Equipping non-utilitarian automata with unnatural morality: a review of Joshua Greene’s Moral tribes

In this paper I discuss Greene's passionate defence of Utilitarianism, which constitutes his attempt of defending what he believes is a suitable unnatural way to face moral dilemmas, a candidate to innervate a higher-level moral system that 'adjudicates among competing tribal moralities'. Contrary to Greene, I argue that there is no objective, decisive argument in favor of a given perspective in many morally relevant cases, and this holds true even if the Utilitarian calculus is accepted as a means to settle conflict among competing moral values. The attempt of setting on indisputable grounds an unchanging and objective (meta) morality proves illusory. As it is illusory to think that it is possible to get rid of the subjective elements that inevitably impinge on any cost-benefit calculus.