In this talk I will argue that recent work in cognitive science and social psychology suggests that the sort of “cognitive control” that plays a central role in modern deontology and utilitarianism is actually a very weak foundation upon which to build an ethical education system. Human rationality is, in fact, not particular dependable in day-to-day situations, which means that a style of ethics that focuses on habits and automatic emotions, rather than reasoning styles, might be expected to do a better job of getting people to reliably act in an ethical manner. I will argue that the early Confucian emphasis on moral spontaneity, moral emotions, and the inculcation of virtuous habits is based upon a much more empirically defensible model of human cognition, portraying early Confucian virtue ethics as involving a kind of “time-delayed cognitive control.” Virtue ethics involves a system of ethical training that acknowledges (explicitly or not) the limitations of individual, in-the-moment cognitive control, and therefore designs a system of training regimes and ethical guidelines—themselves the products of cognitive control—which are to be internalized and automatized. Virtue ethics might this be seen as a clever way of getting around the limits of human cognitive control abilities, embedding higher-level desires and goals in lower-level emotional and sensory-motor systems. I will also argue that the specific features of Confucian virtue ethics—in particular, its emphasis on situation-sensitive training—avoid some of the weaknesses of traditional Western models of virtue ethics.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 14 Mar 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Edward Slingerland, Professor of Asian Studies and Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition, University of British Columbia, Canada
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson