Tuesday, June 9, 2009

moral intuition

I heard a lecture by Dr. J. Anderson Thomson where he talked about moral intuition. So googled it. I found some more videos of Dr. Thomson but no written work by him. I did find this quote by another group of researchers:
Philosophers use the phrase “moral intuition” to describe the appearance in consciousness of moral judgments made without any awareness of having gone through a conscious reasoning process. We propose that moral intuitions are part of a larger set of social intuitions that guide us.
end quote My eyes and ears perk up. Are morals embedded in our DNA? Are morals biological? Or are morals something embedded in our psyhe by indoctrination? Some of both perhaps. It seems a big question. The latest Philosophy Now magazine is asking if machines can be trained to be moral. Are we just machines? Are we trained (like machines) to be moral. Is there no universal morals? Only morals within a social network? I have more questions than answers, eh?

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