Famine, Affluence, and Amorality

Abstract

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.

The disunity of moral judgment: Implications for the study of psychopathy

“…They state that "our claim is not only that there are different kinds of moral judgments; it is also that nothing at all, at any level, unifies those kinds" (Sinnott-Armstrong & Wheatley, 2014, p. 455). Sackris (2021) also concludes that we have good reason for doubting that moral judgments form a distinctive kind, arguing that the decision context influences what properties the judgment made in said context ends up having.…”

“…For example, Blair (2005) attributes psychopathy primarily to dysfunction in the amygdala, while others have attributed psychopathic disorders to dysfunction in the frontal lobe (Gorenstein, 1982;Raine, 2002), and the paralimbic system (Kiehl, 2006), just to name a few brain areas that have been implicated in the disorder. 4 Recently, however, primarily in the field of psychology but also within philosophy, there has been some doubt as to whether the psychopathic individual really is morally impaired (Jurjako and Malatesti, 2018;Marshall, Watts, and Lilienfield, 2018;Gay et al, 2018;Larsen, Jalava and Griffiths, 2020;Jalava and Griffiths, 2017;Sinnott-Armstrong, 2014;Sackris, 2021), with some even questioning whether psychopathy constitutes a distinctive disorder that can be meaningfully correlated with dysfunction in specific neural systems (Crego and Widiger, 2015;Jalava, Griffiths and Maraun, 2015;Jalava and Griffiths, 2022;Lilienfield, 2021;Marshall et al, 2016).…”

The disunity of moral judgment: Evidence and implications

“…Alternatively, if a person believes that all moral judgments are the result of emotion processes (i.e., non-cognitivists), then again, this person believes that there is a significant feature shared by all moral judgments such that if a judgment does not involve (or is not constituted by) emotion processes, then the judgment in question is not a "moral" one. There have already been significant philosophical arguments to the effect that moral judgments do not constitute a unified category in virtue of sharing some significant feature (e.g., Sackris, 2021;Sinnott-Armstrong & Wheatley, 2014;Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2012;Stich, 2006). We largely agree with such arguments and do not aim to rehash them here.…”