Why Is Moral Dumbfounding Significant?

I introduce and refute Dwyer (2009)’s argument that moral dumbfounding provides evidence for what she calls ‘The Linguistic Analogy’.

In its place, I defend a different view. The existence of moral dumbfounding shows that some moral intuitions are not consequences of reasoning from known principles.

• stream
• youtube
• slides only

Notes

What Does Moral Dumbfounding Show? A Misconstrual

Dwyer (2009, p. 294) takes the evidence for moral dumbfounding to show that

moral ‘judgments are [not] the conclusions of explicitly represented syllogisms, one or more premises of which are moral principles, that ordinary folk can articulate.’

This is a mistake. The abstract for Haidt, Bjorklund, & Murphy (2000) states:

‘It was hypothesized that participants’ judgments would be highly consistent with their reasoning on the moral reasoning dilemma’ [ie. reasoning concerning the morally provocative and harmfull events].

And this is what those researchers found.

What Does Moral Dumbfounding Truly Show?

The existence of moral dumbfounding shows that some moral intuitions are not consequences of reasoning from known principles.

It also appears to support the view that, in some cases of moral intution, the moral attributes being tracked are inaccessible. Which is significant because we had difficultly finding evidence for this earlier (in Moral Attributes Are Inaccessible).

It does not show that no ethical judgements are consequences of reasoning from known principles. Indeed, reflection on moral disengagement suggests that this is false.

Glossary

References