Moral Cognition And Judgment From The Perspective Of Experimental Ethics

Morality is a focus of ethical research.How do people perceive morality? What factors affect moral judgment? These questions have always been reflected by ethictists.In the previous research,scholars usually study moral cognition and judgment by introspection and metaphysical reflection.In this paper,we analyzed the multiple problems of moral cognition and judgment from the perspective of experimental ethics.We examined and explored many theories related to morality at the practical level by combining philosophical thinking with scientific experiments in an interdisciplinary way,and thus to promote the research of norms.Compared with the traditional ethics which focusing on rational cognition and deliberative reasoning in moral cognition and judgment,experimental ethics focus more on explaining and clarifying the mechanism of moral cognition and judgment from the aspects of neural basis,intuitive implication and influencing factors.Based on recent research of experimental ethics,we discussed issues of moral cognition and judgment from the prospective of neural physiological basis of synchronous correlation,time course threshold of the free will of the brain based on "readiness potentials" and intuition contains the moral cognition.And through data from the moral dilemma of "thought experiment" and event–related potential(ERP)of EEG experiment,we also analyzed the universality,contextualization,cultural factors and time course of moral cognition and judgment.Meanwhile,we not only analyzed the existing experimental data and theories from multiple perspectives,but also demonstrated the relevant conclusions through three experiments we designed and completed.In the experiments of "trolley problem",we found that compared to participants of Europe and the United States whom with an overwhelming preference of utilitarianism in "impersonal" moral dilemma situation,Chinese participants showed no significant preference towards both utilitarianism and deontology in "impersonal" moral dilemma.In subsequent self–driving vehicle thought experiments,we further demonstrated the experiments of trolley problem,as the key ethical dilemmas faced in the self–driving vehicle design and an important issue in Europe and the United States artificial intelligence algorithm design.In these experiments,Chinese participants continued the low utilitarian tendency as in the previous experiments and showed incomplete correlation characteristics between moral preference and moral choices.This feature indicated previous utilitarain ethical preferences data were not enough to support the argument of the algorithm.The future direction of the self–driving algorithm may be a kind of moral algorithm besides the framework of utilitarianism and egoism(such as Rawlsian algorithm or Vehicle Dynamics algorithm).In further EEG experiment,we used the P300 event–related evoked potential and Complex trial protocol on examing cognitive information in moral behavior.Through Bootstrap repetitive measurement and single factor ANONVA of ERP data,we verified the prior of P300 latency of moral cognition in the the process of moral judgment,which echoed Joshua Greene’s emphasizing the functional role of rational cognition in the dual–process model.Moreover,it indicated that rational cognition still played an functional essential role in ordinary moral situation(besides of moral dilemma).Based on the theoretical analysis of the western experimental data and the above experiments,we proposed that these experiments,on the one hand,provided experimental verification and evidence from the objective level for the normative research of moral cognition and judgment on the "ought to be" level.On the other hand,it also provided a referential data justification for the moral value tendency of the "to be" application field involving moral algorithm,such as self–driving.This showed that experimental ethics could not only open a new way of thinking to promote the "ought to be" problem,but also make the research not only focus on the "ought to be" problem itself,but also provide a mutually verified and interdependent collaborative way to link the "ought to be" and "to be" of moral research.Although the research method of experimental ethics could not guarantee the perfection and absolute reliability of the experimental results,its experimental characteristics,which could be continuously falsified and optimized,still made it a new interdisciplinary approach that can broaden the horizon of ethical research and thus to facilitate moral research.