From Moral Actions to Moral Judgments

Slide I

Readings:
! Today: “Emotion and Moral Judgment” (Tiberius Ch.5).
! Next time: “Sentimentalism and Rationalism” (Tiberius Ch.6).
Slide II

What’s the chapter about?

! So far our focus has been on moral actions and their reasons.
! But making moral judgments is no less important than carrying out moral
actions.
! What counts as a moral judgment?
! More specifically, can judgments that fail to bring about any disposition to
act ever be moral judgments?
Slide III

Judgment internalism (or moral judgment internalism)

! The view: “moral judgments are essentially motivating” (Tiberius, 2015,
p. 79).
! Why judgment internalism?
! While judgment internalism claims that all moral judgments bring about
some disposition to act, the disposition may or may not actually lead to
actions.
! Those denying judgment internalism subscribe to judgment externalism (or
moral judgment externalism).
So judgment externalism is the view that there are moral judgments
that creates no disposition to act.
Many everyday examples seem to support externalism: for example,
people could provide deceptive answers in job interviews even when
convinced that doing so is wrong (79).
Slide IV

Judgment internalism and reasons internalism

! Judgment internalism differs from a kind of internalism we have already
seen – reasons internalism, which is also called reasons existence internalism
(50).
RI has been described as the view that every normative reason is also
a motivating reason (at least in the right contexts).
An alternative characterization: “According to existence internalism,
a necessary connection exists between having a certain normative
status and motivation. A state of affairs couldn’t be good, for example,
unless apprehension of it was capable of motivating, though it need
not motivate overridingly” (Rosati, 2016, §2 ¶4, note omitted).
Slide V

! How the two kinds of internalism differ: “Whereas judgment internalism

states a necessary condition on being a judgment of a certain kind,
existence internalism states a necessary condition on being an act or state
or consideration of a certain normative kind” (Rosati, 2016, §3.2 ¶2).
! One way to think about the relation between the two forms of internalism:
Given a person p, judgment internalism concerns whether a certain
state – making a moral judgment – can be ascribed to p.
Given a person p and something x , reasons internalism concerns
whether a certain relation – being justified by – can be ascribed to the
pair (p, x ).
Slide VI

! An example: suppose John is a politician who has just rejected a plan to

assassinate a general orchestrating the invasion of John’s country. The
following judgment is why John makes the decision: “avoiding
assassinations is good, because it raises the likelihood of a ceasefire and a
ceasefire is valuable.”
Suppose John’s judgment is a moral judgment and judgment
internalism is true: a motivating state, namely John’s desire for a
ceasefire, is part of what makes John’s judgment a moral judgment.
Even so, the following could fail to be true: that avoiding
assassinations raises the likelihood of a ceasefire is a normative reason
for John’s decision only if John’s decision is motivated by the
prospects for a ceasefire. One could argue that the reason just
mentioned would be a good reason for John’s decision even if John
were to prefer a prolonged retaliatory war. In that case, reasons
internalism might be false.
Slide VII

A promising form of judgment internalism – sentimentalism

! Sentimentalism says that “emotions have an essential or constitutive role
in moral judgments” (76).
On one version of it, “moral thoughts are constituted by sentiments.
To think that X is wrong is, at least in part, to have a negative
sentiment towards X , or perhaps to have a higher-order positive
attitude towards a negative sentiment towards X ” (Kauppinen, 2022,
§3.1 ¶1).
A related view, expressivism, is often thought of as a linguistic thesis
about moral terms.
! Why sentimentalism? Let’s take a look at the passage beginning with
“Imagine that we find intelligent life on a distant planet...” (76).
! Sentimentalism has interesting implications for how we should think
about artificial moral agents.
Slide VIII

