Individualism I: the Hauser-Mikhail model of the moral mind

Marc Hauser (2006a, 2006b) John Mikhail (2007, 2008a) Susan Dwyer (1999, 2006, 2009) and Gilbert Harman (2000, 2008) have proposed accounts of moral cognition that are explicitly influenced by Chomskyian accounts of linguistics and the computational theory of mind (as seen in chapter 2).⁸ The internal structure of the moral mind, like Chomskyian accounts of language cognition and Fodorian accounts of cognition in general, relies on formal internal structures representing external states of affairs which are acted upon by computational manipulations. The Hauser-Mikhail⁹ model of the moral mind posits internal complexity in the form of a moral grammar, the structure of which is universal, abstract, and context independent.

Moral grammar is universal in that it is claimed that all normal human beings have this innately (genetically) encoded moral grammar which is required for moral acquisition, normal moral development and moral competence. The underlying principles of the moral grammar determine the space of possible moral variation and which variations take shape will depend on the various moral parameters in our developmental environments.

Moral grammar is abstract in that the underlying principles are abstract structural descriptions of moral states of affairs that include such parameters as intention, harm, ends, means and side-effects to name but a few (see for example Mikhail (2002, 2008a)

7. As I am using the term here, I will understand ‘evolutionary psychology’ to be the research programme that makes specific commitment to innate cognitive modules selected for in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (see for example Barkow, Cosmides et al. 1992; Pinker 1997; Buss 1999). I am not referring to other psychology research programmes that are evolutionary in nature.

8. Mikhail, for example, has a recent paper entitled Moral Cognition and Computational Theory (Mikhail 2008a).

9. I will exclude Dwyer and Harman from the name of this model for brevity’s sake.

and Dwyer (2006), for detailed exposition of this structure). And it is context independent in that the underlying structure of the innately specified principles are themselves invariant to situational effects.

The moral grammarians also claim that our internal universal moral grammar explains the structure and production of our society-wide moral systems: “[t]he universal moral grammar is a theory about the principles that enable children to build a large but finite range of distinctive moral system” (Hauser 2006b:421). Although the underlying structural principles of moral grammar are fixed, the systematic differences between cultures are due to the various parametric variations as set by the culture. Moral grammar can explain both the systematicity and productivity of our moral systems. In this way the

“universal moral grammar provides a toolkit for building possible moral systems”

(Hauser 2006a:215).

According to the Hauser-Mikhail account, what is centrally relevant to understanding moral cognition (and moral systems) is explicating the internal structure of the mind by cashing out the underlying moral grammar through the analysis of the relevant input conditions and resulting output responses (for detailed application of this methodology see Mikhail (2008a)). This model of cognition is explicitly computational. Take for example the following passages from Mikhail, which make clear references to a computational account of cognition:

the human brain contains a computationally complex “moral grammar”…

analogous in certain respects to the mental grammars operative in other domains, such as language, vision, music, and face recognition. (2007:l)

the problem of descriptive adequacy in the theory of moral cognition may be divided into at least three parts: (1) the problem of describing the computational principles (“deontic rules”) operative in the exercise of moral judgment, (2) the problem of describing the unconscious mental representations (“structural descriptions”) over which those computational operations are defined, and (3) the problem of describing the chain of inferences (“conversion rules”) by which the stimulus is converted into an appropriate structural description. (2007:4)

The role of the body in each of these accounts is that as described in one of Andy Clark’s critiques of traditional cognitive science, whereby “the body is just an organ for receiving inputs and effecting outputs (actions)” (Clark 1998:36). Hauser claims, for example, that emotions occur after the moral computational process (i.e., the making of a moral judgement) has been engaged by making the distinction between “emotions playing a role in our moral judgements and emotions playing a role in our moral behaviour, or what we actually do” (2006b:195). Hauser claims that, by and large, the latter exemplifies the role of emotion in moral cognition such that emotion plays no causal role with respect to the permissibility of moral judgements.¹⁰ One of the centrally important differences between the moral grammarians’ model of moral cognition and other emotionally grounded accounts is that emotions typically follow from the judgement-making process rather than having an essential causal role. Hauser hypothesises that “[e]motions may only function to modulate what we actually do as distinct from what we comprehended or perceive as morally permissible” (2006b:46) … and “our emotions are not part of the dedicated and specialized components of the moral faculty” (2006b:53). Emotional engagement occurs after the moral computations have been made and operate as a way of controlling and directing our subsequent moral behaviour. Here our moral computational system (i.e., the moral faculty) is employed before our bodily (emotional) ¹¹ processes are enacted – the role of emotion is to (when required) enact the outputs of the moral faculty in the environment. Under such a view emotions may be central to moral performance but not moral competence. I will later argue that emotional information processing involves the body, and that moral cognition involves emotions, hence the body is part of moral cognition (see chapter 4).

The role that the Hauser-Mikhail model ascribes to the environment and body is that of the problem domain and effectors. The environment presents us with a problem, such as in the case of a moral violation. The information from the environment is in turn presented to our moral mind through our perceptual apparatus. This triggers an analysis

10. It should be noted that Hauser does not necessarily think that this is always the case. He concedes that it is possible that emotions may play a causal role in particular classes of moral judgements such as

“personal/high conflict/other-serving dilemmas” (Hauser 2006a:218). Hence Hauser has recently entertained the possibility of a plurality of moral psychological processes that include emotion driven ones (Hauser, Young et al. 2008b). More recently, Hauser and colleagues suggest that emotion could provide input to the moral circuits, rather than modulate the operation of those circuits (Huebner, Dwyer et al.

2009) – cf. the role of the body in traditional cognition.

11. The assumption I am making is that emotional processes include bodily effects or that their processing involves bodily effects. See chapter 4 for discussion.

of the information with respect to the causes and consequences of the action or event, from which a moral judgement is made. This judgement itself produces outputs which are (often) enacted through our bodies. This is clearly what Clark describes as a “linear processing cycle: perceive, compute and act” (Clark 1999:346). The appropriate moral behaviour is caused from the inside; we are moral in the ways that we are because we have algorithms that specify our moral judgements and behaviours.

The moral grammarians, akin to traditional views of cognition, can also be read as taking the relevant representational structures of the universal moral grammar as being amodal.

For example, Hauser writes that “the principles of [moral grammar] operate on experiences that are independent of their sensory origins, including imagined or perceived visual scenes, auditory events, and all forms of language—spoken, signed, and written” (Hauser 2006b:53). And Mikhail states that “[t]hese concepts and principles which underlie [our unconscious moral knowledge] are as far removed from experience as the hierarchical tree structures and recursive rules of linguistic grammars” (2008b:355).

Amodality is central to their version of the poverty of the moral stimulus argument and hence a core feature of their model. Somatosensory and sensory-motor systems are quite separate from the abstract structures of the universal moral grammar.

Whilst the above is only a brief overview of the moral grammarians’ position, the central themes are clear: The central causal determinants of our moral cognitions are internal brainbound cognitive mechanisms that are realised independently of body and external environment; bodily and environmental resources are not considered part of the moral faculty (qua moral cognitive system); the structure of our moral systems and the scope of cultural moral variation are constrained by the underlying principles of our innate moral grammar (see discussion of evolutionary psychology below); the moral cognitive system is firmly in the head. As we will see, this position does not capture the full gamut of moral cognitive processes and hence does not adequately explain moral cognition. An individualist moral cognition fails to account for the indispensable role that body and environment play in providing solutions to adaptive moral problems.