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Moral Metacognition| old_uid | 2268 |
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| title | Moral Metacognition |
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| start_date | 2007/02/16 |
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| schedule | 14h30-16h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Recent work in fields ranging from cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology and behavioural economics has concentrated on the role of affective processes in decision-making. Cognitive deficits in cases of acquired ventromedial (VMF) damage are cited as evidence that abstract reasoning governed by rules of inference is an inadequate basis for practical decision making. In these cases patients can apply a moral or practical rule correctly to produce a practical conclusion but are not motivated by that conclusion. They also remain unmoved by the, often catastrophic, consequences of their failure to act.
Following Antonio Damasio many theorists explain this motivational inertia as a result of inability to associate affective information with conclusions reached by abstract reasoning. To use his term, these patients lack "somatic markers". Unsurprisingly versions of this idea have been used to support sentimentalism in ethics: the idea that moral reasoning is essentially a matter of having an affective response to a situation agent or action. Sentimentalists also use psychopathy as further evidence that moral failures are the result of affective deficits.
However sentimentalists and cognitive neuroscientists alike underdescribe the deficits in these cases and mischaracterize their effects on cognition. In particular they leave out the temporal and noetic dimension of the relationship between affective states and abstract reasoning. Phylogenetically, ontogenetically and in mature cognition affective states are associated with abstract reasoning via processes of episodic memory and imagination which allow a subject to experience herself in alternative situations. These processes, of mental time travel (MTT) as they have come to be called are mark a crucial metacognitive transition. Phylogenetically, ontogenetically and in mature cognition MTT is a go between online stimulus bound cognition and self conscious deliberation.
A fact rarely mentioned in the moral cognition literature on VMF patients is that VMF damage impairs episodic memory. The real difficulty for VMF patients, and very likely psychopaths, is that they are unable to imagine or remember themselves performing the actions recommended by abstract reasoning.
I propose a cognitive architecture which accommodates these facts and explore the consequences for moral cognition. |
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| responsibles | Pacherie, Dokic, Proust |
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