called these �sub-doxastic states�

89. 89 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Examples include: The grammatical rules that, according to Chomsky, underlie comprehension, speech production & linguistic judgment �Core beliefs� like those posited by Carey & Spelke

90. 90 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Since sub-doxastic states can play a role in inference-like interactions, and since practical reasoning is an inference-like interaction, it is possible that sub-doxastic states play the belief-role in some episodes of practical reasoning So instead of this

91. 91 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism We might sometimes have this

92. 92 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism What makes practical reasoning structures like this important for our purposes is that, since SUB-DOXASTIC STATE 1 is difficult or impossible to remove using evidence or inference, DESIRE 2 will be reliably correlated with DESIRE 1



95. 95 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Let�s now ask: Is DESIRE 2 instrumental or ultimate? Since the objects of ultimate desires are �desired for their own sakes� and since the object of DESIRE 2 is not desired for its own sake, it seems natural enough to say that DESIRE 2 is instrumental

96. 96 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism But if desires like DESIRE 2 do count as instrumental, then Sober & Wilson�s evolutionary argument for psychological altruism is in trouble.

99. 99 An Evolutionary Argument FOR Psychological Altruism Thus Sober & Wilson have not made their case that ALTRUISM is more reliable than HEDONISM

100. 100 Overview ? Egoism vs. ? Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Can Evolutionary Theory Resolve the Debate? Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism: A Crucial Distinction Evolutionary Arguments Against Altruism An Evolutionary Argument For Altruism Should Moral Philosophers Worry about ? Egoism?

101. 101 Overview ? Egoism vs. ? Altruism: Why Philosophers Care Can Evolutionary Theory Resolve the Debate? Psychological Altruism & Evolutionary Altruism: A Crucial Distinction Evolutionary Arguments Against Altruism An Evolutionary Argument For Altruism Should Moral Philosophers Worry about ? Egoism?

102. 102 Should Moral Philosophers Worry About ? Egoism? Recall Hobbes, Bentham & Mill were worried about ? Egoism because they believed it made pro-social behavior fragile If people believe that behaving pro-socially will not lead to their �own good � there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, not consequently of mutual help� (Leviathan,1651, Ch. 15)

103. 103 Should Moral Philosophers Worry About ? Egoism? But one lesson to be learned from the critique of Sober & Wilson�s argument is that if �Mother Nature� (or natural selection, or God) wanted to foster pro-social behavior in a given domain, she need not have made us ? altruists in that domain It would be equally effective to make us ? egoists (indeed, hedonists!) with an appropriate sub-doxastic state

106. 106 Should Moral Philosophers Worry About ? Egoism? Of course, the Egoist�s instrumental pro-social desire may be overridden by a stronger self-interested desire But the Altruist�s intrinsic pro-social desire can ALSO be overridden by a stronger self-interested desire

107. 107 Should Moral Philosophers Worry About ? Egoism? So contrary to what generations of philosophers have assumed, pro-social behavior is no more fragile if ? Egoism is true than if ? Altruism is true Moreover, by my lights, a ? Egoist who is reliably prosocial is more morally appealing than a ? Altruist whose desire to help is ultimate and unconnected to affect

108. Should Moral Philosophers Worry About ? Egoism? Arguably, Mother Teresa helped the wretched because she found their distress painful and alleviating that distress brought her joy And these are the motives of a ? Egoist!

moral theory meets cognitive science how the cognitive sciences can transform traditional debates

moral theory meets cognitive science how the cognitive sciences can transform traditional debates

Presentation Transcript

Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates

Cognitive & Moral Development

Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science

Cognitive Theory

The Cognitive Load Theory

The cognitive theory

The Cognitive Load Theory

Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates

The Cognitive Load Theory

Cognitive Science

Traditional Moral Theory

COGNITIVE THEORY

Cognitive Science

Can Cognitive Science Survive Hypercomputation?

Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science

Cognitive modelling (Cognitive Science MSc.)

Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates

Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science How the Cognitive Sciences Can Transform Traditional Debates

Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science

moral theory meets cognitive science how the cognitive sciences can transform traditional debates