The deeper solution to the mystery of moralism—Believing in morality and free will are hazardous to your mental health

metaphysicist

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The deeper solution to the mystery of moralism—Believing in morality and free will are hazardous to your mental health

by metaphysicist

14th Oct 2012

5 min read

-34

[Crossposted.]

The complex relationship between Systems 1 and 2 and construal level

The distinction between pre-attentive and focal-attentive mental processes has dominated cognitive psychology for some 35 years. In the past decade has arisen another cognitive dichotomy specific to social psychology: processes of abstract construal (far cognition) versusconcrete construal (near cognition). This essay will theorize about the relationship between these dichotomies to clarify further how believing in the existence of free will and in the objective existence of morality can thwart reason by causing you to choose what you don’t want.

The state of the art on pre-attentive and focal-attentive processes is Daniel Kahneman’s bookThinking, Fast and Slow, where he calls pre-attentive processes System 1 and focal-attentive processes System 2. The reification of processes into fictional systems also resembles Freud’sSystem Csc (Conscious) and System Pcs (Preconscious). I’ll adopt the language System 1 andSystem 2, but readers can apply their understanding of conscious –preconscious, pre-attentive – focal-attentive, or automatic processes – controlled processes dichotomies. They name the same distinction, in which System 1 consists of processes occurring quickly and effortlessly in parallel outside awareness; System 2 consists of processes occurring slowly and effortfully in sequentialawareness, which in this context refers to the contents of working memory rather than raw experience and accompanies System 2 activity.

To integrate Systems 1 and 2 with construal-level theory, we note that System 2—the conscious part of our minds—can perform any of three routines in making a decision about taking some action, such as whether to vote in an election, a good example not just for timeliness but also for linkages to our main concern with morality: voting is a clear example of an action without tangible benefit. The potential voter might:

Case 1. Make a conscious decision to vote based on applying the principle that citizens owe a duty to vote in elections.

Case 2. Decide to be open to the candidates’ substantive positions and vote only if either candidate seems worthy of support.

Case 3. Experience a change of mind between 1 and 2.

The preceding were examples of the three routines System 2 can perform:

Case 1. Make the choice.

Case 2. “Program” System 1 to make the choice based on automatic criteria that don’t require sequential thinking.

Case 3. Interrupt System 1 in the face of anomalies.

When System 2 initiates action, whether it retains the power to decide or passes to System 1 is the difference between concrete and abstract construal. The second routine is key to understanding how Systems 1 and 2 work to produce the effects construal-level theory predicts. Keep in mind that the unconscious, automatic System 1 includes not just hardwired patterns but also skilled habits. Meanwhile, System 2 is notoriously “lazy,” unwilling to interrupt System 1, as in Case 3, but despite the perennial biases that plague system 1, resulting from letting System 1 have its way, the highest levels of expertise also occur in System 1.

A delegate System 1 operates with potentially complex holistic patterns typifying far cognition. This pattern is far because we offload distant matter to System 1 but exercise sequential control under System 2 as immediacy looms—although there are many exceptions. It is critical to distinguish far cognition from the lazy failure of System 2 to perform properly in Case 3. Such failure isn’t specific to mode. Far cognition, System 1 acting as delegate for System 2, is a narrower concept than automatic cognition, but far cognition is automatic cognition. Nearcognition admits no easy cross-classification.

Belief in free will and moral realism undermine our “fast and frugal heuristics”

The two most important recent books on the cognitive psychology of decision and judgment areThinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Gut Reactions: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer, and both insist on the contrast between their positions, although conflicts aren’t obvious. Kahneman explains System 1 biases as due to the mechanisms employed outside the range of evolutionary usefulness; Gigerenzer describes “fast and frugal heuristics” that sometimes misfire to produce biases. Where these half-empty versus half-full positions on heuristics and biases really differ is their overall appraisal of near and far processes, as Gigerenzer is a far thinker and Kahneman a near thinker, and they are both naturally biased for their preferred modes. Far thought shows more confidence in fast-and-frugal heuristics, since it offloads to System 1, whose province is to employ them.

The fast-and-frugal-heuristics way of thinking is particularly useful in understanding the effect of moral realism and free will: they cause System 2 to supplant System 1 in decision-making. When we apply principles of integrity to regulate our conduct, sometimes we do better in far mode, where System 2 offloads the task of determining compliance to System 1. To the contrary, if you have a principle of integrity that includes an absolute obligation to vote, you act as in Case 1: on a conscious decision. But principles of integrity do not really take this absolute form, an illusion begotten by moral realism. A principle of integrity flexible enough for actual use might favor voting (based, say, on a general principle embracing an obligation to perform duties) but disfavor it for “lowering the bar” when there’s only a choice between the lesser of evils. To practice the art of objectively applying these principles depends on your honest appraisal of the strength of your commitment to each virtue. System 2 is incapable of this feat; when it can be accomplished, it’s due to System 1’s automatic skills, operating unconsciously.Principles of integrity are applied more accurately in far-mode than near-mode. [Hat Tip to Overcoming Bias for these convenient phrases.]

But belief in moral realism and free will impel moral actors to apply their principles in near-mode. Objective morality and moral realism imply that compliance with morality results from freely willed acts. I’m not going to defend this premise thoroughly here, but this thought experiment might carry some persuasive weight. Read the following in near mode, and introspect your emotions:

Sexual predator Jerry Sandusky will serve his time in a minimal security prison, where he’s allowed groups of visitors five days a week.

Some readers will experience a sense of outrage. Then remind yourself: There’s no free will.If you believe the reminder, your outrage will subside; if you’ve long been a convinced and consistent determinist, you might not need to remind yourself. Morality inculpates based on acts of free will: morality and free will are inseparable.

A point I must emphasize because of its novelty: it’s System 1 that ordinarily determines what you want. System 2 doesn’t ordinarily deliberate about the subject directly; it deliberates about relevant facts, but in the end, you can only intuit your volition. You can’t deduce it.

What a belief in moral realism and free will do is nothing less than change the architecture of decision-making. When we practice principles of integrity and internalize them, they and nonmoral considerations co-determine our System 1 judgments, whereas according to moral realism and free will, moral good is the product of conscious free choice, so System 2 contrastsits moral opinion to System 1’s intuition, for which System 2 compensates—and usually overcompensates. The voter had to weigh the imperatives of the duty to vote and the duty to avoid “lowering the bar” when both candidates are ideologically and programmatically distasteful. System 2 can prime and program System 1 by studying the issues, but the multifaceted decision is itself best made by System 1. What happens when System 2 tries to decide these propositions? System 2 makes the qualitative judgment that System 1 is biased one way or the other and corrects System 1. This will implicate the overcompensation bias, in which conscious attempts to counteract biases usually overcorrect. A voter who thinks correction is needed for a bias toward shirking duty will vote when not really wanting to, all things considered. A voter biased toward "lowering the bar" will be excessively purist. Whatever standard the voter uses will be taken too far.

Belief in moral realism and free will biases practical reasoning

This essay presents the third of three ways that belief in objective morality and free will can cause people to do what they don’t want to do:

It retards people in adaptively changing their principles of integrity.
It prevents people from questioning their so-called foundations.
It systematically exaggerates the compellingness of moral claims.

Some will be tempted to think that the third either is contrary to experience or is socially desirable. It’s neither. In moralism, an exaggerated subjective sense of duty and excessive sense of guilt co-exist with unresponsiveness to morality’s practical demands.

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