I just thought of a way to test one of my intuitions about meta-ethics, and I’d appreciate others thoughts.
I believe that human morality is almost entirely socially constructed (basically an anti-realist position). In other words, I think that the parts of the brain that implement moral decision-making are incredibly plastic (at least at some point in life).
Independently, I believe that behaviorism (i.e. the modern psychological discipline descended from classical conditioning and operant conditioning) is just decision theory plus an initially plastic punishment/reward system.
In short, if behaviorism makes false predictions of human behavior—the same error in different eras and cultures—then that seems like evidence that my plasticity based meta-ethics theory is wrong.
Does anyone see any holes in that logic? Is anyone aware of examples in which behaviorism has failed to accurately predict in the ways I have described?
I just thought of a way to test one of my intuitions about meta-ethics, and I’d appreciate others thoughts.
I believe that human morality is almost entirely socially constructed (basically an anti-realist position). In other words, I think that the parts of the brain that implement moral decision-making are incredibly plastic (at least at some point in life).
Independently, I believe that behaviorism (i.e. the modern psychological discipline descended from classical conditioning and operant conditioning) is just decision theory plus an initially plastic punishment/reward system.
In short, if behaviorism makes false predictions of human behavior—the same error in different eras and cultures—then that seems like evidence that my plasticity based meta-ethics theory is wrong.
Does anyone see any holes in that logic? Is anyone aware of examples in which behaviorism has failed to accurately predict in the ways I have described?