Il ruolo della ragione e delle emozioni nelle scelte: il caso dei dilemmi morali

  • Gessica Fruciano
  • Michele Raso
Keywords: Moral dilemmas, Neuroethics, Moral decision, Moral psychology, Reason, Emotions

Abstract

Those who deal with ethics today cannot fail to take into account the theoretical developments that have recently taken place in the field scientific, by biologists, psychologists, social scientists and neuroscientists.
It therefore becomes of significant importance to investigate the characteristics of ethical decisions, their being different from other types of decision as well as the role that rationality and emotions play in contexts where the decision between two alternatives is the source of moral conflict. In recent years, an important contribution to research has been provided by the neurosciences that have occurred posed the problem of identifying the neural mechanisms that underlie moral decision and judgment.
There is a very particular branch of analytical ethics called «carrellologia» (trolleylogy), which deals with the so-called «problems of the railway carriage», mental experiments structured to analyze the ability to make decisions in extreme but imaginary conditions.
They consist in the evaluation of situations in which the ability to make moral intuitions is tested before a choice of life or death.
In a recent experiment, Greene and colleagues (2001) presented a series of moral dilemmas to some subjects undergo magnetic resonance imaging (fmri). The most used dilemmas are the trolley dilemma and the footbridge dilemma.
What answers have been obtained since the presentation of these experiments? How many cognitive processes, emotions and reason do they influence choice / decision situations?

References

Bacchini, Dario (2011), Lo sviluppo morale, Carocci, Roma 2011.

Bara, Bruno G., Bucciarelli, Monica e Lombardo, Vincenzo (2001), «Model theory of deduction: a unified computational approach», in Cognitive Science, 25, pp. 839-901.

Baron, Jonathan, Gürçay, Burcu, Moore, Adam B., Starcke, Katrin (2012), «Use of a Rasch model to predict response times to utilitarian moral dilemmas», in Synthese (special issue on psychological models of (ir) rationality and decision-making, edited by C. Witteman& W. van derHoek).

Blair, J. R. (1995), «A cognitive developmental approach to morality - Investigating the psychopath», in Cognition, 57, pp. 1-29.

Bonini, Nicolao, Del Missier, Fabio, Rumiati Rino (2008), Psicologia del giudizio e della decisione, il Mulino, Bologna.

Bucciarelli, Monica, Johnson-Laird P.N. (2005), «Naïve deontics: a theory of meaning, representation and reasoning», in Cognitive Psychology, 50(2), pp.159-193.

Bucciarelli, Monica, Khemlani, Sangeet, Johnson-Laird P.N., (2008), «The psychology of moral reasoning», in Judgment and decision making, 3(2), pp.121-139.

Christensen, Julia F., Flexas, Albert, Calabrese, Margareta, Gut, Nadine K. e Gomila, Antoni (2014), «Moral judgment reloaded: a moral dilemma validation study», in Frontiers in Psychology.

Corbellini, Gilberto, Sirgiovanni, Elisabetta (2013), Tutta colpa del cervello. Un’introduzione alla neuroetica, Mondadori Educazione, 2013.

De Caro, Mario (2004), Il libero arbitrio. Una introduzione, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2004.

Decety, Jean, Michalska, Kalina J., Kinzler, Katherine D. (2011), «The developmental neuroscience of moral sensitivity», in Emotion Review, 3 (3), pp. 305-307.

Edmonds, David (2014), Uccideresti l’uomo grasso? Il dilemma etico del male minore, Raffaello Cortina.

Fabio Rosa A. (2008), Il pensiero complesso, Franco Angeli, Milano.

Gangemi, Amelia (2014), E il prezzo del ragionamento nella psicopatologia, in Falzone, Alessandra., Nucera, Sebastiano, Parisi, Francesco, Le ragioni della natura, Corisco Edizioni, Roma-Messina 2014, pp. 193-204.

Greene, Joshua D., Cushman, Fiery A., Stewart, Lisa E., Lowenberg, Kelly, Nystrom, Leigh E., Cohen, Jonathan D. (2009), «Pushing moral buttons: the interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment», in Cognition, 2009.

