Individual Differences in Moral Development: Does Intelligence Really Affect Children’s Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions?

Science.gov (United States)

Beißert, Hanna M.; Hasselhorn, Marcus

2016-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between intelligence and individual differences in children’s moral development across a range of different moral transgressions. Taking up prior research that showed morality and intelligence to be related in adolescents and adults, the current study wants to test if these findings can be extended to younger children. The study was designed to address some of the shortcomings in prior research by examining young children aged between 6 years; 4 months and 8 years; 10 months, using a broad concept of moral development including emotional aspects and applying an approach that is closely connected to children’s daily lives. Participants (N = 129) completed a standardized intelligence test and were presented four moral transgression stories to assess moral development. Results demonstrated that findings from prior research with adolescents or adults cannot simply be extended to younger participants. No significant correlations of moral development and intelligence were found for any of the presented stories. This provides first evidence that – at least in middle childhood – moral developmental status seems to be independent from children’s general intelligence assessed by figural inductive reasoning tests. PMID:28066287

Individual differences in moral development: Does intelligence really affect children’s moral reasoning and moral emotions?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hanna Maria Beißert

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This study investigates the relationship between intelligence and individual differences in children’s moral development across a range of different moral transgressions. Taking up prior research that showed morality and intelligence to be related in adolescents and adults, the current study wants to test if these findings can be extended to younger children. The study was designed to address some of the shortcomings in prior research by examining young children aged between 6 years; 4 months and 8 years; 10 months, using a broad concept of moral development including emotional aspects and applying an approach that is closely connected to children’s daily lives. Participants (N = 129 completed a standardized intelligence test and were presented four moral transgression stories to assess moral development. Results demonstrated that findings from prior research with adolescents or adults cannot simply be extended to younger participants. No significant correlations of moral development and intelligence were found for any of the presented stories. This provides first evidence that – at least in middle childhood – moral developmental status seems to be independent from children’s general intelligence assessed by figural inductive reasoning tests.

The virtues in the moral education of nurses: Florence Nightingale revisited.

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Sellman, D

1997-01-01

The virtues have been a neglected aspect of morality; only recently has reference been made to their place in professional ethics. Unfashionable as Florence Nightingale is, it is nonetheless worth noting that she was instrumental in continuing the Aristotelian tradition of being concerned with the moral character of persons. Nurses who came under Nightingale's sphere of influence were expected to develop certain exemplary habits of behaviour. A corollary can be drawn with the current UK professional body: nurses are expected to behave in certain ways and to display particular kinds of disposition. The difference lies in the fact that, while Nightingale was clear about the need for moral education, current emphasis is placed on ethical theory and ethical decision-making.

Consequences, norms, and generalized inaction in moral dilemmas: The CNI model of moral decision-making.

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Gawronski, Bertram; Armstrong, Joel; Conway, Paul; Friesdorf, Rebecca; Hütter, Mandy

2017-09-01

Research on moral dilemma judgments has been fundamentally shaped by the distinction between utilitarianism and deontology. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consequences; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consistency with moral norms. To identify the processes underlying utilitarian and deontological judgments, researchers have investigated responses to moral dilemmas that pit one principle against the other (e.g., trolley problem). However, the conceptual meaning of responses in this paradigm is ambiguous, because the central aspects of utilitarianism and deontology-consequences and norms-are not manipulated. We illustrate how this shortcoming undermines theoretical interpretations of empirical findings and describe an alternative approach that resolves the ambiguities of the traditional paradigm. Expanding on this approach, we present a multinomial model that allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms (I) in responses to moral dilemmas. We present 8 studies that used this model to investigate the effects of gender, cognitive load, question framing, and psychopathy on moral dilemma judgments. The findings obtained with the proposed CNI model offer more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments, calling for a reassessment of dominant theoretical assumptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting the argument from fetal potential

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Manninen Bertha

2007-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract One of the most famous, and most derided, arguments against the morality of abortion is the argument from potential, which maintains that the fetus' potential to become a person and enjoy the valuable life common to persons, entails that its destruction is prima facie morally impermissible. In this paper, I will revisit and offer a defense of the argument from potential. First, I will criticize the classical arguments proffered against the importance of fetal potential, specifically the arguments put forth by philosophers Peter Singer and David Boonin, by carefully unpacking the claims made in these arguments and illustrating why they are flawed. Secondly, I will maintain that fetal potential is morally relevant when it comes to the morality of abortion, but that it must be accorded a proper place in the argument. This proper place, however, cannot be found until we first answer a very important and complex question: we must first address the issue of personal identity, and when the fetus becomes the type of being who is relevantly identical to a future person. I will illustrate why the question of fetal potential can only be meaningfully addressed after we have first answered the question of personal identity and how it relates to the human fetus.

Savior siblings, parenting and the moral valorization of children.

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Strong, Kimberly; Kerridge, Ian; Little, Miles

2014-05-01

Philosophy has long been concerned with 'moral status'. Discussions about the moral status of children, however, seem often to promote confusion rather than clarity. Using the creation of 'savior siblings' as an example, this paper provides a philosophical critique of the moral status of children and the moral relevance of parenting and the role that formative experience, regret and relational autonomy play in parental decisions. We suggest that parents make moral decisions that are guided by the moral significance they attach to children, to sick children and most importantly, to a specific sick child (theirs). This moral valorization is rarely made explicit and has generally been ignored by both philosophers and clinicians in previous critiques. Recognizing this, however, may transform not only the focus of bioethical discourse but also the policies and practices surrounding the care of children requiring bone marrow or cord blood transplantation by better understanding the values at stake behind parental decision making. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Differences in the Morale of Older, Rural Widows and Widowers.

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Scott, Jean Pearson; Kivett, Vira R.

1985-01-01

Examined effect of sex differences on morale of 257 older rural widows and widowers. Sex of respondent was not found to affect morale; however, perceived financial status and self-rated health had significant direct effects. Widows and widowers reporting higher morale had higher perceived financial status and rated their health as good.…

O significado e medida da competência moral revisitada: um modelo do duplo aspecto da competência moral The meaning and measurement of moral competence revisited: a dual-aspect model

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Georg Lind

2000-01-01

Full Text Available O presente artigo enfoca as questões metodológicas envolvidas na mensuração da competência moral, conforme definida por Lawrence Kohlberg. Compara o Moral Judgment Test (MJT com a entrevista de juízo moral elaborada por Kohlberg (MJI - Moral Judgment Interview e com o DIT (Defining Issues Test de James Rest. Os aspectos cognitivo e afetivo são contemplados no MJT de forma a não se confundirem, o que possibilita sua utilização na avaliação de processos de intervenção. Nestas situações pode-se verificar com maior clareza, através do MJT se as mudanças alcançadas referem-se a atitudes ou de fato ao aspecto da competência moral. O papel dos processos educacionais nas famílias, escolas e universidades é valorizado no desenvolvimento da competência moral.This paper focused on the methodological aspects related to the measurement of the moral-competence concept as defined by Lawrence Kohlberg. The Moral Judgment Test (MJT was compared to the Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Interview (MJI and Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT. The cognitive and affective aspects are contemplated in the MJT in such a way that they are not confounded. This procedure allows their use in the assessment of outcomes in the intervention processes. In these situations, it can be verified more clearly through MJT if the changes obtained refer to attitudes or indeed to the moral-competence aspect. Educational processes in families, schools, and universities are valued in the development of moral competence.

The role of emotion in moral agency: some meta-ethical issues in the moral psychology of emotion

OpenAIRE

Rietti, Sophie

2003-01-01

This thesis aims to elucidate an apparent paradox about the role of emotion in moral agency. A number of lines of concern suggest emotion may have serious negative impact on moral agency. On the other hand, there are considerations that suggest emotion also plays a crucial role in motivating, informing and even constituting moral agency. Significantly, there is a strong connection between participant reactive attitudes and ascription of moral status as agent or subject. Nonemot...

“‘What Is Ethical Cannot be Taught’ – Understanding Moral Theories as Descriptions of Moral Grammar”

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Anne-Marie Søndergaard

2018-01-01

Traditionally, the development of moral theories has been considered one of the main aims of moral philosophy.1 In contrast, Wittgenstein was very critical of the use of theories both in philosophy in general and in moral philosophy in particular, and philosophers inspired by his philosophy have...... become some of the most prominent critics of both particular contemporary moral theories and the idea of moral theory as such. Nonetheless, we will see how Wittgenstein’s later philosophy offers us resources for a revised understanding of the role and status of moral theories according to which theories...... are neither normative nor explanatory, but are rather to be understood as generalisations of particular descriptions of various forms of moral grammar....

Rights and duties under the law of nature:contractarianism and the Moral Status of Animals

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William Bull

2005-01-01

Full Text Available This is a philosophical inquiry into the moral status of animals, focusing on which ethical principle should guide us in our relationship with animals. The author examines the case for applying contractarian theory to animals other than human beings by looking in particular at the issues of rationality and trusteeship. From the law of nature and by way of a contractarian approach the author arrives at the principle of humility, which he advances as the ideal basis for our behaviour in respect of animals. He then tests certain prevailing philosophical positions in this area, including those of Singer and Regan, exploring utilitarian and rights conceptions. Finally, the author considers the significance of the principle of humility in practical terms in order to evaluate its utility as a moral judgment.

Distributed Cognition and Distributed Morality: Agency, Artifacts and Systems.

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Heersmink, Richard

2017-04-01

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology.

Effects of a Structured Discharge Planning Program on Perceived Functional Status, Cardiac Self-efficacy, Patient Satisfaction, and Unexpected Hospital Revisits Among Filipino Cardiac Patients: A Randomized Controlled Study.

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Cajanding, Ruff Joseph

Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among Filipinos and are responsible for a very large number of hospital readmissions. Comprehensive discharge planning programs have demonstrated positive benefits among various populations of patients with cardiovascular disease, but the clinical and psychosocial effects of such intervention among Filipino patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) have not been studied. In this study we aimed to determine the effectiveness of a nurse-led structured discharge planning program on perceived functional status, cardiac self-efficacy, patient satisfaction, and unexpected hospital revisits among Filipino patients with AMI. A true experimental (randomized control) 2-group design with repeated measures and data collected before and after intervention and at 1-month follow-up was used in this study. Participants were assigned to either the control (n = 68) or the intervention group (n = 75). Intervention participants underwent a 3-day structured discharge planning program implemented by a cardiovascular nurse practitioner, which is comprised of a series of individualized lecture-discussion, provision of feedback, integrative problem solving, goal setting, and action planning. Control participants received standard routine care. Measures of functional status, cardiac self-efficacy, and patient satisfaction were measured at baseline; cardiac self-efficacy and patient satisfaction scores were measured prior to discharge, and perceived functional status and number of revisits were measured 1 month after discharge. Participants in the intervention group had significant improvement in functional status, cardiac self-efficacy, and patient satisfaction scores at baseline and at follow-up compared with the control participants. Furthermore, participants in the intervention group had significantly fewer hospital revisits compared with those who received only standard care. The results demonstrate that a

The "moral career" of perinatally HIV-infected children: revisiting Goffman's concept.

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Cruz, Maria Letícia Santos; Bastos, Francisco Inácio; Darmont, Mariana; Dickstein, Paulo; Monteiro, Simone

2015-01-01

HIV-infected children usually live in vulnerable situations, experiencing discrimination and stigma commonly felt by other people living with HIV/AIDS. The present study aims to analyse primary socialisation of HIV-infected children and adolescents recruited from a public health service in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a social process that shapes a new generation of stigmatised and vulnerable persons. Research was informed by an interactionist perspective, focusing on key aspects of HIV-infected children and adolescents life histories under the conceptual frame of Erving Goffman's theories regarding "moral careers". Goffman defines the making of a moral career as the process through which a person learns that she/he possesses a particular attribute, which may lead her/him to be discredited by members of the surrounding society. We have identified aspects of life histories of HIV-vertically infected children and adolescents for each aspect of "moral career" as described by Goffman, relating them to as family structure, the experience of living HIV within the family, and the position and family role of a given subject. The patterns of "moral career" proposed by Goffman in 1963 were useful in identifying components of HIV-related stigma among children and adolescents. These include gender and social disadvantages, difficulty in coping with a child with a potentially severe disease, orphanhood, abandonment, adoption and disclosure of one's HIV serostatus. Primary socialisation of HIV-infected children and adolescents is a key piece of the complex HIV/AIDS-labelling process that could be targeted by interventions aiming to decrease stigma and marginalisation. Health care workers and stakeholders should be committed to ensuring education and guaranteeing the legal rights of this specific population, including the continuous provision of quality health care, full access to school and support to full disclosure of HIV diagnosis.

Aggressive and Nonaggressive Children's Moral Judgments and Moral Emotion Attributions in Situations Involving Retaliation and Unprovoked Aggression

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Gasser, Luciano; Malti, Tina; Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, Eveline

2012-01-01

The authors investigated 7- and 9-year-old children's moral understanding of retaliation as compared to unprovoked aggression with regard to their aggressive behavior status. Based on peer ratings, 48 children were selected as overtly aggressive and 91 as nonaggressive. Their moral understanding of retaliation and unprovoked aggression was…

How Danes evaluate moral claims related to abortion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Uldall, Sigurd Wiingaard

2015-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate how Danish citizens evaluate four moral claims related to abortion issues, regarding the moral status of the fetus, autonomy, harm and possible negative consequences of allowing abortion and to explore the association between moral beliefs and attitudes towards abortion...... to at least one moral claim. Two hundred and fifty-eight responded to all four claims without using the option 'neither agree nor disagree' and were classified as 'morally engaged responders'. A majority of these had a pro-abortion moral. The general relationship between moral beliefs and attitudes towards...... abortion was morally sound. Being 'morally engaged' did not increase the likelihood of reaching moral judgement on whether requests for abortion should be permitted. Education, religion and parenthood were statistically associated with the investigated issues. DISCUSSION: The direction of causality...

Corporate Moral Duties: Consequentialism, Collective Moral Agency and the “Ought” Implies “Can” Maxim

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Leandro Martins Zanitelli

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The claim according to which corporations are morally responsible is a controversial one. At the same time, it is nowadays common to assign moral duties to companies, especially in work confronting the business and human rights issue. Can companies bear moral duties without being morally responsible? This article presents three different accounts of the duty to follow the course of action with the best consequences (consequentialist duty. The ascription of that duty to business is compatible with the claim that, by not being volitional agents, companies are not morally responsible for anything they do. The paper also addresses two possible objections against the claim that companies bear the duty of taking the course of action with the best consequences. These objections state that corporations are incapable of acting, be it in a general way (i.e. corporations do not possess the moral status of agents, be it regarding particular acts (the objection grounded on the “ought” implies “can” maxim.

Cultivating Political Morality for Deliberative Citizens--Rawls and Callan Revisited

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Leung, Cheuk-Hang

2016-01-01

In this article, I will argue that the implementation of deliberative democracy needs to be supplemented by a specific political morality in order to cultivate free and equal citizens in exercising public reason for achieving a cooperative and inclusive liberal society. This cultivation of personality is literally an educational project with a…

Personhood and Moral Status of The Embryo: It's Effect on Validity of Surrogacy Contract Revocation according to Shia Jurisprudence Perspective.

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Nazari Tavakkoli, Saeid

2017-10-01

One of the most controversial issues related to the human embryo is the determination of the moment when an embryo is considered a human being and acquires a moral status. Although personhood and moral status are frequently mentioned in medical ethics, they are considered interdisciplinary as concepts that shape the debate in medical law (fiqh) since their consequences are influential in the way which the parents and other individuals behave towards the embryo. This analytical-descriptive research gathered relevant data in a literature search. After a description of the fundamentals and definitions, we subsequently analyzed juridical texts and selected one of the viewpoints that regarded the surrogacy contract revocation. The surrogacy contract is a contract based upon which two sides (infertile couple and surrogate mother) involved in making the contract are obligated to fulfill its terms. Therefore, contract revocation can be surveyed from three perspectives: mutual revocation (iqala), legal unilateral wills (khiar al-majlis, khiar al-ayb), and contractual wills (khiar al-shart). Revocation of a surrogacy contract either by the genetic parents, surrogate or the fertility clinic is allowed by Muslim jurists only when the embryo lacks personhood. Based on Islamic teachings, the termination of a surrogacy contract in and after the sixteenth week of pregnancy, when the embryo acquires a human soul (ensoulment), is not allowed. However religious thought emphasizes the moral status of the fetus before the sixteenth week and states that optional termination of the surrogacy contract is not permitted while the fetus becomes a human being. Copyright© by Royan Institute. All rights reserved.

Are Military Professionals Bound by a 'Higher' Moral Standard?

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Ficarrotta, J

1997-01-01

.... Military education is full of courses on professional ethics. Indeed, from the top down, part of the background noise of professional military life are these 'higher' expectations, and a belief that somehow, this line of work is one shot through with a special moral status, special moral problems, and special moral demands.

Disgust and the moralization of purity.

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Horberg, E J; Oveis, Christopher; Keltner, Dacher; Cohen, Adam B

2009-12-01

Guided by appraisal-based models of the influence of emotion upon judgment, we propose that disgust moralizes--that is, amplifies the moral significance of--protecting the purity of the body and soul. Three studies documented that state and trait disgust, but not other negative emotions, moralize the purity moral domain but not the moral domains of justice or harm/care. In Study 1, integral feelings of disgust, but not integral anger, predicted stronger moral condemnation of behaviors violating purity. In Study 2, experimentally induced disgust, compared with induced sadness, increased condemnation of behaviors violating purity and increased approval of behaviors upholding purity. In Study 3, trait disgust, but not trait anger or trait fear, predicted stronger condemnation of purity violations and greater approval of behaviors upholding purity. We found that, confirming the domain specificity of the disgust-purity association, disgust was unrelated to moral judgments about justice (Studies 1 and 2) or harm/care (Study 3). Finally, across studies, individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) were more likely than individuals of higher SES to moralize purity but not justice or harm/care.

Moral intuitions, moral expertise, and moral reasoning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Musschenga, A.W.

2009-01-01

In this article I examine the consequences of the dominance of intuitive thinking in moral judging and deciding for the role of moral reasoning in moral education. I argue that evidence for the reliability of moral intuitions is lacking. We cannot determine when we can trust our intuitive moral

Notes on Corruption and Morality

OpenAIRE

Hatti, Neelambar; Hoadley, Mason

2015-01-01

An actor perspective within a moralistic approach to corruption in india and Southeast Asia contrasts to a (Weberian) institutional one. This emphasizes local values which help explain apparent lack of social constraints to everyday corrupt practices as bribery. In Karnataka the approach indicates that status and power within one’s own community gained by amassing wealth however acquired overrides morality; overstepping moral taboos can easily be rectified through an appropriate ritual. In po...

Personhood and Moral Status of The Embryo: It’s Effect on Validity of Surrogacy Contract Revocation according to Shia Jurisprudence Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saeid Nazari Tavakkoli

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Background One of the most controversial issues related to the human embryo is the determination of the moment when an embryo is considered a human being and acquires a moral status. Although personhood and moral status are frequently mentioned in medical ethics, they are considered interdisciplinary as concepts that shape the debate in medical law (fiqh since their consequences are influential in the way which the parents and other individuals behave towards the embryo. Materials and Methods This analytical-descriptive research gathered relevant data in a literature search. After a description of the fundamentals and definitions, we subsequently analyzed juridical texts and selected one of the viewpoints that regarded the surrogacy contract revocation. Results The surrogacy contract is a contract based upon which two sides (infertile couple and surrogate mother involved in making the contract are obligated to fulfill its terms. Therefore, contract revocation can be surveyed from three perspectives: mutual revocation (iqala, legal unilateral wills (khiar al-majlis, khiar al-ayb, and contractual wills (khiar al-shart. Conclusion Revocation of a surrogacy contract either by the genetic parents, surrogate or the fertility clinic is allowed by Muslim jurists only when the embryo lacks personhood. Based on Islamic teachings, the termination of a surrogacy contract in and after the sixteenth week of pregnancy, when the embryo acquires a human soul (ensoulment, is not allowed. However religious thought emphasizes the moral status of the fetus before the sixteenth week and states that optional termination of the surrogacy contract is not permitted while the fetus becomes a human being.

Personhood and Moral Status of The Embryo: It’s Effect on Validity of Surrogacy Contract Revocation according to Shia Jurisprudence Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Tavakkoli, Saeid Nazari

2017-01-01

Background One of the most controversial issues related to the human embryo is the determination of the moment when an embryo is considered a human being and acquires a moral status. Although personhood and moral status are frequently mentioned in medical ethics, they are considered interdisciplinary as concepts that shape the debate in medical law (fiqh) since their consequences are influential in the way which the parents and other individuals behave towards the embryo. Materials and Methods This analytical-descriptive research gathered relevant data in a literature search. After a description of the fundamentals and definitions, we subsequently analyzed juridical texts and selected one of the viewpoints that regarded the surrogacy contract revocation. Results The surrogacy contract is a contract based upon which two sides (infertile couple and surrogate mother) involved in making the contract are obligated to fulfill its terms. Therefore, contract revocation can be surveyed from three perspectives: mutual revocation (iqala), legal unilateral wills (khiar al-majlis, khiar al-ayb), and contractual wills (khiar al-shart). Conclusion Revocation of a surrogacy contract either by the genetic parents, surrogate or the fertility clinic is allowed by Muslim jurists only when the embryo lacks personhood. Based on Islamic teachings, the termination of a surrogacy contract in and after the sixteenth week of pregnancy, when the embryo acquires a human soul (ensoulment), is not allowed. However religious thought emphasizes the moral status of the fetus before the sixteenth week and states that optional termination of the surrogacy contract is not permitted while the fetus becomes a human being. PMID:28868846

Can there be an immoral morality? Dark personality traits as predictors of moral foundations

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Međedović Janko

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Previous researches have shown that some aspects of Moral foundations do not correlate with indicators of immoral behavior, or even have positive correlations with them. The aim of this study was to explore the relations of Moral foundations with general (HEXACO personality model and “dark” personality traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism. Data was gathered via on-line survey (N=402; 70% females. The results have shown that Openness is the best predictor from the set of basic personality traits: It has positive relations with Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity and negative with the other three moral foundations. Psychopathy was negatively associated with Harm/Care and positively with Ingroup/Loyalty foundation. Machiavellianism was a positive predictor of Ingroup/Loyalty and Authority/ Respect. Results confirmed the existence of fundamental differences between moral foundations. Ingroup/Loyalty and Authority/Respect are partly based on immoral personal dispositions, which bring into question their conceptual status as human moral foundations. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47011: Crime in Serbia: phenomenology, risks and the possibilities of social intervention

Mealtime Companionship and Morale in the Rural Elderly.

Science.gov (United States)

Kinard, James D.; Kivett, Vira R.

The importance of mealtime companionship and social interaction to improvements of food consumption, nutritional status, and morale in the elderly have been stressed, but the research supporting this concept is minimal. To determine the relationship between mealtime companionship and morale, a representative group of rural adults (N=418) aged 65…

Moving from conceptual ambiguity to knowledgeable action: using a critical realist approach to studying moral distress.

Science.gov (United States)

Musto, Lynn C; Rodney, Patricia A

2016-04-01

Moral distress is a phenomenon that has been receiving increasing attention in nursing and other health care disciplines. Moral distress is a concept that entered the nursing literature - and subsequently the health care ethics lexicon - in 1984 as a result of the work done by American philosopher and bioethicist Andrew Jameton. Over the past decade, research into moral distress has extended beyond the profession of nursing as other health care disciplines have come to question the impact of moral constraint on individual practitioners, professional practice, and patient outcomes. Along with increased interest in the phenomenon of moral distress have come increasing critiques - critiques that in their essence point to a serious lack of conceptual clarity in the definition, study, and application of the concept. Foundational to gaining conceptual clarity in moral distress in order to develop strategies to prevent and ameliorate the experience is a careful revisiting of the epistemological assumptions underpinning our knowledge and use of the concept of moral distress. It is our contention that the conceptual challenges reveal flaws in the original understanding of moral distress that are based on an epistemological stance that holds a linear conception of cause and effect coupled with a simplistic perspective of 'constraint' and 'agency'. We need a more nuanced approach to our study of moral distress such that our ontological and epistemological stances help us to better appreciate the complexity of moral agents acting in organizational contexts. We believe that critical realism offers such a nuanced approach. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The dual moral self: moral centrality and internal moral motivation.

Science.gov (United States)

Krettenauer, Tobias

2011-01-01

In this study, the relationship between two aspects of the moral self, moral centrality and internal moral motivation, was analyzed. It is argued that these 2 aspects are conceptually distinct but nonetheless empirically related. Based on a cross-sectional study of 205 adolescents (M age = 14.83 years, SD = 2.21 years) it was found that moral centrality and internal moral motivation, even though substantially correlated, interacted in predicting moral emotion expectancies. Even though moral centrality was unrelated to adolescents' age it predicted a longitudinal increase in internal moral motivation over a 1-year interval. Overall, the findings call for a differentiation of moral centrality and internal moral motivation as 2 distinct but interrelated aspects of moral self-development that follow different developmental trajectories and are differentially related to age. At the same time, the study points out that adolescence may be less important for the development of the moral self than commonly assumed.

Moral knowledge and moral factuality

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Ron Wilburn

2010-12-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2008v7n1p69For naturalistic and non-intuitionistic moral realists, moral knowledge is more problematic than ordinary and scientific factual knowledge. For without special faculties of moral discernment, how could we ever detect moral facts and properties? Physical facts and properties may be accessible to perceptual recognition. But how could moral facts and properties ever be similarly accessible? To address this challenge, we need a meta-ethical account that does two things. First, it must explain how the discernment of moral facts and properties ultimately consists only of the detection of appropriate physical items. Second, it must explain why, despite this fact, moral perception seems so very puzzling. In this paper I endeavor to provide such an account. It is largely because of the relational nature of moral properties, and the corresponding externalistically determined normative content of moral property terms, I argue, that our epistemic access to moral knowledge appears mysterious. The metaphysics of moral factuality does a lot to explain the seeming elusiveness of moral knowledge, and in ways that are surprisingly mundane.

From Folk Morality to Moral Philosophy

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J Peikani

2014-02-01

Full Text Available According to our terminology, the mechanism people follow in moral judgments, which is far from the sayings and rules of moral philosophers, is folk morality. Above all, people in moral judgments regard human moral capacity and do not expect full morality of any one. People suppose that perfect moral life is an ideal which is beyond human abilities. This hidden presupposition forms the foundation of human moral behavior. On the other hand, it seems that the moral systems originating from moral philosophy have been constructed a priori and, assuming a perfect man, they expect people to become such a person. It seems that it is necessary for moral philosophers to change their way and begin speculation with respect to people’s moral capacities. In this paper, we argue that minimal ethical speculation increases the level of morality in society. The basis of this turn is new progresses and findings in the field of psychology and the connection between psychology and moral philosophy a connection which will be more and more important for moral philosophers parallel to scientific progresses. Of course, this is an immature idea and therefore confronts with some critiques.

Common morality and moral reform.

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Wallace, K A

2009-01-01

The idea of moral reform requires that morality be more than a description of what people do value, for there has to be some measure against which to assess progress. Otherwise, any change is not reform, but simply difference. Therefore, I discuss moral reform in relation to two prescriptive approaches to common morality, which I distinguish as the foundational and the pragmatic. A foundational approach to common morality (e.g., Bernard Gert's) suggests that there is no reform of morality, but of beliefs, values, customs, and practices so as to conform with an unchanging, foundational morality. If, however, there were revision in its foundation (e.g., in rationality), then reform in morality itself would be possible. On a pragmatic view, on the other hand, common morality is relative to human flourishing, and its justification consists in its effectiveness in promoting flourishing. Morality is dependent on what in fact does promote human flourishing and therefore, could be reformed. However, a pragmatic approach, which appears more open to the possibility of moral reform, would need a more robust account of norms by which reform is measured.

Teaching Morally and Teaching Morality

Science.gov (United States)

Fenstermacher, Gary D.; Osguthorpe, Richard D.; Sanger, Matthew N.

2009-01-01

In this article, the authors introduce what they believe is an important distinction between teaching morality and teaching morally. In P-12 schools, the moral education debate often focuses on character education programs or other moral curricula. Such programs and curricula are championed as a means of teaching morality and transmitting moral…

Moral emotions and moral behavior.

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Tangney, June Price; Stuewig, Jeff; Mashek, Debra J

2007-01-01

Moral emotions represent a key element of our human moral apparatus, influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. This chapter reviews current theory and research on moral emotions. We first focus on a triad of negatively valenced "self-conscious" emotions-shame, guilt, and embarrassment. As in previous decades, much research remains focused on shame and guilt. We review current thinking on the distinction between shame and guilt, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two moral emotions. Several new areas of research are highlighted: research on the domain-specific phenomenon of body shame, styles of coping with shame, psychobiological aspects of shame, the link between childhood abuse and later proneness to shame, and the phenomena of vicarious or "collective" experiences of shame and guilt. In recent years, the concept of moral emotions has been expanded to include several positive emotions-elevation, gratitude, and the sometimes morally relevant experience of pride. Finally, we discuss briefly a morally relevant emotional process-other-oriented empathy.

Moral sensitivity, moral distress, and moral courage among baccalaureate Filipino nursing students.

Science.gov (United States)

Escolar-Chua, Rowena L

2018-06-01

Moral distress, moral sensitivity, and moral courage among healthcare professionals have been explored considerably in recent years. However, there is a paucity of studies exploring these topics among baccalaureate nursing students. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between and among moral distress, moral sensitivity, and moral courage of undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students. The research employed a descriptive-correlational design to explore the relationships between and among moral distress, moral sensitivity, and moral courage of undergraduate nursing students. Participants and research context: A total of 293 baccalaureate Filipino nursing students who have been exposed to various clinical areas participated in the study. Ethical considerations: Institutional review board approval was sought prior to the conduct of the study. Self-determination was assured and anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed to all participants. Results indicate that a majority of the nursing students in the clinical areas encounter morally distressing situations that compromise quality patient care. However, despite the fact that they want to do what is in the best interest of their patients, their perception of being the inexperienced among the healthcare team drives the majority of them to ignore morally distressing situations to avoid conflict and confrontation. Another interesting finding is that 79.20% of the respondents hardly consider quitting the nursing profession even if they frequently encounter morally distressing situations. Analysis also shows associations between moral distress intensity and frequency ( r = 0.13, p < 0.05) and moral distress intensity and moral sensitivity ( r = 0.25, p < 0.05). The dimensions of moral courage are also related to both moral distress and moral sensitivity. Results of the study imply that moral distress is a reality among all healthcare professionals including nursing students and requires more

The Development of Generosity and Moral Cognition across Five Cultures

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Cowell, Jason M.; Lee, Kang; Malcolm-Smith, Susan; Selcuk, Bilge; Zhou, Xinyue; Decety, Jean

2017-01-01

Morality is an evolved aspect of human nature, yet is heavily influenced by cultural environment. This developmental study adopted an integrative approach by combining measures of socioeconomic status (SES), executive function, affective sharing, empathic concern, theory of mind, and moral judgment in predicting sharing behavior in children (N =…

Moral Emotions and Morals

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Rocío Orsi Portalo

2006-12-01

Full Text Available My aim in this paper is to explore the ambivalent role played by the so called moral emotions in moral thinking, overall when the concept of responsibility is concerned. In the first part of this paper I show how moral emotions such as guilt and shame can appear in circumstances that are not under the agent’s control, and therefore the agent could be though of free or responsibility for them. By contrast, in the second part of this essay I put how the absence of moral emotions, or their twisted development, makes as well the flourishing of individual morality impossible.

Fostering Nurses' Moral Agency and Moral Identity: The Importance of Moral Community.

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Liaschenko, Joan; Peter, Elizabeth

2016-09-01

It may be the case that the most challenging moral problem of the twenty-first century will be the relationship between the individual moral agent and the practices and institutions in which the moral agent is embedded. In this paper, we continue the efforts that one of us, Joan Liaschenko, first called for in 1993, that of using feminist ethics as a lens for viewing the relationship between individual nurses as moral agents and the highly complex institutions in which they do the work of nursing. Feminist ethics, with its emphasis on the inextricable relationship between ethics and politics, provides a useful lens to understand the work of nurses in context. Using Margaret Urban Walker's and Hilde Lindemann's concepts of identity, relationships, values, and moral agency, we argue that health care institutions can be moral communities and profoundly affect the work and identity and, therefore, the moral agency of all who work within those structures, including nurses. Nurses are not only shaped by these organizations but also have the power to shape them. Because moral agency is intimately connected to one's identity, moral identity work is essential for nurses to exercise their moral agency and to foster moral community in health care organizations. We first provide a brief history of nursing's morally problematic relationship with institutions and examine the impact institutional master narratives and corporatism exert today on nurses' moral identities and agency. We close by emphasizing the significance of ongoing dialogue in creating and sustaining moral communities, repairing moral identities, and strengthening moral agency. © 2016 The Hastings Center.

Individual moral development and moral progress

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schinkel, Anders; de Ruyter, Doret J.

At first glance, one of the most obvious places to look for moral progress is in individuals, in particular in moral development from childhood to adulthood. In fact, that moral progress is possible is a foundational assumption of moral education. Beyond the general agreement that moral progress is

Individual Moral Development and Moral Progress

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schinkel, Anders; de Ruyter, Doret J.

2017-01-01

At first glance, one of the most obvious places to look for moral progress is in individuals, in particular in moral development from childhood to adulthood. In fact, that moral progress is possible is a foundational assumption of moral education. Beyond the general agreement that moral progress is

Orphan drugs for rare diseases: is it time to revisit their special market access status?

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Simoens, Steven; Cassiman, David; Dooms, Marc; Picavet, Eline

2012-07-30

Orphan drugs are intended for diseases with a very low prevalence, and many countries have implemented legislation to support market access of orphan drugs. We argue that it is time to revisit the special market access status of orphan drugs. Indeed, evidence suggests that there is no societal preference for treating rare diseases. Although society appears to assign a greater value to severity of disease, this criterion is equally relevant to many common diseases. Furthermore, the criterion of equity in access to treatment, which underpins orphan drug legislation, puts more value on health improvement in rare diseases than in common diseases and implies that population health is not maximized. Finally, incentives for the development, pricing and reimbursement of orphan drugs have created market failures, including monopolistic prices and the artificial creation of rare diseases. We argue that, instead of awarding special market access status to orphan drugs, there is scope to optimize research and development (R&D) of orphan drugs and to control prices of orphan drugs by means of, for example, patent auctions, advance purchase commitments, pay-as-you-go schemes and dose-modification studies. Governments should consider carefully the right incentive strategy for R&D of orphan drugs in rare diseases.

Humanness and (im)morality in group relations

OpenAIRE

Henriques, Ana Patrícia Matos

2017-01-01

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia na área de especialidade - Psicologia Social Morality is a valued dimension within and between groups (Ellemers, Pagliaro, & Barreto, 2013; Leach, Bilali, & Pagliaro, 2015), that has been consistently pointed out as part of what makes us uniquely human (Demoulin et al., 2004; Leyens et al., 2000; Haslam, 2006). On the other hand, the extent to which we see others as fully human also impacts on other’s moral status (Bastian, Laham, Wilson, Haslam, & Koval,...

Individual moral development and moral progress

OpenAIRE

Schinkel, Anders; de Ruyter, Doret J.

2017-01-01

At first glance, one of the most obvious places to look for moral progress is in individuals, in particular in moral development from childhood to adulthood. In fact, that moral progress is possible is a foundational assumption of moral education. Beyond the general agreement that moral progress is not only possible but even a common feature of human development things become blurry, however. For what do we mean by ‘progress’? And what constitutes moral progress? Does the idea of individual m...

Moralization Through Moral Shock: Exploring Emotional Antecedents to Moral Conviction.

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Wisneski, Daniel C; Skitka, Linda J

2017-02-01

The current research tested whether exposure to disgusting images increases moral conviction and whether this happens in the presence of incidental disgust cues versus disgust cues relevant to the target of moralization. Across two studies, we exposed participants to one of the four sets of disgusting versus control images to test the moralization of abortion attitudes: pictures of aborted fetuses, animal abuse, non-harm related disgusting images, harm related disgusting images, or neutral pictures, at either sub- or supraliminal levels of awareness. Moral conviction about abortion increased (compared with control) only for participants exposed to abortion-related images at speeds slow enough to allow conscious awareness. Study 2 replicated this finding, and found that the relationship between attitudinally relevant disgust and moral conviction was mediated by disgust, and not anger or harm appraisals. Findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for intuitionist theories of morality and moral theories that emphasize harm.

Moral distress and moral conflict in clinical ethics.

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Fourie, Carina

2015-02-01

Much research is currently being conducted on health care practitioners' experiences of moral distress, especially the experience of nurses. What moral distress is, however, is not always clearly delineated and there is some debate as to how it should be defined. This article aims to help to clarify moral distress. My methodology consists primarily of a conceptual analysis, with especial focus on Andrew Jameton's influential description of moral distress. I will identify and aim to resolve two sources of confusion about moral distress: (1) the compound nature of a narrow definition of distress which stipulates a particular cause, i.e. moral constraint, and (2) the distinction drawn between moral dilemma (or, more accurately, moral conflict) and moral distress, which implies that the two are mutually exclusive. In light of these concerns, I argue that the definition of moral distress should be revised so that moral constraint should not be a necessary condition of moral distress, and that moral conflict should be included as a potential cause of distress. Ultimately, I claim that moral distress should be understood as a specific psychological response to morally challenging situations such as those of moral constraint or moral conflict, or both. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Refining moral agency: Insights from moral psychology and moral philosophy.