Whether sentimentalism is compelling partly depends on how we think about

emotions.
! Conception 1: emotions as states of irrationality
This conception doesn’t make sentimentalism an attractive view.
! Conception 2: emotions as states jointly individuated by a number of
features
Importance: emotions are “about things we care about or things that
matter to us” (71).
Rationality: emotions can be, or fail to be, reasonable.
Phenomenology: emotions are characterized by what it is like to be in
them.
Motivation: emotions have the power to bring about dispositions
Conception 2 is now prominent, but different clusters of theories construe the
relations among the features of emotions differently.
Slide IX
Cluster 1: cognitive theories
! Emotions are simply judgments about about one’s situation.
! Schachter and Singer’s 1962 experiment
The study was described as one of testing a new supplement, but
some participants unknowingly received injections of adrenaline,
which caused noticeable bodily symptoms.
The hypothesis to be tested: what emotion one experiences depends
on what judgment one makes about one’s situation.
Results suggesting that emotions are about one’s situation: when
participants were asked to report the emotions they experienced
when showing the bodily symptoms, different responses correlated
with different situations.
Results suggesting that emotions are judgments: the correlations just
mentioned were stronger in people who weren’t told of any bodily
effect the supplement could have.
! Worry: what if judgments only enabled the participants to label or
categorize their emotions, which weren’t themselves judgments?
Slide X

Cluster 2: feeling theories

! Tiberius’ description of Prinz’s view: “emotions are a kind of appraisal of
the situation (as the cognitivist theories take them to be), but appraisals are
not beliefs or judgments. Rather, appraisals are perceptions of bodily
changes that signify facts about our welfare” (2015, p. 73, note omitted).
Slide XI

! Why should we think that bodily changes signify anything?

Prinz: “I will say that a response within a perceptual system that
reliably occurs in response to a stimulus registers that stimulus. To
represent rather than merely registering, the state would have to have
the function of being caused by the stimulus” (2006, p. 141).
The function might be acquired through evolution or learning (2006,
p. 147).
What are sensed in emotions are patterns of bodily changes – for
example, not just a racing heart, but “a racing heart together with
strained breathing” (2006, p. 148).
It is unclear what evolutionary purposes would have been served by
representing patterns of bodily changes in addition to individual bodily
changes, which are already represented by interoception.
It makes more sense to think that emotions register patterns of bodily
changes but represent something else.
Slide XII

There are also hybrid theories that attempt to integrate cognitive and feeling
theories.
! Whether one takes emotions to be judgments, feelings or hybrid states,
emotions aren’t something incompatible with any standard of
appropriateness.
! If so, sentimentalism is at least prima facie acceptable.
Slide XIII

Additional arguments for sentimentalism: the hypnosis experiment

! Let’s take a look at the passage beginning with “There is also evidence that
emotions cause us to make moral judgments that we would not otherwise
make” (77).
Slide XIV

Additional arguments for sentimentalism: the argument from psychopathy

1 Psychopaths do a worse job in making appropriate moral judgments
because (or at least partly because) psychopaths do a worse job in
distinguishing moral norms from conventional norms.
“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by impulsivity,
egocentrism, lack of empathy and other traits” (80).
Conventional norms are distinguished from moral norms in terms of
severity, applicability, authority-dependency and typical justification.
2 Psychopaths do a worse job in distinguishing moral norms from
conventional norms because (or at least partly because) their emotional
system isn’t functioning properly.
3 Therefore, psychopaths do a worse job in making appropriate moral
judgments because (or at least partly because) their emotional system isn’t
functioning properly.
4 Therefore, having a properly functioning emotional system is a necessary
condition for making appropriate moral judgments.
 Slide XV

知 d的 rative

透過知識
{ 習技 kmomledge
华無法
Against the argument from psychopathy
! The case of acquired sociopaths
! Rejoinder: wouldn’t there be worries about equivocation?

時 英 專有名詞
選開書考
5 ± 填 5
小
止
长
工
文
References I

Kauppinen, Antti (2022). “Moral Sentimentalism”. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Ed. by Edward N. Zalta. Spring 2022 Edition. url:
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/moral-
sentimentalism/.
Prinz, Jesse J. (2006). “Is Emotion a Form of Perception?” In: Canadian Journal
of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 32, pp. 136–160.
Rosati, Connie S. (2016). “Moral Motivation”. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Ed. by Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2016 Edition. url: https:
//plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/moral-motivation/.
Tiberius, Valerie (2015). Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction. New
York: Routledge.