A irracionalidade da razão na tomada de decisão moral

Abstract

We will analyze to what degree rationality in human agency abstains itself from emotional influences in dialogue with the empirical sciences through the concept of decision making. Beginning with a panorama of the importance of reason on ethical reasoning in the history of philosophy, developing afterwards in contemporary rationalist theories or ones dependant of a strong notion of reason. The philosophical methodological basis will then be established for the analysis of the problem through philosophical naturalism, a metaphilosophical discipline which analyzes the world in a scientific manner abstained from supernatural elements. Experimental philosophy is its subarea, which directly dialogues with and guides research in the empirical realm. We will proceed then to the interdisciplinary methodological bases aiming to establish the state-of-the-art in the sciencews of evolutionary biology, which comprehends human persons as animals with physiological, cognitive and genetic traits selected through specific natural history contexts; of behavioral economics, which understands reason in the agent while making decisions as bounded, incontrast with the classical perspective of perfect rationality; of cognitive psychology, comprehending experimentally the study of human mind and the processes involved in our cognition; and of behavioral neurosciences, which offer an unified system of these previous disciplines through the detailed analisys of neuroanatomy in our actions; utilizing "decision making" as the interdisciplinary keyword which equates to the philosophical issue at hand, and presenting the theory of dual process as an educational common thread toward the integrated understanding of these themes. Once this general methodological paradigm is established, we proceed to the empirical evidences regarding our cognitive faculties related to decision making, investigating from the influences of external factors such as disgust and hunger; neuropathologies as brain damage, callosotomy and psychopathy; and prejudice as manifested in racism and sexism. Afterwards we proceed to debate these data with philosophical readings, as well as bringing more of them from experimental philosophers. We then investigate how the process of generating moral judgements takes place at the behavioral neuroscientific level, debate on the fact of moral disagreement and virtue ethics, on thought experiments under these new methodologies and evidences, furthering the philosophical debate on neutrality from the data on prejudice, to then infer on the importance of intuitions in moral deliberation. Finally, we provide a general overview of the discussion and conclude that, despite the centrality of the importance of emotional and unconscious influences in the deliberative process, still reason holds an important guiding role - however only if understood as skill constantly prone to error and requiring maintenance.