Reason , Society , and the Social Intuitionist Model (original) (raw)
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Normativity of Moral Intuitions in the Social Intuitionist Model
TThe aim of this paper is to answer the question of whether moral intuitions, understood in terms of Jonathan Haidt's Social Intuitionist Model (SIM), have any normative power. The conclusion is no. And there are many separate arguments in favor of it. First, these moral intuitions cannot be objective, justifying reasons that are expected to arise in the course of making a ‘real’ moral judgment. Second, we do not even know if they actually represent the grounds for moral judgments. There are too few reasons to exclude the possibility that, when we make moral judgments, we unconsciously follow moral rules, which can be objective moral reasons. Furthermore, in Haidt's terms, moral intuitions are most probably heuristic by nature. But if they are, it is even more problematic for their normativity because they can lead to mistakes. There is also a lacuna in the research concerning problems with resolving moral dilemmas in which two strong moral intuitions are involved. Third, philosophers claim that there is some other kind of justified moral intuitions and psychologists often mistakenly mix together these two phenomena. In this paper, all of these arguments will be examined and they will serve to justify the lack of normativity of moral intuitions in the SIM.
Bias and Reasoning: Haidt's Theory of Moral Judgment
New Waves in Ethics, ed. ThomBrooks. Basingstoke: …
According to Haidt's Social Intuitionist Model (SIM) of moral judgment, most moral judgments are generated by the intuitive process and the purpose of reasoning is to provide a post hoc and biased basis for justification. The SIM is of great importance for moral philosophers because if the SIM were an accurate description of how we arrive at our moral judgments, the evidential weight of most of our moral judgments may be undercut. In this paper, I question Haidt's claim that reasoning provides a biased basis for justification by challenging his claim that reasoning is biased. After presenting the tendencies that, according to Haidt, make reasoning biased, I draw on the literature on epistemic justification to show that these tendencies are not always biases. If I am right, it is premature to claim that our reasoning is biased, and that the purpose of reasoning is to provide a biased basis for justification.
The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment
Psychological Review, 2001
Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences. The model is an intuitionist model in that it states that moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations (intuitions). The model is more consistent than rationalist models with recent findings in social, cultural, evolutionary, and biological psychology, as well as in anthropology and primatology.
Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, 2012
The notion of 'intuition' is usually contrasted with rational thought, thus motivating a differentiation between two kinds of processes that are supposed to characterize human thinking, i.e. rational and 'intuitive' (immediate and non-argumentative) forms of judgment. Recently, the notion of intuition has also played a leading role in cognitive studies on morality with the rise of so-called social intuitionism, according to which people's moral stances are culturally driven intuitions -i.e. they are quick, involuntary and automatic responses driven by culturally and socially acquired principles (see e.g.
The social character of moral reasoning
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
May provides a compelling case that reasoning is central to moral psychology. In practice, many morally significant decisions involve several moral agents whose actions are interdependent – and agents embedded in society. We suggest that social life and the rich patterns of reasoning that underpin it are ethical through and through.