Two types of debunking arguments

Abstract

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological theories as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion.

Keywords:

• Ad hominem
• confabulation
• consequentialism
• debunking arguments
• deontology
• dual-process theory
• genetic fallacy
• Joshua Greene
• Peter Singer
• rationalization

Acknowledgments

I have benefited greatly from comments from and discussions with two anonymous referees, Katharina Brecht, Sabine Döring, and the members of her graduate seminar, Thomas Grundmann and the members of his graduate seminar, Gregor Hochstetter, Leonard Hoeft, Christoph Lumer, Folke Tersman, Michael Wenzler, and audiences at the IZEW Tübingen and the GAP.9 in Osnabrück.

Notes

1. The most systematic statements of this argument are Greene (2008) and Singer (2005). Some of the evidence for the dual-process account of moral judgment includes Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, and Cohen (2001), Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, and Cohen (2004), and Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, and Cohen (2008). For a more complete list of the evidence, see Greene (2014, pp. 701–706).

2. For other debunking arguments in moral philosophy, see, for example, Cohen (2000, pp. 7–19), Joyce (2013a), Huemer (2013, pp. 101–136), Morton (2016), and Street (2006). For the debates in philosophy of religion and metaphysics, refer, for example, to Barrett (2007), Mason (2010), Thurow (2013), and Korman (2014), respectively.

3. See White, 2010.

4. At least I take these two interpretations to yield the most charitable and plausible versions of the argument. For further possible interpretations, refer to Berker (2009).

5. For statements of this argument, see Greene (2008, pp. 43, 70–72) and Singer (2005, pp. 347–348)

6. See Greene (2005a, pp. 345–346; 2005b, pp. 59; 2008, pp. 43, 47, 59–60, 76), Greene et al. (2004, pp. 389–390), and Singer (2005).

7. This interpretation has been endorsed by Greene (n.d., p. 12); see also Greene (2013, pp. 213–217; 2014, pp. 711–713; 2016).

8. More precisely, it is the interplay of personal force and the intention to cause harm as a means to an end. But the argument from morally irrelevant factors focuses specifically on personal force (Greene, 2014, p. 713; n.d., p. 16).

9. Some of the most pointed criticisms include Berker (2009), Kahane (2012), Kumar and Campbell (2012), Mason (2011), Sauer (2012a), and Tersman (2008).

10. This is not to deny that these intuitions might be vulnerable to some other debunking argument. But that they are debunkable, too, would of course have to be demonstrated by Greene and Singer.

11. See Boonin (2008, p. 85).

12. A case in point may be Kershnar (2000).

13. As a side note, this is also why naturalistic explanations of religious belief fall short of debunking religious belief. While they might undermine brute religious feelings or intuitions as evidence of some supernatural being, they cannot on their own disprove the countless independent arguments for the existence of god. To defeat the evidence of such independent reasons to believe in god, one would have to follow Greene and Singer’s strategy and allege that these independent arguments are merely exercises in post hoc rationalization. (Similarly, Thurow, 2013, pp. 91–97; see also Leben, 2014, pp. 341–346).

14. Elsewhere, Greene writes, “Deontology, then, is a kind of moral confabulation. We have strong feelings that tell us in clear and uncertain terms that some things simply cannot be done and that other things simply must be done. But it is not obvious how to make sense of these feelings, and so we, with the help of some especially creative philosophers, make up a rationally appealing story” (2008, p. 63). See also Greene (2008, pp. 36, 60–72; 2013, pp. 298–301; 2014, pp. 718–725; n.d., p. 24) and Singer (2005, pp. 349–350).

15. See, for instance, Dutton and Aron (1974), Gazzaniga and LeDoux (1978), Nisbett and Wilson (1977), Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, and Ditto (2009), Wilson and Nisbett (1978), and Wilson (2002).

16. See Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2012); see also Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2015) and Schwitzgebel and Ellis (2017).

17. One might also add, on Greene and Singer’s behalf, that their conjecture is further supported by the fact of peer disagreement. The persistent stalemate between deontologists and utilitarians indicates that one of the two parties must have poorly assessed the evidence. And this arguably lends support to a theory that argues on independent grounds that deontologists are merely post hoc rationalizers. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

18. The following passage captures well the interplay of these two elements in Greene and Singer’s argument: “Of course it’s possible that there is a coincidence here. It could be that it’s part of the rationally discoverable moral truth that people really do deserve to be punished as an end in itself. At the same time, it could just so happen that natural selection, in devising an efficient means for promoting biologically advantageous consequences, furnished us with emotionally based dispositions that lead us to this conclusion; but this seems unlikely. Rather, it seems that retributivist theories of punishment are just rationalizations for our retributivist feelings, and that these feelings only exist because of the morally irrelevant constraints placed on natural selection in designing creatures that behave in fitness-enhancing ways. In other words, the natural history of our retributivist dispositions makes it unlikely that they reflect any sort of deep moral truth.” (Greene, 2008, p. 71).

