What Sparks Ethical Decision Making? The Interplay Between Moral Intuition and Moral Reasoning: Lessons from the Scholastic Doctrine

Abstract

Recent theories on cognitive science have stressed the significance of moral intuition as a counter to and complementary part of moral reasoning in decision making. Thus, the aim of this paper is to create an integrated framework that can account for both intuitive and reflective cognitive processes, in order to explore the antecedents of ethical decision making. To do that, we build on Scholasticism, an important medieval school of thought from which descends the main pillars of the modern Catholic social doctrine. Particularly, the focus will be on the scholastic concept of synderesis, which is an innate human faculty that constantly inclines decision makers toward universal moral principles. Managerial implications are discussed, stressing how a rediscovery of decision makers' intuitive moral judgments could be relevant in the reflective thinking practice of managers' ethical reasoning, thus saving them from rational insensitivity to ethical dilemmas.

Outcome in patients perceived as receiving excessive care across different ethical climates: a prospective study in 68 intensive care units in Europe and the USA

“…In contrast to the study by Detsky et al [ 16 ], clinicians in our study were not explicitly expected to provide prognostic estimates about the patients’ outcomes. We preferred to focus on the intuitive-heuristic more than the analytic-deductive part of the complex ethical decision-making process [ 26 , 27 ], by asking clinicians whether they felt that the care provided to their patient on a specific day was consistent with the expected outcome in terms of survival and quality of life, and whether this amount of care was in line with the patient’s or relatives’ wishes. We also didn’t focus on futile care, such as in the studies of Neville et al [ 18 ], because this terminology presupposes a high degree of certainty concerning the final fatal prognosis, whereas nowadays technological innovation frequently excludes patients’ spontaneous death in ICU [ 6 , 7 ].…”

What goes around comes around: The integrated role of emotions on consumer ethical decision‐making

“…One such model has been developed by Zollo, Pellegrini, and Ciappei (2017). Their dual processing model of ethical decisionmaking combines moral intuition (System 1), which is unconscious and automatic, with a subsequent rational and reflective ethical decision-making process (System 2) (Zollo, 2020;Zollo et al, 2017).…”

“…Intuiting is the nonconscious first stage of a decision maker's process of moral intuition, which is "activated by the immediate, fast, effortful and automatic System 1" without any link with System 2 reasoning processes (Zollo et al, 2017: p. 687). Emotional processing, in turn, refers to the "emotional unconscious" of human cognition (Zollo et al, 2017), usually labelled as the "hot emotive system" (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999), which is composed of basic emotions-such as happiness, sadness, anger or surprise-and responsible for quick emotional and impulsive processing (Haidt, 2001).…”

Brave: what it means to be an AI Ethicist

“…Simply put, an ethicist must possess the ability to neutrally observe an ethically charged situation, abstract the details of such out to the higher ethical principles at play in order determine right from wrong, and then bring this decision back down to contextually specific actions. This ability can also be referred to as the moral reasoning process [11]. Unlike common rational reasoning, which applies logic and theories to situations, moral reasoning is often heavily influenced by emotions and intuition.…”