Reasoning beyond Consequences

Abstract

Experimental research demonstrates that moral judgment involves both conscious and unconscious reasoning or inference that is not mere post-hoc rationalization. The evidence suggests in particular that we treat as morally significant more than the consequences of a person’s actions, including characteristically deontological distinctions between: intentional vs. accidental outcomes, actions vs. omissions, and harming as a means vs. a byproduct (familiar from the Doctrine of Double Effect). And the relevant empirical evidence relies on more than responses to unrealistic moral dilemmas characteristic of the trolley problem. The result is an extremely minimal dual process model of moral judgment on which we at least compute both an action’s outcomes and the actor’s role in bringing them about. This view resembles the famous linguistic analogy (or moral grammar hypothesis) in only its least controversial aspects, particularly the emphasis on unconscious reasoning in moral cognition.