19. For a defense of post hoc justification along these lines, see Greenspan (2015) and Sauer (2012a, 2012b). See also Schwitzgebel and Ellis (2017, p. 172).

20. Relatedly, Avnur and Scott-Kakures observe that evidence to the effect that one believes something because one wants to believe it has an undermining effect because there is typically “no evidence for any correlation between what one wants and the truth” (2015, pp. 22–23). This is what makes rationalizing what one wants to believe epistemologically problematic.

21. Similarly, Street’s Darwinian Dilemma does not entirely rule out that our moral beliefs might be true (assuming the truth of realism), nor does Joyce’s evolutionary debunking of morality entirely rule out that there might be moral facts (Street, 2006; Joyce, 2006; see, in particular, Joyce, 2013b, pp. 354–355).

22. See for example, Pollock (1986).

23. See for example, Feldman (2006) and Christensen (2010).

24. Yet another commentator writes that “higher-order evidence is evidence that bears on evidential relations, or evidence that bears on what is rational.” (Schoenfield, 2015, p. 426). An anonymous referee has pointed out that there might be cases in which higher-order defeat does not imply lack of justification at the time the belief was originally formed. If someone’s incorrect assessement of the first-order evidence is due to an unconscious bias (as in post hoc rationalization cases), it is not obvious whether the resulting belief is necessarily unjustfied. This depends on what theory of justification we subscribe to. It might therefore be preferable to choose more neutral ways of making this point, such as, for instance, in terms of “incorrect” or “flawed” assessment of the evidence. For the purposes of this paper, it suffices that higher-order evidence implies that the subject was irrational in the sense that her assessment of the evidence was inccorect or flawed. I am happy to admit that she might have been rational or justified in some other sense.

25. See Dean (2010, pp. 52–53). However, see again Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2012).

26. See again Greenspan (2015) and Sauer (2012a, 2012b).

27. Kumar and Campbell think that the secondary argument involves a genetic fallacy (which may be regarded as a subspecies of hominem fallacy). They therefore suggest that Greene should say that the intuitions debunked by the primary argument make up the principal evidence in support of deontology, which renders the secondary argument obsolete (Kumar & Campbell, 2012, pp. 313, 327 note 7). I disagree on both counts. It strikes me as inaccurate to portray deontology as being mainly justified by appeal to intuitive gut reactions (just think of deontology in the Kantian tradition), and the secondary argument is also not fallacious.

28. Or, as Biro and Siegel put it: “An argument is fallacious if it masquerades as being able to yield knowledge or reasonable belief but cannot in fact do so” (2006, p. 2; see also Biro & Siegel, 1992; Hahn & Oaksford, 2006; Siegel & Biro, 1997). This conception of fallacies is not uncontroversial. I am here siding with the proponents of the epistemological account of argumentation (for an instructive overview, see Lumer, 2005).

29. The notion that ad hominem arguments and arguments from authority need not be fallacious is by now widely (if not universally) acknowledged; see, for example, Coleman (1995), Goldman (1999, pp. 152–153), Hinman (1982), Johnson (2009), Korb (2003), Lumer (1990, pp. 256–257), and Putnam (2010).

30. He also admits that his argument “will be speculative and will not be conclusive” (Greene, 2008, p. 36).

31. Similarly, Christoph Lumer points out that such arguments are economical but suboptimal due to their probabilistic nature, and therefore not suitable for scientific inquiry (1990, pp. 248, 256–257).

32. This possibility was raised by an anonymous referee.

33. To be sure, one can think of arguments from higher-order evidence that are not just approximate. For instance, if we know for sure that the proponent of some view has taken a drug that makes him entirely irrational (that is, he shows no sensitivity to the evidence whatsoever), this would arguably suffice to dismiss whatever argument he puts forth on the grounds that he is under the influence of this drug. But typically, arguments from higher-order evidence are weaker in that they only establish that the proponent of the to-be-debunked view is probably not responding to the evidence.

34. There are of course many other contexts of argumentation that might be worth looking into. Think, for instance, of the political arena or the courtroom. It would be interesting to examine the admissibility of debunking arguments that are based on higher-order evidence in these other contexts, too. But this is a topic for another article.

35. One difference, however, is that Greene and Singer have stronger independent evidence of post hoc rationalization on the part of their opponents. Brennan and Jaworski’s hypothesis that anti-commodificationists are post hoc rationalizers is at least in part motivated and made plausible by the fact that anti-commodificationist arguments were found to be flawed. Greene and Singer’s hypothesis that deontologists are post hoc rationalizers, by contrast, is independently motivated. For other such libertarian debunking diagnoses, see, for example, von Mises (1972) and Nozick (1997). On the difference between diagnostic debunking explanations and debunking arguments proper, see also Mason (2010, p. 771).

36. Most prominently Hayek (2006, pp. 81–82).