torekp comments on A Sketch of an Anti-Realist Metaethics - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Jack 22 August 2011 05:32AM

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Comment author: torekp 25 August 2011 12:55:36AM *  2 points [-]

Psychopaths, or at least convicted criminals (the likely target of research), may lack the distinction between moral and conventional. But there are brain-damage-induced cases of sociopathy <PDF> in which individuals can still make that distinction (page 2 of the link). These patients with ventromedial frontal brain damage retain their moral reasoning abilities and beliefs but lose their moral motivation. So, I don't think even the claim that moral judgments necessarily carry some motivational force is true.

@lessdazed: nice point.

Comment author: Jack 25 August 2011 01:30:50AM 3 points [-]

Great article, really exciting to read because this:

My working model of how VM cortex is involved in moral belief and motivation is that VM cortex is necessary for acquisition of moral concepts, but not their retention or employment. Damage to VM cortex results in disconnection of the pathway by which cognitive processing of moral propositions normally causes activation of emotional and motivational systems that ultimately lead to action. This model explains why moral reasoning usually results in moral motivation, why damage to VM cortex in early life prevents people from learning moral concepts, and why the connection between moral belief and motivation is contingent and not necessary, and thus why the form of MI I target is false. It also explains why damage to VM cortex fails to impair the moral concepts and beliefs of VM patients who have already acquired moral knowledge.

Is exactly the kind of thing projectionism expects us to find. You need an intact VM cortex to develop moral beliefs in the first place. Once your emotional responses are projected into beliefs about the external world you can loose the emotional response through VM cortex damage but retain the beliefs without the motivation.

Comment author: torekp 25 August 2011 10:35:32PM 0 points [-]

I agree, projectivism strongly predicts that emotional faculties will be vital to moral development. But most cognitivist approaches would also predict that the emotional brain has a large role to play. For example, consider this part of the article:

Damage to VM cortex results in difficulties in attributing emotional states to others on the basis of facial and vocal characteristics (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2003), and leads to the disruption of the subjective experience of emotion, as indicated by self-report (Bechara et al., 2000, Damasio et al. 1990). What we can conclude from these studies is that VM patients have emotional deficits, and have difficulty in attributing emotions to others, and thus that they may not be reliable in emotion attribution.

People who can't tell whether others are suffering or prospering are going to be seriously impaired in moral learning, on almost any philosophical ethical view.

Comment author: Jack 26 August 2011 12:02:21AM 0 points [-]

Sure. But, to tie it back to what we were discussing before, that internalism is false when it comes to moral beliefs is not evidence against a projectivist and non-cognitivist thesis.

As a tentative aside-- I'm not sure whether or not internalism is a necessary part of the anti-realist position. It seems conceivable that there could be preferences, desires or emotive dispositions that aren't motivating at all. It certainly seems psychologically implausible- but it doesn't follow that it is impossible.

Someone should do a series of qualitative interviews with VM cortex impaired patients. I'd like to know things like what "ought" means to them.

Comment author: torekp 28 August 2011 02:08:10AM 0 points [-]

In a Bayesian sense, the falsity of internalism tends to weaken the case for projectivism and non-cognitivism, by taking away an otherwise promising line of support for them. Mackie's argument from queerness relies upon it, for example.

Comment author: Jack 28 August 2011 03:17:15AM -1 points [-]

Mackie conflates two aspects of queerness- motivation and direction, the latter of which remains even if motivational internalism is false. Second, that motivation can be detached from moral judgment in impaired brains doesn't mean that moral facts don't have a queer associate with motivation.

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