Navigating Morality, Agency, and Emotion in Interpersonal Contexts

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to address certain issues that are central to moral psychology broadly construed. At its core are questions about interpersonal harms, our practices of blaming, and the process of moral repair. In the first chapter, “Gaslighting and Self-Deception,” I draw a novel connection between the phenomena of gaslighting and self-deception. Specifically, I argue that the victim of gaslighting finds herself in a state of “imposed,” or “induced,” self-deception of the Melean variety. I argue that in addition to the epistemic harms normally associated with gaslighting, this constitutes an additional harm to the victim. Not only is the victim of gaslighting left in an epistemically impoverished position, but the added layer of “imposed” self-deception creates an additional harm to both her agency and her autonomy. In the second chapter, “Blame and Norm Psychology,” I discuss our practices of blaming and holding individuals responsible. I argue that despite there being many extant theories of blame, none of them capture all the social and moral aspects and functions of blame. Theories that frame blame as a communicative device have trouble accounting for blame that goes unexpressed. Theories that suppose blame is a costly social signal have trouble explaining detached blame. Most relevant theories struggle with some aspect or form of blame, yet each extant theory also seems to get something right. I propose that we turn to the evolutionary discipline of norm psychology to make sense of these diverse phenomena. Norm psychology posits mechanisms that create mutually re-enforcing and stable cooperative groups, and includes those based on reputation, punishment, signaling, aspects of cultural transmission, cooperative disengagement, and combinations of these. I argue that blame is one such candidate mechanism. Finally, in the third chapter, “Acceptable Apologies,” I address the issue of moral repair. I argue, in this chapter, for a distinction between grades of supererogation: I intend to distinguish between nodes on a continuum of moral repair. I argue that there is a morally salient difference between the acceptance of an apology and the forgiveness of a wrongdoer, and while both are supererogatory acts, when faced with a sincere apology that sincerely promises changed behavior, it might be a “morally permissible moral mistake,” to refuse to accept. However, the same cannot be said of forgiveness. The incorporation of acceptance as an intermediary point between the rejection of an apology and the forgiveness of the wrongdoer allows for: (1) the completion of the wrongdoer’s apology wherein the process of restoration can begin, and (2) the victim to have more cognitive space to rationally process her resentment, and to do so without an obligation to forgive before the restorative process occurs.