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Milliken, Aimee

2018-01-01

Research in moral psychology has recently raised questions about the impact of context and the environment on the way the human mind works. In a 2012 call to action, Paley wrote: "If some of the conclusions arrived at by moral psychologists are true, they are directly relevant to the way nurses think about moral problems, and present serious challenges to favoured concepts in nursing ethics, such as the ethics of care, virtue, and the unity of the person" (p. 80). He urges nurse ethicists and scholars to evaluate the impact these findings may have for moral theory. In this paper, I review some of Paley's (Nursing Philosophy, 13, 2012, 80) critique, focusing on the argument that theories of nursing ethics have failed to account for the role of context; both in terms of its impact on the way nurses make moral judgements and in terms of the environment's influence on the way the mind works. I then examine nursing literature on moral agency, and focus on the role of the environment and context play within existing theory. I argue that theories of moral agency have often accounted for the role of context on the way nurses make decisions; however, less attention has been paid to its impact on the mind. With this background, I use insights from the fields of moral philosophy and moral psychology to refine the conceptualization of nurse moral agency in a way that is reflective of current cognitive, philosophical and nursing practice-based science. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Felt Moral Obligation and the Moral Judgement-Moral Action Gap: Toward a Phenomenology of Moral Life

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Williams, Richard N.; Gantt, Edwin E.

2012-01-01

The step-off point for this article is the problem of the "moral judgement-moral action gap" as found in contemporary literature of moral education and moral development. We argue that this gap, and the conceptual problems encountered by attempts to bridge it, reflects the effect of a different, deeper and more problematic conceptual gap: the…

Moral Disengagement Among Bystanders to School Bullying

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Obermann, Marie-Louise

2011-01-01

This study examined the use of moral disengagement among children indirectly involved in bullying (bystanders). A sample of Danish adolescents (N = 660, M age 12.6 years) were divided into four groups depending on their bystander status: (a) outsiders, who did not experience bullying among...... their peers; (b) defenders, who were likely to help the victims in bullying episodes; (c) guilty bystanders, who did nothing to help bullied peers but felt guilty about it; and (d) unconcerned bystanders, who witnessed peers being bullied, without feeling responsible. Results indicated that, besides from...... active personal involvement in bullying others, being an unconcerned bystander to bullying also associates with moral disengagement. Unconcerned bystanders had significantly higher moral disengagement than guilty bystanders and defenders. Outsiders also showed significant higher disengagement than...

Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility. Fortune's Web

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Carsten Fogh

2011-01-01

Anmeldelse af Nafsika Athanassoulis bog: Morality, Moral Lock and Responsibility (Palgrave MacMillian 2010)......Anmeldelse af Nafsika Athanassoulis bog: Morality, Moral Lock and Responsibility (Palgrave MacMillian 2010)...

The Necessity of Considering Folk Ethics in Moral Philosophy

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Jalal Peykani

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Contemporary ethics and moral philosophy need a kind of revision due to their negligence in human moral capacities, ordinary life, and humans’ expectations of ethics. The assumptions and presuppositions of ethics result in their current unsatisfactory status. In this paper, we first explore and criticize those presuppositions. Then, instead of introducing ideal presuppositions of ethics, we introduce folk ethics and its components in order to show that contemporary ethics and moral philosophy should always begin with folk ethics. The most important advantage of folk ethics is its realistic foundation, which in turn will produce better results.

Adult-child sex and the limits of liberal sexual morality.

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Malón, Agustin

2015-05-01

This article is a critical review of the most common arguments in the specialized literature about the moral status of sexual relationships between adults and prepubescent children. The intent is to reveal how the usual ethical analysis of these experiences, done from a general sexual morality, with a Kantian and utilitarian basis, very clearly shows us the limits and contradictions of contemporary liberal morality regarding sexual matters. It leaves open the possibility that, under certain circumstances, these relationships may be morally admissible. Some shortcomings and contradictions in these liberal arguments suggest that it would be of interest to refer to other authors and ideas to value adult-child sex, approaches that are based on a specific sexual morality concerning the issue of sexual virtues and a more complex conception of human sexual desire. Some of the scientific implications of these moral issues are also discussed.

Gender Differences in Implicit Moral Orientation Associations: The Justice and Care Debate Revisited

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Agerstrom, Jens; Bjorklund, Fredrik; Carlsson, Rickard

2011-01-01

Employing new measures (Implicit Association Test) to study the classic issue of moral orientations, we predicted and found gender differences in implicit associations to the concepts of justice and care. Specifically, we found that men more strongly associate justice vs. care with importance and with themselves than women. However, participants'…

Testing Moral Foundation Theory: Are Specific Moral Emotions Elicited by Specific Moral Transgressions?

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Landmann, Helen; Hess, Ursula

2018-01-01

Moral foundation theory posits that specific moral transgressions elicit specific moral emotions. To test this claim, participants (N = 195) were asked to rate their emotions in response to moral violation vignettes. We found that compassion and disgust were associated with care and purity respectively as predicted by moral foundation theory.…

A cybernetic theory of morality and moral autonomy.

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Chambers, J

2001-04-01

Human morality may be thought of as a negative feedback control system in which moral rules are reference values, and moral disapproval, blame, and punishment are forms of negative feedback given for violations of the moral rules. In such a system, if moral agents held each other accountable, moral norms would be enforced effectively. However, even a properly functioning social negative feedback system could not explain acts in which individual agents uphold moral rules in the face of contrary social pressure. Dr. Frances Kelsey, who withheld FDA approval for thalidomide against intense social pressure, is an example of the degree of individual moral autonomy possible in a hostile environment. Such extreme moral autonomy is possible only if there is internal, psychological negative feedback, in addition to external, social feedback. Such a cybernetic model of morality and moral autonomy is consistent with certain aspects of classical ethical theories.

Neural basis of moral verdict and moral deliberation

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Borg, Jana Schaich; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Calhoun, Vince D.; Kiehl, Kent A.

2011-01-01

How people judge something to be morally right or wrong is a fundamental question of both the sciences and the humanities. Here we aim to identify the neural processes that underlie the specific conclusion that something is morally wrong. To do this, we introduce a novel distinction between “moral deliberation,” or the weighing of moral considerations, and the formation of a “moral verdict,” or the commitment to one moral conclusion. We predict and identify hemodynamic activity in the bilateral anterior insula and basal ganglia that correlates with committing to the moral verdict “this is morally wrong” as opposed to “this is morally not wrong,” a finding that is consistent with research from economic decision-making. Using comparisons of deliberation-locked vs. verdict-locked analyses, we also demonstrate that hemodynamic activity in high-level cortical regions previously implicated in morality—including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and temporoparietal junction—correlates primarily with moral deliberation as opposed to moral verdicts. These findings provide new insights into what types of processes comprise the enterprise of moral judgment, and in doing so point to a framework for resolving why some clinical patients, including psychopaths, may have intact moral judgment but impaired moral behavior. PMID:21590588

Ill-placed democracy: ethics consultations and the moral status of voting.

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Fiester, Autumn M

2011-01-01

As groups around the country begin to craft standards for clinical ethics consultations, one focus of that work is the proper procedure for conducting ethics consults. From a recent empirical look into the workings of ethics consult services (ECSs), one worrisome finding is that some ECSs rely on a committee vote when making a recommendation. This article examines the practice of voting and its moral standing as a procedural strategy for arriving at a clinical ethics recommendation. I focus here on the type of clinical ethics conflicts that are most likely to lead an ECS to vote, namely, conflicts involving ethical uncertainty--or, in the Greek, aporia. I argue that in cases of aporia, voting on an ethics conflict is not a morally justifiable procedure. Then on the same grounds that I use to show that voting is ethically problematic, I raise broader concerns about the common practice of making recommendations by other procedures. In contrast to the standard approach of adjudicating between moral claims, I argue that ECSs can best resolve aporetic conflict through the process of clinical ethics mediation.

Radiation risks and benefits: politics and morality

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maxey, M.N.

1983-01-01

The bioethical framework from which moral reasoning concerning nuclear technology has been derived is both seriously flawed and conceptually inadequate. The reasons are examined and are arranged in response to three questions. First, what is the status of alleged scientific evidence from which moral conclusions about the unacceptability of man-made radiation exposures are derived. Secondly, what criticisms of risk assessment reasoning are pertinent to ethical reflection. Finally, what revisions in an ethical framework are necessary if risk estimates of low-dose radiation exposure are to be conducted properly

The Ethical Justification of the Thesis that Separates Law from Morality Through John Austin

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Galvão Rabelo

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The british legal philosopher John Austin stands at the threshold of the evolution of the legal positivist tradition. His work, which dates back to the first half of the 19th century, was especially important to establish the basic elements of this school of legal understanding. Among his contributions to the legal positivist doctrine, lies the creation of the thesis that separates morality from law. Under an ethical context, however, John Austin was an ardent utilitarian who defended the use of the principle of utility as the only rational criteria for the unveiling of superior moral standards (divine laws. Considering both dimensions of his understanding, it has long been wondered if his utilitarian ethics have influenced, somehow, his legal theory, especially in regards to the separation thesis. Said thesis, which is in the center of the legal positivist tradition, has been interpreted in different ways in contemporary legal debate. A particular branch, called ethical positivism, opened new perspectives to the study of this tradition, defending the legal positivism theory as a morally satisfactory theoretical model for the contemporary legal systems. Hence, using the main premise of ethical positivism (which states that there are moral reasons to defend the separation thesis as an interprative and methodological tool, this paper plans on revisiting the link between John Austins legal and ethical convictions, in order to comprehend what were the moral reasons which led him to defend the separation of what law is and what it should be.

Educating Moral Emotions or Moral Selves: A False Dichotomy?

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Kristjansson, Kristjan

2010-01-01

In the post-Kohlbergian era of moral education, a "moral gap" has been identified between moral cognition and moral action. Contemporary moral psychologists lock horns over how this gap might be bridged. The two main contenders for such bridge-building are moral emotions and moral selves. I explore these two options from an Aristotelian…

Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality: two faces of moral regulation.

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Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie; Sheikh, Sana; Hepp, Sebastian

2009-03-01

A distinction is made between two forms of morality on the basis of approach-avoidance differences in self-regulation. Prescriptive morality is sensitive to positive outcomes, activation-based, and focused on what we should do. Proscriptive morality is sensitive to negative outcomes, inhibition-based, and focused on what we should not do. Seven studies profile these two faces of morality, support their distinct motivational underpinnings, and provide evidence of moral asymmetry. Both are well-represented in individuals' moral repertoire and equivalent in terms of moral weight, but proscriptive morality is condemnatory and strict, whereas prescriptive morality is commendatory and not strict. More specifically, in these studies proscriptive morality was perceived as concrete, mandatory, and duty-based, whereas prescriptive morality was perceived as more abstract, discretionary, and based in duty or desire; proscriptive immorality resulted in greater blame, whereas prescriptive morality resulted in greater moral credit. Implications for broader social regulation, including cross-cultural differences and political orientation, are discussed.

Desperately seeking social approval: Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen and the moral limits of capitalist culture.

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Watson, Matthew

2012-09-01

Adam Smith and Thorstein Veblen shared much in matters of economic ontology. Both dismissed the very notion of an autonomous economic self and instead investigated the processes through which self and other are mutually constituted under changing cultural traditions of individual aspiration. Their strikingly similar critiques of status-oriented consumption and concern for the moral basis of the market economy are established in this manner. However, the political implications of their analyses point in different directions, with Veblen being the more radical. The Smithian individual can always use spectatorial insights to assert through genuinely praiseworthy behaviour personal moral distance from social norms of status-oriented consumption. The Veblenian individual, by contrast, has no such capacity for elevating abstract moral principles above socially-situated conduct, as mind and environment co-evolve in line with changing material circumstances of life. For Veblen, the rise of status-oriented consumption itself acted as a form of moral self-education that more deeply entrenched the social norms of ownership out of which it arose, thus the impossibility of an autonomous economic self was matched by the impossibility of an autonomous moral self. To his way of thinking, moral degradation in conspicuous consumption was irredeemably inscribed into the whole cultural structure of capitalism. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2012.

Slang 'on board'. A moral analysis of medical jargon.

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McCrary, S; Christensen, R C

1993-01-01

Medical jargon is commonly used by health-care professionals. The use of such jargon is sometimes criticized as insensitive or callous. Rather than generalize, we identify four basic types of medical jargon and discuss their relevant moral distinctions. Our characterizations of jargon include medical acronyms, euphemisms, and initiatory and derogatory language. Physicians should be aware of the ways in which they use medical slang. Jargon can serve useful purposes but its moral status is often dependent on the function it serves and the context in which it is used. Jargon that is clearly derogatory can reflect negatively on the moral character of the medical profession and should be avoided when possible.

Moral Communities and Moral Leadership.

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Chambers, David W

2015-01-01

The American College of Dentists is embarking on a multiyear project to improve ethics in dentistry. Early indications are that the focus will be on actual moral behavior rather than theory, that we will include organizations as ethical units, and that we will focus on building moral leadership. There is little evidence that the "telling individuals how to behave" approach to ethics is having the hoped-for effect. As a profession, dentistry is based on shared trust. The public level of trust in practitioners is acceptable, but could be improved, and will need to be strengthened to reduce the risk of increasing regulation. While feedback from the way dentists and patients view ethics is generally reassuring, dentists are often at odds with patients and their colleagues over how the profesion manages itself. Individuals are an inconsistent mix of good and bad behavior, and it may be more helpful to make small improvements in the habits of all dentists than to try to take a few certifiably dishonest ones off the street. A computer simulation model of dentistry as a moral community suggests that the profession will always have the proportion of bad actors it will tolerate, that moral leadership is a difficult posture to maintain, that massive interventions to correct imbalances through education or other means will be wasted unless the system as a whole is modified, and that most dentists see no compelling benefit in changing the ethical climate of the profession because they are doing just fine. Considering organiza-tions as loci of moral behavior reveals questionable practices that otherwise remain undetected, including moral distress, fragmentation, fictitious dentists, moral fading, decoupling, responsibility shifting, and moral priming. What is most needed is not phillosophy or principles, but moral leadership.

A physician's reflection on the moral use of human papilloma virus vaccine.

Science.gov (United States)

Burke, Greg F

2016-08-01

Controversies often surround the use of vaccines, particularly among the pediatric population. Often, the possible temporal relationship between vaccination and subsequent disease is at the center of the controversy. However, others have questioned the moral status of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine because of some instances of state coercion and also the possibility that the vaccine may promote promiscuity. This article addresses the moral status of the HPV vaccine from the perspective of a primary care physician and father of four daughters. Lay Summary: Parents are often asked by pediatricians for permission to vaccinate their children under the age of consent against the sexually transmitted virus HPV. This article addresses the medical and moral concerns about vaccination with some guiding principles to assist in a final decision.

Socio-Economic Factors Related to Moral Reasoning in Childhood and Adolescence: The Missing Link between Brain and Behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simona Carla Silvia eCaravita

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Neuroscientific and psychological research on moral development has until now developed independently, referring to distinct theoretical models, contents and methods. In particular, the influence of socio-economic and cultural factors on morality has been broadly investigated by psychologists but as yet has not been investigated by neuroscientists. The value of bridging these two areas both theoretically and methodologically has, however, been suggested. This study aims at providing a first connection between neuroscientific and psychological literature on morality by investigating whether socio-economic dimensions, i.e. living socio-geographic/economic area, immigrant status and SES, affect moral reasoning as operationalized in moral domain theory (a seminal approach in psychological studies on morality and in Greene and colleagues’ (2001 perspective (one of the main approaches in neuroethics research. Participants were 81 primary school (M = 8.98 yrs.; SD = 0.39, 72 middle school (M = 12.14 yrs.; SD = 0.61 and 73 high school (M = 15.10 yrs.; SD = 0.38 students from rural and urban areas. Participants’ immigrant status (native vs. immigrant and family SES level were recorded. Moral reasoning was assessed by means of a series of personal and impersonal dilemmas based on Greene and colleagues' (2001 neuroimaging experiment and a series of moral and socio-conventional rule dilemmas based on the moral domain theory. Living socio-geographic/economic area, immigrant status and SES mainly affected evaluations of moral and, to a higher extent, socio-conventional dilemmas, but had no impact on judgment of personal and impersonal dilemmas. Results are mainly discussed from the angle of possible theoretical links and suggestions emerging for studies on moral reasoning in the frameworks of neuroscience and psychology.

The moral status of contraception and openness to procreation

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Prijić-Samaržija Snježana

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Permissibility of contraception as a method of birth control is closely connected with issues of moral justification of reproductive autonomy, namely the question whether or not individuals should be allowed to autonomously and freely decide if they are going to have children, when and how many. The development of medical and scientific technologies led to the usage of artificial methods of contraception that can prevent concep­tion with the goal of postponing and planning the birth of a child. In the first part I analyze the bioethical arguments that appear in debates about reproductive autonomy and which can be mobilized against the permissibility of contraception. In the second part I have compared the bioethical arguments to those used against the artificial contraception in the literature about the philosophy of sexuality. In the third and final part, I have argued against the stance of G.E.M. Anscombe and J. Finnis that there is morally relevant distinction be­tween artificial and natural methods of birth control.

Demographic factors associated with moral sensitivity among nursing students.

Science.gov (United States)

Tuvesson, Hanna; Lützén, Kim

2017-11-01

Today's healthcare environment is often characterized by an ethically demanding work situation, and nursing students need to prepare to meet ethical challenges in their future role. Moral sensitivity is an important aspect of the ethical decision-making process, but little is known regarding nursing students' moral sensitivity and its possible development during nursing education. The aims of this study were to investigate moral sensitivity among nursing students, differences in moral sensitivity according to sample sub-group, and the relation between demographic characteristics of nursing students and moral sensitivity. A convenience sample of 299 nursing students from one university completed a questionnaire comprising questions about demographic information and the revised Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire. With the use of SPSS, non-parametric statistics, including logistic regression models, were used to investigate the relationship between demographic characteristics and moral sensitivity. Ethical considerations: The study followed the regulations according to the Swedish Ethical Review Act and was reviewed by the Ethics Committee of South-East Sweden. The findings showed that mean scores of nursing students' moral sensitivity were found in the middle to upper segment of the rating scale. Multivariate analysis showed that gender (odds ratio = 3.32), age (odds ratio = 2.09; 1.73), and parental status (odds ratio = 0.31) were of relevance to nursing students' moral sensitivity. Academic year was found to be unrelated to moral sensitivity. These demographic aspects should be considered when designing ethics education for nursing students. Future studies should continue to investigate moral sensitivity in nursing students, such as if and how various pedagogical strategies in ethics may contribute to moral sensitivity in nursing students.

Nietos Morales

OpenAIRE

Arriaga

2015-01-01

1 Toma en 2 revelados O.I. V. DE GARCIA- Carlota R. 80 años MORALES- Pedro J. 12 años MORALES- Francisco de S. 10 años 6mes. MORALES- Beatriz 09 años Morales- Antonio 07 años MORALES- Manuel 04 años 6mes. MORALES- José 01 año

Spiritual well-being and moral distress among Iranian nurses.

Science.gov (United States)

Soleimani, Mohammad Ali; Sharif, Saeed Pahlevan; Yaghoobzadeh, Ameneh; Sheikhi, Mohammad Reza; Panarello, Bianca; Win, Ma Thin Mar

2016-06-16

Moral distress is increasingly recognized as a problem affecting healthcare professionals, especially nurses. If not addressed, it may create job dissatisfaction, withdrawal from the moral dimensions of patient care, or even encourage one to leave the profession. Spiritual well-being is a concept which is considered when dealing with problems and stress relating to a variety of issues. This research aimed to examine the relationship between spiritual well-being and moral distress among a sample of Iranian nurses and also to study the determinant factors of moral distress and spiritual well-being in nurses. A cross-sectional, correlational design was employed to collect data from 193 nurses using the Spiritual Well-Being Scale and the Moral Distress Scale-Revised. This study was approved by the Regional Committee of Medical Research Ethics. The ethical principles of voluntary participation, anonymity, and confidentiality were considered. Mean scores of spiritual well-being and moral distress were 94.73 ± 15.89 and 109.56 ± 58.70, respectively. There was no significant correlation between spiritual well-being and moral distress (r = -.053, p = .462). Marital status and job satisfaction were found to be independent predictors of spiritual well-being. However, gender and educational levels were found to be independent predictors for moral distress. Age, working in rotation shifts, and a tendency to leave the current job also became significant after adjusting other factors for moral distress. This study could not support the relationship between spiritual well-being and moral distress. However, the results showed that moral distress is related to many elements including individual ideals and differences as well as organizational factors. Informing nurses about moral distress and its consequences, establishing periodic consultations, and making some organizational arrangement may play an important role in the identification and management of moral distress and

On Moral Luck and Nonideal Moral Education

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Chinnery, Ann

2015-01-01

In contrast to the Kantian principle that we are morally accountable only for those actions over which we have control, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, and others have argued that luck plays a significant role in the moral life. Put briefly, moral luck is at play when we are appropriately praised or blamed for our moral actions despite the fact…

Moral maturity and delinquency after prenatal alcohol exposure.

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Schonfeld, Amy M; Mattson, Sarah N; Riley, Edward P

2005-07-01

Prenatal exposure to alcohol is associated with cognitive, behavioral and social deficits, including delinquency. Although delinquent populations and those with intellectual and behavioral deficits exhibit impaired moral judgment and reasoning, this area remains unexplored in alcohol-exposed individuals. Moral maturity and delinquency were evaluated in 27 participants with prenatal alcohol exposure (ALC group) and 29 nonexposed controls (CON group) matched on age (range: 10-18), gender, handedness, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Moral maturity was evaluated using the Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form, and delinquency was evaluated with the Conduct Disorder (CD) Questionnaire. Additional measures included social desirability and inhibition. The ALC group performed at a lower level of moral maturity than the CON group. Whereas Verbal IQ primarily predicted this difference, a deficit on the moral value judgment having to do with relationships with others was specific to prenatal alcohol exposure. Furthermore, delinquency was higher in the ALC group, and specific sociomoral values were predictive of delinquent behavior. Finally, half of the children and adolescents with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure but without fetal alcohol syndrome had probable CD. The results of this study indicate that interventions aimed at reducing delinquency in those with prenatal alcohol exposure are necessary, and targeting moral judgment for this purpose may be beneficial.

DILEMAS MORALES

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Sandra Realpe Quintero

2001-01-01

Full Text Available Antes del siglo XX la tradición filosófica moral ha reconocido la existencia de los conflictos morales pero ha rechazado la posibilidad de los auténticos dilemas morales. Para poder entender por qué hoy el tema de los dilemas morales ha reclamado para sí tanta atención, es importante ponernos de acuerdo en la definición de algunos conceptos. Un conflicto moral es una situación en la que un(a agente se ve confrontado(a con dos obligaciones morales que le instan a actuar. Un dilema moral es una situación extrema de conflicto moral en la que nuestro(a agente no puede seguir un curso de acción que sea conforme con sus dos obligaciones en conflicto. Para que un conflicto moral tenga el carácter de ser un auténtico dilema moral (genuine moral dilemma y no simplemente un aparente dilema moral (apparent moral di- DILEMAS MORALES SANDRA REALPE Licenciada en Filosofía, Univalle, Maestría en Filosofía, Univalle, Diplomado en Psicología Aplicada, Universidad de Londres, Diplomado en Etica de los Negocios Universidad de Colorado, profesora Universidad Icesi, Facultad de Derecho y Humanidades. E-mail: sandrarealpe@hotmail.com lemma, ninguna de las obligaciones en conflicto es en efecto más fuerte o logra invalidar a la otra obligación. A raíz de un artículo escrito en 1962 por E. J. Lemmon, titulado precisamente “Dilemas morales” (Moral Dilemmas, se abrió un debate entre los filósofos anglosajones contemporáneos acerca de la existencia o no de los auténticos dilemas morales. Informar sobre este debate reciente, esclarecer los argumentos de sus principales protagonistas, y hacer presente en nuestro medio un novedoso debate que es importante para reflexionar sobre un buen número de problemas morales, son nuestros principales propósitos en el presente ensayo. ...

College Student Sexual Morality Revisited: A Consideration of Pre-Marital Sex, Extra-Marital Sex and Childlessness between 1940 and 2000-2005

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Lance, Larry M.

2007-01-01

Much attention has been given to the new "sexual morality" of college students today. Indeed, some maintain that the American family is doomed because of the attitudes of young people today toward sex and the family. How does the sexual morality of college students today compare with the sexual morality of college students over half a century ago?…

Moral disengagement in self-reported and peer-nominated school bullying

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Obermann, Marie-Louise

2011-01-01

. Discrepancies between self-reported and peer-nominated bullying involvement indicates that a person’s social reputation has a stronger association with moral disengagement than so far expected. Implications are discussed, highlighting the importance of further research and theory development.......This study examined the relation between moral disengagement and different self-reported and peer-nominated positions in school bullying. The aims of this study were to (1) investigate moral disengagement among children for whom self-reported and peernominated bully status diverged and (2) compare...... levels of disengagement among self-reported and peer-nominated pure bullies, pure victims, bully–victims, and children not involved in bullying. A sample of 739 Danish sixth grade and seventh grade children (mean age 12.6) was included in the study. Moral disengagement was measured using a Danish version...

The ethical desirability of moral bioenhancement: a review of reasons

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2014-01-01

Background The debate on the ethical aspects of moral bioenhancement focuses on the desirability of using biomedical as opposed to traditional means to achieve moral betterment. The aim of this paper is to systematically review the ethical reasons presented in the literature for and against moral bioenhancement. Discussion A review was performed and resulted in the inclusion of 85 articles. We classified the arguments used in those articles in the following six clusters: (1) why we (don’t) need moral bioenhancement, (2) it will (not) be possible to reach consensus on what moral bioenhancement should involve, (3) the feasibility of moral bioenhancement and the status of current scientific research, (4) means and processes of arriving at moral improvement matter ethically, (5) arguments related to the freedom, identity and autonomy of the individual, and (6) arguments related to social/group effects and dynamics. We discuss each argument separately, and assess the debate as a whole. First, there is little discussion on what distinguishes moral bioenhancement from treatment of pathological deficiencies in morality. Furthermore, remarkably little attention has been paid so far to the safety, risks and side-effects of moral enhancement, including the risk of identity changes. Finally, many authors overestimate the scientific as well as the practical feasibility of the interventions they discuss, rendering the debate too speculative. Summary Based on our discussion of the arguments used in the debate on moral enhancement, and our assessment of this debate, we advocate a shift in focus. Instead of speculating about non-realistic hypothetical scenarios such as the genetic engineering of morality, or morally enhancing ‘the whole of humanity’, we call for a more focused debate on realistic options of biomedical treatment of moral pathologies and the concrete moral questions these treatments raise. PMID:25227512

The Lure of Evil: Exploring Moral Formation on the Dark Side of Literature and the Arts

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Carr, David; Davis, Robert

2007-01-01

The moral potential of works of art, for good or ill, has been recognised from philosophical antiquity: on the assumption that the moral effects of art are invariably negative, Plato advised the exclusion of artists from any rationally ordered state. Arguably, however, the problem of the moral status of art has become yet more acute in contexts of…

Revisiting the Political Economy of Communication

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Nicholas Garnham

2014-02-01

The task of the paper and the seminar was to revisit some of Nicholas Garnham’s ideas, writings and contributions to the study of the Political Economy of Communication and to reflect on the concepts, history, current status and perspectives of this field and the broader study of political economy today. The topics covered include Raymond Williams’ cultural materialism, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, the debate between Political Economy and Cultural Studies, information society theory, Karl Marx’s theory and the critique of capitalism.

Promoting Prosociality: Testing the Potential of Moral Elevation and Moral Outrage

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Van de Vyver, Julie

2016-01-01

This thesis examines the effects of two specific moral emotions - moral elevation (experienced when witnessing a moral virtue) and moral outrage (experienced when witnessing a moral transgression) - on prosociality. While ample research has examined emotions such as sympathy and guilt, much less is known about moral elevation and moral outrage. Yet, their separate strands of research suggest that both moral elevation and moral outrage are promising emotions for promoting prosocial responses. ...

Navigating moral distress using the moral distress map.

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Dudzinski, Denise Marie

2016-05-01

The plethora of literature on moral distress has substantiated and refined the concept, provided data about clinicians' (especially nurses') experiences, and offered advice for coping. Fewer scholars have explored what makes moral distress moral If we acknowledge that patient care can be distressing in the best of ethical circumstances, then differentiating distress and moral distress may refine the array of actions that are likely to ameliorate it. This article builds upon scholarship exploring the normative and conceptual dimensions of moral distress and introduces a new tool to map moral distress from emotional source to corrective actions. The Moral Distress Map has proven useful in clinical teaching and ethics-related debriefings. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Moral Philosophy, Moral Expertise, and the Argument from Disagreement.

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Cross, Ben

2016-03-01

Several recent articles have weighed in on the question of whether moral philosophers can be counted as moral experts. One argument denying this has been rejected by both sides of the debate. According to this argument, the extent of disagreement in modern moral philosophy prevents moral philosophers from being classified as moral experts. Call this the Argument From Disagreement (AD). In this article, I defend a version of AD. Insofar as practical issues in moral philosophy are characterized by disagreement between moral philosophers who are more or less equally well credentialed on the issue, non-philosophers have no good reasons to defer to their views. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Moral Psychology and the Problem of Moral Criteria

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Welch, Patrick

2011-01-01

This article is intended as an initial investigation into the foundations of moral psychology. I primarily examine a recent work in moral education, Daniel Lapsley's and Darcia Narvaez"s "Character education", whose authors seem to assume at points that criteria for discerning moral actions and moral traits can be derived apart from ethics or…

The impact of autism spectrum disorder and alexithymia on judgments of moral acceptability.

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Brewer, Rebecca; Marsh, Abigail A; Catmur, Caroline; Cardinale, Elise M; Stoycos, Sarah; Cook, Richard; Bird, Geoffrey

2015-08-01

One's own emotional response toward a hypothetical action can influence judgments of its moral acceptability. Some individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit atypical emotional processing, and moral judgments. Research suggests, however, that emotional deficits in ASD are due to co-occurring alexithymia, meaning atypical moral judgments in ASD may be due to alexithymia also. Individuals with and without ASD (matched for alexithymia) judged the moral acceptability of emotion-evoking statements and identified the emotion evoked. Moral acceptability judgments were predicted by alexithymia. Crucially, however, this relationship held only for individuals without ASD. While ASD diagnostic status did not directly predict either judgment, those with ASD did not base their moral acceptability judgments on emotional information. Findings are consistent with evidence demonstrating that decision-making is less subject to emotional biases in those with ASD. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Moral Judgment Reloaded: A Moral Dilemma validation study

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Julia F. Christensen

2014-07-01

Full Text Available We propose a revised set of moral dilemmas for studies on moral judgment. We selected a total of 46 moral dilemmas available in the literature and fine-tuned them in terms of four conceptual factors (Personal Force, Benefit Recipient, Evitability and Intention and methodological aspects of the dilemma formulation (word count, expression style, question formats that have been shown to influence moral judgment. Second, we obtained normative codings of arousal and valence for each dilemma showing that emotional arousal in response to moral dilemmas depends crucially on the factors Personal Force, Benefit Recipient, and Intentionality. Third, we validated the dilemma set confirming that people's moral judgment is sensitive to all four conceptual factors, and to their interactions. Results are discussed in the context of this field of research, outlining also the relevance of our RT effects for the Dual Process account of moral judgment. Finally, we suggest tentative theoretical avenues for future testing, particularly stressing the importance of the factor Intentionality in moral judgment. Additionally, due to the importance of cross-cultural studies in the quest for universals in human moral cognition, we provide the new set dilemmas in six languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan and Danish. The norming values provided here refer to the Spanish dilemma set.

Moral judgment reloaded: a moral dilemma validation study

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Christensen, Julia F.; Flexas, Albert; Calabrese, Margareta; Gut, Nadine K.; Gomila, Antoni

2014-01-01

We propose a revised set of moral dilemmas for studies on moral judgment. We selected a total of 46 moral dilemmas available in the literature and fine-tuned them in terms of four conceptual factors (Personal Force, Benefit Recipient, Evitability, and Intention) and methodological aspects of the dilemma formulation (word count, expression style, question formats) that have been shown to influence moral judgment. Second, we obtained normative codings of arousal and valence for each dilemma showing that emotional arousal in response to moral dilemmas depends crucially on the factors Personal Force, Benefit Recipient, and Intentionality. Third, we validated the dilemma set confirming that people's moral judgment is sensitive to all four conceptual factors, and to their interactions. Results are discussed in the context of this field of research, outlining also the relevance of our RT effects for the Dual Process account of moral judgment. Finally, we suggest tentative theoretical avenues for future testing, particularly stressing the importance of the factor Intentionality in moral judgment. Additionally, due to the importance of cross-cultural studies in the quest for universals in human moral cognition, we provide the new set dilemmas in six languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, and Danish). The norming values provided here refer to the Spanish dilemma set. PMID:25071621

Moral significance of phenomenal consciousness.

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Levy, Neil; Savulescu, Julian

2009-01-01

Recent work in neuroimaging suggests that some patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state are actually conscious. In this paper, we critically examine this new evidence. We argue that though it remains open to alternative interpretations, it strongly suggests the presence of consciousness in some patients. However, we argue that its ethical significance is less than many people seem to think. There are several different kinds of consciousness, and though all kinds of consciousness have some ethical significance, different kinds underwrite different kinds of moral value. Demonstrating that patients have phenomenal consciousness--conscious states with some kind of qualitative feel to them--shows that they are moral patients, whose welfare must be taken into consideration. But only if they are subjects of a sophisticated kind of access consciousness--where access consciousness entails global availability of information to cognitive systems--are they persons, in the technical sense of the word employed by philosophers. In this sense, being a person is having the full moral status of ordinary human beings. We call for further research which might settle whether patients who manifest signs of consciousness possess the sophisticated kind of access consciousness required for personhood.

Why moral philosophers are not and should not be moral experts.

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Archard, David

2011-03-01

Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the advice of moral experts. I offer a better reason for scepticism grounded in the relation between moral philosophy and common-sense morality: namely that modern moral philosophy views even a developed moral theory as ultimately anchored in common-sense morality, that set of basic moral precepts which ordinary individuals have command of and use to regulate their own lives. Even if moral philosophers do nevertheless have a limited moral expertise, in that they alone can fully develop a set of moral judgments, I sketch reasons - grounded in the values of autonomy and of democracy - why moral philosophers should not wish non-philosophers to defer to their putative expertise. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The Human and Educational Significance of Honesty as an Epistemic and Moral Virtue

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Carr, David

2014-01-01

While honesty is clearly a virtue of some educational as well as moral significance, its virtue-ethical status is far from clear. In this essay, following some discussion of latter-day virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, David Carr argues that honesty exhibits key features of both moral and epistemic virtue, and, more precisely, that honesty as…

Empirical psychology, common sense, and Kant's empirical markers for moral responsibility.

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Frierson, Patrick

2008-12-01

This paper explains the empirical markers by which Kant thinks that one can identify moral responsibility. After explaining the problem of discerning such markers within a Kantian framework I briefly explain Kant's empirical psychology. I then argue that Kant's empirical markers for moral responsibility--linked to higher faculties of cognition--are not sufficient conditions for moral responsibility, primarily because they are empirical characteristics subject to natural laws. Next. I argue that these markers are not necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Given Kant's transcendental idealism, even an entity that lacks these markers could be free and morally responsible, although as a matter of fact Kant thinks that none are. Given that they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions, I discuss the status of Kant's claim that higher faculties are empirical markers of moral responsibility. Drawing on connections between Kant's ethical theory and 'common rational cognition' (4:393), I suggest that Kant's theory of empirical markers can be traced to ordinary common sense beliefs about responsibility. This suggestion helps explain both why empirical markers are important and what the limits of empirical psychology are within Kant's account of moral responsibility.

Moral Geography and Exploration of the Moral Possibility Space

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Bongrae Seok

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This article reviews Owen Flanagan’s latest book “The Geography of Morals, Varieties of Moral Possibilities” (2017. By exploring the space of moral possibility (i.e., diverse options and viewpoints of morality from different philosophical and religious traditions throughout the world, Flanagan argues that ethics is not simply a study of a priori conditions of normative rules and ideal values but a process of developing a careful understanding of varying conditions of human ecology and building practical views on living good life. The goal of this geographical exploration of the moral possibility space is surveying different traditions of morality and finding tractable ways of human flourishing. This article, by following the chapters of his book, explains his views on moral diversity and his interdisciplinary and naturalistic approach to ethics. It also discusses interactive and dynamic ways to expand the moral possibility space.

MacIntyre's Moral Theory and Moral Relativism

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Ali Abedi Renani

2017-01-01

In this paper, I seek to explain the similarity and disparity between MacIntyre’s moral theory and moral relativism. I will argue that MacIntyre’s moral theory can escape the charge of moral relativism because both his earlier social and his later metaphysical approaches appeal to some criteria, the human telos or universal human qualities respectively. The notion of telos is wider than the notion of function which is defined in social contexts. If there is a context-transcending notion of te...

Moral sensitivity and moral distress in Iranian critical care nurses.

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Borhani, Fariba; Abbaszadeh, Abbas; Mohamadi, Elham; Ghasemi, Erfan; Hoseinabad-Farahani, Mohammad Javad

2017-06-01

Moral sensitivity is the foremost prerequisite to ethical performance; a review of literature shows that nurses are sometimes not sensitive enough for a variety of reasons. Moral distress is a frequent phenomenon in nursing, which may result in paradoxes in care, dealing with patients and rendering high-quality care. This may, in turn, hinder the meeting of care objectives, thus affecting social healthcare standards. The present research was conducted to determine the relationship between moral sensitivity and moral distress of nurses in intensive care units. This study is a descriptive-correlation research. Lutzen's moral sensitivity questionnaire and Corley Moral Distress Questionnaire were used to gather data. Participants and research context: A total of 153 qualified nurses working in the hospitals affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences were selected for this study. Subjects were selected by census method. Ethical considerations: After explaining the objectives of the study, all the participants completed and signed the written consent form. To conduct the study, permission was obtained from the selected hospitals. Nurses' average moral sensitivity grade was 68.6 ± 7.8, which shows a moderate level of moral sensitivity. On the other hand, nurses also experienced a moderate level of moral distress (44.8 ± 16.6). Moreover, there was no meaningful statistical relationship between moral sensitivity and moral distress (p = 0.26). Although the nurses' moral sensitivity and moral distress were expected to be high in the intensive care units, it was moderate. This finding is consistent with the results of some studies and contradicts with others. As moral sensitivity is a crucial factor in care, it is suggested that necessary training be provided to develop moral sensitivity in nurses in education and practical environments. Furthermore, removing factors that contribute to moral distress may help decrease it in nurses.

