Provided by Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive
TWO ACCOUNTS OF MORAL DIVERSITY: THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF
PLURALISM AND ABSOLUTISM
John Bolender, Department of Philosophy, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
Psychology is relevant to judging moral theories. Ever since G. E. Moore’s discussion of
the naturalistic fallacy (1903), many philosophers have denied this, but the charge of irrelevancy
overlooks the fact that the assumptions on which a moral position rests often include non-moral
elements. If the non-moral bits are wrong, the moral position will often be undermined. This
paper concerns some of the descriptive assumptions of value pluralism and absolutism, and the
prospects for cognitive science evaluating those assumptions.
Pluralism’s descriptive assumptions are that there are moral conflicts and that they
sometimes cannot be resolved in a way which all participants would find fully persuasive.
Possibly, I could never be persuaded that the moral principles recognized in some other culture
reflect obligations, even if I can understand to an extent (empathetically or rationally) how others
might think that they do, and that at least some of the members of that other culture find
themselves in the same position with regard to my principles. Expose all of us to the relevant
non-moral facts as much as you will, have us engage in civil debate appealing to reason as best
we can, boost our respective intelligences as far as humanly possible or select among us equally
for moral genius, resolution would nonetheless not occur. Either each side would see nothing
compelling in the other’s values, or they would perceive something compelling, but it would not
be enough to persuade them to change their values.
Richard Brandt usefully distinguishes three claims comprising “moral relativism” (1968),
although his “moral relativism” is what I here call “pluralism.” The claims are: that there are