In the history of Earth, no one -- not even Mike Furr -- as far as I'm aware, has ever attempted to construct a serious, scientific measure of a person's total moral goodness or badness: that is, a "moralometer". Obviously, creating an accurate moralometer would require overcoming an intimidating range of challenges, both conceptual and methodological.
Also in the history of Earth, as far as I'm aware, no one has ever attempted to construct a systematic map of the challenges... until now! Psychologist Jessie Sun and I have a paper in draft that does exactly this.
The paper is, I confess, a bit long: 114 pages in the current draft. There's a lot to cover! Last week at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, we boiled it down to a poster. As a bonus, I brought a scientific prototype of a working moralometer.
Here's the poster's content, followed by a demonstration of the moralometer.
---------------------------------------
The Prospects and Challenges of Measuring a Person’s Overall Moral Goodness (or: On Moralometers)
Moralometers
Is it possible to measure a person’s overall general morality? In other words, is it possible to construct a valid moralometer?
Moralometers could take four possible forms:
The designer of a moralometer faces an intimidating array of both conceptual and methodological challenges.
Imagine the benefits! And potential for abuse.
Fixed vs. Flexible Measures
A moralometer can use either (a) flexible criteria based on judges’ understandings of how to evaluate and weight the various facets of morality into a general score or (b) fixed criteria that deliver a general score based on criteria selected by and weighted by the researchers.
Self-report and informant report can be either fixed or flexible.
Behavioral and physiological measures are fixed.
Conceptual Requirements on a Moralometer
KEY: - = Not applicable ✔︎ = Requirement can likely be satisfied ! = Significant difficulty !! = Major difficulty
Methodological Requirements on a Moralometer
Conclusions
An accurate general-purpose moralometer is probably conceptually and methodologically infeasible.
Conclusions might still be warranted:
---------------------------------------
Poster Discussion
When asked about the usefulness of this endeavor, I gave two replies:
1. Conceptual Value. It's a conceptually interesting theoretical project that no one has attempted before. Isn't that enough?
2. Practical Value. It provides a framework for identifying hazards in measuring moral phenomena. Narrower measures (e.g., of honesty, moral reputation, or ethical vegetarianism) raise the same general challenges, though often to a lesser extent. Our framework facilitates thinking about those challenges.
---------------------------------------
A Working Moralometer
You'll be delighted to hear that despite the massive conceptual and methodological challenges, Jessie and I managed to build a working moralometer, as shown here:
In the photo, the moralometer shines bright red -- indicating "evil" on the red-to-yellow-to-green scale -- when aimed at Sarah Lane Ritchie of the Templeton Foundation. (Shhh! Don't tell the good folks at Templeton.)
The moral measurement procedure:
1. Informed consent. Participants are warned that they might be discovered to be evil and that this could lead to an existential crisis or social ostracism.
2. Thought activation. Participants are instructed to contemplate trolley problems. Ideally (as in the photo) the researcher wears a shirt displaying a trolley problem as a visual aid. This activates the moral module in the brain.
3. Moralon detection. The moral module emits moralons, which the moralometer detects. It doesn't matter what solution the participant entertains. Once moralons are emitted, the person's overall goodness or badness can be accurately detected.
To date, no decisive scientific evidence has ever revealed the moralometer output to be anything less than 100% accurate!
Here's an earlier prototype of the moralometer, devised by my daughter Kate when she was in middle school:
No comments:
Post a Comment