Politics without morality and accountability: The Nkandla case from a deontological perspective

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Mojalefa L.J. Koenane

2017-02-01

Full Text Available The Nkandla controversy has long dominated South African politics and has seemingly been endless. This article revisits the Nkandla issue from the perspective that it fails the Kantian categorical imperative (i.e. CI and attempts to explain the problem of individual as well as organisational or structural corruption, in which the author contends the Nkandla controversy to be grounded. This article opens a discussion on the relevance of Kantian theory in confronting the matter of Nkandla. The author argues that Kant’s moral theory should not be viewed simplistically but from a rational position of internalised moral maxims or precepts. The Nkandla project is interrogated in relation to the former Public Protector’s and Minister of Police’s reports on the Nkandla ‘security upgrades’. It is the author’s view that South Africans are demanding accountability insofar as the Nkandla project is concerned, since moral attitudes are an integral and necessary part of our everyday lives. It is the author’s contention that the President and the executive have no desire to be accountable and transparent in the Nkandla matter. The aftermath of Nkandla controversy has changed the face of South Africa’s political environment completely. The author further argues that holding political elites accountable should not be regarded as hostility towards those held responsible and the African National Congress as political organisation. The author also looks at the Constitutional Court ruling on this matter.

Moral Motivation, Moral Judgment, and Antisocial Behavior

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Brooks, Jeff; Bock, Tonia; Narvaez, Darcia

2013-01-01

The link between judgment and action is weak throughout psychology, including moral psychology. That is, people often do not act in accordance with their reasoning. Might moral judgment development be better viewed as a capacity that inhibits "immoral" behavior? One model that helps account for the moral judgment-action gap is Rest's…

The importance of moral construal: moral versus non-moral construal elicits faster, more extreme, universal evaluations of the same actions.

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Jay J Van Bavel

Full Text Available Over the past decade, intuitionist models of morality have challenged the view that moral reasoning is the sole or even primary means by which moral judgments are made. Rather, intuitionist models posit that certain situations automatically elicit moral intuitions, which guide moral judgments. We present three experiments showing that evaluations are also susceptible to the influence of moral versus non-moral construal. We had participants make moral evaluations (rating whether actions were morally good or bad or non-moral evaluations (rating whether actions were pragmatically or hedonically good or bad of a wide variety of actions. As predicted, moral evaluations were faster, more extreme, and more strongly associated with universal prescriptions-the belief that absolutely nobody or everybody should engage in an action-than non-moral (pragmatic or hedonic evaluations of the same actions. Further, we show that people are capable of flexibly shifting from moral to non-moral evaluations on a trial-by-trial basis. Taken together, these experiments provide evidence that moral versus non-moral construal has an important influence on evaluation and suggests that effects of construal are highly flexible. We discuss the implications of these experiments for models of moral judgment and decision-making.

Moral Action as Social Capital, Moral Thought as Cultural Capital

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Kang, Min Ju; Glassman, Michael

2010-01-01

This paper explores the idea that moral thought/reasoning and moral actions are actually two separate phenomena that have little relationship to each other. The idea that moral thinking does or can control moral action creates a difficult dualism between our knowledge about morality and our everyday actions. These differences run parallel to the…

Moral satisficing: rethinking moral behavior as bounded rationality.

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Gigerenzer, Gerd

2010-07-01

What is the nature of moral behavior? According to the study of bounded rationality, it results not from character traits or rational deliberation alone, but from the interplay between mind and environment. In this view, moral behavior is based on pragmatic social heuristics rather than moral rules or maximization principles. These social heuristics are not good or bad per se, but solely in relation to the environments in which they are used. This has methodological implications for the study of morality: Behavior needs to be studied in social groups as well as in isolation, in natural environments as well as in labs. It also has implications for moral policy: Only by accepting the fact that behavior is a function of both mind and environmental structures can realistic prescriptive means of achieving moral goals be developed. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Theological ethics, moral philosophy, and public moral discourse.

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Jonsen, Albert R

1994-03-01

The advent and growth of bioethics in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s precipitated an era of public moral discourse, that is, the deliberate attempt to analyze and formulate moral argument for use in public policy. The language for rational discussion of moral matters evolved from the parent disciplines of moral philosophy and theological ethics, as well as from the idioms of a secular, pluralistic world that was searching for policy answers to difficult bioethical questions. This article explores the basis and content of the unique contributions of both theological and philosophical ethics to the development of public moral discourse.

Learning from moral inconsistency.

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Campbell, Richmond

2017-10-01

Moral inconsistency is an understudied phenomenon in cognitive moral psychology and deserves in depth empirical study. Moral inconsistency, as understood here, is not formal inconsistency but inconsistency in moral emotion and belief in response to particular cases. It occurs when persons treat cases as morally different that are really morally the same, even from their moral perspective. Learning to recognize and avoid such moral inconsistency in non-trivial but is a form of moral learning that complements and enhances other psychological and social mechanisms through which persons learn how to apply shared moral norms when their applications are uncertain and threaten to lapse into moral inconsistency. The same psychological process also can function to revise current moral norms when their straightforward applications are morally inconsistent with more basic moral commitments. Through this moral learning and related kinds, people can learn how to identify issues of moral priority when moral norms conflict and, when necessary, how to revise their moral norms. The recent revolution in dominant moral norms around gay sex and gay marriage in Europe and North America provides a possible illustration. When coupled with other modes of moral learning in the context of ambiguous but deeply rooted moral norms, such as those of sanctity and authority, reflection on moral inconsistency can help to justify this large-scale moral change, even among those who find gay sex, by its nature, morally repugnant. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Defining Legal Moralism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thaysen, Jens Damgaard

2015-01-01

This paper discusses how legal moralism should be defined. It is argued that legal moralism should be defined as the position that “For any X, it is always a pro tanto reason for justifiably imposing legal regulation on X that X is morally wrong (where “morally wrong” is not conceptually equivalent...... to “harmful”)”. Furthermore, a distinction between six types of legal moralism is made. The six types are grouped according to whether they are concerned with the enforcement of positive or critical morality, and whether they are concerned with criminalising, legally restricting, or refraining from legally...... protecting morally wrong behaviour. This is interesting because not all types of legal moralism are equally vulnerable to the different critiques of legal moralism that have been put forth. Indeed, I show that some interesting types of legal moralism have not been criticised at all....

The Morality of Aspiration: A Neglected Dimension of Law and Morality

NARCIS (Netherlands)

W. van der Burg (Wibren)

1999-01-01

markdownabstractIntroduction In The Morality of Law, Fuller introduces the distinction between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration, and applies it to problems of jurisprudence. 1 In moral theory, both types of morality may be easily associated (though never completely

Liberating Moral Reflection

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Horell, Harold D.

2013-01-01

The author argues that if we are to foster life-giving and liberating moral reflection, we must first liberate moral reflection from distortions; specifically, from the distorting effects of moral insensitivity, destructive moral relativism, and confusions resulting from a failure to understand the dynamics of moral reflection. The author proposes…

Moral Identity Predicts Doping Likelihood via Moral Disengagement and Anticipated Guilt.

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Kavussanu, Maria; Ring, Christopher

2017-08-01

In this study, we integrated elements of social cognitive theory of moral thought and action and the social cognitive model of moral identity to better understand doping likelihood in athletes. Participants (N = 398) recruited from a variety of team sports completed measures of moral identity, moral disengagement, anticipated guilt, and doping likelihood. Moral identity predicted doping likelihood indirectly via moral disengagement and anticipated guilt. Anticipated guilt about potential doping mediated the relationship between moral disengagement and doping likelihood. Our findings provide novel evidence to suggest that athletes, who feel that being a moral person is central to their self-concept, are less likely to use banned substances due to their lower tendency to morally disengage and the more intense feelings of guilt they expect to experience for using banned substances.

Refusing intergroup help from the morally superior: How one group's moral superiority leads to another group's reluctance to seek their help. : How one group's moral superiority leads to another group's reluctance to seek their help

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Täuber, Susanne; van Zomeren, Martijn

We examine how group members paradoxically refuse intergroup help where they might need it most: in the moral status domain. Based on the Sacred Value Protection Model (Tetlock, 2002), we predicted and found that group members felt stronger group-based anger and a stronger motivation to reaffirm

Escuela, profesorado y educación moral

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miguel MARTÍNEZ MARTÍN

2009-11-01

use to present a number of specific action proposals; the third part offers us the opportunity to revisit the debate on the subject of religious education and its relationship to values education; and finally the text will close with a review of the training requirements produced by moral and civic education.SOMMAIRE: L'éducation morale et civique est, en tout état de cause, l'un des principaux buts de formation des éducateurs. Dans notre pays, la réflexion et la pratique pédagogique autour de l'éducation morale et civique a souffert une brusque accélération entre la deuxième moitié des années quatre vingt et la première moitié des années quatre vingt dix. Dans cet article, notre intention est de considérer une série de thèmes qui ont été et sont d'intérêt tout en regardant vers le futur. Pour atteindre cet objectif, il nous a paru opportun de diviser cet écrit en quatre parties destinées à traiter des thèmes différents et complémentaires. La première servira à analyser le contexte et les propositions légales successives en relation avec l'éducation morale et civique; dans la deuxième, sera présenté un modèle que distingue différentes voies de formation et qui nous servira à introduire quelques propositions concrètes d'action; dans la troisième, nous débattrons, à nouveau, le thème de la formation religieuse et de sa relation avec l'éducation de valeurs; et finalement nous terminerons ce travail avec une approche aux nécessités de formation qu'a généré l'éducation morale et civique.

Cultural Conceptions of Morality: Examining Laypeople's Associations of Moral Character

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Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Wilson, Marc; Fischer, Ronald

2014-01-01

Whether moral conceptions are universal or culture-specific is controversial in moral psychology. One option is to refrain from imposing theoretical constraints and to ask laypeople from different cultures how "they" conceptualize morality. Our article adopts this approach by examining laypeople's associations of moral character in…

Children's Moral Emotions and Moral Cognition: Towards an Integrative Perspective

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Malti, Tina; Latzko, Brigitte

2010-01-01

This chapter presents a brief introduction to the developmental and educational literature linking children's moral emotions to cognitive moral development. A central premise of the chapter is that an integrative developmental perspective on moral emotions and moral cognition provides an important conceptual framework for understanding children's…

Protection as care: moral reasoning and moral orientation among ethnically and socioeconomically diverse older women.

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Dakin, Emily

2014-01-01

This study examined moral reasoning among ethnically and socioeconomically diverse older women based on the care and justice moral orientations reflecting theoretical frameworks developed by Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg, respectively. A major gap in this area of research and theory development has been the lack of examination of moral reasoning in later life. This study addressed this gap by assessing socioeconomically and ethnically diverse older women's reasoning in response to ethical dilemmas showing conflict between autonomy, representative of Kohlberg's justice orientation, and protection, representative of Gilligan's care orientation. The dilemmas used in this study came from adult protective services (APS), the U.S. system that investigates and intervenes in cases of elder abuse and neglect. Subjects were 88 African American, Latina, and Caucasian women age 60 or over from varying socioeconomic status backgrounds who participated in eight focus groups. Overall, participants favored protection over autonomy in responding to the case scenarios. Their reasoning in responding to these dilemmas reflected an ethic of care and responsibility and a recognition of the limitations of autonomy. This reasoning is highly consistent with the care orientation. Variations in the overall ethic of care and responsibility based on ethnicity and SES also are discussed. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Context, Moral Orientation and Self- Esteem: Impacting the Moral ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Context, Moral Orientation and Self- Esteem: Impacting the Moral Development of ... The purpose of this study was to compare moral orientation and a measure of self-esteem with the degree of consideration ... AJOL African Journals Online.

Brogaard's Moral Contextualism

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Binderup, Lars Grassme

2008-01-01

Brogaard's non-indexical version of moral contextualism has two related problems. It is unable to account for the function of truth-governed assertoric moral discourse, since it leaves two (semantically clearheaded) disputants without any incentive to resolve seemingly contradictory moral claims....... The moral contextualist could explain why people do feel such an incentive by ascribing false beliefs about the semantic workings of their own language. But, secondly, this leaves Brogaard's moral contextualism looking weaker than a Mackie-style invariantist error theory about morals. The latter is equally...

Defining Features of Moral Sensitivity and Moral Motivation: Pathways to Moral Reasoning in Medical Students

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Morton, Kelly R.; Worthley, Joanna S.; Testerman, John K.; Mahoney, Marita L.

2006-01-01

Kohlberg's theory of moral development explores the roles of cognition and emotion but focuses primarily on cognition. Contemporary post-formal theories lead to the conclusion that skills resulting from cognitive-affective integration facilitate consistency between moral judgement and moral behaviour. Rest's four-component model of moral…

Sociological concept of morale

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Marjanović Miloš

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The author first discusses the overall unity of the total normative regulation, from which it is separated in the late Roman empire the right, but only in the new century and the morale. There are analyzed the relationship between the moral and ethical reflection and Weber's distinction between pure ethics will (Gesinnungsethik and ethics of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik. The morale is determined by the good as the highest value, as a specific form of social norms but also as a kind of human behavior. These three definitions can be combined in an integrative approach. There are examined the dimensions of moral statements, subjective and objective side of morality, as well as the difference between morale and morality. A general notion of morale can not be defined in substantive but only in formal way . The formal definition is a constituent of general as well as of sociological concept of morale and it is related to morality as a social phenomenon. Its essence is to define the morale by specific norms, the characteristics of the internal and external mandatory (with the pricks of conscience as the most distinctive moral sanction and control exercised by the formal not institutionalized or diffuse society , and in consideration of morality as a social process (actions of people associated moral norms . The basic types of social moral process - being, education, functioning and changing of morale are described. There are briefly analyzed the influence of society to the morale and social function of morale, with special emphasis on the relationship between law and morale.

Morality in everyday life.

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Hofmann, Wilhelm; Wisneski, Daniel C; Brandt, Mark J; Skitka, Linda J

2014-09-12

The science of morality has drawn heavily on well-controlled but artificial laboratory settings. To study everyday morality, we repeatedly assessed moral or immoral acts and experiences in a large (N = 1252) sample using ecological momentary assessment. Moral experiences were surprisingly frequent and manifold. Liberals and conservatives emphasized somewhat different moral dimensions. Religious and nonreligious participants did not differ in the likelihood or quality of committed moral and immoral acts. Being the target of moral or immoral deeds had the strongest impact on happiness, whereas committing moral or immoral deeds had the strongest impact on sense of purpose. Analyses of daily dynamics revealed evidence for both moral contagion and moral licensing. In sum, morality science may benefit from a closer look at the antecedents, dynamics, and consequences of everyday moral experience. Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Everyday Moral Judge - Autobiographical Recollections of Moral Emotions.

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Körner, André; Tscharaktschiew, Nadine; Schindler, Rose; Schulz, Katrin; Rudolph, Udo

2016-01-01

Moral emotions are typically elicited in everyday social interactions and regulate social behavior. Previous research in the field of attribution theory identified ought (the moral standard of a given situation or intended goal), goal-attainment (a goal can be attained vs. not attained) and effort (high vs. low effort expenditure) as cognitive antecedents of moral emotions. In contrast to earlier studies, mainly relying on thought experiments, we investigated autobiographical recollections of N = 312 participants by means of an online study. We analyzed a diverse range of moral emotions, i.e., admiration, anger, contempt, indignation, pride, respect, schadenfreude, and sympathy, by using a mixed-method approach. Qualitative and quantitative methods clearly corroborate the important role of ought, goal-attainment, and effort as eliciting conditions of moral emotions. Furthermore, we built categorical systems based on our participants' descriptions of real-life situations, allowing for more fine-grained distinctions between seemingly similar moral emotions. We thus identify additional prerequisites explaining more subtle differences between moral emotion clusters as they emerge from our analyses (i.e., cluster 1: admiration, pride, and respect; cluster 2: anger, contempt, and indignation; cluster 3: schadenfreude and sympathy). Results are discussed in the light of attributional theories of moral emotions, and implications for future research are derived.

The Everyday Moral Judge - Autobiographical Recollections of Moral Emotions.

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André Körner

Full Text Available Moral emotions are typically elicited in everyday social interactions and regulate social behavior. Previous research in the field of attribution theory identified ought (the moral standard of a given situation or intended goal, goal-attainment (a goal can be attained vs. not attained and effort (high vs. low effort expenditure as cognitive antecedents of moral emotions. In contrast to earlier studies, mainly relying on thought experiments, we investigated autobiographical recollections of N = 312 participants by means of an online study. We analyzed a diverse range of moral emotions, i.e., admiration, anger, contempt, indignation, pride, respect, schadenfreude, and sympathy, by using a mixed-method approach. Qualitative and quantitative methods clearly corroborate the important role of ought, goal-attainment, and effort as eliciting conditions of moral emotions. Furthermore, we built categorical systems based on our participants' descriptions of real-life situations, allowing for more fine-grained distinctions between seemingly similar moral emotions. We thus identify additional prerequisites explaining more subtle differences between moral emotion clusters as they emerge from our analyses (i.e., cluster 1: admiration, pride, and respect; cluster 2: anger, contempt, and indignation; cluster 3: schadenfreude and sympathy. Results are discussed in the light of attributional theories of moral emotions, and implications for future research are derived.

Moral vindications.

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Kumar, Victor

2017-10-01

Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently been unearthing the unconscious processes that give rise to moral intuitions and emotions. According to skeptics like Joshua Greene, what has been found casts doubt on many of our moral beliefs. However, a new approach in moral psychology develops a learning-theoretic framework that has been successfully applied in a number of other domains. This framework suggests that model-based learning shapes intuitions and emotions. Model-based learning explains how moral thought and feeling are attuned to local material and social conditions. Philosophers can draw on these explanations, in some cases, in order to vindicate episodes of moral change. Explanations can support justifications by showing that they are not mere rationalizations. In addition, philosophical justifications are a fertile source for empirical hypotheses about the rational learning mechanisms that shape moral intuitions and emotions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Moral Hindsight.

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Fleischhut, Nadine; Meder, Björn; Gigerenzer, Gerd

2017-03-01

How are judgments in moral dilemmas affected by uncertainty, as opposed to certainty? We tested the predictions of a consequentialist and deontological account using a hindsight paradigm. The key result is a hindsight effect in moral judgment. Participants in foresight, for whom the occurrence of negative side effects was uncertain, judged actions to be morally more permissible than participants in hindsight, who knew that negative side effects occurred. Conversely, when hindsight participants knew that no negative side effects occurred, they judged actions to be more permissible than participants in foresight. The second finding was a classical hindsight effect in probability estimates and a systematic relation between moral judgments and probability estimates. Importantly, while the hindsight effect in probability estimates was always present, a corresponding hindsight effect in moral judgments was only observed among "consequentialist" participants who indicated a cost-benefit trade-off as most important for their moral evaluation.

The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm.

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Schein, Chelsea; Gray, Kurt

2018-02-01

The nature of harm-and therefore moral judgment-may be misunderstood. Rather than an objective matter of reason, we argue that harm should be redefined as an intuitively perceived continuum. This redefinition provides a new understanding of moral content and mechanism-the constructionist Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM). TDM suggests that acts are condemned proportional to three elements: norm violations, negative affect, and-importantly-perceived harm. This harm is dyadic, involving an intentional agent causing damage to a vulnerable patient (A→P). TDM predicts causal links both from harm to immorality (dyadic comparison) and from immorality to harm (dyadic completion). Together, these two processes make the "dyadic loop," explaining moral acquisition and polarization. TDM argues against intuitive harmless wrongs and modular "foundations," but embraces moral pluralism through varieties of values and the flexibility of perceived harm. Dyadic morality impacts understandings of moral character, moral emotion, and political/cultural differences, and provides research guidelines for moral psychology.

Contextual and perceptual brain processes underlying moral cognition: a quantitative meta-analysis of moral reasoning and moral emotions.

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Sevinc, Gunes; Spreng, R Nathan

2014-01-01

Human morality has been investigated using a variety of tasks ranging from judgments of hypothetical dilemmas to viewing morally salient stimuli. These experiments have provided insight into neural correlates of moral judgments and emotions, yet these approaches reveal important differences in moral cognition. Moral reasoning tasks require active deliberation while moral emotion tasks involve the perception of stimuli with moral implications. We examined convergent and divergent brain activity associated with these experimental paradigms taking a quantitative meta-analytic approach. A systematic search of the literature yielded 40 studies. Studies involving explicit decisions in a moral situation were categorized as active (n = 22); studies evoking moral emotions were categorized as passive (n = 18). We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis using the Activation Likelihood Estimation to determine reliable patterns of brain activity. Results revealed a convergent pattern of reliable brain activity for both task categories in regions of the default network, consistent with the social and contextual information processes supported by this brain network. Active tasks revealed more reliable activity in the temporoparietal junction, angular gyrus and temporal pole. Active tasks demand deliberative reasoning and may disproportionately involve the retrieval of social knowledge from memory, mental state attribution, and construction of the context through associative processes. In contrast, passive tasks reliably engaged regions associated with visual and emotional information processing, including lingual gyrus and the amygdala. A laterality effect was observed in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, with active tasks engaging the left, and passive tasks engaging the right. While overlapping activity patterns suggest a shared neural network for both tasks, differential activity suggests that processing of moral input is affected by task demands. The results provide novel

Contextual and perceptual brain processes underlying moral cognition: a quantitative meta-analysis of moral reasoning and moral emotions.

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Gunes Sevinc

Full Text Available BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Human morality has been investigated using a variety of tasks ranging from judgments of hypothetical dilemmas to viewing morally salient stimuli. These experiments have provided insight into neural correlates of moral judgments and emotions, yet these approaches reveal important differences in moral cognition. Moral reasoning tasks require active deliberation while moral emotion tasks involve the perception of stimuli with moral implications. We examined convergent and divergent brain activity associated with these experimental paradigms taking a quantitative meta-analytic approach. DATA SOURCE: A systematic search of the literature yielded 40 studies. Studies involving explicit decisions in a moral situation were categorized as active (n = 22; studies evoking moral emotions were categorized as passive (n = 18. We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis using the Activation Likelihood Estimation to determine reliable patterns of brain activity. RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS: Results revealed a convergent pattern of reliable brain activity for both task categories in regions of the default network, consistent with the social and contextual information processes supported by this brain network. Active tasks revealed more reliable activity in the temporoparietal junction, angular gyrus and temporal pole. Active tasks demand deliberative reasoning and may disproportionately involve the retrieval of social knowledge from memory, mental state attribution, and construction of the context through associative processes. In contrast, passive tasks reliably engaged regions associated with visual and emotional information processing, including lingual gyrus and the amygdala. A laterality effect was observed in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, with active tasks engaging the left, and passive tasks engaging the right. While overlapping activity patterns suggest a shared neural network for both tasks, differential activity suggests that

The ABC of moral development: an attachment approach to moral judgment

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Govrin, Aner

2014-01-01

As with other cognitive faculties, the etiology of moral judgment and its connection to early development is complex. Because research is limited, the causative and contributory factors to the development of moral judgment in preverbal infants are unclear. However, evidence is emerging from studies within both infant research and moral psychology that may contribute to our understanding of the early development of moral judgments. Though its finding are preliminary, this proposed paradigm synthesizes these findings to generate an overarching, model of the process that appears to contribute to the development of moral judgment in the first year of life. I will propose that through early interactions with the caregiver, the child acquires an internal representation of a system of rules that determine how right/wrong judgments are to be construed, used, and understood. By breaking moral situations down into their defining features, the attachment model of moral judgment outlines a framework for a universal moral faculty based on a universal, innate, deep structure that appears uniformly in the structure of almost all moral judgments regardless of their content. The implications of the model for our understanding of innateness, universal morality, and the representations of moral situations are discussed. PMID:24478739

Executive Summary: Transforming Moral Distress into Moral Resilience in Nursing.

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Rushton, Cynda Hylton; Schoonover-Shoffner, Kathy; Kennedy, Maureen Shawn

To examine practices for addressing moral distress, a collaborative project was developed by the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, the American Journal of Nursing, and the Journal of Christian Nursing, along with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and the American Nurses Association. Its purpose was to identify strategies that individuals and systems can use to mitigate the detrimental effects of moral distress and foster moral resilience. On August 11 and 12, 2016, an invitational symposium, State of the Science: Transforming Moral Distress into Moral Resilience in Nursing, was held at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland. Forty-five nurse clinicians, researchers, ethicists, organization representatives, and other stakeholders took part. The result of the symposium was group consensus on recommendations for addressing moral distress and building moral resilience in four areas: practice, education, research, and policy. Participants and the organizations represented were energized and committed to moving this agenda forward. The full report is available online at http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Pages/Moral-Distress-Supplement.aspx.

Moral Geography and Exploration of the Moral Possibility Space

OpenAIRE

Bongrae Seok

2017-01-01

This article reviews Owen Flanagan’s latest book “The Geography of Morals, Varieties of Moral Possibilities” (2017). By exploring the space of moral possibility (i.e., diverse options and viewpoints of morality from different philosophical and religious traditions throughout the world), Flanagan argues that ethics is not simply a study of a priori conditions of normative rules and ideal values but a process of developing a careful understanding of varying conditions of human ecology and build...

Moral virtues

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Georg Spielthenner

2004-01-01

Full Text Available Although much has been published on virtues in recent years, there is still considerable uncertainty in philosophy (and even more among philosophical laymen about the concept of a virtue and especially about moral virtues. In this article, I will try to clarify these notions. In particular, I want to answer the question: When are virtues moral virtues? Clearly, not every practical virtue is a moral virtue. Why was the courage of the Nazi soldiers in the second world war not a moral virtue, but yet is presumably one if included among the cardinal virtues? To clarify this question, this article will deal with the concept of a virtue but I will also investigate the notion of virtues being of a moral nature. To this end, I propose and explain (I a definition of moral virtues and clarify this definition further in section (II, by explaining why I did not include qualities, which others have considered as essential.

Is moral bioenhancement dangerous?

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Drake, Nicholas

2016-01-01

In a recent response to Persson and Savulescu's Unfit for the Future, Nicholas Agar argues that moral bioenhancement is dangerous. His grounds for this are that normal moral judgement should be privileged because it involves a balance of moral subcapacities; moral bioenhancement, Agar argues, involves the enhancement of only particular moral subcapacities, and thus upsets the balance inherent in normal moral judgement. Mistaken moral judgements, he says, are likely to result. I argue that Agar's argument fails for two reasons. First, having strength in a particular moral subcapacity does not necessarily entail a worsening of moral judgement; it can involve strength in a particular aspect of morality. Second, normal moral judgement is not sufficiently likely to be correct to be the standard by which moral judgements are measured. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

The measurement of principled morality by the Kohlberg Moral Dilemma Questionnaire.

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Heilbrun, A B; Georges, M

1990-01-01

The four stages preceding the postconventional level in the Kohlberg (1958, 1971, 1976) system of moral development are described as involving moral judgments that conform to external conditions of punishment, reward, social expectation, and conformity to the law. No special level of self-control seems necessary to behave in keeping with these conditions of external reinforcement. In contrast, the two stages of postconventional (principled) mortality involve defiance of majority opinion and defiance of the law--actions that would seem to require greater self-control. This study was concerned with whether postconventional moral reasoning, as measured by the Kohlberg Moral Dilemma Questionnaire (MDQ), can be associated with higher self-control. If so, prediction of principled moral behavior from the MDQ would be based not only on postconventional moral reasoning but bolstered by the necessary level of self-control as well. College students who came the closest to postconventional moral reasoning showed better self-control than college students who were more conventional or preconventional in their moral judgments. These results support the validity of the MDQ for predicting principled moral behavior.

On Shermer on morality.

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Miller, Christian B

2016-11-01

This is my critical commentary on Michael Shermer's paper "Morality is real, objective, and natural." Shermer and I agree that morality is both real and objective. Here I raise serious reservations about both Shermer's account of where morality comes from and his account of what morality tells us to do. His approach to the foundations of morality would allow some very disturbing behaviors to count as moral, and his approach to what morality says does not provide the action guidance we need from a moral theory. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

Moral Education as Intercultural Moral Education

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Frisancho, Susana; Delgado, Guillermo Enrique

2018-01-01

In a diverse country such as Peru, moral education should reflect social, cultural, political and spiritual dilemmas of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and their communities. To promote understanding and respect amongst people from different sociocultural backgrounds, moral education should encourage a dialogue between indigenous values…

Why Be Moral? Children's Explicit Motives for Prosocial-Moral Action

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Sonia eSengsavang

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Recent research on young children's morality has stressed the autonomous and internal nature of children's moral motivation. However, this research has mostly focused on implicit moral motives, whereas children's explicit motives have not been investigated directly. This study examined children’s explicit motives for why they want to engage in prosocial actions and avoid antisocial behavior. A total of 195 children aged 4 to 12 years were interviewed about their motives for everyday prosocial-moral actions, as well as reported on their relationship with their parents. Children's explicit motives to abstain from antisocial behavior were found to be more external and less other-oriented than their motives for prosocial action. Motives that reflected higher levels of internal motivation became more frequent with age. Moreover, positive parent-child relationships predicted more other-oriented motives and greater explication of moral motives. Overall, the study provides evidence that children’s explicit moral motivation is far more heterogeneous than prominent theories of moral development (past and present suggest.

Why be moral? Children's explicit motives for prosocial-moral action.

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Sengsavang, Sonia; Willemsen, Kayleen; Krettenauer, Tobias

2015-01-01

Recent research on young children's morality has stressed the autonomous and internal nature of children's moral motivation. However, this research has mostly focused on implicit moral motives, whereas children's explicit motives have not been investigated directly. This study examined children's explicit motives for why they want to engage in prosocial actions and avoid antisocial behavior. A total of 195 children aged 4-12 years were interviewed about their motives for everyday prosocial-moral actions, as well as reported on their relationship with their parents. Children's explicit motives to abstain from antisocial behavior were found to be more external and less other-oriented than their motives for prosocial action. Motives that reflected higher levels of internal motivation became more frequent with age. Moreover, positive parent-child relationships predicted more other-oriented motives and greater explication of moral motives. Overall, the study provides evidence that children's explicit moral motivation is far more heterogeneous than prominent theories of moral development (past and present) suggest.

Kant’s Prudential Theory of Religion: The Necessity of Historical Faith for Moral Empowerment

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Stephen R. Palmquist

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Given his emphasis on deontological ethics, Kant is rarely regarded as a friend of prudence. For example, he is often interpreted as an opponent of so-called “historical faiths” (i.e., empirical religious traditions. What typically goes unnoticed is that in explaining the legitimate (indeed, indispensable role of historical faiths in the moral development of the human race, Kant appeals explicitly to their prudential status. A careful examination of Kant’s main references to prudence demonstrates that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its limitations (as merely the vehicle of true religion, not its essential core and its real value (as a necessary means of moral empowerment. The wise person adopts some form of historical faith, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life virtually impossible for embodied beings to achieve.

Reconciling the self and morality: an empirical model of moral centrality development.

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Frimer, Jeremy A; Walker, Lawrence J

2009-11-01

Self-interest and moral sensibilities generally compete with one another, but for moral exemplars, this tension appears to not be in play. This study advances the reconciliation model, which explains this anomaly within a developmental framework by positing that the relationship between the self's interests and moral concerns ideally transforms from one of mutual competition to one of synergy. The degree to which morality is central to an individual's identity-or moral centrality-was operationalized in terms of values advanced implicitly in self-understanding narratives; a measure was developed and then validated. Participants were 97 university students who responded to a self-understanding interview and to several measures of morally relevant behaviors. Results indicated that communal values (centered on concerns for others) positively predicted and agentic (self-interested) values negatively predicted moral behavior. At the same time, the tendency to coordinate both agentic and communal values within narrative thought segments positively predicted moral behavior, indicating that the 2 motives can be adaptively reconciled. Moral centrality holds considerable promise in explaining moral motivation and its development.

Kaip galima su sveiko proto morale suderinama moralės teorija

OpenAIRE

Vasilionytė, Ieva

2014-01-01

The dissertation explores the question of the possibility of a moral theory compatible with common sense morality. Common sense morality is limited to its two fundamental features, or suppositions: moral judgements are truth apt and practical, i.e. they are at the same time in some sense objectively right or wrong and necessarily action guiding. In contemporary philosophy, the two fundamental features of common sense morality seem to be incompatible: only descriptions can have truth values, b...

How moral disagreement may ground principled moral compromise

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kappel, Klemens

2018-01-01

In an influential article, Simon C. May forcefully argued that, properly understood, there can never be principled reasons for moral compromise (May, 2005). While there may be pragmatic reasons for compromising that involve, for instance, concern for political expediency or for stability, there a......In an influential article, Simon C. May forcefully argued that, properly understood, there can never be principled reasons for moral compromise (May, 2005). While there may be pragmatic reasons for compromising that involve, for instance, concern for political expediency or for stability......, there are properly speaking no principled reasons to compromise. My aim in the article is to show how principled moral compromise in the context of moral disagreements over policy options is possible. I argue that when we disagree, principled reasons favoring compromises or compromising can assume a more significant...... part of what makes a position all things considered best, and in this way disagreement can ground moral compromise....

Mapping the Moral Domain

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Graham, Jesse; Nosek, Brian A.; Haidt, Jonathan; Iyer, Ravi; Koleva, Spassena; Ditto, Peter H.

2010-01-01

The moral domain is broader than the empathy and justice concerns assessed by existing measures of moral competence, and it is not just a subset of the values assessed by value inventories. To fill the need for reliable and theoretically-grounded measurement of the full range of moral concerns, we developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) based on a theoretical model of five universally available (but variably developed) sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. We present evidence for the internal and external validity of the scale and the model, and in doing so present new findings about morality: 1. Comparative model fitting of confirmatory factor analyses provides empirical justification for a five-factor structure of moral concerns. 2. Convergent/discriminant validity evidence suggests that moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant. 3. We establish pragmatic validity of the measure in providing new knowledge and research opportunities concerning demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions. These analyses provide evidence for the usefulness of Moral Foundations Theory in simultaneously increasing the scope and sharpening the resolution of psychological views of morality. PMID:21244182

Moral politics

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Rapp, Carolin; Traunmüller, Richard; Freitag, Markus

2014-01-01

This article combines the research strands of moral politics and political behavior by focusing on the effect of individual and contextual religiosity on individual vote decisions in popular initiatives and public referenda concerning morally charged issues. We rely on a total of 13 surveys with 1...... American research on moral politics, direct democracies, and the public role of religion....

Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency.

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Bandura, Albert

2002-01-01

Addresses the issue of selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Argues that moral functioning is governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. Concludes that the massive threats to human welfare stem mainly from deliberate acts of principle rather than from unrestrained acts of impulse.…

Moral Beliefs and Cognitive Homogeneity

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Nevia Dolcini

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The Emotional Perception Model of moral judgment intends to account for experientialism about morality and moral reasoning. In explaining how moral beliefs are formed and applied in practical reasoning, the model attempts to overcome the mismatch between reason and action/desire: morality isn’t about reason for actions, yet moral beliefs, if caused by desires, may play a motivational role in (moral agency. The account allows for two kinds of moral beliefs: genuine moral beliefs, which enjoy a relation to desire, and motivationally inert moral beliefs acquired in ways other than experience. Such etiology-based dichotomy of concepts, I will argue, leads to the undesirable view of cognition as a non-homogeneous phenomenon. Moreover, the distinction between moral beliefs and moral beliefs would entail a further dichotomy encompassing the domain of moral agency: one and the same action might possibly be either genuine moral, or not moral, if acted by individuals lacking the capacity for moral feelings, such as psychopaths.

Relationship between ICU nurses' moral distress with burnout and anticipated turnover.

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Shoorideh, Foroozan Atashzadeh; Ashktorab, Tahereh; Yaghmaei, Farideh; Alavi Majd, Hamid

2015-02-01

Moral distress is one of intensive care unit nurses' major problems, which may happen due to various reasons, and has several consequences. Due to various moral distress outcomes in intensive care unit nurses, and their impact on nurses' personal and professional practice, recognizing moral distress is very important. The aim of this study was to determine correlation between moral distress with burnout and anticipated turnover in intensive care unit nurses. This study is a descriptive-correlation research. A total of 159 intensive care unit nurses were selected from medical sciences universities in Iran. Data collection instruments included "demographic questionnaire," "ICU Nurses' Moral Distress Scale," "Copenhagen Burnout Inventory" and "Hinshaw and Atwood Turnover Scale." Data analysis was done by using SPSS19. Informed consent from samples and research approval was obtained from Shahid Beheshti Medical Sciences University Research Ethics Board in Tehran. The findings showed intensive care unit nurses' moral distress and anticipated turnover was high, but burnout was moderate. The results revealed that there was a positive statistical correlation between intensive care unit nurses' age, their work experience and the fraction of nurses' number to number of intensive care unit beds with their moral distress and burnout. However, there were no correlation between gender, marriage status, educational degree and work shift and moral distress. Some of the findings of this research are consistent with other studies and some of them are inconsistent. Similarly, moral distress with burnout and anticipated turnover did not have statistical correlation. However, a positive correlation was found between burnout and anticipated turnover. The results showed that increase in the recruitment of young nurses, and nursing personnel, and diminishing intensive care unit nurses' moral distress, burnout and their turnover intention are essential. © The Author(s) 2014.