Greene, Joshua D., Sommerville, R. Brian, Nystrom, Leigh E., Darley, JohnM. e Cohen J.D. (2001), «An FMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment», in Science, 293.

Greene, Joshua, Haidt, Jonathan (2002), «How (and where) does moral judgment work?, in Trends in cognitive sciences, 6(12), pp. 517-523.

Haidt Jonathan (2001), «The emotional dog and its rationa ltail: a social intuition ist approach to moral judgment», in Psychologicalreview, 108.

Hauser, Marc, Cushman, Fiery, Young, Liane, Jin, R. Kang-Xing, Mikhail, John (2007), «A dissociation between moral judgments and justifications», in Mind & Language, 22, pp. 1-21.

Hauser, Marc D. (2007), Menti morali. Le origini naturali del bene e del male, il Saggiatore, Milano.

Kahane, Guy, Wiech, Katja, Shackel, Nicholas, Farias, Miguel, Savulescu, Julian, Tracey, Irene (2012), «The neural basis of intuitive and counter intuitive moral judgment», in Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, 7(4), pp. 393-402.

Kahneman, Daniel, Slovic, Paul, Tversky, Amos (eds.) (1982), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA 1982.

Kahneman, Daniel, Tversky, Amos (1973), «On the psychology of prediction», in Psychological Review, 80, pp. 237–251.

Kahneman, Daniel, Tversky, Amos (1982), «On the Study of Statistical Intuition», in Cognition, 11, pp. 123-141.

Legrenzi, Paolo, Girotto, Vittorio, Johnson-Laird, Philip N. (1993), «Focussing in reasoning and decision-making» in Cognition, 49, pp.37-66.

Manfrinati, Andrea (2011), Il conflitto morale nella prospettiva delle neuroscienze, in Da Re, Antonio, Ponchio, Alice, a cura di, Il conflitto morale, Il Poligrafo, Padova.

Margoni, Francesco (2013), Dilemmi e scelte morali, in Brainfactor.it (2013). Consultato il 28/09/2016, http://www.brainfactor.it/?p=1880

Moll, Jorge, de Oliveira-Souza, Ricardo, Eslinger, Paul J., Bramati, Ivanei E., Andreiuolo, Pedro A., Pessoa, Luiz (2002), «The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral», in Emotions, 22, pp. 2730–2736.

Moll, Jorge, de Oliveira-Souza, Ricardo., Bramati, Ivanei E., Grafman, Jordan (2002), «Functional networks in emotional moral and non moral social judgments», in Neuroimage, 16(3 Pt 1), pp. 696-703.

Moll, Jorge, Zahn, Roland, de Oliveira-Souza, Ricardo., Krueger, Frank, Grafman, Jordan (2005), «The neural basis of human moral cognition», in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(10), pp. 799-809.

Paxton, Joseph M., Ungar, Leo, Greene, Joshua D. (2012). Reflection and reasoning in moral judgment, Cognitive Science, 36, pp. 163-177.

Pennisi, Antonino (1998), Psicopatologia del linguaggio, Carocci, Roma 1998.

Pennisi, Antonino, Bucca, Antonino, Falzone, Alessandra (2004), Trattato di psicopatologia del linguaggio, Edas Edizioni, Messina 2004.

Pennisi, Antonino, Perconti, Pietro (2006), Le scienze cognitive del linguaggio, il Mulino, Bologna 2006.

Surian, Luca, Il giudizio morale. Come distinguiamo il bene dal male, Il Mulino, Bologna 2013.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1976), Killing, letting die and the trolley problem, in The Mornist, vol. 59.

Thomson Judith Jarvis (1985), The trolley problem, in The Yale Law Journal, vol. 94, n. 6.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1986), Rights, restitution, and risk, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Published
2020-08-17
How to Cite
Fruciano, G. and Raso, M. (2020) “Il ruolo della ragione e delle emozioni nelle scelte: il caso dei dilemmi morali ”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio. doi: 10.4396/SFL2019ESC0005.
Section
Emotions and Cognitive Sciences