The Ethical Significance of Cognitive Science

Abstract

Since empirical research in cognitive science answers only descriptive questions, some philosophers may protest that it cannot yield answers to normative questions in ethics. This chapter shows how cognitive science informs three topics of inquiry in ethics—the nature of moral judgment, debunking arguments, and non-ideal theory. It focuses on metaethics and normative ethics. The chapter lays out the relevant philosophical subjects, explains how cognitive science can help address them, and illustrates by discussing recent work in naturalistic ethics. Cognitive science informs metaethical investigation of moral judgment when the target of study is moral judgment itself, rather than the concept, because cognitive science facilitates empirical study of paradigm cases of moral judgment and their causal/explanatory role. Debunking arguments in ethics can rely on cognitive science to supply empirical premises about the causes of moral belief. The principal challenge for debunking arguments is to identify credible empirical premises.