The Everyday Moral Judge – Autobiographical Recollections of Moral Emotions

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Tscharaktschiew, Nadine; Schindler, Rose; Schulz, Katrin; Rudolph, Udo

2016-01-01

Moral emotions are typically elicited in everyday social interactions and regulate social behavior. Previous research in the field of attribution theory identified ought (the moral standard of a given situation or intended goal), goal-attainment (a goal can be attained vs. not attained) and effort (high vs. low effort expenditure) as cognitive antecedents of moral emotions. In contrast to earlier studies, mainly relying on thought experiments, we investigated autobiographical recollections of N = 312 participants by means of an online study. We analyzed a diverse range of moral emotions, i.e., admiration, anger, contempt, indignation, pride, respect, schadenfreude, and sympathy, by using a mixed-method approach. Qualitative and quantitative methods clearly corroborate the important role of ought, goal-attainment, and effort as eliciting conditions of moral emotions. Furthermore, we built categorical systems based on our participants’ descriptions of real-life situations, allowing for more fine-grained distinctions between seemingly similar moral emotions. We thus identify additional prerequisites explaining more subtle differences between moral emotion clusters as they emerge from our analyses (i.e., cluster 1: admiration, pride, and respect; cluster 2: anger, contempt, and indignation; cluster 3: schadenfreude and sympathy). Results are discussed in the light of attributional theories of moral emotions, and implications for future research are derived. PMID:27977699

Moral education through literature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pantić Nataša

2006-01-01

Full Text Available This paper examines a variety of perspectives on the role of literature in moral education. These proceed from general considerations to more specific issues that remain contested to the present day, such as distinction between individual and social morality. Others bring any literature under suspicion in the post-structuralist era, such as the cultural relativity of morality, distinctions between aesthetic and moral dimensions of literary works, and between moral awareness and behavior. The discussion is illustrated through considerations of the place of literature in English moral education from the Victorians to the present day. The discussion of dilemmas that policy makers and educators face today focuses on three dilemmas that often serve to question a possibility of justifying the morally educative power of literature: cultural relativism in literature and ideology (and its implications for the canon, the distinction between an aesthetic and moral power of literature, and finally, the doubts about the transferability of moral awareness acquired through literature to actual moral conduct. .

Moral Development in Adolescence

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Hart, Daniel; Carlo, Gustavo

2005-01-01

Themes in the papers in this special issue of the "JRA" on moral development are identified. We discuss the intersection of moral development research with policy concerns, the distinctive qualities of moral life in adolescence that warrant investigation, the multiple connotations of "moral", the methods typical of moral development research, and…

The Unifying Moral Dyad: Liberals and Conservatives Share the Same Harm-Based Moral Template.

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Schein, Chelsea; Gray, Kurt

2015-08-01

Do moral disagreements regarding specific issues (e.g., patriotism, chastity) reflect deep cognitive differences (i.e., distinct cognitive mechanisms) between liberals and conservatives? Dyadic morality suggests that the answer is "no." Despite moral diversity, we reveal that moral cognition--in both liberals and conservatives--is rooted in a harm-based template. A dyadic template suggests that harm should be central within moral cognition, an idea tested--and confirmed--through six specific hypotheses. Studies suggest that moral judgment occurs via dyadic comparison, in which counter-normative acts are compared with a prototype of harm. Dyadic comparison explains why harm is the most accessible and important of moral content, why harm organizes--and overlaps with--diverse moral content, and why harm best translates across moral content. Dyadic morality suggests that various moral content (e.g., loyalty, purity) are varieties of perceived harm and that past research has substantially exaggerated moral differences between liberals and conservatives. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Explaining Moral Behavior.

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Osman, Magda; Wiegmann, Alex

2017-03-01

In this review we make a simple theoretical argument which is that for theory development, computational modeling, and general frameworks for understanding moral psychology researchers should build on domain-general principles from reasoning, judgment, and decision-making research. Our approach is radical with respect to typical models that exist in moral psychology that tend to propose complex innate moral grammars and even evolutionarily guided moral principles. In support of our argument we show that by using a simple value-based decision model we can capture a range of core moral behaviors. Crucially, the argument we propose is that moral situations per se do not require anything specialized or different from other situations in which we have to make decisions, inferences, and judgments in order to figure out how to act.

Integrity and moral residue: nurses as participants in a moral community.

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Hardingham, Lorraine B

2004-07-01

This paper will examine the concepts of integrity and moral residue as they relate to nursing practice in the current health care environment. I will begin with my definition and conception of ethical practice, and, based on that, will go on to argue for the importance of recognizing that nurses often find themselves in the position of compromising their moral integrity in order to maintain their self-survival in the hospital or health care environment. I will argue that moral integrity is necessary to a moral life, and is relational in nature. When integrity is threatened, the result is moral distress, moral residue, and in some cases, abandonment of the profession. The solution will require more than teaching bioethics to nursing students and nurses. It will require changes in the health care environment, organizational culture and the education of nurses, with an emphasis on building a moral community as an environment in which to practise ethically.

Asymmetric Information in Iranian’s Health Insurance Market: Testing of Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard

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Lotfi, Farhad; Gorji, Hassan Abolghasem; Mahdavi, Ghadir; Hadian, Mohammad

2015-01-01

Background: Asymmetric information is one of the most important issues in insurance market which occurred due to inherent characteristics of one of the agents involved in insurance contracts; hence its management requires designing appropriate policies. This phenomenon can lead to the failure of insurance market via its two consequences, namely, adverse selection and moral hazard. Objective: This study was aimed to evaluate the status of asymmetric information in Iran’s health insurance market with respect to the demand for outpatient services. Materials/sPatients and Methods: This research is a cross sectional study conducted on households living in Iran. The data of the research was extracted from the information on household’s budget survey collected by the Statistical Center of Iran in 2012. In this study, the Generalized Method of Moment model was used and the status of adverse selection and moral hazard was evaluated through calculating the latent health status of individuals in each insurance category. To analyze the data, Excel, Eviews and stata11 software were used. Results: The estimation of parameters of the utility function of the demand for outpatient services (visit, medicine, and Para-clinical services) showed that households were more risk averse in the use of outpatient care than other goods and services. After estimating the health status of households based on their health insurance categories, the results showed that rural-insured people had the best health status and people with supplementary insurance had the worst health status. In addition, the comparison of the conditional distribution of latent health status approved the phenomenon of adverse selection in all insurance groups, with the exception of rural insurance. Moreover, calculation of the elasticity of medical expenses to reimbursement rate confirmed the existence of moral hazard phenomenon. Conclusions: Due to the existence of the phenomena of adverse selection and moral hazard

Moral foundations vignettes: a standardized stimulus database of scenarios based on moral foundations theory.

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Clifford, Scott; Iyengar, Vijeth; Cabeza, Roberto; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter

2015-12-01

Research on the emotional, cognitive, and social determinants of moral judgment has surged in recent years. The development of moral foundations theory (MFT) has played an important role, demonstrating the breadth of morality. Moral psychology has responded by investigating how different domains of moral judgment are shaped by a variety of psychological factors. Yet, the discipline lacks a validated set of moral violations that span the moral domain, creating a barrier to investigating influences on judgment and how their neural bases might vary across the moral domain. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by developing and validating a large set of moral foundations vignettes (MFVs). Each vignette depicts a behavior violating a particular moral foundation and not others. The vignettes are controlled on many dimensions including syntactic structure and complexity making them suitable for neuroimaging research. We demonstrate the validity of our vignettes by examining respondents' classifications of moral violations, conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and demonstrating the correspondence between the extracted factors and existing measures of the moral foundations. We expect that the MFVs will be beneficial for a wide variety of behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of moral cognition.

Moral foundations vignettes: a standardized stimulus database of scenarios based on moral foundations theory

Science.gov (United States)

Iyengar, Vijeth; Cabeza, Roberto; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter

2016-01-01

Research on the emotional, cognitive, and social determinants of moral judgment has surged in recent years. The development of moral foundations theory (MFT) has played an important role, demonstrating the breadth of morality. Moral psychology has responded by investigating how different domains of moral judgment are shaped by a variety of psychological factors. Yet, the discipline lacks a validated set of moral violations that span the moral domain, creating a barrier to investigating influences on judgment and how their neural bases might vary across the moral domain. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by developing and validating a large set of moral foundations vignettes (MFVs). Each vignette depicts a behavior violating a particular moral foundation and not others. The vignettes are controlled on many dimensions including syntactic structure and complexity making them suitable for neuroimaging research. We demonstrate the validity of our vignettes by examining respondents’ classifications of moral violations, conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and demonstrating the correspondence between the extracted factors and existing measures of the moral foundations. We expect that the MFVs will be beneficial for a wide variety of behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of moral cognition. PMID:25582811

Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots, and Human Morality.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Coeckelbergh, Mark

2010-01-01

Can we build ‘moral robots’? If morality depends on emotions, the answer seems negative. Current robots do not meet standard necessary conditions for having emotions: they lack consciousness, mental states, and feelings. Moreover, it is not even clear how we might ever establish whether robots

From moral agents to moral factors: the structural ethics approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brey, Philip A.E.; Kroes, P.; Verbeek, P.P.C.C.

2014-01-01

It has become a popular position in the philosophy of technology to claim that some or all technological artifacts can qualify as moral agents. This position has been developed to account for the moral role of technological artifacts in society and to help clarify the moral responsibility of

Moral foundations, worldviews, moral absolutism and belief in conspiracy theories.

Science.gov (United States)

Leone, Luigi; Giacomantonio, Mauro; Lauriola, Marco

2017-09-05

In the present research, we examined whether individual differences in basic moral concerns might be related to a greater endorsement of conspiracy theories. Building on the notion that conspiracy theories often deal with super-individual relevant events in which a group perspective is central, we proposed that individual differences in moral concerns pertaining to group- and community-concerns (i.e., binding moral foundations) rather than to individual well-being (i.e., individualising moral foundations) would be positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. We further hypothesised that such relations would be totally mediated by beliefs in a dangerous world and by embracing moral absolutism. We found support for these predictions in two community samples (Ns: 319; 514). Theoretical implications were discussed. © 2017 International Union of Psychological Science.

Moral Complexity: The Fatal Attraction of Truthiness and the Importance of Mature Moral Functioning.

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Narvaez, Darcia

2010-03-01

Recently, intuitionist theories have been effective in capturing the academic discourse about morality. Intuitionist theories, like rationalist theories, offer important but only partial understanding of moral functioning. Both can be fallacious and succumb to truthiness: the attachment to one's opinions because they "feel right," potentially leading to harmful action or inaction. Both intuition and reasoning are involved in deliberation and expertise. Both are malleable from environmental and educational influence, making questions of normativity-which intuitions and reasoning skills to foster-of utmost importance. Good intuition and reasoning inform mature moral functioning, which needs to include capacities that promote sustainable human well-being. Individual capacities for habituated empathic concern and moral metacognition-moral locus of control, moral self-regulation, and moral self-reflection-comprise mature moral functioning, which also requires collective capacities for moral dialogue and moral institutions. These capacities underlie moral innovation and are necessary for solving the complex challenges humanity faces. © The Author(s) 2010.

Religion, morality, evolution.

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Bloom, Paul

2012-01-01

How did religion evolve? What effect does religion have on our moral beliefs and moral actions? These questions are related, as some scholars propose that religion has evolved to enhance altruistic behavior toward members of one's group. I review here data from survey studies (both within and across countries), priming experiments, and correlational studies of the effects of religion on racial prejudice. I conclude that religion has powerfully good moral effects and powerfully bad moral effects, but these are due to aspects of religion that are shared by other human practices. There is surprisingly little evidence for a moral effect of specifically religious beliefs.

"Moral Ecology" and "Moral Capital": Tools towards a Sociology of Moral Education from a South African Ethnography

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Swartz, Sharlene

2010-01-01

Research and pedagogy in the field of morality and moral education has long been dominated by philosophical and psychological disciplines. Although sociological studies and theorising in the field have not been absent, it has been limited and non-systematic. Drawing on a study that investigated the lived morality of a group of young South Africans…

Reactions to morally motivated deviance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cramwinckel, F.M.; Van den Bos, K.; Van Dijk, E.

2015-01-01

People value morality in themselves and others. They want to be moral and good individuals, associate themselves with others who share their moral values, and belong to moral groups. As an ironic consequence of the importance of morality, people sometimes respond negatively to morally motivated

Neural correlates of moral and non-moral emotion in female psychopathy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carla L Harenski

2014-09-01

Full Text Available This study presents the first neuroimaging investigation of female psychopathy in an incarcerated population. Prior studies have found that male psychopathy is associated with reduced limbic and paralimbic activation when processing emotional stimuli and making moral judgments. The goal of this study was to investigate whether these findings extend to female psychopathy. During fMRI scanning, 157 incarcerated and 46 non-incarcerated female participants viewed unpleasant pictures, half which depicted moral transgressions, and neutral pictures. Participants rated each picture on moral transgression severity. Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R in all incarcerated participants. Non-incarcerated participants were included as a control group to derive brain regions of interest associated with viewing unpleasant versus neutral pictures (emotion contrast, and unpleasant pictures depicting moral transgressions versus unpleasant pictures without moral transgressions (moral contrast. Regression analyses in the incarcerated group examined the association between PCL-R scores and brain activation in the emotion and moral contrasts. Results of the emotion contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate. Results of the moral contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right temporo-parietal junction. These results indicate that female psychopathy, like male psychopathy, is characterized by reduced limbic activation during emotion processing. In contrast, reduced temporo-parietal activation to moral transgressions has been less observed in male psychopathy. These results extend prior findings in male psychopathy to female psychopathy, and reveal aberrant neural responses to morally-salient stimuli that may be unique to female psychopathy.

Morale and Productivity

Science.gov (United States)

2015-06-01

account for valuation of highly technical skill sets and variation among job descriptions. 9 Once morale can be effectively measured and linked to...morale progression through phases (arrival, engagement, acceptance, and reentry), which have corresponding peaks and valleys for morale and, by

It's not all about moral reasoning: Understanding the content of Moral Case Deliberation.

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Svantesson, Mia; Silén, Marit; James, Inger

2018-03-01

Moral Case Deliberation is one form of clinical ethics support described as a facilitator-led collective moral reasoning by healthcare professionals on a concrete moral question connected to their practice. Evaluation research is needed, but, as human interaction is difficult to standardise, there is a need to capture the content beyond moral reasoning. This allows for a better understanding of Moral Case Deliberation, which may contribute to further development of valid outcome criteria and stimulate the normative discussion of what Moral Case Deliberation should contain. To explore and compare the content beyond moral reasoning in the dialogue in Moral Case Deliberation at Swedish workplaces. A mixed-methods approach was applied for analysing audio-recordings of 70 periodic Moral Case Deliberation meetings at 10 Swedish workplaces. Moral Case Deliberation facilitators and various healthcare professions participated, with registered nurses comprising the majority. Ethical considerations: No objection to the study was made by an Ethical Review Board. After oral and written information was provided, consent to be recorded was assumed by virtue of participation. Other than 'moral reasoning' (median (md): 45% of the spoken time), the Moral Case Deliberations consisted of 'reflections on the psychosocial work environment' to a varying extent (md: 29%). Additional content comprised 'assumptions about the patient's psychosocial situation' (md: 6%), 'facts about the patient's situation' (md: 5%), 'concrete problem-solving' (md: 6%) and 'process' (md: 3%). The findings suggest that a restorative function of staff's wellbeing in Moral Case Deliberation is needed, as this might contribute to good patient care. This supports outcome criteria of improved emotional support, which may include relief of moral distress. However, facilitators need a strategy for how to proceed from the participants' own emotional needs and to develop the use of their emotional knowing to focus on

Morality in everyday life

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hofmann, W.; Wisneski, D.C.; Brandt, M.J.; Skitka, L.J.

2014-01-01

The science of morality has drawn heavily on well-controlled but artificial laboratory settings. To study everyday morality, we repeatedly assessed moral or immoral acts and experiences in a large (N = 1252) sample using ecological momentary assessment. Moral experiences were surprisingly frequent

What Develops in Moral Development? A Model of Moral Sensibility

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Sherblom, Stephen A.

2012-01-01

The field of moral psychology would benefit from an integrative model of what develops in moral development, contextualized within the larger scope of social science research. Moral sensibility is proposed as the best concept to embody stated aims, but the content of this concept must be more finely articulated and conceptualized as a dynamic…

Religion and morality.

Science.gov (United States)

McKay, Ryan; Whitehouse, Harvey

2015-03-01

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose "religion" and "morality" into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts-in particular, sanitized conceptions of "prosocial" behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories "religion" and "morality" must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Morality and Ecological Moral: contributions to the teaching practice

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ligiane Raimundo Gomes

2010-05-01

Full Text Available This research searched to investigate if the acquisition of the notion of respect to the environment, that we call “ecological moral”, is constructed during the childish development, solidarily to the construction of the morality, presupposing that the notion of respect on the ecological field is the same that found the conquest of the moral autonomy. For this investigation, it had been taken a sample of 15 participants, five by age group – form 6 to 8 years old, 10 to 11 years old and 13 to 15 years old. Through the piagetian clinical method, it was told to the children and adolescents two groups of stories: three stories were taken from Piaget’s studies about morality, focusing the conscience of rules and the notions of lie and justice, and four another hypothetical stories were created specifically to study the respect to the environment, focusing, respectively, the selective collection, the extinction of the birds, the pollution of a river and the cutting of tree. The statements of the participants were analysed according to the theoretical reference of Piaget concerning to the morality, also helped by some studious that have been amplifying the application field of Piaget’s theory. The data analysis allowed us to set up three levels for the development of the notion of respect to the environment, proving that the ecological moral has a psychogenetic dimension and there is a relation between the development of the morality and the acquisition of the ecological moral.

Moral Education in Taiwan.

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Meyer, Jeffrey F.

1988-01-01

Reports the attitudes of 80 Taiwanese teachers of morality about moral education in the face of drastic social change and modernization. Discusses the content and nature of traditional Chinese morality, the effects of contemporary culture on children's moral development, and teaching methods. Contains 18 references. (SV)

Moral distress and its interconnection with moral sensitivity and moral resilience: viewed from the philosophy of Viktor E. Frankl.

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Lützén, Kim; Ewalds-Kvist, Béatrice

2013-10-01

The interconnection between moral distress, moral sensitivity, and moral resilience was explored by constructing two hypothetical scenarios based on a recent Swedish newspaper report. In the first scenario, a 77-year-old man, rational and awake, was coded as "do not resuscitate" (DNR) against his daughter's wishes. The patient died in the presence of nurses who were not permitted to resuscitate him. The second scenario concerned a 41-year-old man, who had been in a coma for three weeks. He was also coded as "do not resuscitate" and, when he stopped breathing, was resuscitated by his father. The nurses persuaded the physician on call to resume life support treatment and the patient recovered. These scenarios were analyzed using Viktor Frankl's existential philosophy, resulting in a conceivable theoretical connection between moral distress, moral sensitivity, and moral resilience. To substantiate our conclusion, we encourage further empirical research.

Adolescents' Self-Attributed Moral Emotions Following a Moral Transgression: Relations with Delinquency, Confidence in Moral Judgment and Age

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Krettenauer, Tobias; Eichler, Dana

2006-01-01

The study investigates adolescents' self-attributed moral emotions following a moral transgression by expanding research with children on the happy-victimizer phenomenon. In a sample of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (M=16.18 years, SD=2.41), participants were confronted with various scenarios describing different moral rule…

Moral Behavior as Rule Governed Behavior: Person and System Effects on Moral Decision Making.

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Kurtines, William M.; And Others

Recent approaches to research on moral development have considered the preeminence of situational factors in moral development and moral behavior. An open systems approach emphasizes the interactive effects of person and situation variables on moral decision-making. The interactive effects of three sets of variables on moral decision-making were…

Moral motivation within groups

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lee, Romy van der

2013-01-01

Morality is of particular importance to people: People want to be considered moral and want to belong to moral groups. Consequently, morality judgments have the potential to motivate individuals to behave in ways that are considered to be ‘good’. In the current dissertation, I examined the impact of

Morality in Interactions: On the Display of Moral Behavior by Leaders and Employees

NARCIS (Netherlands)

S. van Gils (Suzanne)

2012-01-01

textabstractRecent research has tried to understand moral behavior in the workplace mainly from an intra-personal perspective, blaming ethical failures on the person’s moral character, moral development or moral identity, or on isolated aspects of the situation. In doing so, little attention has

Foundations for Moral Relativism

OpenAIRE

Velleman, J. David

2015-01-01

In this new edition of Foundations for Moral Relativism, a distinguished moral philosopher tames a bugbear of current debate about cultural difference. J. David Velleman shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral world...

Popper's Third World: Moral Habits, Moral Habitat and Their Maintenance

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Ozolins, Janis Talivaldis

2010-01-01

If we accept Popper's idea that the human habitat is described in terms of three worlds, and that there are overlaps between these three worlds, our moral actions and values will also be subject to the same kinds of consideration as a repertoire of behaviours exhibited in a physical environment. We will develop moral habits in a moral habitat and…

Individual Differences in Moral Development: Does Intelligence Really Affect Children?s Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions?

OpenAIRE

Bei?ert, Hanna M.; Hasselhorn, Marcus

2016-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between intelligence and individual differences in children’s moral development across a range of different moral transgressions. Taking up prior research that showed morality and intelligence to be related in adolescents and adults, the current study wants to test if these findings can be extended to younger children. The study was designed to address some of the shortcomings in prior research by examining young children aged between 6 years; 4 months...

Media's Moral Messages: Assessing Perceptions of Moral Content in Television Programming

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Glover, Rebecca J.; Garmon, Lance C.; Hull, Darrell M.

2011-01-01

This study extends the examination of moral content in the media by exploring moral messages in television programming and viewer characteristics predictive of the ability to perceive such messages. Generalisability analyses confirmed the reliability of the Media's Moral Messages (MMM) rating form for analysing programme content and the existence…

Ethical Perspectives, Reactions to Other's Moral Behavior, and Consequent Moral Action.

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Pope, William R.; Forsyth, Donelson R.

In analyzing various moral and legal philosophies, two perspectives emerge, absolute moral rules/higher law, and situationally-specific moral rules/legal positivism. From these two perspectives, four types of individuals emerge in accordance with their degree of adherence to ideological tenets: (1) situationists (high on idealism and relativism);…

MORAL TECHNIQUES. FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND ITS ARTIFACTS FOR DOING GOOD

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GABRIEL GATTI

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In many of its applications forensic anthropology is a singular discipline, midway between a bare techno-scientific exercise and a militant involvement in overcoming situations marked by human rights violations. Today, riding on an intense and transnational wave of humanitarian sensitivity, forensic anthropology has acquired a significant scientific, moral and media status, and has become a front line scientific-technical practice in the human rights field at the planetary level. This text, which analyzes some of the artifacts with which forensic anthropology represents and works on its object, aims to understand this discipline through the concept of moral technique, which, in my understanding, captures the particular tensions of this form of working for good.

The Epistemology of Moral Bioenhancement.

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Crutchfield, Parker

2016-07-01

Moral bioenhancement is the potential practice of manipulating individuals' moral behaviors by biological means in order to help resolve pressing moral issues such as climate change and terrorism. This practice has obvious ethical implications, and these implications have been and continue to be discussed in the bioethics literature. What have not been discussed are the epistemological implications of moral bioenhancement. This article details some of these implications of engaging in moral bioenhancement. The argument begins by making the distinction between moral bioenhancement that manipulates the contents of mental states (e.g. beliefs) and that which manipulates other, non-representational states (e.g. motivations). Either way, I argue, the enhanced moral psychology will fail to conform to epistemic norms, and the only way to resolve this failure and allow the moral bioenhancement to be effective in addressing the targeted moral issues is to make the moral bioenhancement covert. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

eWOM, Revisit Intention, Destination Trust and Gender

OpenAIRE

Abubakar, Abubakar Mohammed; Ilkan, Mustafa; Al-Tal, Raad Meshall; Eluwole, Kayode

2017-01-01

This article investigates the impact of eWOM on intention to revisit and destination trust, and the moderating role of gender in medical tourism industry. Result from structural equation modeling (n=240) suggests the following: (1) that eWOM influences intention to revisit and destination trust; (2) that destination trust influences intention to revisit; (3) that the impact of eWOM on intention to revisit is about 1.3 times higher in men; (4) that the impact of eWOM on destination trust is ab...

The Moral Self-Image Scale: Measuring and Understanding the Malleability of the Moral Self.

Science.gov (United States)

Jordan, Jennifer; Leliveld, Marijke C; Tenbrunsel, Ann E

2015-01-01

Recent ethical decision-making models suggest that individuals' own view of their morality is malleable rather than static, responding to their (im)moral actions and reflections about the world around them. Yet no construct currently exists to represent the malleable state of a person's moral self-image (MSI). In this investigation, we define this construct, as well as develop a scale to measure it. Across five studies, we show that feedback about the moral self alters an individual's MSI as measured by our scale. We also find that the MSI is related to, but distinct from, related constructs, including moral identity, self-esteem, and moral disengagement. In Study 1, we administered the MSI scale and several other relevant scales to demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, we examine the relationship between the MSI and one's ought versus ideal self. In Studies 3 and 4, we find that one's MSI is affected in the predicted directions by manipulated feedback about the moral self, including feedback related to social comparisons of moral behavior (Study 3) and feedback relative to one's own moral ideal (Study 4). Lastly, Study 5 provides evidence that the recall of one's moral or immoral behavior alters people's MSI in the predicted directions. Taken together, these studies suggest that the MSI is malleable and responds to individuals' moral and immoral actions in the outside world. As such, the MSI is an important variable to consider in the study of moral and immoral behavior.

Moral Development in Business Education--Social Conditions Influencing Moral Judgement Competence

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Bienengräber, Thomas

2014-01-01

Workplace relations like any social relation first and foremost have a moral dimension. Thus, if vocational education sees one of its major goals in helping apprentices to deal with moral issues, one of the core objectives in vocational education is the support of the apprentice's development of moral judgement competence. Since Lawrence Kohlberg…

How does morality work in the brain? A functional and structural perspective of moral behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Pascual, Leo; Rodrigues, Paulo; Gallardo-Pujol, David

2013-01-01

Neural underpinnings of morality are not yet well understood. Researchers in moral neuroscience have tried to find specific structures and processes that shed light on how morality works. Here, we review the main brain areas that have been associated with morality at both structural and functional levels and speculate about how it can be studied. Orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortices are implicated in emotionally-driven moral decisions, while dorsolateral prefrontal cortex appears to moderate its response. These competing processes may be mediated by the anterior cingulate cortex. Parietal and temporal structures play important roles in the attribution of others' beliefs and intentions. The insular cortex is engaged during empathic processes. Other regions seem to play a more complementary role in morality. Morality is supported not by a single brain circuitry or structure, but by several circuits overlapping with other complex processes. The identification of the core features of morality and moral-related processes is needed. Neuroscience can provide meaningful insights in order to delineate the boundaries of morality in conjunction with moral psychology. PMID:24062650

Moral Cognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schleim, Stephan; Clausen, Jens; Levy, Neil

2015-01-01

Research on moral cognition is a growing and heavily multidisciplinary field. This section contains chapters addressing foundational psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical issues of research on moral decision-making. Further- more, beyond summarizing the state of the art of their

Sentimentalist Moral Education

Science.gov (United States)

Slote, Michael

2010-01-01

Care ethics, and moral sentimentalism more generally, have not developed a picture of moral education that is comparable in scope or depth to the rationalist/Kantian/Rawlsian account of moral education that has been offered by Lawrence Kohlberg. But it is possible to do so if one borrows from the work of Martin Hoffman and makes systematic use of…

The Moral Dimensions of Infrastructure.

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Epting, Shane

2016-04-01

Moral issues in urban planning involving technology, residents, marginalized groups, ecosystems, and future generations are complex cases, requiring solutions that go beyond the limits of contemporary moral theory. Aside from typical planning problems, there is incongruence between moral theory and some of the subjects that require moral assessment, such as urban infrastructure. Despite this incongruence, there is not a need to develop another moral theory. Instead, a supplemental measure that is compatible with existing moral positions will suffice. My primary goal in this paper is to explain the need for this supplemental measure, describe what one looks like, and show how it works with existing moral systems. The secondary goal is to show that creating a supplemental measure that provides congruency between moral systems that are designed to assess human action and non-human subjects advances the study of moral theory.

A multidimensional analysis of disparities between individuals' moral judgments and moral intentions

OpenAIRE

Oktay, Selim

2001-01-01

Cataloged from PDF version of article. One major issue that needs to be investigated in the area of business ethics is the disparities between individuals' moral judgments and their actual behaviors. Since it is very difficult to measure actual behaviors, moral intentions are measured in the current study, instead of behaviors. A multidimensional approach including the analysis of gender differences and effects of work experience on moral judgments and moral intentions, fact...

Predictors of Moral Disengagement in Sport.

Science.gov (United States)

Shields, David Light; Funk, Christopher D; Bredemeier, Brenda Light

2015-12-01

Researchers have made productive use of Bandura's (1991) construct of moral disengagement (MD) to help explain why sport participants deviate from ethical ideals. In this study of intercollegiate athletes from diverse sports (N = 713), we examined MD in relation to other character-related variables: empathy, moral identity, moral attentiveness, and contesting orientations. We also examined whether moral attentiveness conforms to the pattern of "bracketed morality" found in moral reasoning (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995) and moral behavior (Kavussanu, Boardley, Sagar, & Ring, 2013). Results indicated that MD correlated positively with perceptual moral attentiveness and war contesting orientation; MD correlated negatively with empathy, moral identity, reflective moral attentiveness, and partnership contesting orientation. Results of hierarchical regression demonstrated that gender, contesting orientations, moral identity, and one form of moral attentiveness were significant predictors of MD. Finally, sport participants were found to be less morally attentive in sport than in everyday life.

Development and psychometric testing of a new tool for detecting moral distress: the Moral Distress Thermometer.

Science.gov (United States)

Wocial, Lucia D; Weaver, Michael T

2013-01-01

To report the development and psychometric testing of the Moral Distress Thermometer. The Moral Distress Thermometer is a new screening tool to measure moral distress in nurses who practise in the hospital setting. Moral distress occurs when one knows the ethically correct thing to do, but is prevented from acting on that perceived obligation. It is a well documented phenomenon with negative consequences that may be experienced by nurses. Creating an instrument to effectively and efficiently measure moral distress in a timely way has been identified as a priority for nursing. This study used a cross-sectional survey design. Data collection for this research occurred in 2009. Participants simultaneously completed either the adult or pediatric version of the Moral Distress Scale version 2009 and the Moral Distress Thermometer. A total of 529 participants from various clinical areas completed both tools. Coefficients alpha were adequate for both Adult (0·90) and Pediatric (0·92) Moral Distress Scale 2009 scales. Statistically significant Pearson correlations were found for the Moral Distress Thermometer with Adult Moral Distress Scale 2009 and Pediatric Moral Distress Scale 2009 and higher Moral Distress Thermometer, Adult Moral Distress Scale 2009 and Pediatric Moral Distress Scale 2009 means for participants who had left or who considered leaving a position because of moral distress. These findings provide support for the validity of the Moral Distress Thermometer. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited

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Katie McShane

2014-06-01

Full Text Available While holist views such as ecocentrism have considerable intuitive appeal, arguing for the moral considerability of ecological wholes such as ecosystems has turned out to be a very difficult task. In the environmental ethics literature, individualist biocentrists have persuasively argued that individual organisms—but not ecological wholes—are properly regarded as having a good of their own . In this paper, I revisit those arguments and contend that they are fatally flawed. The paper proceeds in five parts. First, I consider some problems brought about by climate change for environmental conservation strategies and argue that these problems give us good pragmatic reasons to want a better account of the welfare of ecological wholes. Second, I describe the theoretical assumptions from normative ethics that form the background of the arguments against holism. Third, I review the arguments given by individualist biocentrists in favour of individualism over holism. Fourth, I review recent work in the philosophy of biology on the units of selection problem, work in medicine on the human biome, and work in evolutionary biology on epigenetics and endogenous viral elements. I show how these developments undermine both the individualist arguments described above as well as the distinction between individuals and wholes as it has been understood by individualists. Finally, I consider five possible theoretical responses to these problems.

Justifying group-specific common morality.

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Strong, Carson

2008-01-01

Some defenders of the view that there is a common morality have conceived such morality as being universal, in the sense of extending across all cultures and times. Those who deny the existence of such a common morality often argue that the universality claim is implausible. Defense of common morality must take account of the distinction between descriptive and normative claims that there is a common morality. This essay considers these claims separately and identifies the nature of the arguments for each claim. It argues that the claim that there is a universal common morality in the descriptive sense has not been successfully defended to date. It maintains that the claim that there is a common morality in the normative sense need not be understood as universalist. This paper advocates the concept of group specific common morality, including country-specific versions. It suggests that both the descriptive and the normative claims that there are country-specific common moralities are plausible, and that a country-specific normative common morality could provide the basis for a country's bioethics.

Influence of the cortical midline structures on moral emotion and motivation in moral decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Hyemin; Chen, Jingyuan; Jeong, Changwoo; Glover, Gary H

2016-04-01

The present study aims to examine the relationship between the cortical midline structures (CMS), which have been regarded to be associated with selfhood, and moral decision making processes at the neural level. Traditional moral psychological studies have suggested the role of moral self as the moderator of moral cognition, so activity of moral self would present at the neural level. The present study examined the interaction between the CMS and other moral-related regions by conducting psycho-physiological interaction analysis of functional images acquired while 16 subjects were solving moral dilemmas. Furthermore, we performed Granger causality analysis to demonstrate the direction of influences between activities in the regions in moral decision-making. We first demonstrate there are significant positive interactions between two central CMS seed regions-i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)-and brain regions associated with moral functioning including the cerebellum, brainstem, midbrain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula (AI); on the other hand, the posterior insula (PI) showed significant negative interaction with the seed regions. Second, several significant Granger causality was found from CMS to insula regions particularly under the moral-personal condition. Furthermore, significant dominant influence from the AI to PI was reported. Moral psychological implications of these findings are discussed. The present study demonstrated the significant interaction and influence between the CMS and morality-related regions while subject were solving moral dilemmas. Given that, activity in the CMS is significantly involved in human moral functioning. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The problem of moral choice personality

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I. A. Kadievskaya

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Article is dedicated to the comprehension of the problems of the moral selection of personality. It is substantiated, that the moral consciousness is the complex system, because of which in the society are established the specific rules of interrelations between the people.   The concepts are analyzed: morals, relativity, moral absolutism, general human values, globalization, manipulation by consciousness, spiritual­ moral training. The specific character of the moral relativity, which denies absolute nature, i.e., is established universality and compulsion of morals, emphasizing conditionality and situationality of moral n. Moral absolutism is contradicted to moral relativity. Moral absolutism corresponds to persuasion, that there are absolute standards, which can be used for the permission of questions of morals, and that the specific actions can be correct or incorrect by themselves independent of their context. The two­digit (positive and negative axiological understanding of the phenomenon of globalization, which dually influences our consciousness, spiritual peace and moral selection, is represented. Under the conditions for large­scale information manipulations the translation of moral values as information, modifies their essence. Is shown the role of spiritual­ moral training in the formation, which must be variative and voluntary, allow for the possibility of ideological selection. The moral freedom of each person is manifested in the transformation of moral requirements into the internal needs of personality, into its own persuasions.

The moral ties that bind . . . Even to out-groups: the interactive effect of moral identity and the binding moral foundations.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Isaac H; Aquino, Karl; Koleva, Spassena; Graham, Jesse

2014-08-01

Throughout history, principles such as obedience, loyalty, and purity have been instrumental in binding people together and helping them thrive as groups, tribes, and nations. However, these same principles have also led to in-group favoritism, war, and even genocide. Does adhering to the binding moral foundations that underlie such principles unavoidably lead to the derogation of out-group members? We demonstrated that for people with a strong moral identity, the answer is "no," because they are more likely than those with a weak moral identity to extend moral concern to people belonging to a perceived out-group. Across three studies, strongly endorsing the binding moral foundations indeed predicted support for the torture of out-group members (Studies 1a and 1b) and withholding of necessary help from out-group members (Study 2), but this relationship was attenuated among participants who also had a strong moral identity. © The Author(s) 2014.

Moral identity and the experience of moral elevation in response to acts of uncommon goodness.

Science.gov (United States)

Aquino, Karl; McFerran, Brent; Laven, Marjorie

2011-04-01

Four studies using survey and experimental designs examined whether people whose moral identity is highly self-defining are more susceptible to experiencing a state of moral elevation after being exposed to acts of uncommon moral goodness. Moral elevation consists of a suite of responses that motivate prosocial action tendencies. Study 1 showed that people higher (vs. lower) in moral identity centrality reported experiencing more intense elevating emotions, had more positive views of humanity, and were more desirous of becoming a better person after reading about an act of uncommon goodness than about a merely positive situation or an act of common benevolence. Study 2 showed that those high in moral identity centrality were more likely to recall acts of moral goodness and experience moral elevation in response to such events more strongly. These experiences were positively related to self-reported prosocial behavior. Study 3 showed a direct effect on behavior using manipulated, rather than measured, moral identity centrality. Study 4 replicated the effect of moral identity on the states of elevation as well as on self-reported physical sensations and showed that the elevation mediates the relationship between moral identity, witnessing uncommon goodness, and prosocial behavior.

Centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral circle: Competing constraints on moral learning.

