Stephen G. Morris

Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about free will and moral responsibility

Philosophers working in the nascent field of ‘experimental philosophy’ have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we describe our methodology of surveying peoples prephilosophical judgments about the freedom and responsibility of agents in deterministic scenarios. In two studies, we found that a majority of participants judged that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. We then discuss the philosophical implications of our results as well as various difficulties inherent in such research.

In defense of the hedonistic account of happiness

Although the concept of HAPPINESS plays a central role in ethics, contemporary philosophers have generally given little attention to providing a robust account of what this concept entails. In a recent paper, Dan Haybron sets out to accomplish two main tasks: the first is to underscore the importance of conducting philosophical inquiry into the concept of HAPPINESS; the second is to defend a particular account of happiness—which he calls the ‘emotional state conception of happiness’—while pointing out weaknesses in the primary competing accounts of happiness, including the hedonistic account. I argue against his claim that the emotional state conception of happiness is superior to the hedonistic conception of happiness. In the course of defending the hedonistic account of happiness against Haybrons attacks, I provide my own explanation for why the study of happiness is important to ethics.

Preserving the Concept of Race: A Medical Expedient, a Sociological Necessity

In this essay I argue that there are strong reasons for preserving the concept of race in both medical and sociological contexts. While I argue that there are important reasons to conceive of race as picking out distinctions among populations that are both legitimate and important, the notion of race that I advocate in this essay differs in fundamental ways from traditional folk notions of race. As a result, I believe that the folk understanding of race needs to be either revised or eliminated altogether.

Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act: A Chimera of Religion and Politics

Caulfield and Bubela (2007) analyze the decision to criminalize somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in Canada in order to better understand how a statutory prohibition on certain types of scientific research could occur in a liberal democracy. Their analysis focuses on the moral justifications of the criminal ban and the political factors that shaped the legislation. I suggest that a more comprehensive understanding of what happened in Canada requires that we acknowledge the growing influence of religion on Canadian politics. Furthermore, I discuss how analyzing current political events in the United States can provide us with insight regarding how religion impacts Canadian politics at present and how it may shape Canadian policies in the future. After conducting a thorough review of the arguments offered during the political process aimed at establishing why SCNT warrants a criminal ban, Caulfield and Bubela concluded, “the true justification for the policy remained unclear” (2007, 51). In lieu of any definitive official justification, the authors provide their own explanation for the criminal ban, which relies primarily on the roles played by both political compromise and moral justifications stemming from the moral status of the embryo. In regards to the first of these factors, they point out how the decision to criminalize SCNT resulted from a political compromise between those who favor a ban on embryonic stem cell research outright and those whose priority was to ensure that embryonic stem cell research would not be banned completely. However, political compromise cannot, by itself, explain why SCNT was criminalized. As I discuss later, the claim that the ban on SCNT represented the political middle ground is highly dubious. To better understand the factors that gave rise to the banning of SCNT, one must consider the primary moral justification given in favor of it, which according to Caulfield and Bubela was the claim that SCNT unlawfully infringes on the moral status of the embryo. As they acknowledge, there are problems with using the moral status of the embryo as the basis for a criminal ban on SCNT in Canada. Caulfield and Bubela mention that,

The Evolution of Cooperative Behavior and Its Implications for Ethics

While many philosophers agree that evolutionary theory has important implications for the study of ethics, there has been no consensus on what these implications are. I argue that we can better understand these implications by examining two related yet distinct issues in evolutionary theory: the evolution of our moral beliefs and the evolution of cooperative behavior. While the prevailing evolutionary account of morality poses a threat to moral realism, a plausible model of how altruism evolved in human beings provides the grounding for a research program that focuses on achieving some of the more practical goals shared by ethicists.

Commentary on “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the Question of Natural Compatibilism”

In “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the Question of Natural Compatibilism,” Deery, Davis, and Carey recommend that experimental philosophers employ a new methodology for determining the extent to which the folk are natural compatibilists about free will and moral responsibility. While I agree that the general methodology that the authors developed holds great promise for improving our understanding of folk attitudes about free will and moral responsibility, I am much less enthusiastic about some of the conclusions that they reached on the basis of the particular studies they ran. Key among these are that the folk harbor some compatibilist intuitions and that the findings of both Nichols and Knobe (2007), on the one hand, and Nahmias and Murray (2011), on the other, are undermined by their reliance upon a particular formulation of determinism in the cases they presented to their subjects.

Identifying the Explanatory Weakness of Strong Altruism: The Needle in the ‘Haystack Model’

Evolutionary theorists have encountered difficulty in explaining how altruistic behavior can evolve. I argue that these theorists have made this task more difficult than it needs to be by focusing their efforts on explaining how nature could select for a strong type of altruism that has powerful selection forces working against it. I argue that switching the focus to a weaker type of altruism renders the project of explaining how altruism can evolve significantly less difficult. I offer a model of weak altruism that can avoid many of the difficulties that evolutionary accounts of altruism have traditionally faced.