Greene: From Neural "Is" to Moral "Ought"

Is The Greatest Pleasure The Greatest Good?
Poll: Utilitarianism defines the good in terms of happiness, so it follows that maximum happiness would be the maximum good.  Agree or disagree?

Happiness Machine: p. 292 The Pig that Wants to Be Eaten
Reverse Utility Machine:

Mill Vs Kant: What is the Good?
READ paragraph 19 p. 529

Rule vs Act Utilitarianism (Utilitarianism and Rights)
The magistrate and the mob.  Is there a way out for the utilitarian?
“A magistrate is faced with a very real threat from a large and uncontrollable mob of rioters demanding a culprit for a crime. Unless the criminal is produced, promptly tried, and executed, they will take their own bloody revenge on a much smaller and quite vulnerable section of the community (a kind of frenzied pogrom). The judge knows that the real culprit is unknown and that the authorities do not even have a good clue as to who he might be. But he also knows that there is within easy reach a disreputable, thoroughly disliked, and useless man, who, though innocent, could easily be framed so that the mob would be quite convinced that he was guilty and would be pacified if he were promptly executed. Recognising that that he can prevent the occurrence of extensive carnage only by framing some innocent person, the magistrate has him framed, goes through the mockery of a trial, and has him executed.”A: What is the correct thing to do?  Why?
Is there a way out for the utilitarian?
Utilitarianism and punishment:  Let the lower criminals (murderers) go for indicting the higher ones. (Whitey)


Act Utilitarianism:  The calculous has to be done for every act.

Rule Utilitarianism (weak): We use secondary rules to make decisions. However, if we encounter a situation where the secondary rule dictates a course of action that doesn't maximize happiness, we temporarily suspend the rule in favor of the Greatest Happiness Principle. Under this type of rule utilitarianism, the secondary rules are heuristics, but can be suspended for special cases in which they don't give the right result.

Rule Utilitarianism (strong): Same as weak except the rules are never suspended. Suspending rules undermines predictability causing anxiety and uncertainty which, in turn, diminish utility.

Greene:
Nagel on Greene
Intuitions: http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh2H47a1i7QNzEa5Dq

Naturalistic Fallacy: 
Explanation + Hume
Give anti and pro gay rights arguments, male promiscuity and sexual behavior,


Bleeding Hiker and Drowning Child
Drowning child video

Drowning Child: On your way to work, you pass a small pond. On hot days, children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool today, though, and the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep his head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull him out, he seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy (Singer 2009: 3).

(1) Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad.
(2) If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.

(3) By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and

medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. . 
Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong (Singer 1972: 231-233; Singer 2009: 15-16). 

Explanation: What is the "some good reason" that distinguishes cases?
Evolution: personal vs impersonal
Why does it matter if it's impersonal or not? (Recall trolly)
READ: p. 546 1st paragraph.
UpShot: What's the effect of the empirical on our ethical thinking? (2nd paragraph of 546).
Student Explanation

Neuroscience and Meta-Ethics
Neuroscience can help us understand our common-sense conceptions of morality.

Realism vs Anti-Realism:
Cat is like beautiful sunset, sexual attraction (baboons): It's in the eye of the beholder.

Debunking: READ p.546 bottom to p547 top.
(Harmon) Can we explain away moral perception with psychology.
I.e., "projections of internal attitudes".

Phenomenology of moral judgment. (Is it really like this? Is there no deliberation?) Do we "effortlessly determine" right and wrong? Cat example vs amputation/begging to die.

Veridical vs non-veridical intuitions. Why did evolve the way it did? What was it tracking?

2 systems: camera analogy automatic settings vs manual (deliberative).
Our intuitions are the product of our evolutionary environment.  We evolved in relatively isolated groups.  They serve us well in solving the tragedy of the commons-type problems and allows our group to cooperate and outcompete other groups for finite resources.  However, our intuitions are not for solving the "tragedy of common sense morality."

ISSUE: DOES THE DEBUNKING SUCCEED?

READ from "Moral Tribes"
Me Vs US  not Us Vs Them
TED Paul Bloom: Biases, Prejudice

Haidt:  Our moral intuitions are also shaped by our culture and SES. http://www.moralfoundations.org/questionnaires
http://www.moralfoundations.org/

The phenomenology of moral judgement 
READ: p. 547, 1st column, last paragraph