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Graham, Jesse; Waytz, Adam; Meindl, Peter; Iyer, Ravi; Young, Liane

2017-10-01

The idea of the moral circle pictures the self in the center, surrounded by concentric circles encompassing increasingly distant possible targets of moral concern, including family, local community, nation, all humans, all mammals, all living things including plants, and all things including inanimate objects. The authors develop the idea of two opposing forces in people's moral circles, with centripetal forces pulling inward, urging greater concern for close others than for distant others, and centrifugal forces pushing outward, resisting "drawing the line" anywhere as a form of prejudice and urging egalitarian concern for all regardless of social distance. Review of the developmental literature shows very early emergence of both moral forces, suggesting at least partly intuitive bases for each. Moral education approaches favoring one force over the other are compared, to show how these forces can provide constraints on moral learning. Finally, the centripetal/centrifugal forces view is applied to current moral debates about empathy and about politics. The authors argue that this view helps us see how intercultural and interpersonal disagreements about morality are based in intrapersonal conflicts shared by all people. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

A Quantitative Analysis of Moral Exemplars Presented in Moral Education Textbooks in Korea and Japan

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Hyemin; Park, Sung Choon; Kim, Jongsung; Jeong, Changwoo; Kunii, Yutaka; Kim, Sora

2018-01-01

This study is a comparative analysis of the characteristics of moral exemplars presented in moral education textbooks in Korea and Japan. The purpose of the study is to examine and compare moral values presented through the lives and stories of moral exemplars in the two countries that have moral education as an independent and separate subject…

Bystander Behavior in Bullying Situations: Basic Moral Sensitivity, Moral Disengagement and Defender Self-Efficacy

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Thornberg, Robert; Jungert, Tomas

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate how basic moral sensitivity in bullying, moral disengagement in bullying and defender self-efficacy were related to different bystander behaviors in bullying. Therefore, we examined pathways that linked students' basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement, and defender self-efficacy to different…

MORALE Assignment

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Carienvt

some aspects of military life are so ingrained in military culture that the ... Military and political leaders around the world regard high morale of the armed .... expensive modern centralised practices borrowed from contemporary business will ..... psychological plan for the management of morale of SANDF soldiers during an.

Objectivity And Moral Relativism

OpenAIRE

Magni, Sergio Filippo

2017-01-01

The relativity of morals has usually been taken as an argument against the objectivity of ethics. However, a more careful analysis can show that there are forms of moral objectivism which have relativistic implications, and that moral relativism can be compatible with the objectivity of ethics. Such an objectivity is not always in contrast to moral relativism and it is possible to be relativists without having to give up the claim of objectivity in ethics

The Moral Self-Image Scale: Measuring and Understanding the Malleability of the Moral Self

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jennifer eJordan

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Recent ethical decision-making models suggest that individuals’ own view of their morality is malleable rather than static, responding to their (immoral actions and reflections about the world around them. Yet no construct currently exists to represent the malleable state of a person’s moral self-image (MSI. In this investigation, we define this construct, as well as develop a scale to measure it. Across five studies, we show that feedback about the moral self alters an individual’s MSI as measured by our scale. We also find that MSI is related to, but distinct from, related constructs, including moral identity, self-esteem, and moral disengagement. In Study 1, we administered the MSI scale and several other relevant scales to demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, we examine the relationship between the MSI and one’s ought versus ideal self. In Studies 3 and 4, we find that one’s MSI is affected in the predicted directions by manipulated feedback about the moral self, including feedback related to social comparisons of moral behavior (Study 3 and feedback relative to one’s own moral ideal (Study 4. Lastly, Study 5 provides evidence that the recall of one’s moral or immoral behavior alters people’s MSI in the predicted directions. Taken together, these studies suggest that the MSI is malleable and responds to individuals’ moral and immoral actions in the outside world. As such, the MSI is an important variable to consider in the study of moral and immoral behavior.

Neural evidence for moral intuition and the temporal dynamics of interactions between emotional processes and moral cognition.

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Gui, Dan-Yang; Gan, Tian; Liu, Chao

2016-01-01

Behavioral and neurological studies have revealed that emotions influence moral cognition. Although moral stimuli are emotionally charged, the time course of interactions between emotions and moral judgments remains unknown. In the present study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of the interaction between emotional processes and moral cognition. The results revealed that when making moral judgments, the time course of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform was significantly different between high emotional arousal and low emotional arousal contexts. Different stages of processing were distinguished, showing distinctive interactions between emotional processes and moral reasoning. The precise time course of moral intuition and moral reasoning sheds new light on theoretical models of moral psychology. Specifically, the N1 component (interpreted as representing moral intuition) did not appear to be influenced by emotional arousal. However, the N2 component and late positive potential were strongly affected by emotional arousal; the slow wave was influenced by both emotional arousal and morality, suggesting distinct moral processing at different emotional arousal levels.

[Moral and religious issues in health care].

Science.gov (United States)

Necek, Robert

2012-01-01

The paper summarises the moral and spiritual factors important in care for sick people. Medical care is one of the ancient forms of our activity as humans, expounding care for other people's well-being. The moral aspect of medical care is deeply rooted in constant daily interaction between the patient and the doctor aiming at easing symptoms, support, help, prevention and defense. Such teleological orientation of medicine is, according to John Paul II, made possible not so much by technology but by physician's conscience, wisdom and unlimited honesty. This is where ethics is needed to regulate that particular relation. This ethics stems from Christian morality, which raises our role as humans to that of guardians of dignity of another human being. Man is indeed the measure of all things, and this becomes the context for all relations including man's relation to God, but also relation of God to man. Thus, human dignity assumes the status of unconditional natural rule, inherently forestalling all legal arrangements. The morality of health care requires holistic approach, including care for body, mind, social interaction and spiritual needs. Only then, as explained by dr Ewa Kucharska, is it possible to answer patient's all needs. The moral side of the therapeutic contract bounds the doctor and the patient, alike. From this point of view, it is immoral not to cooperate with physicians in their strife for the preservation of health and life itself. Self negligence or active self harm (drugs, alcohol abuse, HIV/AIDS) are the utmost examples of such dishonesty. Finally, the imperative to bring hope and faith to the suffering, vests special importance in hospital chaplains, who bring good word, but most importantly the sacrament to those in need. The prayer in turn may evoke strong hope for cure, capable of supporting both soul and body. The suffering of man cannot be understood on rational grounds. It requires acceptance, and, above all, it requires faith. And this

Mirrored morality: an exploration of moral choice in video games.

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Weaver, Andrew J; Lewis, Nicky

2012-11-01

This exploratory study was designed to examine how players make moral choices in video games and what effects these choices have on emotional responses to the games. Participants (n=75) filled out a moral foundations questionnaire (MFQ) and then played through the first full act of the video game Fallout 3. Game play was recorded and content analyzed for the moral decisions made. Players also reported their enjoyment of and emotional reactions to the game and reflected on the decisions they made. The majority of players made moral decisions and behaved toward the nonplayer game characters they encountered as if these were actual interpersonal interactions. Individual differences in decision making were predicted by the MFQ. Behaving in antisocial ways did increase guilt, but had no impact on enjoyment.

Children's giving: moral reasoning and moral emotions in the development of donation behaviors.

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Ongley, Sophia F; Nola, Marta; Malti, Tina

2014-01-01

This study investigated the role of moral reasoning and moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt) in the development of young children's donating behavior (N = 160 4- and 8-year-old children). Donating was measured through children's allocation of resources (i.e., stickers) to needy peers and was framed as a donation to "World Vision." Children's sympathy was measured with both self- and primary caregiver-reports and participants reported their anticipation of guilt feelings following actions that violated prosocial moral norms, specifically the failure to help or share. Participants also provided justifications for their anticipated emotions, which were coded as representing moral or non-moral reasoning processes. Children's moral reasoning emerged as a significant predictor of donating behavior. In addition, results demonstrated significant developmental and gender effects, with 8-year-olds donating significantly more than 4-year-olds and 4-year-old girls making higher value donations than boys of the same age. We discuss donation behaviors within the broader context of giving and highlight the moral developmental antecedents of giving behaviors in childhood.

Moral individualism and elective death.

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Prado, C G

2013-01-01

Moral individualism (Brooks, 2011; Smith, 2011) is a contemporary interpretation of morality as entirely a matter of personal choice. It is a popular rather than theory-based interpretation and has a number of social generative sources related to present-day preoccupation with individuality and personal distinctiveness. A key generative source is popularization of postmodernism, which prioritizes self-reinvention and provides moral individualism with the appearance of intellectual legitimacy. Moral individualism is a deeply flawed misconception of morality because it abolishes moral communality. My concern in this paper is that in doing so, it seriously jeopardizes productive discussion of the moral permissibility of elective death or choosing to die in despairingly and dire circumstances. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Can Innate, modular "foundations" explain morality? Challenges for Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory.

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Suhler, Christopher L; Churchland, Patricia

2011-09-01

Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory is an influential scientific account of morality incorporating psychological, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. The theory proposes that morality is built upon five innate "foundations," each of which is believed to have been selected for during human evolution and, subsequently, tuned-up by learning during development. We argue here that although some general elements of Haidt's theory are plausible, many other important aspects of his account are seriously flawed. First, innateness and modularity figure centrally in Haidt's account, but terminological and conceptual problems foster confusion and ambiguities. Second, both the theory's proposed number of moral foundations and its taxonomy of the moral domain appear contrived, ignoring equally good candidate foundations and the possibility of substantial intergroup differences in the foundations' contents. Third, the mechanisms (viz., modules) and categorical distinctions (viz., between foundations) proposed by the theory are not consilient with discoveries in contemporary neuroscience concerning the organization, functioning, and development of the brain. In light of these difficulties, we suggest that Haidt's theory is inadequate as a scientific account of morality. Nevertheless, the theory's weaknesses are instructive, and hence, criticism may be useful to psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers attempting to advance theories of morality, as well as to researchers wishing to invoke concepts such as innateness and modularity more generally.

Brazilian adolescents' prosocial moral judgment and behavior: relations to sympathy, perspective taking, gender-role orientation, and demographic characteristics.

Science.gov (United States)

Eisenberg, N; Zhou, Q; Koller, S

2001-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine demographic and individual difference variables that predict level of prosocial moral judgment and self-reported prosocial behavior and to test mediating or moderating relations among predictors. The relations of prosocial moral reasoning and self-reported prosocial behavior to perspective taking, sympathy, age, sociometric status, and gender-role orientation were examined with a sample of 149 Brazilian adolescents who completed a series of questionnaire measures. Prosocial moral judgment was expected to be predicted by both sympathy and perspective taking, whereas sympathy or prosocial moral judgment was expected to mediate the relations of femininity and perspective taking to prosocial behavior. Self-reported perspective taking and sympathy interacted when predicting prosocial moral judgment; adolescents who were high in either sympathy or perspective taking (or both) scored high in prosocial moral reasoning. A feminine orientation predicted sympathy and perspective taking, perspective taking predicted prosocial moral reasoning and sympathy, and sympathy had both direct and indirect paths (through moral judgment) to prosocial behavior. The findings generally were consistent with the contention that both the tendency to take others' perspectives and to sympathize are related to level of prosocial moral reasoning, which in turn motivates prosocial behavior. Moreover, patterns of correlations among variables were similar to those found in the United States.

The Effects of Moral Identity on Moral Emotion and Antisocial Behavior in Sport

OpenAIRE

Kavussanu, M; Stanger, N; Ring, C

2015-01-01

Given the prevalence and significance of antisocial behavior in sport, researchers have begun to explore the role that self conscious moral emotions play in reducing such behavior. In this research, we examined whether moral identity inhibits antisocial behaviour and whether these effects are mediated by anticipated guilt. Using a cross-sectional design, Study 1 showed that moral identity was negatively related to antisocial behavior. Study 2 found that the negative association between moral ...

Construction of Life-Practice Moral Education Based on Traditional Chinese Morality with Life Connotation

Science.gov (United States)

Yi, Lian-yun; Peng, Jing

2006-01-01

The actual effect is a big problem in current school moral education. By analyzing the problems in the theory and practice of the current school moral education, the author points out that the reason is that, for a long time, the meaning of morality has been dissimilated, and moral education is considered as a kind of knowledge input and…

Seeking Moral Autonomy in a Chinese Context: A Study of Elementary Moral Education Standards

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Lena; Misco, Thomas

2016-01-01

In this article, we explored Chinese moral education standards for grades one and two by using the heuristic of moral autonomy and by employing a typology of moral autonomy, one based on Kantian and Deweyan ideas about moral autonomy and agency. Given the larger charge for all of schooling to develop independence, problem-solving, and creativity…

Moral Economy and Moral Capital in the Community of Clinical Practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Jaye, Chrystal; Young, Jessica; Egan, Tony; Williamson, Martyn

2018-03-01

This New Zealand study used focused ethnography to explore the activities of communities of clinical practice (CoCP) in a community-based long-term conditions management program within a large primary health care clinic. CoCP are the informal vehicles by which patient care was delivered within the program. Here, we describe the CoCP as a micro-level moral economy within which values such as trust, respect, authenticity, reciprocity, and obligation circulate as a kind of moral capital. As taxpayers, citizens who become patients are credited with moral capital because the public health system is funded by taxes. This moral capital can be paid forward, accrued, banked, redeemed, exchanged, and forfeited by patients and their health care professionals during the course of a patient's journey. The concept of moral capital offers another route into the "black box" of clinical work by providing an alternative theoretic for explaining the relational aspects of patient care.

La vrai morale se moque de la morale: questões éticas em Pascal

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Telma de Souza Birchal

2002-12-01

Full Text Available Em Pascal encontramos um duplo registro da questão moral: por um lado, o autor dos Pensées dirige uma dura crítica aos ideais morais da filosofia, especialmente aos do estoicismo; por outro, ele afirma uma "verdadeira moral" que "zomba da moral". A análise desse duplo registro será feita a partir de quatro contextos encontrados nos Pensamentos: 1- O contexto epistemológico da diferença entre espírito geométrico e espírito de finesse, ao qual se remetem os termos correlatos "moral do espírito" e "moral do julgamento"; 2- O contexto antropológico da "desproporção do homem" e da virtude como meio-termo; 3- O contexto antropológico - teológico da miséria e da grandeza do homem 4- O contexto metafísico-teológico da teoria das "três ordens de coisas". A "verdadeira moral" constitui-se, afinal, por dois movimentos: no primeiro, a moral pascaliana é simplesmente naturalista e compartilha do espírito mecanicista do seu século. Em seu segundo movimento, ela é teológica e constitui-se essencialmente como uma hermenêutica do desejo.We find in Pascal a double approach to the moral issue. On the one hand the author of the Pensées strongly criticizes the moral ideals of philosophy, in particular those of Stoicism but, on the other, he claims that there is a "true morals" which "mocks of morals". We here analyze this double approach from the point of view of four contexts exhibited in the Pensées: 1- The epistemological context that distinguishes the "esprit de géométrie" and the "esprit de finesse" which points, respectively, to a "moral of the ' esprit'" and to a "moral of judgment". 2- The anthropological context of the "disproportion of men" and of virtue as mean 3- The anthropological-theological context of the misery and greatness of man. 4- The metaphysical-theological context of the theory of the "three orders of things". The "true morals" is construed in two movements. In the first, Pascal's morals is naturalistic and

Moral Violations Reduce Oral Consumption

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Cindy; Van Boven, Leaf; Andrade, Eduardo B.; Ariely, Dan

2014-01-01

Consumers frequently encounter moral violations in everyday life. They watch movies and television shows about crime and deception, hear news reports of corporate fraud and tax evasion, and hear gossip about cheaters and thieves. How does exposure to moral violations influence consumption? Because moral violations arouse disgust and because disgust is an evolutionarily important signal of contamination that should provoke a multi-modal response, we hypothesize that moral violations affect a key behavioral response to disgust: reduced oral consumption. In three experiments, compared with those in control conditions, people drank less water and chocolate milk while (a) watching a film portraying the moral violations of incest, (b) writing about moral violations of cheating or theft, and (c) listening to a report about fraud and manipulation. These findings imply that “moral disgust” influences consumption in ways similar to core disgust, and thus provide evidence for the associations between moral violations, emotions, and consumer behavior. PMID:25125931

Moral Violations Reduce Oral Consumption.

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Cindy; Van Boven, Leaf; Andrade, Eduardo B; Ariely, Dan

2014-07-01

Consumers frequently encounter moral violations in everyday life. They watch movies and television shows about crime and deception, hear news reports of corporate fraud and tax evasion, and hear gossip about cheaters and thieves. How does exposure to moral violations influence consumption? Because moral violations arouse disgust and because disgust is an evolutionarily important signal of contamination that should provoke a multi-modal response, we hypothesize that moral violations affect a key behavioral response to disgust: reduced oral consumption. In three experiments, compared with those in control conditions, people drank less water and chocolate milk while (a) watching a film portraying the moral violations of incest, (b) writing about moral violations of cheating or theft, and (c) listening to a report about fraud and manipulation. These findings imply that "moral disgust" influences consumption in ways similar to core disgust, and thus provide evidence for the associations between moral violations, emotions, and consumer behavior.

When moral identity symbolization motivates prosocial behavior: the role of recognition and moral identity internalization.

Science.gov (United States)

Winterich, Karen Page; Aquino, Karl; Mittal, Vikas; Swartz, Richard

2013-09-01

This article examines the role of moral identity symbolization in motivating prosocial behaviors. We propose a 3-way interaction of moral identity symbolization, internalization, and recognition to predict prosocial behavior. When moral identity internalization is low, we hypothesize that high moral identity symbolization motivates recognized prosocial behavior due to the opportunity to present one's moral characteristics to others. In contrast, when moral identity internalization is high, prosocial behavior is motivated irrespective of the level of symbolization and recognition. Two studies provide support for this pattern examining volunteering of time. Our results provide a framework for predicting prosocial behavior by combining the 2 dimensions of moral identity with the situational factor of recognition. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Spontaneous Development of Moral Concepts

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Siegal, M.

1975-01-01

Moral competence is more difficult to attain than scientific competence. Since language comprehension plays a central role in conceptual development, and moral language is difficult to learn, there is a common deficiency in moral conceptual development. This suggests a theory of non-spontaneous solutions to moral problems. (Author/MS)

Improving moral judgments: philosophical considerations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kalis, A.

2010-01-01

In contemporary moral psychology, an often-heard claim is that knowing how we make moral judgments can help us make better moral judgments. Discussions about moral development and improvement are often framed in terms of the question of which mental processes have a better chance of leading to good

Morality in Interactions: On the Display of Moral Behavior by Leaders and Employees

OpenAIRE

Gils, Suzanne

2012-01-01

textabstractRecent research has tried to understand moral behavior in the workplace mainly from an intra-personal perspective, blaming ethical failures on the person’s moral character, moral development or moral identity, or on isolated aspects of the situation. In doing so, little attention has been paid to the interplay between the person and the interpersonal context in which this behavior takes place. Thus, an important angle for investigating the question why good people do bad things ha...

Moral Education and Caring

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Noddings, Nel

2010-01-01

Michael Slote's very interesting work on moral sentimentalism and moral education raises some important questions on the meaning of empathy, the limitations of "inductions", and the development of moral education from the perspective of care ethics. These questions are addressed in this commentary. (Contains 5 notes.)

Adverse selection and moral hazard in health insurance

OpenAIRE

Bien, Franck; Alary, David

2006-01-01

In this paper, we want to characterize the optimal health insurance contract with adverse selection and moral hazard. We assume that policyholders differ by the permanent health status loss and choose an unobservable preventive effort in order to reduce the probability of illness which is ex-ante identical. The difference in illness'after-effect modifies policyholders' preventive actions. By the way, they differ in probabilities of illness leading to a situation close to Rothschild and Stigli...

Moral realism in nursing.

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Edwards, Steven D

2014-04-01

For more than 15 years Professor Per Nortvedt has been arguing the case for moral realism in nursing and the health-care context more generally. His arguments focus on the clinical contexts of nursing and medicine and are supplemented by a series of persuasive examples. Following a description of moral realism, and the kinds of considerations that support it, criticisms of it are developed that seem persuasive. It is argued that our moral responses are explained by our beliefs as opposed to moral realities. In particular, two key arguments presented by Nortvedt are challenged: the so-called argument from convergence and the argument from clinical sensitivity. Both of these key planks in the case for moral realism are rejected, and an alternative 'social conditioning' account briefly sketched, which, it is claimed, has the same explanatory power as Nortvedt's thesis but does not rest on an appeal to independently existing moral properties. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Moral Disengagement in media and Moral Identity activation: their interactive effect on support of war

OpenAIRE

Liebnitzky, Jan

2015-01-01

People can disengage from their internalized moral standards and self-regulation in order to perform immoral behaviour by using different Moral Disengagement mechanisms. These mechanisms within media have a positive effect on immoral behaviour. However, Moral Identity activation is said to counter arguments of Moral Disengagement. In this study, both concepts are applied to the context of war. An additional assumption took into account in how far participants’ internalized moral standards con...

Remedies for moral damage before the European Court of Human Rights: Cyprus v. Turkey case

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Đajić Sanja

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This article provides the overview of the Cyprus v. Turkey judgment, a recently decided case before the Grand Chamber of the European Court for Human Rights. This is the first inter-State case which ended with pecuniary judgment for moral damages. The article begins with the overview of factual and legal issues in the Cyprus v. Turkey case which is followed by contextualizing this judgment within the general legal framework regarding moral damages and remedies available. The second part provides the insight into the case law of the International Court of Justice, European Court for Human Rights and international investment arbitration in order to assess the status of moral damages under general international law. While all international courts and tribunals recognize moral damage as a cause of action, they seem to respond differently to the issue of remedies. International Court of Justice seems to favour declaratory over pecuniary judgments; European Court of Human Rights tend to award both non-pecuniary and pecuniary remedies for moral damages; international investment tribunals seem to favour pecuniary remedies for moral damages. A separate issue is whether international law permits or rather proscribes punitive damages. While the ILC finds that general international law does not allow for punitive damages there are different opinions, at least within the ECHR setting, that moral damages are inherently punitive for fault-based conduct of the responsible state.

Relativistic Absolutism in Moral Education.

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Vogt, W. Paul

1982-01-01

Discusses Emile Durkheim's "Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education," which holds that morally healthy societies may vary in culture and organization but must possess absolute rules of moral behavior. Compares this moral theory with current theory and practice of American educators. (MJL)

The effects of social solidarity on moral emotions and morality

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I. A. ATUDOREI

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This paper analyses the impact of social solidarity on moral emotions such as embarrassment, shame and guilt at a social level. The effect of moral emotions on individual morality is presented. The paper emphasizes the fact that solidarity, which is generally perceived as having positive effects, may also produce social anomie. This situation is reached by a silent agreement concerning intellectual fraud which goes unpunished at a social level and can, thus, lead to deviant behaviour being considered tolerable as a result of rational reasoning which could shake social structure.

Does "science" make you moral? The effects of priming science on moral judgments and behavior.

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Ma-Kellams, Christine; Blascovich, Jim

2013-01-01

Previous work has noted that science stands as an ideological force insofar as the answers it offers to a variety of fundamental questions and concerns; as such, those who pursue scientific inquiry have been shown to be concerned with the moral and social ramifications of their scientific endeavors. No studies to date have directly investigated the links between exposure to science and moral or prosocial behaviors. Across four studies, both naturalistic measures of science exposure and experimental primes of science led to increased adherence to moral norms and more morally normative behaviors across domains. Study 1 (n = 36) tested the natural correlation between exposure to science and likelihood of enforcing moral norms. Studies 2 (n = 49), 3 (n = 52), and 4 (n = 43) manipulated thoughts about science and examined the causal impact of such thoughts on imagined and actual moral behavior. Across studies, thinking about science had a moralizing effect on a broad array of domains, including interpersonal violations (Studies 1, 2), prosocial intentions (Study 3), and economic exploitation (Study 4). These studies demonstrated the morally normative effects of lay notions of science. Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms and exhibit more morally normative behavior. These studies are the first of their kind to systematically and empirically test the relationship between science and morality. The present findings speak to this question and elucidate the value-laden outcomes of the notion of science.

Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality.

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Gray, Kurt; Young, Liane; Waytz, Adam

2012-04-01

Mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgment entails labeling entities as good or bad or actions as right or wrong. We suggest that mind perception is the essence of moral judgment. In particular, we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds-a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Diverse lines of research support dyadic morality. First, perceptions of mind are linked to moral judgments: dimensions of mind perception (agency and experience) map onto moral types (agents and patients), and deficits of mind perception correspond to difficulties with moral judgment. Second, not only are moral judgments sensitive to perceived agency and experience, but all moral transgressions are fundamentally understood as agency plus experienced suffering-that is, interpersonal harm-even ostensibly harmless acts such as purity violations. Third, dyadic morality uniquely accounts for the phenomena of dyadic completion (seeing agents in response to patients, and vice versa), and moral typecasting (characterizing others as either moral agents or moral patients). Discussion also explores how mind perception can unify morality across explanatory levels, how a dyadic template of morality may be developmentally acquired, and future directions.

Moral Law and Moral Education: Defending Kantian Autonomy

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Johnston, James Scott

2007-01-01

In this paper, I examine why Kantian ethics has had such a hard time of it. I look at readings of Kant's moral theory that have had great force in the 20th century and conclude that these have much to do with an ensuing confusion, which has led to charges of rigidity, formality and severity. Then I demonstrate that when we make moral judgements we…

The relationship of ethics education to moral sensitivity and moral reasoning skills of nursing students.

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Park, Mihyun; Kjervik, Diane; Crandell, Jamie; Oermann, Marilyn H

2012-07-01

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students.

Moral Behavior as Rule Governed Behavior: A Psychosocial Role-Theoretical Approach to Moral Decision Making.

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Kurtines, William M.

Research on moral development and behavior has traditionally emphasized person related variables such as level or stage of moral reasoning, individual differences in moral traits and dispositions, or past reinforcement history. The effects of context on moral action and decision, in contrast, have received relatively little attention. It is…

Kant's Account of Moral Education

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Giesinger, Johannes

2012-01-01

While Kant's pedagogical lectures present an account of moral education, his theory of freedom and morality seems to leave no room for the possibility of an education for freedom and morality. In this paper, it is first shown that Kant's moral philosophy and his educational philosophy are developed within different theoretical paradigms: whereas…

Role of Resistive Self-Regulatory Efficacy and Moral Disengagement in the Relationship between Values and Aggressiveness in Athletes

OpenAIRE

Albouza Y; d'Arripe-Longueville F; Corrion K

2017-01-01

This study examined whether athletes’ values are related to aggressiveness through self-regulatory mechanisms. Athletes (N=225) completed four questionnaires to assess their values, resistive self-regulatory efficacy, moral disengagement and aggressiveness. The results of structural equation modeling showed a good fit to the data and illustrated that: (a) The status and moral values were indirectly associated with aggressiveness through the mediating roles of resistive self-regulatory efficac...

Moral character in the workplace.

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Cohen, Taya R; Panter, A T; Turan, Nazli; Morse, Lily; Kim, Yeonjeong

2014-11-01

Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

Moral Education in Pakistan.

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Haq, Shafiqua

1980-01-01

This report describes formal and informal methods of moral education operative in Pakistan. The nation's Islamic environment is explained; school policy, objectives, and practices are outlined; and informal moral education efforts through the mass media are noted. Problems in moral education in Pakistan and proposals for the future are discussed.…

Moral distress in nursing personnel Sufrimiento moral en trabajadores de enfermería Sofrimento moral em trabalhadores de enfermagem

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Edison Luiz Devos Barlem

2013-02-01

Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: to analyze the frequency and intensity of moral distress experienced by nursing personnel in southern Brazil, covering elements of their professional practice. METHOD: a survey was undertaken in two hospitals in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, with 247 nurses. Data was collected by means of the adapted Moral Distress Scale. RESULTS: the perception of situations that lead to moral distress is enhanced in nurses and in nursing staff working in institutions with greater openness to dialogue, which hold team meetings, with fewer working hours and a greater ratio of professionals to patients. CONCLUSION: understanding moral distress allows us to go beyond solving the problems of the workers themselves, enabling the development of an ethics of active individuals and wide opportunities, defined mainly by the relationship with oneself.OBJETIVO: analizar la frecuencia e intensidad del sufrimiento moral vivido por los profesionales de enfermería del sur de Brasil, abarcando los elementos de su rutina profesional. MÉTODO: investigación survey en dos hospitales, con 247 profesionales de enfermería. Los datos fueron recolectados mediante aplicación de la adaptación del Moral Distress Scale. RESULTADOS: la percepción de situaciones que conducen al sufrimiento moral es intensificada en enfermeros; en trabajadores de enfermería que actúan en instituciones con mayor apertura al dialogo, que realizan reuniones de equipo, con menos horas de trabajo y mayor relación del número de profesionales por paciente. CONCLUSIÓN: entender el sufrimiento moral permite ir más allá de la resolución de los problemas de los propios trabajadores, lo que posibilita la elaboración de una ética de sujetos activos y de amplias posibilidades, definidas principalmente por la relación consigo mismo.OBJETIVO: analisar a frequência e a intensidade de sofrimento moral vivenciado por trabalhadores de enfermagem do Sul do Brasil, contemplando elementos do seu cotidiano

Who Engages with Moral Beauty?

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Diessner, Rhett; Iyer, Ravi; Smith, Meghan M.; Haidt, Jonathan

2013-01-01

Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the "telos" of the human virtues. Displays of moral beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 ("N" = 5380) shows engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological…

Stress alters personal moral decision making.

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Youssef, Farid F; Dookeeram, Karine; Basdeo, Vasant; Francis, Emmanuel; Doman, Mekaeel; Mamed, Danielle; Maloo, Stefan; Degannes, Joel; Dobo, Linda; Ditshotlo, Phatsimo; Legall, George

2012-04-01

While early studies of moral decision making highlighted the role of rational, conscious executive processes involving frontal lobe activation more recent work has suggested that emotions and gut reactions have a key part to play in moral reasoning. Given that stress can activate many of the same brain regions that are important for and connected to brain centres involved in emotional processing we sought to evaluate if stress could influence moral decision making. Sixty-five undergraduate volunteers were randomly assigned to control (n=33) and experimental groups (n=32). The latter underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and induction of stress was assessed by measurement of salivary cortisol levels. Subjects were then required to provide a response to thirty moral dilemmas via a computer interface that recorded both their decision and reaction time. Three types of dilemmas were used: non-moral, impersonal moral and personal moral. Using a binary logistic model there were no significant predicators of utilitarian response in non-moral and impersonal moral dilemmas. However the stressed group and females were found to predict utilitarian responses to personal moral dilemmas. When comparing percentage utilitarian responses there were no significant differences noted for the non-moral and impersonal moral dilemmas but the stressed group showed significantly less utilitarian responses compared to control subjects. The stress response was significantly negatively correlated with utilitarian responses. Females also showed significantly less utilitarian responses than males. We conclude that activation of the stress response predisposed participants to less utilitarian responses when faced with high conflict personal moral dilemmas and suggest that this offers further support for dual process theory of moral judgment. We also conclude that females tend to make less utilitarian personal moral decisions compared to males, providing further evidence that there are

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

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CIPRIAN IULIAN ŞOPTICĂ

2011-05-01

Full Text Available The subject of this article concerns the what, the how and the whyof moral phenomenology. The first question we take into consideration is „What is moral phenomenology”? The second question which arises is „How to pursue moral phenomenology”? The third question is „Why pursue moral phenomenology”? We will analyze the study Moral phenomenology:foundation issues1, by which the American phenomenologist Uriah Kriegel aims three lines of research: the definition of moral phenomenology and the description of field research within the phenomenological tradition; the establishment of a method of moral phenomenology research; the emphasis of the purpose of such research and its importance for moral philosophy in general.

Has Richard Rorty a moral philosophy?

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Mohammad Asghari

2015-06-01

Full Text Available I try to show that Richard Rorty, although is not a moral philosopher like Kant, nerveless, has moral philosophy that must be taken seriously. Rorty was not engaged with moral philosophy in the systematic manner common among leading modern and contemporary moral philosophers. This paper has two parts: first part, in brief, is concerned with principles of his philosophy such as anti-essentialism, Darwinism, Freudism, and historicism. Second part which be long and detailed, considers many moral themes in Rorty's thought such as critique of Kantian morality, solidarity, moral progress, cruelty and concept of other, etc. Subsequently, I will try to answer the research question of the article namely, has Rorty a moral philosophy?

Charisma and Moral Reasoning

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Jessica Flanigan

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Charisma is morally problematic insofar as it replaces followers’ capacity to engage in genuine moral reasoning. When followers defer to charismatic leaders and act in ways that are morally wrong they are not only blameworthy for wrongdoing but for failing in their deliberative obligations. Even when followers defer to charismatic leaders and do the right thing, their action is less praiseworthy to the extent that it was the result of charisma rather than moral deliberation. Therefore, effective charismatic leadership reliably undermines the praiseworthiness and amplifies the blameworthiness of follower’s actions.

Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Kurt; Young, Liane; Waytz, Adam

2012-01-01

Mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgment entails labeling entities as good or bad or actions as right or wrong. We suggest that mind perception is the essence of moral judgment. In particular, we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Diverse lines of research support dyadic morality. First, perceptions of mind are linked to moral judgments: dimensions of mind perception (agency and experience) map onto moral types (agents and patients), and deficits of mind perception correspond to difficulties with moral judgment. Second, not only are moral judgments sensitive to perceived agency and experience, but all moral transgressions are fundamentally understood as agency plus experienced suffering—that is, interpersonal harm—even ostensibly harmless acts such as purity violations. Third, dyadic morality uniquely accounts for the phenomena of dyadic completion (seeing agents in response to patients, and vice versa), and moral typecasting (characterizing others as either moral agents or moral patients). Discussion also explores how mind perception can unify morality across explanatory levels, how a dyadic template of morality may be developmentally acquired, and future directions. PMID:22754268

The Moral Standing of Machines: Towards a Relational and Non-Cartesian Moral Hermeneutics

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Coeckelbergh, Mark

2014-01-01

Should we give moral standing to machines? In this paper, I explore the implications of a relational approach to moral standing for thinking about machines, in particular autonomous, intelligent robots. I show how my version of this approach, which focuses on moral relations and on the conditions of

The role of emotions for moral judgments depends on the type of emotion and moral scenario.

Science.gov (United States)

Ugazio, Giuseppe; Lamm, Claus; Singer, Tania

2012-06-01

Emotions seem to play a critical role in moral judgment. However, the way in which emotions exert their influence on moral judgments is still poorly understood. This study proposes a novel theoretical approach suggesting that emotions influence moral judgments based on their motivational dimension. We tested the effects of two types of induced emotions with equal valence but with different motivational implications (anger and disgust), and four types of moral scenarios (disgust-related, impersonal, personal, and beliefs) on moral judgments. We hypothesized and found that approach motivation associated with anger would make moral judgments more permissible, while disgust, associated with withdrawal motivation, would make them less permissible. Moreover, these effects varied as a function of the type of scenario: the induced emotions only affected moral judgments concerning impersonal and personal scenarios, while we observed no effects for the other scenarios. These findings suggest that emotions can play an important role in moral judgment, but that their specific effects depend upon the type of emotion induced. Furthermore, induced emotion effects were more prevalent for moral decisions in personal and impersonal scenarios, possibly because these require the performance of an action rather than making an abstract judgment. We conclude that the effects of induced emotions on moral judgments can be predicted by taking their motivational dimension into account. This finding has important implications for moral psychology, as it points toward a previously overlooked mechanism linking emotions to moral judgments.

Construing Morality at High versus Low Levels Induces Better Self-control, Leading to Moral Acts

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Chia-Chun Wu

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Human morality entails a typical self-control dilemma in which one must conform to moral rules or socially desirable norms while exerting control over amoral, selfish impulses. Extant research regarding the connection between self-control and level of construal suggest that, compared with a low-level, concrete construal (highlighting means and resources, e.g., answering ‘how’ questions, a high-level, abstract construal (highlighting central goals, e.g., answering ‘why’ questions promotes self-control. Hence, construing morality at higher levels rather than lower levels should engender greater self-control and, it follows, promote a tendency to perform moral acts. We conducted two experiments to show that answering “why” (high-level construal vs. “how” (low-level construal questions regarding morality was associated with a situational state of greater self-control, as indexed by less Stroop interference in the Stroop color-naming task (Experiments 1 and 2. Participants exposed to “why” questions regarding morality displayed a greater inclination for volunteerism (Experiment 1, showed a lower tendency toward selfishness in a dictator game (Experiment 2, and were more likely to return undeserved money (Experiment 2 compared with participants exposed to “how” questions regarding morality. In both experiments, self-control mediated the effect of a high-level construal of morality on dependent measures. The current research constitutes a new approach to promoting prosociality and moral education. Reminding people to think abstractly about human morality may help them to generate better control over the temptation to benefit from unethical acts and make it more likely that they will act morally.

Construing Morality at High versus Low Levels Induces Better Self-control, Leading to Moral Acts.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Chia-Chun; Wu, Wen-Hsiung; Chiou, Wen-Bin

2017-01-01

Human morality entails a typical self-control dilemma in which one must conform to moral rules or socially desirable norms while exerting control over amoral, selfish impulses. Extant research regarding the connection between self-control and level of construal suggest that, compared with a low-level, concrete construal (highlighting means and resources, e.g., answering 'how' questions), a high-level, abstract construal (highlighting central goals, e.g., answering 'why' questions) promotes self-control. Hence, construing morality at higher levels rather than lower levels should engender greater self-control and, it follows, promote a tendency to perform moral acts. We conducted two experiments to show that answering "why" (high-level construal) vs. "how" (low-level construal) questions regarding morality was associated with a situational state of greater self-control, as indexed by less Stroop interference in the Stroop color-naming task (Experiments 1 and 2). Participants exposed to "why" questions regarding morality displayed a greater inclination for volunteerism (Experiment 1), showed a lower tendency toward selfishness in a dictator game (Experiment 2), and were more likely to return undeserved money (Experiment 2) compared with participants exposed to "how" questions regarding morality. In both experiments, self-control mediated the effect of a high-level construal of morality on dependent measures. The current research constitutes a new approach to promoting prosociality and moral education. Reminding people to think abstractly about human morality may help them to generate better control over the temptation to benefit from unethical acts and make it more likely that they will act morally.

