As far as morality, one could imagine a person, or machine, who made decisions that we would call moral, but without the emotional overtones that we would recognize as part of what makes moral decisions so difficult. He might have trouble deciding whether to save the orphans, because two high priority goals are thrown into an unusual state of conflict, but he would not feel guilt over his decision. It would just be that making the decision took a little longer than most decisions, because of the unusual structure of the situation with regard to satisfying his goals. It would not feel different than playing cards and struggling with a difficult probabilistic calculation in a borderline case where determining the optimal decision took a little longer than normal.
One might imagine, perhaps, an “altruistic psychopath” who was incapable of feeling emotional about these kinds of issues, but who had decided on abstract logical grounds to make helping others be a relatively high priority. And of course ordinary psychopaths are unfortunately not too rare, people who cause harm to others without feeling that they are behaving immorally.
I wonder whether it makes sense to impute moral weight to such individuals, who it seems are acting without a sense of morality. It calls into question the purpose of our sense of morality and why it seems so important to us.
As far as morality, one could imagine a person, or machine, who made decisions that we would call moral, but without the emotional overtones that we would recognize as part of what makes moral decisions so difficult. He might have trouble deciding whether to save the orphans, because two high priority goals are thrown into an unusual state of conflict, but he would not feel guilt over his decision. It would just be that making the decision took a little longer than most decisions, because of the unusual structure of the situation with regard to satisfying his goals. It would not feel different than playing cards and struggling with a difficult probabilistic calculation in a borderline case where determining the optimal decision took a little longer than normal.
One might imagine, perhaps, an “altruistic psychopath” who was incapable of feeling emotional about these kinds of issues, but who had decided on abstract logical grounds to make helping others be a relatively high priority. And of course ordinary psychopaths are unfortunately not too rare, people who cause harm to others without feeling that they are behaving immorally.
I wonder whether it makes sense to impute moral weight to such individuals, who it seems are acting without a sense of morality. It calls into question the purpose of our sense of morality and why it seems so important to us.