Peter Railton

Kavka Distinguished University Professor, Perrin Professor of Philosophy, and Thurnau Professor (Emeritus), at the University of Michigan.

Professor Railton’s main research has been in ethics and the philosophy of science, focusing especially on questions about the nature of objectivity, value, norms, and explanation. Recently, he has also begun working in aesthetics, moral psychology, and the theory of action. He has a special interest in the bearing of empirical research in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory on these questions. A collection of some of his papers in ethics and meta-ethics, Facts, Values, and Norms, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2003, and Homo Prospectus, a book co-authored with Martin Seligman, Roy Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada, appeared with Oxford University Press in 2016.

Keynote Address

Title

The Empire’s New Mind?

Abstract

This is an extraordinary time to be launching a new initiative in moral psychology. Partly, this is due to the explosion of work on moral psychology in Philosophy and Psychology alike. Partly, it is due to the striking convergence of a range of disciplines upon a shared model of the mind that might be called the Evaluative Model. Recent research in neuroscience, cognitive science, economics, decision theory, and artificial intelligence has given us an account of the mind built on learning and acting upon representations of expected value. In very broad terms, the Evaluative Model is similar to the Belief-Desire-Intention Model that has been so influential in philosophical work on action and moral psychology—both models have the basic structure of combining two fundamental kinds of states, doxastic and motivational, to shape decisions that guide action. However, the probabilities, value assignments, decision processes, and plans of the Evaluative Model differ from the beliefs, desires, practical reasoning, and intentions of the Belief-Desire-Intention Model in significant ways—enough so, in the minds of some theorists, that the two models are strictly incompatible, forcing a choice between them. In this choice, it would seem that the weight of empirical and theoretical science—“The Empire” of my title—lies on the side of the Evaluative Model, and so we must content ourselves with an error-theory (at best) of the Belief-Desire-Intention Model. That would have profound implications for the future course of work in moral psychology.

While I believe that the implications of the Evaluative Model for moral psychology are profound, this is in part because it can help solve some long-standing foundational problems of the Belief-Desire-Intention Model, and place that model on a firmer empirical and theoretical basis. To be sure, there is a great deal to be done to understand the relationships between the two models, and the Evaluative Model does pose challenges for some assumptions that have become entwined with the Belief-Desire-Intention Model. But some of these assumptions have weakened rather than strengthened that model—especially, I think, in ways relevant to moral psychology. Untangling the model from these assumptions would enable moral psychology to develop more fully the joint resources of the two models—not an imperial conquest, then, but the building of a mutually-beneficial alliance respectful of each side. (Were it that current events could also take this turn!)