Caring across Boundaries versus Keeping Boundaries Intact: Links between Moral Values and Interpersonal Orientations

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Niemi, Laura; Young, Liane

2013-01-01

Prior work has established robust diversity in the extent to which different moral values are endorsed. Some people focus on values related to caring and fairness, whereas others assign additional moral weight to ingroup loyalty, respect for authority and established hierarchies, and purity concerns. Five studies explore associations between endorsement of distinct moral values and a suite of interpersonal orientations: Machiavellianism, prosocial resource distribution, Social Dominance Orientation, and reported likelihood of helping and not helping kin and close friends versus acquaintances and neighbors. We found that Machiavellianism (Studies 1, 3, 4, 5) (e.g., amorality, controlling and status-seeking behaviors) and Social Dominance Orientation (Study 4) were negatively associated with caring values, and positively associated with valuation of authority. Those higher in caring values were more likely to choose prosocial resource distributions (Studies 2, 3, 4) and to report reduced likelihood of failing to help kin/close friends or acquaintances (Study 4). Finally, greater likelihood of helping acquaintances was positively associated with all moral values tested except authority values (Study 4). The current work offers a novel approach to characterizing moral values and reveals a striking divergence between two kinds of moral values in particular: caring values and authority values. Caring values were positively linked with prosociality and negatively associated with Machiavellianism, whereas authority values were positively associated with Machiavellianism and Social Dominance Orientation. PMID:24349095

Psychology as a Moral Science

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brinkmann, Svend

What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline’s ethical foundations,...... as a Moral Science contains enough controversial ideas to spark great interest among researchers and scholars in psychology and the philosophy of science.......What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline’s ethical foundations......, Psychology as a Moral Science argues that psychological phenomena are inherently moral, and that psychology, as prescriptive and interventive practice, reflects specific moral principles. The book cites normative moral standards, as far back as Aristotle, that give human thoughts, feelings, and actions...

Inability and Obligation in Moral Judgment

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Buckwalter, Wesley; Turri, John

2015-01-01

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle. PMID:26296206

The development of generosity and moral cognition across five cultures.

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Cowell, Jason M; Lee, Kang; Malcolm-Smith, Susan; Selcuk, Bilge; Zhou, Xinyue; Decety, Jean

2017-07-01

Morality is an evolved aspect of human nature, yet is heavily influenced by cultural environment. This developmental study adopted an integrative approach by combining measures of socioeconomic status (SES), executive function, affective sharing, empathic concern, theory of mind, and moral judgment in predicting sharing behavior in children (N = 999) from the age of 5 to 12 in five large-scale societies: Canada, China, Turkey, South Africa, and the USA. Results demonstrate that age, gender, SES, culture, and social cognitive mechanisms explain over 20% of the variance worldwide in children's resource allocation. These findings are discussed in reference to standard cultural comparisons (individualist/collectivist), as well as the degree of market integration, and highlight continuities and discontinuities in children's generosity across urban contexts. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Adolescents' aggressive and prosocial behaviors: links with social information processing, negative emotionality, moral affect, and moral cognition.

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Laible, Deborah J; Murphy, Tia Panfile; Augustine, Mairin

2014-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine whether moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases independently predicted adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behavior in adolescence. A total of 148 adolescents completed self-report measures of prosocial and aggressive behavior, moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases. Although in general all 3 factors (emotional, moral, and social cognitive) were correlated with adolescent social behavior, the most consistent independent predictors of adolescent social behavior were moral affect and cognition. These findings have important implications for intervention and suggest that programs that promote adolescent perspective taking, moral reasoning, and moral affect are needed to reduce aggressive behavior and promote prosocial behavior.

The Concept of the Moral Domain in Moral Foundations Theory and Cognitive Developmental Theory: Horses for Courses?

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Maxwell, Bruce; Beaulac, Guillaume

2013-01-01

Moral foundations theory chastises cognitive developmental theory for having foisted on moral psychology a restrictive conception of the moral domain which involves arbitrarily elevating the values of justice and caring. The account of this negative influence on moral psychology, referred to in the moral foundations theory literature as the…

Functional and clinical neuroanatomy of morality.

Science.gov (United States)

Fumagalli, Manuela; Priori, Alberto

2012-07-01

Morality is among the most sophisticated features of human judgement, behaviour and, ultimately, mind. An individual who behaves immorally may violate ethical rules and civil rights, and may threaten others' individual liberty, sometimes becoming violent and aggressive. In recent years, neuroscience has shown a growing interest in human morality, and has advanced our understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in moral decisions, their anatomical substrates and the neurology of abnormal moral behaviour. In this article, we review research findings that have provided a key insight into the functional and clinical neuroanatomy of the brain areas involved in normal and abnormal moral behaviour. The 'moral brain' consists of a large functional network including both cortical and subcortical anatomical structures. Because morality is a complex process, some of these brain structures share their neural circuits with those controlling other behavioural processes, such as emotions and theory of mind. Among the anatomical structures implicated in morality are the frontal, temporal and cingulate cortices. The prefrontal cortex regulates activity in subcortical emotional centres, planning and supervising moral decisions, and when its functionality is altered may lead to impulsive aggression. The temporal lobe is involved in theory of mind and its dysfunction is often implicated in violent psychopathy. The cingulate cortex mediates the conflict between the emotional and the rational components of moral reasoning. Other important structures contributing to moral behaviour include the subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Brain areas participating in moral processing can be influenced also by genetic, endocrine and environmental factors. Hormones can modulate moral behaviour through their effects on the brain. Finally, genetic polymorphisms can predispose to aggressivity and violence, arguing for a genetic

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

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CIPRIAN IULIAN ŞOPTICĂ

2011-01-01

The subject of this article concerns the what, the how and the whyof moral phenomenology. The first question we take into consideration is „What is moral phenomenology”? The second question which arises is „How to pursue moral phenomenology”? The third question is „Why pursue moral phenomenology”? We will analyze the study Moral phenomenology:foundation issues1, by which the American phenomenologist Uriah Kriegel aims three lines of research: the definition of moral phenomenology and the desc...

Human Terrain Systems and the Moral Prosecution of Warfare

Science.gov (United States)

2011-10-01

personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” While this seems prima facie obvious, it is not easy to discern what...these theaters is incorrect. Military commanders do not choose their wars, but they do have a constitutional duty to prosecute them. Just war...would fall under the noncombatant status and be subject to no military coercion. It is the moral soldier’s duty to discern between the two and act

How "moral" are the principles of biomedical ethics?--a cross-domain evaluation of the common morality hypothesis.

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Christen, Markus; Ineichen, Christian; Tanner, Carmen

2014-06-17

The principles of biomedical ethics - autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice - are of paradigmatic importance for framing ethical problems in medicine and for teaching ethics to medical students and professionals. In order to underline this significance, Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress base the principles in the common morality, i.e. they claim that the principles represent basic moral values shared by all persons committed to morality and are thus grounded in human moral psychology. We empirically investigated the relationship of the principles to other moral and non-moral values that provide orientations in medicine. By way of comparison, we performed a similar analysis for the business & finance domain. We evaluated the perceived degree of "morality" of 14 values relevant to medicine (n1 = 317, students and professionals) and 14 values relevant to business & finance (n2 = 247, students and professionals). Ratings were made along four dimensions intended to characterize different aspects of morality. We found that compared to other values, the principles-related values received lower ratings across several dimensions that characterize morality. By interpreting our finding using a clustering and a network analysis approach, we suggest that the principles can be understood as "bridge values" that are connected both to moral and non-moral aspects of ethical dilemmas in medicine. We also found that the social domain (medicine vs. business & finance) influences the degree of perceived morality of values. Our results are in conflict with the common morality hypothesis of Beauchamp and Childress, which would imply domain-independent high morality ratings of the principles. Our findings support the suggestions by other scholars that the principles of biomedical ethics serve primarily as instruments in deliberated justifications, but lack grounding in a universal "common morality". We propose that the specific manner in which the principles

PERKEMBANGAN MORAL SANTRI ANAK USIA DINI

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Siti Mumun Muniroh

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This study intends to explore and analyze the moral development of students of early childhood at boarding school Salafiyah Shafi'ites Pekalongan. The study was focused on three moral development, namely the aspect of moral reasoning, moral feeling, and moral behavior. The research data was obtained through interviews, observation, field notes and documentation. Data analysis use an interactive analysis model introduced by Miles and Huberman. The results of this study are: moral reasoning of students of early childhood show heteronomous morality. Students understand some important points such as justice, stealing, punishment and tolerance. Some students have an understanding that justice, punishment or regulation are something that are governed by a caregiver who has authority and can not be changed. Moral behavior has been demonstrated too by the students early age. Students have been able to show moral behavior, such as following the rules applied in the boarding school. Meanwhile, from the aspect of moral sense, students of early childhood has evolved as embarrassment, empathy and guilt when breaking the rules.

Emotional Reactions and Moral Judgment: the Effects of Morally Challenging Interactions in Military Operations

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de Graaff, Miriam; Schut, M; Verweij, D.E.M.; Vermetten, H.G.J.M.; Giebels, Ellen

2016-01-01

This study explores the association between different types of morally challenging interactions during military deployment and response strategies (e.g., moral justification), as well as the mediating role of moral emotions. Interviews with Dutch servicemen who participated in military operations

Moral distress in emergency nurses.

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Fernandez-Parsons, Robin; Rodriguez, Lori; Goyal, Deepika

2013-11-01

For nurses, moral distress leads to burnout, attrition, compassion fatigue, and patient avoidance. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional, and descriptive design, we assessed the frequency, intensity, and type of moral distress in 51 emergency nurses in 1 community hospital using a 21-item, self-report, Likert-type questionnaire. Results showed a total mean moral distress level of 3.18, indicative of overall low moral distress. Situations with the highest levels of moral distress were related to the competency of health care providers and following family wishes to continue life support, also known as futile care. Moral distress was the reason given by 6.6% of registered nurses for leaving a previous position, 20% said that they had considered leaving a position but did not, and 13.3% stated that they are currently considering leaving their position because of moral distress. Copyright © 2013 Emergency Nurses Association. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Personal factors of moral responsibility in adolescence

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Sergey V. Molchanov

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Background. Responsibility as a measure of individual freedom comes only under the condition of freedom of choice and the ability to anticipate and take into account the consequences of acts. Therefore, personal factors play a key role in taking moral responsibility. Scholars have studied the personal bases of responsibility that comprises autonomy, independence, confidence, the locus of control, the motivation to achieve a goal, the level of aspiration. However, the role of the moral self and moral identity in the determination of responsibility is not sufficiently studied. Objective. The objective of the research is to study the relationship between the moral identity of the individual and the willingness to accept moral responsibility in adolescence. Proceeding from the general hypothesis about the essential role of moral identity in adopting and actualising themoral responsibility, two specific hypotheses are articulated, specifying the role of values and moral self-esteem in taking moral responsibility. Design. An empirical study of adolescents aged 13–17 years was conducted. Subjects are students of educational institutions of general education in Moscow (a total of 314 subjects. The study poses the challenges of studying the readiness to accept moral responsibility by adolescents in the situation of a moral dilemma, the connection of the moral and value orientation of adolescents and the willingness to accept moral responsibility, the connection of self-esteem of moral qualities and the readiness of adolescents to accept moral responsibility. The methodology for assessing moral responsibility in the situation of solving the moral dilemma «Moral Situations from Real Life» (MORS, a modified version of M. Rokich’s method for evaluating value orientations, the method of structured moral self-esteem (A.I. Podolsky, P. Heymans, O.A. Karabanova are used. Conclusion. The results revealed the influence of the participants’ moral dilemma

Unifying Kohlberg with Information Integration: The Moral Algebra of Recompense and of Kohlbergian Moral Informers

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Wilfried Hommers

2010-01-01

Full Text Available In order to unify two major theories of moral judgment, a novel task is employed which combines elements of Kohlberg's stage theory and of the theory of information integration. In contrast to the format of Kohlberg's moral judgment interview, a nonverbal and quantitative response which makes low demands on verbal facility was used . Moral informers differing in value, i.e. high and low, are presented. The differences in effect of those two pieces of information should be substantial for a person at that specific moral stage, but small for a person at a different stage. Hence, these differences may diagnose the person's moral stage in the simplest possible way as the two levels of each of the thoughts were about typical content of the four Kohlbergian preconventional and conventional stages. The novel task allowed additionally to measure the influence of another moral concept which was about the non-Kohlbergian moral concept of recompense. After a training phase, pairs of those thoughts were presented to allow for the study of integration and individual differences. German and Korean children, 8, 10, and 12 years in age, judged deserved punishment. The patterns of means, correlations and factor loadings showed that elements of both theories can be unified, but produced unexpected results also. Additive integration of each of the two pairs of moral informers appeared, either with two Kohlbergian moral informers or with another Kohlbergian moral informer in combination with information about recompense. Also cultural independence as well as dependence, developmental changes between 8 and 10 years, and an outstanding moral impact of recompense in size and distinctiveness were observed.

Interprofessionals' definitions of moral resilience.

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Holtz, Heidi; Heinze, Katherine; Rushton, Cynda

2018-02-01

To describe common characteristics and themes of the concept of moral resilience as reported by interprofessional clinicians in health care. Research has provided an abundance of data on moral distress with limited research to resolve and help negate the detrimental effects of moral distress. This reveals a critical need for research on how to mitigate the negative consequences of moral distress that plague nurses and other healthcare providers. One promising direction is to build resilience as an individual strategy concurrently with interventions to build a culture of ethical practice. Qualitative descriptive methods were used to analyse descriptive definitions provided by 184 interprofessional clinicians in health care attending educational programmes in various locations as well as a small group of 23 professionals with backgrounds such as chaplaincy and nonhealthcare providers. Three primary themes and three subthemes emerged from the data. The primary themes are integrity-personal and relational, and buoyancy. The subthemes are self-regulation, self-stewardship and moral efficacy. Individual healthcare providers and healthcare systems can use this research to help negate the detrimental effects of moral distress by finding ways to develop interventions to cultivate moral resilience. Moral resilience involves not only building and fostering the individual's capacity to navigate moral adversity but also developing systems that support a culture of ethical practice for healthcare providers. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The price of morality. An analysis of personality, moral behaviour, and social rules in economic terms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goessling, T.

2003-01-01

The focus of the present study was the rationality of moral behaviour and moral conviction. Assumptions like "morality pays" or "good ethics is good business" are not a priori right. Whether morality as personal conviction is also economically rational or not depends in large part on the

KOMPETENSI MORAL DAN INTENSI WHISTLEBLOWING

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Harti Budi yanti

2018-02-01

Full Text Available This study examines the effect of age, gender and moral competence on whistleblowing intentions. Most of the respondents had a medium moral competence score. The older women group proved to be higher in moral competence scores than men of the same age. Age and gender do not affect whistle blowing intentions. However, moral competence strengthens the influence of age and gender on whistle blowing intentions. The results of this test provide support for human resource development practitioners to start paying attention to moral competence in addition to technical competence as the basis of consideration of recruitment, promotion and layoffs.

Robots and the Limits of Morality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rodogno, Raffaele

2016-01-01

In this chapter, I ask whether we can coherently conceive of robots as moral agents and as moral patients. I answer both questions negatively but conditionally: for as long as robots lack certain features, they can be neither moral agents nor moral patients. These answers, of course, are not new...... and biological bases of moral practices and arguing that the relevant differences in such bases are sufficient, for the time being, to exclude robots from adopting, both, an active and a passive moral role....

Individual moral judgment and cultural ideologies.

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Narvaez, D; Getz, I; Rest, J R; Thoma, S J

1999-03-01

Moral judgment cannot be reduced to cultural ideology, or vice versa. But when each construct is measured separately, then combined, the product predicts powerfully to moral thinking. In Study 1, 2 churches (N = 96) were selected for their differences on religious ideology, political identity, and moral judgment. By combining these 3 variables, a multiple correlation of .79 predicted to members' moral thinking (opinions on human rights issues). Study 2 replicated this finding in a secular sample, with the formula established in Study 1 (R = .77). Individual conceptual development in moral judgment and socialization into cultural ideology co-occur, simultaneously and reciprocally, in parallel, and not serially. Individual development in moral judgment provides the epistemological categories for cultural ideology, which in turn influences the course of moral judgment, to produce moral thinking (e.g., opinions about abortion, free speech).

Morality is real, objective, and natural.

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Shermer, Michael

2016-11-01

To make the case that morality is real, objective, and natural, it will be argued, first, that morals exist in human nature as part of our evolutionary heritage; that morality involves how we think and act toward other moral agents in terms of whether our thoughts and actions are right or wrong with regard to their survival and flourishing; and that moral progress is real, quantifiable, and the result of our improved understanding of causality in the social and moral sciences in the same manner as our understanding of causality has progressed in the physical and biological sciences. A moral starting point is the survival and flourishing of sentient beings. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

Distributed morality in an information society.

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Floridi, Luciano

2013-09-01

The phenomenon of distributed knowledge is well-known in epistemic logic. In this paper, a similar phenomenon in ethics, somewhat neglected so far, is investigated, namely distributed morality. The article explains the nature of distributed morality, as a feature of moral agency, and explores the implications of its occurrence in advanced information societies. In the course of the analysis, the concept of infraethics is introduced, in order to refer to the ensemble of moral enablers, which, although morally neutral per se, can significantly facilitate or hinder both positive and negative moral behaviours.

A teoria de Kohlberg sobre o desenvolvimento do raciocínio moral e os instrumentos de avaliação de juízo e competência moral em uso no Brasil Kohlberg's theory about moral judgment development and the instruments used for evaluation of moral judgment and moral competence in Brazil

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Patricia Unger Raphael Bataglia

2010-04-01

Full Text Available O presente artigo tem por objetivo abordar as bases, finalidades e composição de dois instrumentos de avaliação de juízo moral: a Moral Judgment Interview (MJI e o Defining Issues Test (DIT, e um de competência moral: o Moral Judgment Test (MJT. Retoma a teoria do desenvolvimento moral de Kohlberg que fundamenta esses instrumentos, assim como os últimos estudos realizados com os mesmos. A MJI é uma entrevista semiestruturada que avalia o nível de juízo moral. O DIT é um teste objetivo que mede a proporção de respostas pós-convencionais. O MJT é um instrumento objetivo, que avalia a competência moral. Destaca-se a crescente utilização desses instrumentos em pesquisas sobre moralidade.This paper presents intends to address the objectives and composition of two instruments for evaluation of moral judgment: the "Moral Judgment Interview" (MJI and the "Defining Issues Test" (DIT and one for moral competence measurement: the "Moral Judgment Test" (MJT. It retakes Kohlberg's moral development theory which gives the foundation for these instruments. Presents Brazilian studies with each instrument. MJI is a semi-structured interview that evaluates the stage of moral judgment. DIT is an objective test that measures the percentage of post-conventional answers. MJT is an objective instrument that measures the moral judgment competence. Researches have used more and more these instruments.

Moral Understanding in the Psychopath*

Science.gov (United States)

Malatesti, Luca

2010-01-01

A pressing and difficult practical problem concerns the general issue of the right social response to offenders classified as having antisocial personality disorder. This paper approaches this general problem by focusing, from a philosophical perspective, on the still relevant but more approachable question whether psychopathic offenders are morally responsible. In particular, I investigate whether psychopaths possess moral understanding. A plausible way to approach the last question requires a satisfactory philosophical interpretation of the empirical evidence that appears to show that psychopaths fail to draw the distinction between conventional and moral norms. Specifically, I will consider a recent philosophical debate polarized between supporters of rationalist and sentimentalist accounts of moral understanding. These opponents have discussed whether the case of psychopathy offers empirical support for their account and undermine the rival view. I will argue that the available empirical data leave the outcome of this discussion indeterminate. However, this implies that both these principal theories of moral understanding, if independently motivated, would imply that psychopaths have certain deficits that might affect their moral understanding and, consequently, their moral responsibility. PMID:21151766

The Misfortunes of Moral Enhancement.

Science.gov (United States)

Azevedo, Marco Antonio

2016-10-01

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu's arguments are fortunately unconvincing. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The rise of moral cognition.

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Greene, Joshua D

2015-02-01

The field of moral cognition has grown rapidly in recent years thanks in no small part to Cognition. Consistent with its interdisciplinary tradition, Cognition encouraged the growth of this field by supporting empirical research conducted by philosophers as well as research native to neighboring fields such as social psychology, evolutionary game theory, and behavioral economics. This research has been exceptionally diverse both in its content and methodology. I argue that this is because morality is unified at the functional level, but not at the cognitive level, much as vehicles are unified by shared function rather than shared mechanics. Research in moral cognition, then, has progressed by explaining the phenomena that we identify as "moral" (for high-level functional reasons) in terms of diverse cognitive components that are not specific to morality. In light of this, research on moral cognition may continue to flourish, not as the identification and characterization of distinctive moral processes, but as a testing ground for theories of high-level, integrative cognitive function. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

THE MORAL VALUES AND THEIR INFLUENCE IN THE FORMATION OF THE MORAL IDEAL IN SCHOOL OF THE PRIMARY EDUCATION / LOS VALORES MORALES Y SU INFLUENCIA EN LA FORMACIÓN DEL IDEAL MORAL EN ESCOLARES DE LA EDUCACIÓN PRIMARIA

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Wanda Lázara Domínguez Rodríguez

2013-10-01

Full Text Available In the article an approach is presented to the formation process of moral values and its influence in the formation of the moral ideal in school of the Primary Education. It is summarize the main theoretical – methodological foundations that settle down in the relationship between the moral ideals and the moral values. There are also exposed different characteristic that influence in the moral ideal to reach in the educational process and the features that are part of the moral ideal to form.

Moral development and reproductive health decisions.

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McFadden, E A

1996-01-01

This article reviews the concepts of biomedical ethics, the justice perspective, and the care perspective of moral development and moral decision making; integrates key aspects of each to women's reproductive health nursing practice; and gives examples of application of these models to use as a framework for the assessment of moral development in guiding women in making reproductive health decisions. Emphasis is placed on the need for an integrated approach to assessment of the recognition of and response to what an individual identifies as a moral dilemma. Discussion of two different perspectives, justice and caring, is presented with application to women's health concerns. Nurses are encouraged to assess their moral development and appraisal of issues that constitute moral dilemmas and their ensuing decision making processes and those of clients. Techniques for obtaining information about moral reasoning are suggested. Rather than a traditional framework for the assessment of moral development, the uniqueness of individual women's experiences as they pertain to the case context is recommended to assess the client's appraisal of the circumstances of a perceived moral situation from the client's vantage point.

Naturalising Ethics: The Implications of Darwinism for the Study of Moral Philosophy

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Cartwright, John

2010-01-01

The nature of moral values has occupied philosophers and educationalists for centuries and a variety of claims have been made about their origin and status. One tradition suggests they may be thoughts in the mind of God; another that they are eternal truths to be reached by rational reflection (much like the truths of mathematics) or alternatively…

Identity as a Source of Moral Motivation

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Hardy, Sam A.; Carlo, Gustavo

2005-01-01

Theory and research regarding moral motivation has focused for decades on the roles of moral reasoning and, to some extent, moral emotion. Recently, however, several models of morality have positioned identity as an additional important source of moral motivation. An individual has a moral identity to the extent that he or she has constructed his…

PENDIDIKAN KARAKTER: UPAYA MEMBENTUK GENERASI BERKESADARAN MORAL

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Much. Arif Saiful Anam

2014-11-01

Full Text Available The post-reform moral crisis shows that the achievement of moral competence processed at school has not been able to result the optimal output to the moral awareness generation development of nation. This condition such that begun from verbalistic growth culture from the learning process which inclines to only teach moral education as the textual limitation. That phenomenon and fact cause many sides conclude that the importance of character education implementation intensively as the essence of moral awareness generation development. This perspective places moral as the main environment aspect which decides generation characterization. Therefore, moral awareness should be learned intently and progressed or developed by character education applicatively. When the first time of implementation of character education in the school environment, it needs to do by the moral conditioning then continue to the moral training. The Design Character education like this has a function as systemic moral ideas in progressing the generation moral awareness which is able to supply young generation with moral intelligence competence and character.

Consequences of moral Kohlberg´s moral development levels in higher education

OpenAIRE

Bordignon, Nelso Antonio

2011-01-01

Abstract Introduction. This article presents the results of a research work about the implications of Kohlberg´s moral development level in higher education. Objective. To identify the state of moral development among higher education teachers, departing from the orientation they give to their lives and to those of their students, and from what they think and say they do for their students´ moral education.With the results, an analysis is done in order to establish the impli...

Harry Potter's Provocative Moral World: Is There a Place for Good and Evil in Moral Education?

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Glanzer, Perry L.

2008-01-01

In a challenging critique of moral education in public schools, James Davison Hunter argues that the unspoken imperative of all moral education is to teach only those virtues, principles, and other moral teachings about which there is essentially no disagreement in American society. Hunter claims that almost every major form of moral education in…

Latest legal and social developments in the euthanasia debate: bad moral consciences and political unrest.

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Ferreira, N

2007-06-01

Several events that took place during recent years, such as the French Act on the rights of patients and the end of life, the Terri Schiavo case and Lord Joffe's proposal for an Assisted Dying Bill in the United Kingdom, have triggered the debate on euthanasia more than ever. It is therefore opportune to revisit basic notions related thereto and to make a comparative analysis of the legal regime of euthanasia in several countries in Europe and elsewhere, as well as to try to see how the public awareness of the problem has of late developed. There seems to be a clear trend in many legal systems towards an increasing respect for the patient's right to self-determination. However, we are still looking at a complex social game, where legal and medical terminology are manipulated and euphemisms are invented in order to accommodate bad moral consciences and avoid political unrest.

Morality and personal experience: the moral conceptions of a Muscovite man

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zigon, J.

2009-01-01

Use of the concept of morality allows anthropologists to avoid the difficulties of their traditional concepts of culture, society, and power, and provides an intimate perspective on the everyday lives of subjects and interlocutors. Yet the very concept of morality remains undertheorized by

Imagining Moral Bioenhancement Practices: Drawing Inspiration from Moral Education, Public Health Ethics, and Forensic Psychiatry.

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Specker, Jona; Schermer, Maartje H N

2017-07-01

In this article, we consider contexts or domains in which (future) moral bioenhancement interventions possibly or most likely will be implemented. By looking closely at similar or related existing practices and their relevant ethical frameworks, we hope to identify ethical considerations that are relevant for evaluating potential moral bioenhancement interventions. We examine, first, debates on the proper scope of moral education; second, proposals for identifying early risk factors for antisocial behaviour; and third, the difficult balancing of individual freedom and third party concerns in (forensic) psychiatry. In imagining moral bioenhancement in practice, we observe that unlike other forms of enhancement, moral enhancement fundamentally asks how the interests and preferences of the individual and the interests of others should be weighed (in view of public safety and managing public risk). Highly diverse domains such as education, mental health, and the judicial domain might be involved, and moral bioenhancement might challenge existing institutional settings. Given these highly varied contexts and domains, it appears unlikely that there will be a distinct set of practices that will be referred to as "moral bioenhancement."

Implicit moral evaluations: A multinomial modeling approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Cameron, C Daryl; Payne, B Keith; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Scheffer, Julian A; Inzlicht, Michael

2017-01-01

Implicit moral evaluations-i.e., immediate, unintentional assessments of the wrongness of actions or persons-play a central role in supporting moral behavior in everyday life. Yet little research has employed methods that rigorously measure individual differences in implicit moral evaluations. In five experiments, we develop a new sequential priming measure-the Moral Categorization Task-and a multinomial model that decomposes judgment on this task into multiple component processes. These include implicit moral evaluations of moral transgression primes (Unintentional Judgment), accurate moral judgments about target actions (Intentional Judgment), and a directional tendency to judge actions as morally wrong (Response Bias). Speeded response deadlines reduced Intentional Judgment but not Unintentional Judgment (Experiment 1). Unintentional Judgment was stronger toward moral transgression primes than non-moral negative primes (Experiments 2-4). Intentional Judgment was associated with increased error-related negativity, a neurophysiological indicator of behavioral control (Experiment 4). Finally, people who voted for an anti-gay marriage amendment had stronger Unintentional Judgment toward gay marriage primes (Experiment 5). Across Experiments 1-4, implicit moral evaluations converged with moral personality: Unintentional Judgment about wrong primes, but not negative primes, was negatively associated with psychopathic tendencies and positively associated with moral identity and guilt proneness. Theoretical and practical applications of formal modeling for moral psychology are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Moral Education in Japan

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Roesgaard, Marie Højlund

‘religion’ is not a subject in schools. So, how do the Japanese go about the business of teaching values and morality? Using the Japanese example, this volume looks at moral education from the basic point of view of universal and common human values, with due attention given to culture-specific traits...... in the legal frame work (the Fundamental Law on Education was revised in 2006) and the ministerial guidelines and policies (new curriculum guidelines have been issued after the law change, and new proposals for strengthening the position of moral education come on a regular basis) have reflected the increased......What is a ‘good’ person and how do we educate ‘good’ persons? This question of morality is central to any society and its government and educational system including the Japanese. In many societies it has been customary to teach about morality from a religious standpoint, but not so in Japan, where...

Untangling Partnership and Domination Morality

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David Loye

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Riane Eisler’s (1987 cultural transformation theory is an effective framework for understanding many of the constructs that shape society. This article uses Eisler’s theory to explain the formation of morality and the construction of conscience. It contrasts partnership morality and domination morality, and describes the factors that shape our tendency to embrace one or the other. The article helps us understand that we have a choice, and invites us to choose partnership morality.

Moral og videnproduktion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Munch, Birgitte

Research report concerning moral and ethical problems inherent in the consulting engineers' profession. Based upon 25 in-depth interviews in 11 firms, the report is contributing to the understanding of the concepts and meaning of moral and ethics in a world of technical rationality. The objectivity...

Who believes us when we try to conceal our prejudices? The effectiveness of moral credentials with in-groups versus out-groups.

Science.gov (United States)

Krumm, Angela J; Corning, Alexandra F

2008-12-01

Moral credentials are pieces of evidence accrued by individuals that can later be presented, intentionally or unintentionally, as a record of their lack of prejudice (B. Monin & D. T. Miller, 2001). For example, attending a gay pride march or being an openly gay person ostensibly credentials an individual to tell gay jokes free of concern that he or she will be labeled prejudiced. The authors tested whether displays of moral credentials actually work to insulate individuals from attributions of prejudice by others. Results indicated that displays of moral credentials generally discourage attributions of discrimination but unevenly so, depending on who makes the judgment. Consistent with predictions from social identity theory (H. Tajfel & J. C. Turner, 1979), participants most swayed by displays of moral credentials were those who shared an in-group status with the person displaying the moral credentials.

Moral traditions and norms of education

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Gauhar ALDAMBERGENOVA

2014-07-01

Full Text Available This article discusses moral and political, moral and economic, moral and business, moral and pragmatic, hygienic and other relations. The concept of " ethical tradition" includes not only moral values but also a set of core components associated with the development of ethical and moral qualities that characterize it against the backdrop of life events. Here it is pertinent to note that it is very important to assess personality according to his deeds. Each person has the vision of the concept of " value", which is not formed by itself it is made on the basis of norms , concepts , moral relations , transmitted from generation to generation through the h istorical experience. Monitoring of normative behavior of personality is not a reckless submission standards , it examines the various forms of behavior within a framework . Personality does not simply follow moral standards; on the contrary , it is active an d inquisitive in mastering and applying them in practice.

Morality and politics: Comparing alternate theories.

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Miles, Andrew; Vaisey, Stephen

2015-09-01

Debates about the American "culture wars" have led scholars to develop several theories relating morality to political attitudes and behaviors. However, researchers have not adequately compared these theories, nor have they examined the overall contribution of morality to explaining political variation. This study uses nationally representative data to compare the utility of 19 moral constructs from four research traditions - associated with the work of Hunter, Lakoff, Haidt, and Schwartz - for predicting political orientation (liberalism/conservatism). Results indicate that morality explains a third of the variation in political orientation - more than basic demographic and religious predictors - but that no one theory provides a fully adequate explanation of this phenomenon. Instead, political orientation is best predicted by selected moral constructs that are unique to each of the four traditions, and by two moral constructs that crosscut them. Future work should investigate how these moral constructs can be synthesized to create a more comprehensive theory of morality and politics. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Moral judgment in episodic amnesia.

Science.gov (United States)

Craver, Carl F; Keven, Nazim; Kwan, Donna; Kurczek, Jake; Duff, Melissa C; Rosenbaum, R Shayna

2016-08-01

To investigate the role of episodic thought about the past and future in moral judgment, we administered a well-established moral judgment battery to individuals with hippocampal damage and deficits in episodic thought (insert Greene et al. 2001). Healthy controls select deontological answers in high-conflict moral scenarios more frequently when they vividly imagine themselves in the scenarios than when they imagine scenarios abstractly, at some personal remove. If this bias is mediated by episodic thought, individuals with deficits in episodic thought should not exhibit this effect. We report that individuals with deficits in episodic memory and future thought make moral judgments and exhibit the biasing effect of vivid, personal imaginings on moral judgment. These results strongly suggest that the biasing effect of vivid personal imagining on moral judgment is not due to episodic thought about the past and future. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Wording effects in moral judgments

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Ross E. O'Hara

2010-12-01

Full Text Available As the study of moral judgments grows, it becomes imperative to compare results across studies in order to create unified theories within the field. These efforts are potentially undermined, however, by variations in wording used by different researchers. The current study sought to determine whether, when, and how variations in wording influence moral judgments. Online participants responded to 15 different moral vignettes (e.g., the trolley problem using 1 of 4 adjectives: ``wrong'', ``inappropriate'', ``forbidden'', or ``blameworthy''. For half of the sample, these adjectives were preceded by the adverb ``morally''. Results indicated that people were more apt to judge an act as wrong or inappropriate than forbidden or blameworthy, and that disgusting acts were rated as more acceptable when ``morally'' was included. Although some wording differences emerged, effects sizes were small and suggest that studies of moral judgment with different wordings can legitimately be compared.

Moral bioenhancement and the utilitarian catastrophe.

Science.gov (United States)

Agar, Nicholas

2015-01-01

This article challenges recent calls for moral bioenhancement-the use of biomedical means, including pharmacological and genetic methods, to increase the moral value of our actions or characters. It responds to those who take a practical interest in moral bioenhancement. I argue that moral bioenhancement is unlikely to be a good response to the extinction threats of climate change and weapons of mass destruction. Rather than alleviating those problems, it is likely to aggravate them. We should expect biomedical means to generate piecemeal enhancements of human morality. These predictably strengthen some contributors to moral judgment while leaving others comparatively unaffected. This unbalanced enhancement differs from the manner of improvement that typically results from sustained reflection. It is likely to make its subjects worse rather than better at moral reasoning.

Moral identity and emotion in athletes.

Science.gov (United States)

Kavussanu, Maria; Willoughby, Adrian; Ring, Christopher

2012-12-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of moral identity on physiological responses to affective pictures, namely, the startle blink reflex and pain-related evoked potential. Male (n = 48) and female (n = 46) athletes participating in contact team sports were randomly assigned to either a moral identity group or a non-moral identity group and viewed a series of unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant sport-specific pictures. During picture viewing, a noxious electrocutaneous stimulus was delivered as the startle probe and the startle blink and pain-related evoked potential were measured. Upon completion of physiological measures, participants reviewed the pictures and rated them for valence and arousal. ANOVAs revealed that participants in the moral identity group displayed larger startle blinks and smaller pain-related potentials than did those in the non-moral identity group across all picture valence categories. However, the difference in the magnitude of startle blinks between the moral and non-moral identity groups was larger in response to unpleasant than pleasant and neutral pictures. Our findings suggest that moral identity affects physiological responses to sport-specific affective pictures, thereby providing objective evidence for the link between moral identity and emotion in athletes.

Morale Hazard

OpenAIRE

Hanming Fang; Giuseppe Moscarini

2003-01-01

We interpret workers' confidence in their own skills as their morale, and investigate the implication of worker overconfidence on the firm's optimal wage-setting policies. In our model, wage contracts both provide incentives and affect worker morale, by revealing private information of the firm about worker skills. We provide conditions for the non-differentiation wage policy to be profit-maximizing. In numerical examples, worker overconfidence is a necessary condition for the firm to prefer ...

Dimensi moral dalam Pendidikan Kewarganegaraan

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Muchson AR

2009-06-01

Full Text Available In the past times, the moral issue is a core and main face of education. The talks about education, educators, or well-educated people refer ni"'ainfy to illustration of aspect of their morality and personality. Although the paradigm of education as a inheritance of values, especialfy moral values, are considered as an old-fashioned or conseruatiie, but , such education is very relevant for the solution to improve the morality of the nation.  Subjects of Civic Education have distinctive vission, namely the formation of good citizens.  Definition of ''good citizens" shows that the moral content is essential. However it is often based on interpretation of the ruler. As a consequence, these subfects are regarded as more political  than academic and suf?jects with a weak saentificfoundation.  As a part of formal curriatium, the moral dimension in Civic Education should be abso­ lutefy developed from the content or material standards. Beside, teachers with the aTttonomy thry had could inculcate moral values, whether unitersal or contextual or cultural or local. Thus, it is possible for teachers to develop iiformal curriculum or hidden curriculum, beside the formal curriculum

Progressive Taxation and Tax Morale

OpenAIRE

Philipp Doerrenberg; Andreas Peichl

2010-01-01

As the link between tax compliance and tax morale is found to be robust, finding the determinants of tax morale can help to understand and fight tax evasion. In this paper we analyze the effect of progressive taxation on tax morale in a cross-country approach - which has not been investigated before. Our theoretical analysis leads to two testable predictions. First, an individual's tax morale is higher, the more progressive the tax schedule is. Second, the impact of tax progressivity on tax m...

