Joshua Greene’s Empirical Challenge to Deontology

We examine Joshua Greene’s empirical challenge to deontology. Greene accepts Haidt’s claim that moral reasoning is largely a post-hoc “moral confabulation”, but confines it to deontological intuitions. Consequentialist intuitions are exempted. We consider Greene’s “natural kinds” account of deontology and consequentialism. It fails because it mis-applies Kripke and Putnam’s understanding of natural kinds. We then turn to Greene’s famous claims about the moral irrelevance of personal force, which he uses to debunk characteristically deontological intuitions in trolley problem scenarios. We show that personal force does not explain these intuitions. Shooting someone at point blank range, for example, is not an application of personal force on Greene’s definition, yet would be as objectionable as pushing the fat man in front of the trolley in Footbridge. Finally, we show how action at a distance, such as the use of military drones, is also associated with emotional reactions, albeit reactions that come after-the-fact rather than ones accompanying the immediate action of pushing a large man, pressing a button or flipping a switch. These later emotional effects of impersonal violence are ignored by Greene, but undermine his simple opposition of cognitive and emotional responses to various trolley scenarios. We base our conclusions on real-life cases, not thought experiments.