Use of dilemmas in empirical studies of morality: problems and prospects

The authors discuss the practice of using dilemmas in empirical studies of moral decision making - one of the most significant interdisciplinary problems which is currently uniting the efforts of specialists in such fields as psychology, neurophysiology, economics and philosophy. The use of moral dilemmas has been a "classic" experimental paradigm of studying human behavior in a situation of moral choice for an extended period of time; the short stories describing situations that involve moral conflicts (the contradiction between several competing moral considerations) have been used in the field of psychology since the time of L Kohlberg, and at the turn of the 20-21" centuries they experienced a 'rebirth' due to the flourishing of the neurophysiology of morality. The moral dilemmas used in the modern neuroethics are based on philosophical thought experiments by P. Foot and J.J. Thomson, but the set of dilemmas introduced by J. Greene, the author of the dual-process theory, has not been validated and standardized, which casts doubt on the results obtained with it that are underlying the large-scale theoretical constructs (including the typology of dilemmas). The low level of experimental, mundane and psychological realism found in this set is associated with threats of external validity; also, the methodological heterogeneity of the conducted research and the lack of attention to the control of significant parameters on the part of the researchers themselves are criticized. Meanwhile, the use of moral dilemmas itself is extremely promising because of their easy modifiability and the ability to provide a high level of experimental control over the variables included in them. The article presents the results of the analysis of the factor structure of J. Greene's set of dilemmas; mathematical and statistical tools such as factor analysis by the principal component method and centroid analysis were used. The absence of a stable factor structure revealed as a result of the analysis suggests that the criterion of typologizalion of moral dilemmas put forward by Greene is highly artificial, and his set itself needs revision and modification.