How the First Year of College Influences Moral Reasoning Development for Students in Moral Consolidation and Moral Transition

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Mayhew, Matthew J.; Seifert, Tricia A.; Pascarella, Ernest T.

2012-01-01

Understanding the developmental issues first-time college students face is critical for scholars and educators interested in learning and development. This purpose of this study was to investigate the differential impact of first-year college experiences on the moral reasoning development of 1,469 students in moral transition versus those in moral…

Moral education: School as a just community

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Miočinović Ljiljana Đ.

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses Kohlberg’s view of moral education, how it was developing and changing over time. Starting from a theoretical postulate that thinking constitutes the essence of morality and from empirical findings of the stage development of moral judgment, in his early works Kohlberg defines moral education as "encouraging the natural course of moral judgment development". As a principal method of work, Kohlberg recommends the encouragement of a cognitive conflict by means of discussing hypothetic moral dilemmas. Criticisms that he is over-intellectualizing moral education, getting acquainted with a collective upbringing in kibbutz's, active participation in work in schools and prisons and finding that moral judgment and acting in everyday life is a response to the prevailing moral atmosphere of a group are leading to the changes in moral education goals and development of a new approach known as "just community". Now a group is in the focus of moral education, not an individual any longer, the major area of studies being group norms and expectations. The "just community" approach does not remain only at the classroom level discussing hypothetical moral dilemmas but directly influences the structure of school justice i.e. its rules and discipline, processes they are passed as well as the rights and duties of both teachers and students. Its goal is no longer to develop moral judgment of an individual student but to develop a group as moral community founded upon the norms of trust, participation and collective responsibility.

BRAIN, EMOTION, AND MORAL JUDGEMENT

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Fransisca Ting

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The dual process theory posits that people relies on their emotion (especially negative emotions when they are faced with personal moral dilemmas, such as pushing a person off a footbridge in order to stop a trolley that would otherwise kill five people. In an fMRI investigation, the medial frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and bilateral angular gyrus are more activated in considering a personal moral dilemma, leading them to make a characteristically deontological judgment. On the other hand, people are less emotionally engaged in non‐personal moral dilemmas, leading them to be more consequentialist in their judgment. Empathy is argued to be a salient moral emotion that could alter one’s moral judgment in moral dilemmas. Specifically, when judging about the permissibility of a person’s proposed action, the subjects will judge those they empathize with less harshly, and when they themselves have to make the decision, they will tend to save the party they empathize with across dilemmas.

Recognizing Moral Identity as a Cultural Construct.

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Jia, Fanli; Krettenauer, Tobias

2017-01-01

Current research on moral identity shows that moral identity predicts moral action in Western cultures but not in non-Western cultures. The present paper argues that this may be due to the fact that the concept of moral identity is culturally biased. In order to remedy this situation, we argue that researchers should broaden their scopes of inquiry by adding a cultural lens to their studies of moral identity. This change is important because although some concept of moral identity likely exists in all cultures, it may function in different ways and at different levels in each place. We propose that moral identity is a context-dependent construct tied to varying social and cultural obligations. We argue that Western moral identity stresses an individually oriented morality, whereas, people from Eastern cultures consider a highly moral person to be societally oriented. We conclude by discussing the implications of this view for future research.

Lakatos Revisited.

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Court, Deborah

1999-01-01

Revisits and reviews Imre Lakatos' ideas on "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." Suggests that Lakatos' framework offers an insightful way of looking at the relationship between theory and research that is relevant not only for evaluating research programs in theoretical physics, but in the social…

Quasi-realism and the moral problem

OpenAIRE

Carlsson, Andreas Brekke

2007-01-01

Moral judgments have two characteristic features. On the one hand they aim at objectivity. We normally think there are correct answers to be found on moral matters, and we think that is possible for our moral judgments to be mistaken. In this respect moral judgments behave as ordinary beliefs. On the other hand moral judgements are essentially practical. They are action guiding and closely connected to motivation. In this respect they behave as desires. If we combine these two features with a...

The Morality of Men Convicted of Domestic Violence: How It Supports the Maintenance of the Moral Self-Concept.

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Marzana, Daniela; Vecina, María L; Alfieri, Sara

2016-12-01

The phenomenon of abuse toward women is a prevalent social problem in most societies. In the present work, we take into consideration the abusive man's point of view with particular reference to the sphere of their morality and set as aims: (a) to show that high levels of self-deception are mediating between an extreme moral worldview, called moral absolutism, and a functional high moral self-concept, (b) to analyze the relation of the five moral foundations (Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority, and Purity) with this moral absolutism, and (c) to test a comprehensive model of the relationships between the individuated variables in the preceding hypotheses. Participants are 264 men convicted of domestic violence offenses, who, having begun court-mandated psychological treatment lasting 12 weeks, have filled out a self-report questionnaire during the second meeting. The results reveal that (a) self-deception is as a full mediator between moral absolutism and moral self-concept in men convicted of domestic violence and in such a way that the more they felt right about their moral beliefs, the more they deceived themselves, and the more they felt good about themselves, (b) the moral foundations could be explaining moral absolutism understood as a rigid moral vision of the world, and (c) the tested model produces satisfying fit indices. Finally, we discuss the applied implications, for example, a key role can be played by the family and the school: Moral socialization begins within the family and there finds the first push that will accompany it the rest of life.

Moral character effects in endorser perception

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Chang Joseph W.

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This research consists of two experimental studies investigating the influence of moral character on endorser perception, and the influence of perceiver characteristics on tarnished endorser perception and brand evaluations. Perceiver characteristics are discussed from the perspectives of dispositional tendency, innate moral intuitions and self-location. The first study compared the influences of moral character and warmth on endorser perception. The second study examined the impact of perceiver characteristics on tarnished endorsers and brand evaluations. The findings reveal that moral character is more influential than warmth on endorser evaluations. Tarnished endorsers with immoral character exert more negative influence than tarnished endorsers with coldness character on brand evaluations. Innate moral intuitions and self-location moderate brand evaluations. High-morality consumers and heart-locators are more vulnerable than low-morality and brain-locators to the brands endorsed by tarnished endorsers, respectively.

At the heart of morality lies neuro-visceral integration: lower cardiac vagal tone predicts utilitarian moral judgment

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Kappes, Andreas; Rho, Yeojin; Van Bavel, Jay J.

2016-01-01

To not harm others is widely considered the most basic element of human morality. The aversion to harm others can be either rooted in the outcomes of an action (utilitarianism) or reactions to the action itself (deontology). We speculated that the human moral judgments rely on the integration of neural computations of harm and visceral reactions. The present research examined whether utilitarian or deontological aspects of moral judgment are associated with cardiac vagal tone, a physiological proxy for neuro-visceral integration. We investigated the relationship between cardiac vagal tone and moral judgment by using a mix of moral dilemmas, mathematical modeling and psychophysiological measures. An index of bipolar deontology-utilitarianism was correlated with resting heart rate variability (HRV)—an index of cardiac vagal tone—such that more utilitarian judgments were associated with lower HRV. Follow-up analyses using process dissociation, which independently quantifies utilitarian and deontological moral inclinations, provided further evidence that utilitarian (but not deontological) judgments were associated with lower HRV. Our results suggest that the functional integration of neural and visceral systems during moral judgments can restrict outcome-based, utilitarian moral preferences. Implications for theories of moral judgment are discussed. PMID:27317926

Technology in Muslim Moral Philosophy.

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Moosa, Ebrahim

2016-04-01

The article explores the place, role and status of technology in Muslim moral philosophy. Invoking early Muslim encounters with technology the author makes the case why technology is already deeply embedded in contemporary Muslim bioethical thinking. Due to an absence of the philosophical grounding there remains some ambivalence as to why technology is essential to Muslim ethical thinking. Countering the techno-pessimists, the author makes a case in favor of compositional thinking, namely that our thinking itself is altered by our tools and our environment. Compositional thinking opposes the representational mode of thinking that creates a dichotomy between nature versus culture, and technology versus nature. One should, however, anticipate an environment in which technology would be beneficial and not be viewed as potentially harmful.

Moral Cognitivism | Lillehammer | Philosophical Papers

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The paper explicates a set of criteria the joint satisfaction of which is taken to qualify moral judgements as cognitive. The paper examines evidence that some moral judgements meet these criteria, and relates the resulting conception of moral judgements to ongoing controversies about cognitivism in ethics. Philosophical ...

Is There a Moral Skill?

Science.gov (United States)

Gotz, Ignacio L.

1989-01-01

The nature of skill, distinguished from habit, is sketched. Moral skill is defined as the skill, born of genetically rooted talent, which masterminds subsidiary skills into moral action (action conforming to certain moral principles). Training this skill is possible, but results will be uneven because talent varies. (IAH)

Ethics or Morals: Understanding Students' Values Related to Genetic Tests on Humans

Science.gov (United States)

Lindahl, Mats Gunnar

2009-10-01

To make meaning of scientific knowledge in such a way that concepts and values of the life-world are not threatened is difficult for students and laymen. Ethics and morals pertaining to the use of genetic tests for hereditary diseases have been investigated and discussed by educators, anthropologists, medical doctors and philosophers giving, at least in part, diverging results. This study investigates how students explain and understand their argumentation about dilemmas concerning gene testing for the purpose to reduce hereditary diseases. Thirteen students were interviewed about their views on this issue. Qualitative analysis was done primarily by relating students’ argumentation to their movements between ethics and morals as opposing poles. Students used either objective or subjective knowledge but had difficulties to integrate them. They tried to negotiate ethic arguments using utilitarian motives and medical knowledge with sympathy or irrational and personal arguments. They discussed the embryo’s moral status to decide if it was replaceable in a social group or not. The educational implications of the students’ use of knowledge in personal arguments are discussed.

Parental attachment and Chinese adolescents' delinquency: The mediating role of moral disengagement.

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Bao, Zhenzhou; Zhang, Wei; Lai, Xuefen; Sun, Wenqiang; Wang, Yanhui

2015-10-01

There is substantial literature documenting the negative association between secure parental attachment and lower adolescent delinquency, but little is known about the mediating mechanisms (i.e., how does parental attachment relate to delinquency?) underlying this relation. The present study examined whether secure parental attachment would be indirectly related to lower adolescent delinquency through lower adolescent moral disengagement. A total of 1766 adolescents (44% male; mean age = 14.25 years, SD = 1.54) living in an urban area of southern China completed anonymous questionnaires regarding parental attachment, moral disengagement and delinquency. After controlling for gender, age, socioeconomic status, and school variable, it was found that secure parental attachment was negatively associated with adolescent delinquency and this negative association was fully mediated by the extent of adolescent moral disengagement. These findings contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of adolescent delinquency and have important implications for intervention. Copyright © 2015 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

HUBUNGAN MORALITAS DAN STATUS EKONOMI DENGAN KECERDASAN SOSIAL PADA REMAJA DI SMP NEGERI 9 BINJAI

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Ali Muryati

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The study was conducted to test whether there is a relationship of morality and economic status in adolescents with social intelligence on Junior High School 9 Binjai. Population of 700 adolescents aged 13 -15, which is used as a sample of 100 students, because all questionnaires were returned after completed. The results obtained are as follows great relationship X1 variable to variable Y, can be seen from the coefficient of determinant (R Square = 0.229, indicating that 22.9% of social intelligence related to morality.         Relationship variables X2 to Y, can be seen from the coefficient of determinant (R Square = 0.202, indicating that 20.2% of social intelligence related to economic status. Correlation coefficient of the results showed that a significant relationship between the morality of social intelligence in adolescents with t count value = 8.751. While the t table = 1.984 for a significant level of 0.05 (5%, for 0.01 confidence level (1% means the relationship between morality with social intelligence is very significant alevel of 0.05  and  0.01.Tthe relationship variables X1 and X2 to Y, can be seen determinant (R Square = 0.662, indicating that 66.2% of social intelligence relating to morality and economic status.

The developmental origins of moral concern: An examination of moral boundary decision making throughout childhood.

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Neldner, Karri; Crimston, Daniel; Wilks, Matti; Redshaw, Jonathan; Nielsen, Mark

2018-01-01

Prominent theorists have made the argument that modern humans express moral concern for a greater number of entities than at any other time in our past. Moreover, adults show stable patterns in the degrees of concern they afford certain entities over others, yet it remains unknown when and how these patterns of moral decision-making manifest in development. Children aged 4 to 10 years (N = 151) placed 24 pictures of human, animal, and environmental entities on a stratified circle representing three levels of moral concern. Although younger and older children expressed similar overall levels of moral concern, older children demonstrated a more graded understanding of concern by including more entities within the outer reaches of their moral circles (i.e., they were less likely to view moral inclusion as a simple in vs. out binary decision). With age children extended greater concern to humans than other forms of life, and more concern to vulnerable groups, such as the sick and disabled. Notably, children's level of concern for human entities predicted their prosocial behavior. The current research provides novel insights into the development of our moral reasoning and its structure within childhood.

In Defense of Pharmaceutically Enhancing Human Morality.

Science.gov (United States)

Protopapadakis, Evangelos D

2017-01-01

I will discuss the prospect of pharmaceutically enhancing human morality and decision making in such a way as to eliminate morally unjustifiable choices and promote desirable ones. Our species in the relatively short period since it has emerged has enormously advanced in knowledge, science, and technical progress. When it comes to moral development, the distance it has covered is almost negligible. What if we could medically accelerate our moral development? What if we could once and for all render our species totally immune to certain vices? I will examine whether pharmaceutically intervening in human morality would compromise the autonomy of moral agents. I will argue that the argument from the autonomy of the moral agent is neither stable nor convincing. In the light of Kantian ethics we might consider moral enhancement by pharmaceutical means to be a perfect duty for moral agents.

The Role of Gratitude and Moral Elevation in Moral Identity Development

Science.gov (United States)

Pohling, Rico; Diessner, Rhett; Strobel, Anja

2018-01-01

Experiencing the moral emotions of gratitude and moral elevation are responses to witnessing virtuous deeds of others. Both emotions have been found to share similar features and behavioral consequences, including the stimulation of personal development. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions indicates that gratitude and elevation…

A identidade moral e a integridade são preditoras da motivação moral?

OpenAIRE

Costa, Ana Mafalda Nunes da

2012-01-01

Com o objetivo de analisar os componentes que induzem o comportamento moral, apoiámo-nos nas teorias psicológicas que admitem a importância do papel das emoções e da identidade na motivação para a ação moral, contrariamente ao que era defendido pelas teorias construtivistas, que apenas referiam a cognição como motor do funcionamento moral. Deste modo elegemos a identidade moral e a integridade como variáveis que podem estar associadas à motivação moral. Participaram 91 adultos emergentes, com...

Irony as a figure of speech and moral stance (with regard to Wittlin and Kierkegaard

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Katarzyna Szewczyk-Haake

2015-12-01

Full Text Available In his work as a writer, Józef Wittlin searched for literature able to grant the   reader moral support, while at the same time being artistically successful. In his novel Salt of the Earth, the way to com-bine these two, to a certain extent contradictionary aims, is found in the use of irony. An analysis of the classical types of irony appearing in the novel (naive irony, irony of the sender, verbal irony leads to the conclusion that each of those was remarkably modified by the author. As a result, the “ironical anthropology” created by Wittlin in his novel lacks any elements of simple moralizing or giving ready-made moral solutions, but brings a striking image of a human commu-nity, unified not by a common status, but by a common fate. In the novel, irony turns out to be not only a textual figure, but first and foremost a moral stance, approximate to that of Socrates as described by Kierkegaard. Thanks to this stance, Wittlin enthuses his readers with the longing for the ideal, shaping their moral sensibility, at the same time granting them the sovereignty to which the reader of a literary work should be entitled.

Faultless responsibility: on the nature and allocation of moral responsibility for distributed moral actions.

Science.gov (United States)

Floridi, Luciano

2016-12-28

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments, it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform), may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e. morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs, and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence and common knowledge from epistemic logic.This article is part of the themed issue 'The ethical impact of data science'. © 2016 The Author(s).

Aims and harvest of moral case deliberation.

Science.gov (United States)

Weidema, Froukje C; Molewijk, Bert A C; Kamsteeg, Frans; Widdershoven, Guy A M

2013-09-01

Deliberative ways of dealing with ethical issues in health care are expanding. Moral case deliberation is an example, providing group-wise, structured reflection on dilemmas from practice. Although moral case deliberation is well described in literature, aims and results of moral case deliberation sessions are unknown. This research shows (a) why managers introduce moral case deliberation and (b) what moral case deliberation participants experience as moral case deliberation results. A responsive evaluation was conducted, explicating moral case deliberation experiences by analysing aims (N = 78) and harvest (N = 255). A naturalistic data collection included interviews with managers and evaluation questionnaires of moral case deliberation participants (nurses). From the analysis, moral case deliberation appeals for cooperation, team bonding, critical attitude towards routines and nurses' empowerment. Differences are that managers aim to foster identity of the nursing profession, whereas nurses emphasize learning processes and understanding perspectives. We conclude that moral case deliberation influences team cooperation that cannot be controlled with traditional management tools, but requires time and dialogue. Exchanging aims and harvest between manager and team could result in co-creating (moral) practice in which improvements for daily cooperation result from bringing together perspectives of managers and team members.

Moral Intelligence in the Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Clarken, Rodney H.

2009-01-01

Moral intelligence is newer and less studied than the more established cognitive, emotional and social intelligences, but has great potential to improve our understanding of learning and behavior. Moral intelligence refers to the ability to apply ethical principles to personal goals, values and actions. The construct of moral intelligence consists…

Moral judgment of alcohol addicts

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Mladenović Ivica

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction. Alcoholism could represent an important factor of crime and different forms of abuse of family members (physical and emotional exist in many alcohol-addict cases, as well as characteristics of immoral behaviour. Objective. The objective of our study was to determine the predominating forms in moral judgment of alcohol addicts, and to examine whether there was any statistically significant difference in moral judgment between alcohol addicted persons and non-alcoholics from general population. Methods. The sample consisted of 62 subjects, divided into a study (alcoholics and a control group (non-alcoholics from general population. The following instruments were used: social-demographic data, AUDIT, MMPI-201, cybernetic battery of IQ tests (KOG-3 and the TMR moral reasoning test. Results. Mature forms of moral judgment prevailed in both group of subjects, alcohol addicted persons and non-alcoholics. Regarding mature forms of moral judgment (driven by emotions and cognitive non-alcoholics from the general population had higher scores, but the difference was not statistically significant. Regarding socially adapted and egocentric orientation alcohol addicted persons had higher scores. However, only regarding intuitive-irrational orientation there was a statistically significant difference in the level of moral judgment (p<0.05 between alcoholics and non-alcoholics, in favour of the alcoholics. Conclusion. Moral judgment is not a category differing alcohol addicted persons from those who are not. Nevertheless, the potential destructivity of alcoholism is reflected in lower scores regarding mature orientations in moral judgment.

Moral repugnance, moral distress, and organ sales.

Science.gov (United States)

Taylor, James Stacey

2015-06-01

Many still oppose legalizing markets in human organs on the grounds that they are morally repugnant. I will argue in this paper that the repugnance felt by some persons towards sales of human organs is insufficient to justify their prohibition. Yet this rejection of the view that markets in human organs should be prohibited because some persons find them to be morally repugnant does not imply that persons' feelings of distress at the possibility of organ sales are irrational. Eduardo Rivera-Lopez argues that such instinctive distress is an appropriate response to the (rationally defensible) perception that certain kinds of arguments that are offered in favor of legalizing organ sales are "in an important sense, illegitimate." Having argued that repugnance should not ground the prohibition of markets in human organs, I will also argue that the moral distress that some feel towards certain arguments that favor such markets is not rationally defensible, either. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Humans, Animals, and Aristotle. Aristotelian Traces in the Current Critique of Moral Individualism

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Martin Huth

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The concept of moral individualism is part of the foundational structure of most prominent modern moral philosophies. It rests on the assumption that moral obligations towards a respective individual are constituted solely by her or his capacities. Hence, these obligations are independent of any ἔθος (ethos, of any shared ethical sense and social significations. The moral agent and the individual with moral status (who is the target of a respective action are construed as subjects outside of any social relation or lifeworld significations. This assumption has been contested in the last decades by diverse authors with very different approaches to moral philosophy. In the last years, an increasing number of philosophers like Cora Diamond and Alice Crary (with a Wittgensteinian background, but also phenomenologists like Paul Ricœur, Klaus Held, and Bernhard Waldenfels question the presupposition that individual capacities are the agent-neutral and context-neutral ground of moral considerations. This critique of moral individualism in different contemporary discourses shows a striking similarity between Wittgensteinian and phenomenological philosophers as their critical inquiry of prominent theories like the ones by Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Peter Singer or Tom Regan is derived from mostly implicitly efficacious Aristotelian theorems. Telling examples are the ἔθος (ethos as pre-given normative infrastructure, the ἕξις (hexis as individual internalization of the ethos, the φρόνησις (phronesis described as a specific practical know-how in contrast to scientific knowledge, and not at least the definition of the human being as ζῷον πολιτικόν (zoon politikon. However, the Aristotelian sources of this movement have not yet been scrutinized systematically. This paper aims, first, to reveal the significance of these sources to make them visible and, second, to contribute to the notion of the topicality of Aristotelian

Oxidative phosphorylation revisited

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nath, Sunil; Villadsen, John

2015-01-01

The fundamentals of oxidative phosphorylation and photophosphorylation are revisited. New experimental data on the involvement of succinate and malate anions respectively in oxidative phosphorylation and photophosphorylation are presented. These new data offer a novel molecular mechanistic...

Moral Distress, Workplace Health, and Intrinsic Harm.

Science.gov (United States)

Weber, Elijah

2016-05-01

Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, and there's good evidence that it has a negative impact on the health care work environment. However, contemporary discussions of moral distress have several problems. First, they tend to rely on inadequate characterizations of moral distress. As a result, subsequent investigations regarding the frequency and consequences of moral distress often proceed without a clear understanding of the phenomenon being discussed, and thereby risk substantially misrepresenting the nature, frequency, and possible consequences of moral distress. These discussions also minimize the intrinsically harmful aspects of moral distress. This is a serious omission. Moral distress doesn't just have a negative impact on the health care work environment; it also directly harms the one who experiences it. In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Moral competency: meta-competence of nursing care

Science.gov (United States)

Zafarnia, Niloofar; Abbaszadeh, Abbas; Borhani, Fariba; Ebadi, Abbas; Nakhaee, Nouzar

2017-01-01

Introduction To follow the progress of technology and increasing domain of nurses’ duties, ethical challenges can be observed more than ever. Therefore, the growing and dynamic system of nursing requires nurses with professional and ethical competence who can provide optimal care. The aim of the present study was to define and explain dimensions of moral competency among the clinical nurses of Iran. Methods This qualitative content analysis study was carried out in the years 2014 and 2015 in Iran. Data were collected through in-depth semistructured interviews and field notes. The resulting data were analyzed by Graneheim and Lundman’s method of conventional content analysis. The participants were 12 clinical nurses who were selected using purposive convenient sampling and continued interviews until data saturation. Results Themes obtained in the present study were posited in three main categories of “moral character,” with subcategories of altruism, search for meaning, be pioneering, perfectionism, self-control, honesty, and forgiveness; “moral care” with subcategories of dignified care, safe care, fair care, and holistic care; and “moral decision-making” with subcategories of moral sensitivity, moral thinking, moral reasoning, and moral courage. Conclusions Findings of the present study suggest that nurses’ moral competency is an adorable character with a wide range that includes moral virtues and character, moral decision-making, and ultimately providing moral care; therefore, moral competency is a meta-competence in the field of nursing. Because there are many competencies in different fields. PMID:28848630

Educação moral: adestramento ou reflexão comunicativa? Moral education: training or communicative reflection?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pedro Goergen

2001-10-01

Full Text Available O texto busca elucidar alguns dos mais relevantes aspectos da educação moral no contexto do mundo plural contemporâneo. Parte-se do suposto de que a educação moral é possível e necessária, mesmo no cenário atual de desestabilização dos valores fixos e universais da tradição. Esta educação moral, portanto, já não pode ser concebida como transmissão de valores e comportamentos morais, mas como a introdução dos educandos no mundo conflitante das concepções morais, objetivando consensos mínimos que sirvam de base para o seu agir moral. Por meio de uma relação pedagógica reflexivo/comunicativa espera-se sensibilizar os alunos para a problemática da moralidade, bem como promover a estruturação de uma subjetividade a partir da qual cada um possa tomar suas decisões morais com responsabilidade.This text seeks to elucidate some of the most relevant aspects of moral education in the context of our contemporaneous, plural world. It assumes that moral education is possible and necessary, even in the current setting where the fixed, universal values of tradition are destabilized. Such moral education, which can no longer be considered as the transmission of moral values and behaviors, consists of the introduction of learners into the conflicting world of moral conceptions, aiming at minimum consensuses that lay the bases for their moral actions. Through a reflexive-communicative pedagogical relationship one hopes to heighten the students awareness of the morality problems, as well as structure a subjectivity that allows anyone to responsibly make their own moral decisions.

¿PERMITE SER FELIZ LA MORAL CRISTIANA?

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Waldo Romo P

2006-01-01

Full Text Available La pregunta que encabeza el artículo ya es desafiante: "¿Permite ser feliz la moral cristiana?". Existe la posibilidad de responder negativamente. El autor, después de analizar algunos pensadores (Nietzsche, entre ellos que han negado a la moral cristiana la posibilidad de hacer feliz al ser humano, presenta las condiciones de posibilidad para que dicha moral se encauce a ser un camino de felicidad. Entre esas condiciones se destaca: el paso de una moral heterónama a una moral de autonomía teónoma, una moral centrada en la persona más que una moral centrada en la ley, una moral de discipulado que pone primero el amor y luego el cumplimiento normativo. Profundiza, al respecto, en el logion de Jesucristo: "El que me ama, cumple mis mandamientos". Esta enseñanza plantea el orden secuencial de toda moral cristiana: porque se ama a Jesús, se entiende el cumplimiento de las normas. Estas se transforman, entonces, en el "test" verificador del amor. De lo contrario, se permanece en un ritualismo normativo, que en defintiva hastía y no lleva a la felicidad. Por ello, el artículo profundiza en una moral de opción fundamental expresada en actitudes y actos morales coherentes con esa opción. Si las condiciones de posibilidad propuestas se llegan a dar, la interrogante que organiza el artículo tendrá una respuesta positivaThe question that heads this article is already challenging: "Does Christian morality permit one to be happy?" The possibility of responding negatively exists. The author, after analyzing the contributions of some thinkers (Nietszche among them who have denied the possibility that Christian morality could make human beings happy, presents the conditions that would orient said morality towards the possibility of becoming a path to happiness. Among those conditions, the author highlights: the passage from a "heteronomous" morality to a morality of "theonomous" autonomy, a morality centered on the person rather than a morality

The Evolution of Contractual Morality

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Alejandro Rosas

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Evolutionary explanations of altruism and human cooperation, first set forth by pioneers such as Darwin, Hamilton and Trivers, suggest that biology might be capable of offering a plausible scientific explanation of the core of human morality. According to this project, morality and human cooperation arise when resourcesare scarce; they cannot be exploited by isolated individuals; and individuals cannot maintain a long-term position of domination over others in order to advance their selfish ends. An important philosophical question that arises with respect to this project has to do with the concepts of de morality and moral motivation that itpresupposes. The evolutionary project has not been clear in this respect. The article argues in favor of two theses: 1 evolutionary explanations of cooperation suggest a contractual type of morality, but they are ambiguous regarding the motivations favored by natural selection, thus reflecting, without resolving it, a traditionaldisagreement between Hobbes’s moral contractualism (selfish motivations and that of Kant (altruistic motivations; 2 in their current form, these explanations cannot resolve that disagreement, but a reflection on the role of the capacity to interpret the motivations and character of others in the evolution of morality could provide arguments in favor of Kantian contractualism.

Gender Differences in Moral Motivation

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Nunner-Winkler, Gertrud; Meyer-Nikele, Marion; Wohlrab, Doris

2007-01-01

Moral gender differences have been discussed in terms of Kohlbergian stages and content of orientations and taken to correspond to universal stable male and female features. The present study instead focuses on moral motivation and explains differences in terms of role expectations. We assessed moral motivation in 203 adolescents by a newly…

Moral dilemmas and moral principles: when emotion and cognition unite.

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Manfrinati, Andrea; Lotto, Lorella; Sarlo, Michela; Palomba, Daniela; Rumiati, Rino

2013-01-01

Traditional studies on moral judgement used resolutions of moral dilemmas that were framed in terms of acceptability of the consequentialist action promoting a greater good, thus overlooking the deontological implications (choices cannot be justified by their consequences). Recently, some authors have suggested a parallelism between automatic, unreflective emotional responses and deontological moral judgements. In this study, we developed a novel experimental paradigm in which participants were required to choose between two resolutions of a moral dilemma (consequentialist and deontological). To assess whether emotions are engaged in each of the two resolutions, we asked participants to evaluate their emotional experience through the ratings of valence and arousal. Results showed that emotion is involved not only in deontological but also in consequentialist resolutions. Moreover, response times pointed out a different interplay between emotion and cognition in determining a conflict in the dilemma's resolution. In particular, when people were faced with trolley-like dilemmas we found that decisions leading to deontological resolutions were slower than decisions leading to consequentialist resolutions. We propose that this finding reflects the special (but not accepted) permission provided by the doctrine of the double effect for incidentally causing death for the sake of a good end.

Between Moral Relativism and Moral Hypocrisy: Reframing the Debate on "FGM".

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Earp, Brian D

2016-06-01

The spectrum of practices termed "Female Genital Mutilation" (or FGM) by the World Health Organization is sometimes held up as a counterexample to moral relativism. Those who advance this line of thought suggest the practices are so harmful in terms of their physical and emotional consequences, as well as so problematic in terms of their sexist or oppressive implications, that they provide sufficient, rational grounds for the assertion of a universal moral claim--namely, that all forms of FGM are wrong, regardless of the cultural context. However, others point to cultural bias and moral double standards on the part of those who espouse this argument, and have begun to question the received interpretation of the relevant empirical data on FGM as well. In this article I assess the merits of these competing perspectives. I argue that each of them involves valid moral concerns that should be taken seriously in order to move the discussion forward. In doing so, I draw on the biomedical "enhancement" literature in order to develop a novel ethical framework for evaluating FGM (and related interventions--such as female genital "cosmetic" surgery and nontherapeutic male circumcision) that takes into account the genuine harms that are at stake in these procedures, but which does not suffer from being based on cultural or moral double standards.

The means/side-effect distinction in moral cognition: A meta-analysis.

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Feltz, Adam; May, Joshua

2017-09-01

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other factors, such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k=101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference=0.87, 95% CI 0.67-1.06; standardized mean change=0.57, 95% CI 0.44-0.69; log odds ratio=1.59, 95% CI 1.15-2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

At the heart of morality lies neuro-visceral integration: lower cardiac vagal tone predicts utilitarian moral judgment.

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Park, Gewnhi; Kappes, Andreas; Rho, Yeojin; Van Bavel, Jay J

2016-10-01

To not harm others is widely considered the most basic element of human morality. The aversion to harm others can be either rooted in the outcomes of an action (utilitarianism) or reactions to the action itself (deontology). We speculated that the human moral judgments rely on the integration of neural computations of harm and visceral reactions. The present research examined whether utilitarian or deontological aspects of moral judgment are associated with cardiac vagal tone, a physiological proxy for neuro-visceral integration. We investigated the relationship between cardiac vagal tone and moral judgment by using a mix of moral dilemmas, mathematical modeling and psychophysiological measures. An index of bipolar deontology-utilitarianism was correlated with resting heart rate variability (HRV)-an index of cardiac vagal tone-such that more utilitarian judgments were associated with lower HRV. Follow-up analyses using process dissociation, which independently quantifies utilitarian and deontological moral inclinations, provided further evidence that utilitarian (but not deontological) judgments were associated with lower HRV. Our results suggest that the functional integration of neural and visceral systems during moral judgments can restrict outcome-based, utilitarian moral preferences. Implications for theories of moral judgment are discussed. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The Ideal of Moral Autonomy

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Ricardo Marquisio Aguirre

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Some elements of the ideal of moral autonomy are discussed in this paper. Such ideal is a key assumption in social practices focused on normative imputation, particularly morality and law. First, a constructivist conception of normativity is introduced, taking reasons as an essential and non-reducible element, and focused on the conceptual features of moral reasons within the normative domain. Then, an idea of moral autonomy based on the self-constitution is developed including three key features: the possibility of responding to reasons based on shared social expectations; the responsibility for certain scope of actions, according to a set of reasons available to the individual and to their maximum extent of expansion; and the need to preserve autonomy as a purpose unifying the set of autonomous actions of moral agents.

Morale in the market

OpenAIRE

Ognedal, Tone

2014-01-01

There is a growing interest in morale as a potential substitute for sanctions, encouraged by exerimental evidence that people's morale affect their economic decisions. I show that while morale may be a substitute for sanctions for each citizen, it is not a substitute in the market. In a model where employed and self-employed differ in their opportunities for tax evasion, I demonstrate that a higher fraction of tax compliant citizens may reduce social surplus and tax revenues. In contrast to s...

Zygmunt Bauman's poisoned gift of morality.

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Junge, M

2001-03-01

Bauman's attempt to develop a sociological theory of morality turning around fundamental premises of Durkheim's approach fails in the last analysis, since in Bauman's view the 'moral party of two' does not constitute a social situation. It is argued that the necessary condition to think sociologically about morality is the concept of reciprocity and thus one can arrive at a view of morality in postmodernity consistent with Bauman's earlier theory of practice. If Bauman's idea about responsibilty as the core of morality is transformed to the idea of an appeal of history to compassion and is supplemented with the idea of reciprocity as an emerging norm it is possible to outline a sociological theory of moral practice according to postmodern conditions.

In Defense of Deterrence. The Relevance, Morality and Cost-Effectiveness of Nuclear Weapons

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tertrais, Bruno

2011-10-01

Since 1945, nuclear deterrence has been the target of continuous criticism on strategic, legal and moral grounds. But in the past five years, the renewed debate on nuclear disarmament has been accompanied by an increase in such criticism. Efforts led by four US statesmen, or the more radical 'Global Zero' movement, as well as various diplomatic initiatives, have been accompanied by a flurry of new, serious academic studies questioning the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. More than ever, nuclear deterrence is attacked by many, both on the 'Left' and on the 'Right'. To the traditional arguments related to the credibility, the legality or the morality of nuclear deterrence are now added two other factors. First, nuclear weapons, it is argued, have limited value vis-a-vis proliferation and terrorism, and such risks bolster the case for nuclear disarmament. Second, alternatives such as high-precision conventional means and missile defense are said to now be much more effective than they were in the past. What follows is an attempt to respond to those arguments and offer a proper defense of nuclear deterrence. It is essentially devoted to the most traditional and widely used form of nuclear deterrence, that is, deterrence through the threat of nuclear retaliation ('deterrence by punishment'). It begins with revisiting and addressing the two classic criticisms of nuclear deterrence: its validity as a war-prevention mechanism (Part One, 'Nuclear Deterrence Works'), and its legality as well as morality (Part Two, 'Nuclear Deterrence Is Neither Immoral Nor Illegal'). It then goes on to address criticisms which, without being entirely new, have gained in importance in recent years: first, the cost-effectiveness of nuclear deterrence, in particular vis-a-vis so-called possible alternatives such conventional deterrence and missile defense (Part Three, 'Nuclear Deterrence is Cost-Effective'); second, the validity of nuclear deterrence in the context of twenty-first century

Philosophy, Casuistry, and Moral Development

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Fullinwider, Robert K.

2010-01-01

Moral educators have little to learn from the moral theories in which philosophers routinely trade. These theories--including those by Slote, Hume, and Kant--leave behind the concrete world in which the moral educator labors. As interesting as they may be, they merely devise alternative routes to the same destination--to the main general features…

Explaining the moral of the story.

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Walker, Caren M; Lombrozo, Tania

2017-10-01

Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to children, the ability to spontaneously extract "the moral" of a story develops relatively late. Instead, children tend to represent stories at a concrete level - one that highlights surface features and understates more abstract themes. Here we examine the role of explanation in 5- and 6-year-old children's developing ability to learn the moral of a story. Two experiments demonstrate that, relative to a control condition, prompts to explain aspects of a story facilitate children's ability to override salient surface features, abstract the underlying moral, and generalize that moral to novel contexts. In some cases, generating an explanation is more effective than being explicitly told the moral of the story, as in a more traditional pedagogical exchange. These findings have implications for moral comprehension, the role of explanation in learning, and the development of abstract reasoning in early childhood. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Teaching virtue: pedagogical implications of moral psychology.

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Frey, William J

2010-09-01

Moral exemplar studies of computer and engineering professionals have led ethics teachers to expand their pedagogical aims beyond moral reasoning to include the skills of moral expertise. This paper frames this expanded moral curriculum in a psychologically informed virtue ethics. Moral psychology provides a description of character distributed across personality traits, integration of moral value into the self system, and moral skill sets. All of these elements play out on the stage of a social surround called a moral ecology. Expanding the practical and professional curriculum to cover the skills and competencies of moral expertise converts the classroom into a laboratory where students practice moral expertise under the guidance of their teachers. The good news is that this expanded pedagogical approach can be realized without revolutionizing existing methods of teaching ethics. What is required, instead, is a redeployment of existing pedagogical tools such as cases, professional codes, decision-making frameworks, and ethics tests. This essay begins with a summary of virtue ethics and informs this with recent research in moral psychology. After identifying pedagogical means for teaching ethics, it shows how these can be redeployed to meet a broader, skills based agenda. Finally, short module profiles offer concrete examples of the shape this redeployed pedagogical agenda would take in the practical and professional ethics classroom.

