Do you think that this is what utilitarianism is, or ought to be?
Utilitarianism does offer the possibility of a precise, algorithmic approach to morality, but we don't have anything close to that as of now. People disagree about what "utility" is, how it should be measured, and how it should be aggregated. And of course, even if they did agree, actually performing the calculation in most realistic cases would require powers of prediction and computation well beyond our abilities.
The reason I used the phrase "artificially created", though, is that I think any attempt at systematization, utilitarianism included, will end up doing considerable violence to our moral intuitions. Our moral sensibilities are the product of a pretty hodge-podge process of evolution and cultural assimilation, so I don't think there's any reason to expect them to be neatly systematizable. One response is that the benefits of having a system (such as bias mitigation) are strong enough to justify biting the bullet, but I'm not sure that's the right way to think about morality, especially if you're a moral realist. In science, it might often be worthwhile using a simplified model even though you know there is a cost in terms of accuracy. In moral reasoning, though, it seems weird to say "I know this model doesn't always correctly distinguish right from wrong, but its simplicity and precision outweigh that cost".
So, do you think that, absent a formal algorithm, when presented with a "save" formulation, a (properly trained) philosopher should immediately detect the framing effect, recast the problem in the "die" formulation (or some alternative framing-free formulation), all before even attempting to solve the problem, to avoid anchoring and other biases?
Something like this might be useful, but I'm not at all confident it would work. Sounds like another research project for the Harvard Moral Psychology Research Lab. I'm not aware of any moral philosopher proposing something along these lines, but I'm not extremely familiar with that literature. I do philosophy of science, not moral philosophy.
Imagine someone finding out that "Physics professors fail on basic physics problems". This, of course, would never happen. To become a physicist in academia, one has to (among million other things) demonstrate proficiency on far harder problems than that.
Philosophy professors, however, are a different story. Cosmologist Sean Carroll tweeted a link to a paper from the Harvard Moral Psychology Research Lab, which found that professional moral philosophers are no less subject to the effects of framing and order of presentation on the Trolley Problem than non-philosophers. This seems as basic an error as, say, confusing energy with momentum, or mixing up units on a physics test.
Abstract:
We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle case (the “trolley problem”) and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman “Asian disease” scenario. Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider “different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case”. Nor were framing and order effects lower among participants reporting familiarity with the trolley problem or with loss-aversion framing effects, nor among those reporting having had a stable opinion on the issues before participating the experiment, nor among those reporting expertise on the very issues in question. Thus, for these scenario types, neither framing effects nor order effects appear to be reduced even by high levels of academic expertise.
Some quotes (emphasis mine):
When scenario pairs were presented in order AB, participants responded differently than when the same scenario pairs were presented in order BA, and the philosophers showed no less of a shift than did the comparison groups, across several types of scenario.
[...] we could find no level of philosophical expertise that reduced the size of the order effects or the framing effects on judgments of specific cases. Across the board, professional philosophers (94% with PhD’s) showed about the same size order and framing effects as similarly educated non-philosophers. Nor were order effects and framing effects reduced by assignment to a condition enforcing a delay before responding and encouraging participants to reflect on “different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case”. Nor were order effects any smaller for the majority of philosopher participants reporting antecedent familiarity with the issues. Nor were order effects any smaller for the minority of philosopher participants reporting expertise on the very issues under investigation. Nor were order effects any smaller for the minority of philosopher participants reporting that before participating in our experiment they had stable views about the issues under investigation.
I am confused... I assumed that an expert in moral philosophy would not fall prey to the relevant biases so easily... What is going on?