Greene would probably not dispute that philosophers have generally agreed that the difference between the lever and footbridge cases are due to “apparently non-significant changes in the situation”
However, what philosophers have typically done is either bit the bullet and said one ought to push, or denied that one ought to push in the footbridge case, but then feel the need to defend commonsense intuitions by offering a principled justification for the distinction between the two. The trolley literature is rife with attempts to vindicate an unwillingness to push, because these philosophers are starting from the assumption that commonsense moral intuitions track deep moral truths and we must explicate the underlying, implicit justification our moral competence is picking up on.
What Greene is doing by appealing to neuroscientific/psychological evidence is to offer a selective debunking explanation of some of those intuitions but not the others. If the evidence demonstrates that one set of outputs (deontological judgments) are the result of an unreliable cognitive process, and another set of outputs (utilitarian judgments) are the result of reliable cognitive processes, then he can show that we have reason to doubt one set of intuitions but not the other, provided we agree with his criteria about what constitutes a reliable vs. an unreliable process. A selective debunking argument of this kind, relying as it does on the reliability of distinct psychological systems or processes, does in fact turn on the empirical evidence (in this case, on his dual process model of moral cognition).
[But nobody believes that judgements are correct or wrong merely because of the process that produces them.]
Sure, but Greene does not need to argue that deontological/utilitarian conclusions are correct or incorrect, only that we have reason to doubt one but not the other. If we can offer reasons to doubt the very psychological processes that give rise to deontological intuitions, this skepticism may be sufficient to warrant skepticism about the larger project of assuming that these intuitions are underwitten by implicit, non-obvious justifications that the philosopher’s job is to extract and explicate.
You mention evolutionary debunking arguments as an alternative that is known “without any reference to psychology.” I think this is mistaken. Evolutionary debunking arguments are entirely predicated on specific empirical claims about the evolution of human psychology, and are thus a perfect example of the relevance of empirical findings to moral philosophy.
[Also it’s worth clarifying that Greene only deals with a particular instance of a deontological judgement rather than deontological judgements in general.]
Yes, I completely agree and I think this is a major weakness with Greene’s account.
I think there are two other major problems: the fMRI evidence he has is not very convincing, and trolley problems offer a distorted psychological picture of the distinction between utilitarian and non-utilitarian moral judgment. Recent work by Kahane shows that people who push in footbridge scenarios tend not to be utilitarians, just people with low empathy. The same people that push tend to also be more egoistic, less charitable, less impartial, less concerned about maximizing welfare, etc.
Regarding your last point two points: I agree that one move is to simply reject how he talks about intuitions (or one could raise other epistemic challenges presumably). I also agree that training in psychology/neuroscience but not philosophy impairs one’s ability to evaluate arguments that presumably depend on competence in both. I am not sure why you bring this up though, so if there was an inference I should draw from this help me out!
Thanks for the excellent reply.
Greene would probably not dispute that philosophers have generally agreed that the difference between the lever and footbridge cases are due to “apparently non-significant changes in the situation”
However, what philosophers have typically done is either bit the bullet and said one ought to push, or denied that one ought to push in the footbridge case, but then feel the need to defend commonsense intuitions by offering a principled justification for the distinction between the two. The trolley literature is rife with attempts to vindicate an unwillingness to push, because these philosophers are starting from the assumption that commonsense moral intuitions track deep moral truths and we must explicate the underlying, implicit justification our moral competence is picking up on.
What Greene is doing by appealing to neuroscientific/psychological evidence is to offer a selective debunking explanation of some of those intuitions but not the others. If the evidence demonstrates that one set of outputs (deontological judgments) are the result of an unreliable cognitive process, and another set of outputs (utilitarian judgments) are the result of reliable cognitive processes, then he can show that we have reason to doubt one set of intuitions but not the other, provided we agree with his criteria about what constitutes a reliable vs. an unreliable process. A selective debunking argument of this kind, relying as it does on the reliability of distinct psychological systems or processes, does in fact turn on the empirical evidence (in this case, on his dual process model of moral cognition).
[But nobody believes that judgements are correct or wrong merely because of the process that produces them.]
Sure, but Greene does not need to argue that deontological/utilitarian conclusions are correct or incorrect, only that we have reason to doubt one but not the other. If we can offer reasons to doubt the very psychological processes that give rise to deontological intuitions, this skepticism may be sufficient to warrant skepticism about the larger project of assuming that these intuitions are underwitten by implicit, non-obvious justifications that the philosopher’s job is to extract and explicate.
You mention evolutionary debunking arguments as an alternative that is known “without any reference to psychology.” I think this is mistaken. Evolutionary debunking arguments are entirely predicated on specific empirical claims about the evolution of human psychology, and are thus a perfect example of the relevance of empirical findings to moral philosophy.
[Also it’s worth clarifying that Greene only deals with a particular instance of a deontological judgement rather than deontological judgements in general.]
Yes, I completely agree and I think this is a major weakness with Greene’s account.
I think there are two other major problems: the fMRI evidence he has is not very convincing, and trolley problems offer a distorted psychological picture of the distinction between utilitarian and non-utilitarian moral judgment. Recent work by Kahane shows that people who push in footbridge scenarios tend not to be utilitarians, just people with low empathy. The same people that push tend to also be more egoistic, less charitable, less impartial, less concerned about maximizing welfare, etc.
Regarding your last point two points: I agree that one move is to simply reject how he talks about intuitions (or one could raise other epistemic challenges presumably). I also agree that training in psychology/neuroscience but not philosophy impairs one’s ability to evaluate arguments that presumably depend on competence in both. I am not sure why you bring this up though, so if there was an inference I should draw from this help me out!