Neuromorality

I would like to thank Wilson and Spicer for their thought-provoking comments and respond to two of the issues they raise. The first issue I address is the distinction Wilson draws between behavior that conforms to moral norms, and the variegated mechanisms by which such behavior is produced. The distinction is hinted at firstly when Wilson asks "is it really morally superior, as Tankersley suggests, for me, a man with no pedophilic interests, not to sexually assault children than it is for Joe, a man with pedophilic desires, to resist them?" (2011, 366). Wilson here is pointing to an important distinction between moral norms with which group members must comply (do not attack children, do not covet thy neighbor's wife), and moral dispositions, desires or predilections, which are one type of mechanism that can lead an individual to comply with the social rules. Importantly, for many moral norms the majority of group members most likely do not need to engage in self-restraint to behave in ways that conform to the norms, and Wilson is certainly right to think that the minority of members who lack these normative dispositions are "doing more moral work" (2011, 366), insofar as it is effortful for them to override their statistically deviant predilections in order to conform. Both scenarios involve moral, normative behavior, but via different mechanisms; for the normally disposed, there is a naturally occurring match between what society demands of him behaviorally and his preferences; for the self-restraining, dispositionally deviant Joe, some other preference overrides his deviant preferences, enabling him to conform to society's norms. Although most people would commend Joe for his effort, however, my guess is that most people would prefer to be and be surrounded by members who arrive at their moral behavior through the moral dispositions, because this mechanism probably more reliably produces the norm-conforming behavior. Still, Wilson's point that the struggle against one's natural dispositions may constitute true moral superiority is well-taken.

The behavior versus mechanism distinction also arises in Wilson's discussion of the treatment of antisocial offenders. Wilson argues that "it ought to be possible, empirically, to compare programs based primarily on emotional change with those based primarily on rational change" (2011, 366) to arbitrate between the rationalist and sentimentalist views of morality. In other words, if we can teach offenders to behave less antisocially by teaching them to feel bad when they deviate from social norms, this provides support for the sentimentalist position, whereas teaching offenders to behave less antisocially by teaching them consequentialist rules provides support for the rationalist position. Here we must be wary of conflating the moral-conforming behavior and the mechanism by which one arrives at this behavior. The Blair study is a nice illustration of how antisocial offenders might use rule-based heuristics to mimic the moral behavior to which, in normal individuals, a moral disposition gives rise. Violent offenders correctly categorized behaviors as bad, presumably using consequentialist-based reasoning, but were unable to distinguish between what nonviolent offenders distinguished as moral transgressions (e.g., hitting someone) and conventional transgressions (e.g., speaking out of turn in class). If the psychopath were taught some heuristic that mapped onto this moral-conventional distinction, say, for example, transgressions that cause physical harm are worse than those that do not, then he could probably match the nonviolent offenders' discrimination performance. The fact that the nonviolent offenders do not consciously apply such heuristics, however, suggests that moral behavior is being affected in them by some other mechanism, some disposition toward violence or the observable effects it has on others. Rule-based learning is tedious and painstaking, with each new instance requiring a new rule. A significant advantage of a dispositional mechanism, such as an appropriate emotional response to the observable reactions of victims, is the generalizability of these dispositional responses to a range of situations. For example, the rule "Transgressions causing physical harm are worse than transgressions not causing physical harm" does not generalize to moral transgressions involving hurtful verbal abuse. Whereas a normally disposed individual would generalize appropriately by producing a similar...