INTUITION AND EMOTION IN MORAL DECISION MAKING - A NEUROPHILOSOPHICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH

Modern neuroscience, together with some of the main philosophical assumptions related to mind, has brought us closer to understanding moral decision-making. Joshua Greene`s Dual Processing Model, prominent in the morality field, says that two different modes of processing are associated with moral decision-making: the cognitive moral process, linked to the utilitarian choice (the greater good) correlated with greater activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in dilemmas with less emotional charge; and the intuitive and affective mental process, which is linked to deontological moral reasoning (each being has an end in itself), correlated with greater activity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in dilemmas with greater emotional charge. This hypothesis has been confirmed by further research using neuroimaging techniques. These differences were interpreted not just in the context of such extreme dilemmas, but quite generally. The model proposed by Greene needs methodological and conceptual refinement. One of these points is that utilitarian judgments in the dilemmas used in these researches tend to be highly counter-intuitive, as they conflict with a strict duty not to harm. In real life, however, they can also conflict with less stringent duties. From this, it appears that several of previous experiments did not distinguish two variables: the content of a moral judgment, (1)whether it is utilitarian or not, and (2)how intuitive this judgment is for most people. Thus, the reported differences between utilitarian and deontological judgments may be due to the greater intuitiveness of deontological choices in moral dilemmas examined, rather than a general divide between utilitarian and deontological models of moral judgment. Perhaps, we are just investigating the relationship between a pattern of response to moral dilemmas and its correlation with the greater intuitiveness of one type of judgment in relation to another. And not the actual emotional charge inherent in the presented dilemma.