Greene

consequentialism vs deontology

consequentialism - the results matter, not the actions themselves, whatever has the best outcome is the best action deontology - more focus on the action itself in reference to 'rules' or 'morals'

what are the consequentialist justifications of punishment? what are the deontological justifications of punishment?

consequentialism says punishment should serve a purpose, if someone is going to jail it's for rehabilitation purposes or to keep further incidents from happening, deontology believes more opposite, punishment comes from a more emotional place, for revenge or for people to get what is coming to them

how might the connection between emotion and deontology have been evolutionary adaptive for the human species?

evolution is interested in genes surviving, not individual people, as a species were are organized to protect relatives and family members because we're protecting our genotype

what is the connection between emotion and deontological moral deliberation? why does greene think that deontological moral philosophy involves post hoc reasoning? what is "confabulation"? give an example

greene believed that deontological reasoning is a post hoc rationalization of emotion-based action, he thought deontological moral philosophy involves post hoc reasoning because he believed deontological views are emotionally charged and post hoc reasoning is how people explain their emotional actions - confabulation is a story telling form of post hoc rationalization, an example being someone hypnotized into putting a lamp onto someone else head and then later saying they did it to see how everyone would react

how does greene's account cast doubt on wielenberg's claim that there are necessary moral truths? how does wielenberg's own practice in his book support greene's position?

greene believes we have deontological views but when calculating you switch to a consequentialist view, wielenberg originally sides with khan in saying that you should be moral because it's the right thing to do, but in the alien invasion scenario he switches sides in saying that you should enslave one to save extermination, this supports greene's position because he switches from a deontological view to a consequentialist view when he considers the alien invasion scenario

how does greene distinguish between "cognition" and emotion?

he says you can't have one without the other, but cognition is the processing of info without any emotional input, cool and deliberate allowing us to make decisions at leisure, emotion is a more hot mode of information processing and not as logical

what is post hoc reasoning or rationalization? how does the panty hose experiment illustrate this psychological phenomenon?

post hoc reasoning/rationalization is concocting reason after the fact of something we do, in the panty hose experiment subjects were able to find differences in the same panty hose, only to later find out they were all the same

describe in detail the psychological "determinate victim" experiment and its significance for greene's thesis

the determinate victim experiment was a test where 10 subjects were each given 10 dollars and randomly either a "keep" or "lose" card that determined if they got to keep the 10 dollars, and 60% of the keep subjects donated part of their money to the losing subjects, this goes along with greene's thesis that knowing the person in the worse off situation makes the giving party more generous

explain the "pull of identifiable victims" and its connection with emotion, how is the jessica mcclure case relevant? how are peter singer's views concerning donation relevant?

the pull of identifiable victims is the idea that people are more willing to help someone when the victim can be identified, when there is a face to the cause they are helping/donating to, jessica mcclure received so many donations because everyone was seeing her face and wanted to help, peter singer thinks that whether you see the victim or not shouldn't matter, but this simply isn't reality, people are more likely to donate to an identifiable victim

explain the trolley, the footbridge, and loop thought experiments, their significance for deontological and consequentialist moral deliberation, and include brain activity data greene provides

trolley - person has switch to kill one person on the track instead of 5 people on the other track footbridge - person has the option to push the heavier person off the bridge to stop the train loop - if the train did not kill someone it would loop back around and kill the 5, so the person has to choose to kill one or five people more people respond yes to pulling the switch than to pushing the person - because of the action itself, and brain scans showed that those who answered yes to the footbridge question had to overpower their negative emotional response