Friendly Home and Inhabitants' Morality: Mutual Relationships

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Nartova-Bochaver, Sofya K.; Kuznetsova, Valeriya B.

2018-01-01

The study is aimed at investigating the connection between the friendliness of the home environment and the moral motives' level. The friendliness of the home environment includes two aspects: the number of functions provided by home (functionality) and the congruence of these functions with inhabitants' needs (relevance). The theoretical framework of the study was formed by research and ideas emphasizing the interplay between people and their environments. We hypothesized that the friendliness of the home environment and inhabitants' moral motives would have a reciprocal relationship: the friendlier the home the higher the inhabitants' moral motives' level, and, vice versa, the higher the person's moral motives' level the more positive home image. The respondents were 550 students (25% male). The Home Environment Functionality Questionnaire, the Home Environment Relevance Questionnaire, and the Moral Motivation Model Scale were used. As expected, it was found that the friendliness of the home environment and the inhabitants' moral motives are in reciprocal synergetic relationships. Relevance formed more nuanced correlation patterns with moral motives than functionality did. Functionality predicted moral motives poorly whereas moral motives predicted functionality strongly. Finally, relevance and moral motives were found to be in mutual relationships whereas the perceived functionality was predicted by moral motives only. PMID:29375450

Circular revisit orbits design for responsive mission over a single target

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Li, Taibo; Xiang, Junhua; Wang, Zhaokui; Zhang, Yulin

2016-10-01

The responsive orbits play a key role in addressing the mission of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) because of their capabilities. These capabilities are usually focused on supporting specific targets as opposed to providing global coverage. One subtype of responsive orbits is repeat coverage orbit which is nearly circular in most remote sensing applications. This paper deals with a special kind of repeating ground track orbit, referred to as circular revisit orbit. Different from traditional repeat coverage orbits, a satellite on circular revisit orbit can visit a target site at both the ascending and descending stages in one revisit cycle. This typology of trajectory allows a halving of the traditional revisit time and does a favor to get useful information for responsive applications. However the previous reported numerical methods in some references often cost lots of computation or fail to obtain such orbits. To overcome this difficulty, an analytical method to determine the existence conditions of the solutions to revisit orbits is presented in this paper. To this end, the mathematical model of circular revisit orbit is established under the central gravity model and the J2 perturbation. A constraint function of the circular revisit orbit is introduced, and the monotonicity of that function has been studied. The existent conditions and the number of such orbits are naturally worked out. Taking the launch cost into consideration, optimal design model of circular revisit orbit is established to achieve a best orbit which visits a target twice a day in the morning and in the afternoon respectively for several days. The result shows that it is effective to apply circular revisit orbits in responsive application such as reconnoiter of natural disaster.

The Social Meaning of Inherited Financial Assets. Moral Ambivalences of Intergenerational Transfers

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Merlin Schaeffer

2013-11-01

Full Text Available What do inherited financial assets signify to heirs and testators and how does this shape their conduct? Based on grounded theory methodology and twenty open, thematically structured interviews with US heirs, future heirs and testators, this article explicates a theoretical account that proposes a moral ambivalence as the core category to understand the social meaning of inherited financial assets. In particular, the analysis reveals that the social meaning of inherited assets is a contingent, individual compromise between seeing inherited assets as unachieved wealth and seeing them as family means of support. Being the lifetime achievement of another person, inheritances are, on the one hand, morally dubious and thus difficult to appropriate. Yet in terms of family solidarity, inheritances are "family money," which is used when need arises. Taken from this angle, inheriting is not the transfer of one individual's privately held property to another person, but rather the succession of the social status as support-giver along with the resources that belong to this status to the family's next generation. Heirs need to find a personal compromise between these poles, which always leaves room for interpretation. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1401131

Sense of fairness: not by itself a moral sense and not a foundation of a lot of morality.

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Ramlakhan, Nalini; Brook, Andrew

2013-02-01

Baumard et al. make a good case that a sense of fairness evolved and that showing this requires reciprocity games with choice of partner. However, they oversimplify both morality and the evolution of morality. Where fairness is involved in morality, other things are, too, and fairness is often not involved. In the evolution of morality, other things played a role. Plus, the motive for being fair originally was self-interest, not anything moral.

Expanding the moral circle: farmed fish as objects of moral concern.

Science.gov (United States)

Lund, Vonne; Mejdell, Cecilie M; Röcklinsberg, Helena; Anthony, Ray; Håstein, Tore

2007-05-04

Until recently fish welfare attracted little attention, but international and national legislation and standards of fish welfare are now emerging and an overview of these developments is presented in this study. Whereas animal welfare legislation is based on public morality, animal ethics does not automatically accept public morality as normative and elaborates arguments regarding the way humans should treat animals (referred to as moral standards). In this study we present the most common animal ethics theories. For most of these, sentience is considered a demarcation line for moral concern: if an animal is sentient, then it should be included in the moral circle, i.e. receive moral consideration in its own right and some basic welfare should be ensured. As for fish, research has revealed that the sensory system of teleosts can detect noxious stimuli, and that some kind of phenomenal consciousness, allowing the fish to feel pain, seems to be present. This raises the ethical question as to how much evidence we need in order to act on such indications of fish sentience. A simple risk analysis shows that the probability that fishes can feel pain is not negligible and that if they do indeed experience pain the consequences in terms of the number of suffering individuals are great. We conclude that farmed fish should be given the benefit of the doubt and we should make efforts that their welfare needs are met as well as possible. Finally, the way forward is briefly discussed: efforts must be made to understand what fish welfare means in practical fish farming. This will involve the development of research and education, greater accountability and transparency, compliance with and control of policies, and quality assurance schemes.

Moral Luck from Bernard Williams’ Point of View

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Zahra Khazai ; Fatemeh Tamaddon

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Moral luck is an important issue in meta- ethics. Its conflict to principle of control make challenges to moral moral assessment, moral judgment and moral responsibility. Bernard Williams is the first philosopher who uses the expression "moral luck" and tries to show that the contradiction between “moral” and “luck” is not so serious. Against Kantian’s idea and also our intuitions Williams doesn’t believe that morality is immune of luck and that unlike other values, is accessible to all people. If moral value is accessible to all, according to his idea, it should be not only immune of luck but also supreme. Giving some examples, Williams by concepts like justification, regret and retrospective, shows that morality hasn’t these characteristics. Dividing moral luck into four types: resultant, circumstantial, constitutive and causal, Thomas Nagel puts Williams' moral luck under the first type and criticizes it. This study seeks to explain Bernard Williams’ viewpoint on moral luck. At first it clears types of moral luck, principle of control and its contradiction with moral luck, then after explaining Williams’ account of moral luck criticizes it. Nagel’s criticisms and others show that although they accept the existence of moral luck and also their account is compatible to williams’ but they deny williams’ success in defending of this phenomenon. Finally, despite of all critiques, it seems that Williams’ failure in defense of moral luck didn’t decrease the importance of this matter, but made some stronger ideas were appeared by Thomas Nagel in this regard.

A constructionist review of morality and emotions: no evidence for specific links between moral content and discrete emotions.

Science.gov (United States)

Cameron, C Daryl; Lindquist, Kristen A; Gray, Kurt

2015-11-01

Morality and emotions are linked, but what is the nature of their correspondence? Many "whole number" accounts posit specific correspondences between moral content and discrete emotions, such that harm is linked to anger, and purity is linked to disgust. A review of the literature provides little support for these specific morality-emotion links. Moreover, any apparent specificity may arise from global features shared between morality and emotion, such as affect and conceptual content. These findings are consistent with a constructionist perspective of the mind, which argues against a whole number of discrete and domain-specific mental mechanisms underlying morality and emotion. Instead, constructionism emphasizes the flexible combination of basic and domain-general ingredients such as core affect and conceptualization in creating the experience of moral judgments and discrete emotions. The implications of constructionism in moral psychology are discussed, and we propose an experimental framework for rigorously testing morality-emotion links. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Moral relativism and the premisibility of promoting moral judgments across divergent value systems

OpenAIRE

Nilsen, Kine

2005-01-01

"When in Rome do as the Romans do - but what if the Romans go in for some rather nasty doings" (Blackburn 2003:12)? This is Simon Blackburn's challenge towards relativism. The relativist position is often presented as the ultimate example of moral tolerance promptly stating that "anything goes". Because no universally acknowledged hierarchy of moral vaues can be discovered or referred to, all moral claims are judged only in reference to the social context from which they originate (Shafer-Lan...

Inverting the moral economy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olwig, Mette Fog; Noe, Christine; Kangalawe, Richard

2017-01-01

Governments, donors and investors often promote land acquisitions for forest plantations as global climate change mitigation via carbon sequestration. Investors’ forestry thereby becomes part of a global moral economy imaginary. Using examples from Tanzania we critically examine the global moral...... economy’s narrative foundation, which presents trees as axiomatically ‘green’, ‘idle’ land as waste and economic investments as benefiting the relevant communities. In this way the traditional supposition of the moral economy as invoked by the economic underclass to maintain the basis of their subsistence...

Inverting the moral economy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olwig, Mette Fog; Noe, Christine; Kangalawe, Richard

2015-01-01

Governments, donors and investors often promote land acquisitions for forest plantations as global climate change mitigation via carbon sequestration. Investors’ forestry thereby becomes part of a global moral economy imaginary. Using examples from Tanzania we critically examine the global moral...... economy’s narrative foundation, which presents trees as axiomatically ‘green’, ‘idle’ land as waste and economic investments as benefiting the relevant communities. In this way the traditional supposition of the moral economy as invoked by the economic underclass to maintain the basis of their subsistence...

Human Trafficking and National Morality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

William R. DI PIETRO

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The paper proposes that national morality is an important variable for explaining national anti-trafficking policy. It uses cross country regression analysis to see whether or not empirically national morality is a determinant of anti-trafficking policy. The findings of the paper are consistent with the notion that improved levels of national morality lead to better national anti-trafficking policy. National morality is found to be statistically relevant for national anti-trafficking policy when controlling for the extent of democracy, the share of the private sector in the economy, and the degree of globalization.

Naturalising Ethics: The Implications of Darwinism for the Study of Moral Philosophy

Science.gov (United States)

Cartwright, John

2010-05-01

The nature of moral values has occupied philosophers and educationalists for centuries and a variety of claims have been made about their origin and status. One tradition suggests they may be thoughts in the mind of God; another that they are eternal truths to be reached by rational reflection (much like the truths of mathematics) or alternatively through intuition; another that they are social conventions; and another (from the logical positivists) that they are not verifiable facts but simply the expression of emotional likes and dislikes. Standard introductory texts (e.g., Bowie 2004; Vardy and Grosch 1999) on the subject of ethics rarely mention Darwin or Darwinism (Mepham 2005 is a useful exception) possibly mindful of the fact that the relationship of evolutionary biology to moral questions has had a troublesome history. The effect of this has been that whole generations of moral philosophers have given the biological sciences a wide berth and consequently often remain poorly informed about recent advances in evolutionary thought and the neurosciences. On the other hand, scientists have developed interesting models of the evolution of the moral sentiments and are using new imaging techniques to explore the centres of the brain associated with emotion and motivation, but many have been fearful of committing the naturalistic fallacy and so have steered clear of extrapolating their findings to ethical questions. No one after all wants to be seen to be committing an elementary logical blunder. But in the last 20 years, evolutionary biologists have regained the confidence to explore the implications of evolution for the study of ethics (de Waal 1996; Wilson 1998; Wright 1994; Greene 2003). This paper is designed to encourage those entrusted with the teaching of ethics to be open to the potential of Darwinism as a source of ideas on the origins and status of ethical thought and behaviour. It is also hoped that it will illustrate for science educators the enormous

Moral disengagement in the corporate world.

Science.gov (United States)

White, Jenny; Bandura, Albert; Bero, Lisa A

2009-01-01

We analyze mechanisms of moral disengagement used to eliminate moral consequences by industries whose products or production practices are harmful to human health. Moral disengagement removes the restraint of self-censure from harmful practices. Moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from harmful activities by investing them with socially worthy purposes, sanitizing and exonerating them, displacing and diffusing responsibility, minimizing or disputing harmful consequences, making advantageous comparisons, and disparaging and blaming critics and victims. Internal industry documents and public statements related to the research activities of these industries were coded for modes of moral disengagement by the tobacco, lead, vinyl chloride (VC), and silicosis-producing industries. All but one of the modes of moral disengagement were used by each of these industries. We present possible safeguards designed to protect the integrity of research.

The moral bioenhancement of psychopaths.

Science.gov (United States)

Baccarini, Elvio; Malatesti, Luca

2017-10-01

We argue that the mandatory moral bioenhancement of psychopaths is justified as a prescription of social morality. Moral bioenhancement is legitimate when it is justified on the basis of the reasons of the recipients. Psychopaths expect and prefer that the agents with whom they interact do not have certain psychopathic traits. Particularly, they have reasons to require the moral bioenhancement of psychopaths with whom they must cooperate. By adopting a public reason and a Kantian argument, we conclude that we can justify to a psychopath being the recipient of mandatory moral bioenhancement because he has a reason to require the application of this prescription to other psychopaths. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Beyond the Cognitive and the Virtue Approaches to Moral Education: Some Theoretical Foundations for an Integrated Account of Moral Education.

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Roh, Young-Ran

2000-01-01

Explores theoretical foundation for integrated approach to moral education; discusses rational choice and moral action within human reflective structure; investigates moral values required for integrative approach to moral education; discusses content of moral motivation, including role of emotion and reason. (Contains 15 references.) (PKP)

Social Information Processing, Moral Reasoning, and Emotion Attributions: Relations with Adolescents' Reactive and Proactive Aggression

Science.gov (United States)

Arsenio, William F.; Adams, Erin; Gold, Jason

2009-01-01

Connections between adolescents' social information processing (SIP), moral reasoning, and emotion attributions and their reactive and proactive aggressive tendencies were assessed. One hundred mostly African American and Latino 13- to 18-year-olds from a low-socioeconomic-status (SES) urban community and their high school teachers participated.…

Artificial Intelligence and Moral intelligence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laura Pana

2008-07-01

Full Text Available We discuss the thesis that the implementation of a moral code in the behaviour of artificial intelligent systems needs a specific form of human and artificial intelligence, not just an abstract intelligence. We present intelligence as a system with an internal structure and the structural levels of the moral system, as well as certain characteristics of artificial intelligent agents which can/must be treated as 1- individual entities (with a complex, specialized, autonomous or selfdetermined, even unpredictable conduct, 2- entities endowed with diverse or even multiple intelligence forms, like moral intelligence, 3- open and, even, free-conduct performing systems (with specific, flexible and heuristic mechanisms and procedures of decision, 4 – systems which are open to education, not just to instruction, 5- entities with “lifegraphy”, not just “stategraphy”, 6- equipped not just with automatisms but with beliefs (cognitive and affective complexes, 7- capable even of reflection (“moral life” is a form of spiritual, not just of conscious activity, 8 – elements/members of some real (corporal or virtual community, 9 – cultural beings: free conduct gives cultural value to the action of a ”natural” or artificial being. Implementation of such characteristics does not necessarily suppose efforts to design, construct and educate machines like human beings. The human moral code is irremediably imperfect: it is a morality of preference, of accountability (not of responsibility and a morality of non-liberty, which cannot be remedied by the invention of ethical systems, by the circulation of ideal values and by ethical (even computing education. But such an imperfect morality needs perfect instruments for its implementation: applications of special logic fields; efficient psychological (theoretical and technical attainments to endow the machine not just with intelligence, but with conscience and even spirit; comprehensive technical

Medicine, Morality, and Mortality: The Challenges of Moral Diversity.

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Cherry, Mark J

2015-10-01

This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy assesses the deep and abiding tensions that exist among the competing epistemic perspectives that bear on medicine and morality. Concepts of health and disease, as well as the theoretical framing of medical ethics and health care policy, intersect with an overlapping set of culturally situated communities (scientific, political, moral, and religious), striving to understand and manipulate the world in ways that each finds explanatory, appropriate, or otherwise befitting. The articles explore the complexities of framing public health care policy to guide bioethical decision making in the face of the plurality of ethical viewpoints and moral rationalities--including health enhancing supplements, continuous sedation until death, medical futility, the protection of vulnerable populations, and competing professional obligations. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Aggression and Moral Development: Integrating Social Information Processing and Moral Domain Models

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Arsenio, William F.; Lemerise, Elizabeth A.

2004-01-01

Social information processing and moral domain theories have developed in relative isolation from each other despite their common focus on intentional harm and victimization, and mutual emphasis on social cognitive processes in explaining aggressive, morally relevant behaviors. This article presents a selective summary of these literatures with…

To delegate or not to delegate: Care robots, moral agency and moral responsibility

OpenAIRE

van Wynsberghe, Aimee

2014-01-01

The use of robots in healthcare is on the rise, from robots to assist with lifting, bathing and feeding, to robots used for social companionship. Given that the tradition and professionalization of medicine and nursing has been grounded on the fact that care providers can assume moral responsibility for the outcome of medical interventions, we must ask whether or not a robot can assume moral responsibility for the outcome of its actions. In this paper I discuss the issue of moral agency and m...

The Moral Shadows of Shame and Contempt

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rodogno, Raffaele

2018-01-01

Are shame and contempt moral, immoral, or non-moral emotions? The answer, I argue in this paper, is less than straightforward.......Are shame and contempt moral, immoral, or non-moral emotions? The answer, I argue in this paper, is less than straightforward....

INTERVENING DEONTOLOGI MORAL EVALUATION AUDITOR DALAM PENGARUHNYA PEMBUATAN KEPUTUSAN BERBASIS ETIS DENGAN PERKEMBANGAN MORAL COGNITIVE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emrinaldi Nur DP

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pengaruh time pressure, risiko audit, perkembangan moral kognitif dan deontologi evaluasi moral yang menjadi tanda dini prosedur audit off dari karakteristik individu sisi dalam membuat keputusan etis. Penelitian ini menggunakan sikap berhenti prematur prosedur audit ketergantungan . Baru-baru ini sikap tidak etis ini tampaknya menjadi hal yang berisiko karena menunjukkan bahwa auditor tidak konsisten tentang bertanggung jawab dan etika mereka. Populasi dari penelitian ini adalah seluruh auditor independen yang bekerja di KAP di Pekanbaru, Padang dan Batam. Sedangkan sampel adalah mereka yang bekerja di KAP kotaPekanbaru, Padang dan Batam. Pengambilan sampel dilakukan dengan metode purposive sampling. Jumlah sampel yang digunakan adalah 69 responden. Data dianalisis dengan teknik analisis PLS (Partial Least Square dengan menggunakan software SmartPLS. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa tekanan waktu berpengaruh signifikan untuk mengaudit tanda dini prosedur off, pembangunan dan tata susila moral yang evaluasi moral yang kognitif berpengaruh negatif tidak signifikan untuk mengaudit tanda dini prosedur off. Selain itu, ada juga hubungan yang signifikan antara perkembangan moral kognitif seseorang dan deontologi evaluasi moral. Kelima T-Statistic tes secara bersamaan tidak berpengaruh untuk mengaudit tanda dini prosedur off. Hanya 23,8 % variabilitas membangun berhenti prematur sikap prosedur audit, dan sisanya 76,2 % explaine oleh variabel lain di luar penelitian ini. The purpose of this research is to find out the effect of time pressure, audit risk, cognitive moral development and deontology moral evaluation into audit procedure’s premature sign off from individual characteristic’ side in making ethical decision. This research used premature stopping attitude of audit procedure as the dependence. Recently, this unethical attitude seems to be risky thing because it indicates that auditors are not

The moral problem of health disparities.

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Jones, Cynthia M

2010-04-01

Health disparities exist along lines of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic class in US society. I argue that we should work to eliminate these health disparities because their existence is a moral wrong that needs to be addressed. Health disparities are morally wrong because they exemplify historical injustices. Contractarian ethics, Kantian ethics, and utilitarian ethics all provide theoretical justification for viewing health disparities as a moral wrong, as do several ethical principles of primary importance in bioethics. The moral consequences of health disparities are also troubling and further support the claim that these disparities are a moral wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides additional support that health disparities are a moral wrong, as does an analogy with the generally accepted duty to provide equal access to education. In this article, I also consider and respond to 3 objections to my thesis.

Gender differences in moral judgment and the evaluation of gender-specified moral agents.

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Capraro, Valerio; Sippel, Jonathan

2017-11-01

Whether, and if so, how exactly gender differences are manifested in moral judgment has recently been at the center of much research on moral decision making. Previous research suggests that women are more deontological than men in personal, but not impersonal, moral dilemmas. However, typical personal and impersonal moral dilemmas differ along two dimensions: Personal dilemmas are more emotionally salient than impersonal ones and involve a violation of Kant's practical imperative that humans must never be used as a mere means, but only as ends. Thus, it remains unclear whether the reported gender difference is due to emotional salience or to the violation of the practical imperative. To answer this question, we explore gender differences in three moral dilemmas: a typical personal dilemma, a typical impersonal dilemma, and an intermediate dilemma, which is not as emotionally salient as typical personal moral dilemmas, but contains an equally strong violation of Kant's practical imperative. While we replicate the result that women tend to embrace deontological ethics more than men in personal, but not impersonal, dilemmas, we find no gender differences in the intermediate situation. This suggests that gender differences in these type of dilemmas are driven by emotional salience, and not by the violation of the practical imperative. Additionally, we also explore whether people think that women should behave differently than men in these dilemmas. Across all three dilemmas, we find no statistically significant differences about how people think men and women should behave.

Moral fictions and medical ethics.

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Miller, Franklin G; Truog, Robert D; Brock, Dan W

2010-11-01

Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices is based on a series of moral fictions - motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end-of-life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions is radically mistaken. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

A comparison of four measures of moral reasoning.

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Wilmoth, G H; McFarland, S G

1977-08-01

Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Scale, Gilligan et al.'s Sexual Moral Judgment Scale, Maitland and Goldman's Objective Moral Judgment Scale, and Hogan's Maturity of Moral Judgment Scale, were examined for reliability and inter-scale relationships. All measures except the Objective Moral Judgment Scale had good reliabilities. The obtained relations between the Moral Judgment Scale and the Sexual Moral Judgment Scale replicated previous research. The Objective Moral Judgment Scale was not found to validly assess the Kohlberg stages. The Maturity of Moral Judgment Scale scores were strongly related to the subjects's classification on the Kohlberg stages, and the scale appears to offer a reliable, quickly scored, and valid index of mature thought, although the scale's continuous scores do not permit clear stage classification.

The Relationship between Moral Decision Making and Patterns of Consolidation and Transition in Moral Judgment Development.

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Thoma, Stephen J.; Rest, James R.

1999-01-01

Assessed the relationship between a measure of consolidation and transition in moral-judgment development and utility of moral concepts in sociomoral decision making in multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal samples. Found that participants' reliance on a Kohlbergian moral framework was highest during periods of consolidation and lowest during…

Towards a New Paradigm of Moral Personhood

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Frimer, Jeremy A.; Walker, Lawrence J.

2008-01-01

Moral psychology is between paradigms. Kohlberg's model of moral rationality has proved inadequate in explaining action; yet its augmentation--moral personality--awaits empirical embodiment. This article addresses some critical issues in developing a comprehensive empirical paradigm of moral personhood. Is a first-person or a third-person…

Disclosure of HIV status between parents and children in Uganda in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

While disclosure of HIV sero-status is encouraged in the management of the HIV and AIDS epidemic, it remains a challenge, especially among family members. This article examines the moral dilemmas and pragmatic incentives surrounding disclosure of HIV status in contemporary Uganda. Our findings are based on 12 ...

On the role of attention and emotion in morality: attentional control modulates unrelated disgust in moral judgments.

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Van Dillen, Lotte F; van der Wal, Reine C; van den Bos, Kees

2012-09-01

The emotion of disgust can influence people's moral judgments, even if this emotion objectively is unrelated to the moral judgment in question. The present work demonstrates that attentional control regulates this effect. In three studies, disgust was induced. In an unrelated part of the studies, participants then judged a moral transgression. Disgust resulted in more severe moral judgments when attentional control (either measured by means of individual predisposition or manipulated with experimental control) was weak as opposed to strong (Studies 1-3). Findings further showed that attentional control mediated the positive relation between the intensity of participants' disgust responses and the severity of their moral judgments (Study 2). Moreover, attentional control has its effects through the regulation of affective processing (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that unrelated influences of disgust on moral judgments are contingent on the attention system.

Moral Hazard in Pediatrics.

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Brunnquell, Donald; Michaelson, Christopher M

2016-07-01

"Moral hazard" is a term familiar in economics and business ethics that illuminates why rational parties sometimes choose decisions with bad moral outcomes without necessarily intending to behave selfishly or immorally. The term is not generally used in medical ethics. Decision makers such as parents and physicians generally do not use the concept or the word in evaluating ethical dilemmas. They may not even be aware of the precise nature of the moral hazard problem they are experiencing, beyond a general concern for the patient's seemingly excessive burden. This article brings the language and logic of moral hazard to pediatrics. The concept reminds us that decision makers in this context are often not the primary party affected by their decisions. It appraises the full scope of risk at issue when decision makers decide on behalf of others and leads us to separate, respect, and prioritize the interests of affected parties.

Norm Acquisition, Rational Judgment and Moral Particularism

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Westphal, Kenneth R.

2012-01-01

Moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, has become prominent both in moral philosophy and in philosophy of education. This article re-examines Nussbaum's case for particularism, based on Sophocles' "Antigone", because her stress on sensitive appreciation of circumstantial specifics is…

Seeking a Multi-Construct Model of Morality

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McDaniel, Brenda L.; Grice, James W.; Eason, E. Allen

2010-01-01

The present study explored a multi-construct model of moral development. Variables commonly seen in the moral development literature, such as family interactions, spiritual life, ascription to various sources of moral authority, empathy, shame, guilt and moral judgement competence, were investigated. Results from the current study support previous…

Teoría moral y anomia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Riba, Jordi

2008-12-01

Full Text Available From the distinction between the concept of anomie of Durkheim and Guyau, is exposed as Guyau taking that concept describes the need of the moral theory to take a turn in his conception. For Guyau the moral stops configured as a universal law, to become an individualistic conception of morality. For Guyau the process is not only inevitable, also it is desirable.

A partir de la distinción entre la concepción de anomia de Durkheim y Guyau, en este texto se expone como Guyau tomando dicho concepto describe la necesidad que tiene la teoría moral de dar un giro en su concepción. Para Guyau la moral deja de configurarse como ley universal, para convertirse en una concepción individualista de la moral. Para Guyau el proceso no solo es inevitable sino deseable.

A person-centered approach to moral judgment.

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Uhlmann, Eric Luis; Pizarro, David A; Diermeier, Daniel

2015-01-01

Both normative theories of ethics in philosophy and contemporary models of moral judgment in psychology have focused almost exclusively on the permissibility of acts, in particular whether acts should be judged on the basis of their material outcomes (consequentialist ethics) or on the basis of rules, duties, and obligations (deontological ethics). However, a longstanding third perspective on morality, virtue ethics, may offer a richer descriptive account of a wide range of lay moral judgments. Building on this ethical tradition, we offer a person-centered account of moral judgment, which focuses on individuals as the unit of analysis for moral evaluations rather than on acts. Because social perceivers are fundamentally motivated to acquire information about the moral character of others, features of an act that seem most informative of character often hold more weight than either the consequences of the act or whether a moral rule has been broken. This approach, we argue, can account for numerous empirical findings that are either not predicted by current theories of moral psychology or are simply categorized as biases or irrational quirks in the way individuals make moral judgments. © The Author(s) 2014.

Atypical moral judgment following traumatic brain injury

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Angelica Muresan

2012-07-01

Full Text Available Previous research has shown an association between emotions, particularly social emotions, and moral judgments. Some studies suggested an association between blunted emotion and the utilitarian moral judgments observed in patients with prefrontal lesions. In order to investigate how prefrontal brain damage affects moral judgment, we asked a sample of 29 TBI patients (12 females and 17 males and 41 healthy participants (16 females and 25 males to judge 22 hypothetical dilemmas split into three different categories (non-moral, impersonal and personal moral. The TBI group presented a higher proportion of affirmative (utilitarian responses for personal moral dilemmas when compared to controls, suggesting an atypical pattern of utilitarian judgements. We also found a negative association between the performance on recognition of social emotions and the proportion of affirmative responses on personal moral dilemmas. These results suggested that the preference for utilitarian responses in this type of dilemmas is accompanied by difficulties in social emotion recognition. Overall, our findings suggest that deontological moral judgments are associated with normal social emotion processing and that frontal lobe plays an important role in both emotion and moral judgment.

Moral Punishment in Everyday Life.

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Hofmann, Wilhelm; Brandt, Mark J; Wisneski, Daniel C; Rockenbach, Bettina; Skitka, Linda J

2018-05-01

The present research investigated event-related, contextual, demographic, and dispositional predictors of the desire to punish perpetrators of immoral deeds in daily life, as well as connections among the desire to punish, moral emotions, and momentary well-being. The desire to punish was reliably predicted by linear gradients of social closeness to both the perpetrator (negative relationship) and the victim (positive relationship). Older rather than younger adults, conservatives rather than people with other political orientations, and individuals high rather than low in moral identity desired to punish perpetrators more harshly. The desire to punish was related to state anger, disgust, and embarrassment, and these were linked to lower momentary well-being. However, the negative effect of these emotions on well-being was partially compensated by a positive indirect pathway via heightened feelings of moral self-worth. Implications of the present field data for moral punishment research and the connection between morality and well-being are discussed.

On The Limits of Rational Moral Education.

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Leming, James S.

1981-01-01

Explores reasons for the current ineffectiveness of moral education and offers an alternative perspective on the proper purpose and methods for moral education. This ideal moral education is based primarily on the belief that social interactions during childhood are highly significant in the development of morality and on the functionalist…

Implicational Schemata and the Attribution of Morality.

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Reeder, Glenn D.; Spores, John M.

Attribution of a disposition or trait to a person asserts information about the pattern of that person's behavior. Past research has suggested that a moral disposition implies only moral behavior, while an immoral disposition implies both moral and immoral behavior. The effect of these implicational schemata on attributions of morality was…

"Living Drawing": Aesthetic Teaching for Moral Artists

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Kim, Jiwon

2016-01-01

With its inherent attributes such as qualitative immediacy, imaginativeness, and embodiment, John Dewey's concept of aesthetic experience makes a difference in moral education, in the ways of empathetic moral perception, moral reasoning, and moral action. If it matters then how can we help students gain aesthetic experience? By analyzing teacher…

Moral Reasoning and Attitudes towards Refugees

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kutlaca, Maja; Kuppens, T.; Blikmans, Martijn; Gootjes, Frank

2017-01-01

This study examines the moral underpinnings of attitudes towards refugees, by applying insights from moral reasoning theories. We created and in two pilot studies validated a short self-report measure of two moral reasoning styles. Next, we used this measure to investigate perceived threats,

The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis: Moral Externalization and the Evolution of Human Cooperation.

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Stanford, P Kyle

2017-07-06

A range of empirical findings are first used to more precisely characterize our distinctive tendency to objectify or externalize moral demands, and it is then argued that this salient feature of our moral cognition represents a profound puzzle for evolutionary approaches to human moral psychology that existing proposals do not help to resolve. It is then proposed that such externalization facilitated a broader shift to a vastly more cooperative form of social life by establishing and maintaining a connection between the extent to which an agent is herself motivated by a given moral norm and the extent to which she uses conformity to that same norm as a criterion in evaluating candidate partners in social interaction generally. This connection ensures the correlated interaction necessary to protect those prepared to adopt increasingly cooperative, altruistic, and other prosocial norms of interaction from exploitation, especially as such norms were applied in novel ways and/or to novel circumstances and as the rapid establishment of new norms allowed us to reap still greater rewards from hypercooperation. A wide range of empirical findings are then used to support this hypothesis, showing why the status we ascribe to moral demands and considerations exhibits the otherwise puzzling combination of objective and subjective elements that it does as well as showing how the need to effectively advertise our externalization of particular moral commitments generates features of our social interaction so familiar that they rarely strike us as standing in need of any explanation in the first place.

Moral parochialism and contextual contingency across seven societies

Science.gov (United States)

Fessler, Daniel M. T.; Barrett, H. Clark; Kanovsky, Martin; Stich, Stephen; Holbrook, Colin; Henrich, Joseph; Bolyanatz, Alexander H.; Gervais, Matthew M.; Gurven, Michael; Kushnick, Geoff; Pisor, Anne C.; von Rueden, Christopher; Laurence, Stephen

2015-01-01

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. PMID:26246545

Moral parochialism and contextual contingency across seven societies.

Science.gov (United States)

Fessler, Daniel M T; Barrett, H Clark; Kanovsky, Martin; Stich, Stephen; Holbrook, Colin; Henrich, Joseph; Bolyanatz, Alexander H; Gervais, Matthew M; Gurven, Michael; Kushnick, Geoff; Pisor, Anne C; von Rueden, Christopher; Laurence, Stephen

2015-08-22

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. © 2015 The Authors.

The Relevance of Cosmopolitanism for Moral Education

Science.gov (United States)

Merry, Michael S.; de Ruyter, Doret J.

2011-01-01

In this article we defend a moral conception of cosmopolitanism and its relevance for moral education. Our moral conception of cosmopolitanism presumes that persons possess an inherent dignity in the Kantian sense and therefore they should be recognised as ends-in-themselves. We argue that cosmopolitan ideals can inspire moral educators to awaken…

Emotions and clinical ethics support. A moral inquiry into emotions in moral case deliberation.

Science.gov (United States)

Molewijk, Bert; Kleinlugtenbelt, Dick; Pugh, Scott M; Widdershoven, Guy

2011-12-01

Emotions play an important part in moral life. Within clinical ethics support (CES), one should take into account the crucial role of emotions in moral cases in clinical practice. In this paper, we present an Aristotelian approach to emotions. We argue that CES can help participants deal with emotions by fostering a joint process of investigation of the role of emotions in a case. This investigation goes beyond empathy with and moral judgment of the emotions of the case presenter. In a moral case deliberation, the participants are invited to place themselves in the position of the case presenter and to investigate their own emotions in the situation. It is about critically assessing the facts in the case that cause the emotion and the related (moral) thoughts that accompany the emotion. It is also about finding the right emotion in a given situation and finding the right balance in dealing with that emotion. These steps in the moral inquiry give rise to group learning. It is a process of becoming open towards the perspectives of others, leading to new insights into what is an appropriate emotion in the specific situation. We show how this approach works in moral case deliberation. A physician presents a situation in which he is faced with a pregnant woman who is about to deliver multiple extremely premature infants at the threshold of viability. The moral deliberation of the case and the emotions therein leads to the participants' conclusion that "compassion" is a more adequate emotion than "sadness". The emotion "sadness" is pointed towards the tragedy that is happening to the woman. The emotion "compassion" is pointed towards the woman; it combines consideration and professional responsibility. Through the shift towards compassion, participants experienced more creativity and freedom to deal with the sad situation and to support the woman. The paper ends with an analysis and reflection on the deliberation process. In the conclusion we argue for more attention to

Teaching Moral Education: Principles of Instruction.

Science.gov (United States)

Doris, Dennis A.

1978-01-01

A nonindoctrinating, sound theoretical and practical base upon which to develop the teaching of moral education relies on several principles: discussion of moral conflict situations; knowledge of the student's stage of moral development; guidance of developmental matches; encouragement of role taking; and focus on rational thinking. (JMF)

Constructing Morality : Transcendental Arguments in Ethics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Maagt, S.

2017-01-01

How are moral claims justified? And is there an objective basis for morality? These fundamental questions of ethics are the central questions of this thesis. I explore and offer a partial defense of a so-called Kantian constructivist account of morality. I define Kantian constructivism as the

Learning a commonsense moral theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Kleiman-Weiner, Max; Saxe, Rebecca; Tenenbaum, Joshua B

2017-10-01

We introduce a computational framework for understanding the structure and dynamics of moral learning, with a focus on how people learn to trade off the interests and welfare of different individuals in their social groups and the larger society. We posit a minimal set of cognitive capacities that together can solve this learning problem: (1) an abstract and recursive utility calculus to quantitatively represent welfare trade-offs; (2) hierarchical Bayesian inference to understand the actions and judgments of others; and (3) meta-values for learning by value alignment both externally to the values of others and internally to make moral theories consistent with one's own attachments and feelings. Our model explains how children can build from sparse noisy observations of how a small set of individuals make moral decisions to a broad moral competence, able to support an infinite range of judgments and decisions that generalizes even to people they have never met and situations they have not been in or observed. It also provides insight into the causes and dynamics of moral change across time, including cases when moral change can be rapidly progressive, changing values significantly in just a few generations, and cases when it is likely to move more slowly. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotion and moral judgment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Avramova, Y.R.; Inbar, Y.

2013-01-01

Research in psychology and cognitive science has consistently demonstrated the importance of emotion in a wide range of everyday judgments, including moral judgment. Most current accounts of moral judgment hold that emotion plays an important role, but the nature and extent of this role are still

The Breakdown of Morale

NARCIS (Netherlands)

N. Vikander (Nick)

2009-01-01

textabstractThis paper studies how morale in teams can break down. It interprets high morale as team members working together productively, either because of a sense of fairness or because of implicit incentives from repeated interactions. Team members learn that lay-offs will occur at a fixed

Development of Adolescent Moral and Civic Identity through Community Service: A Qualitative Study in Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Huixuan; Yang, Min

2018-01-01

This article draws on Marcia's model that defines four statuses of adolescents' identity formation to examine adolescent moral and civic identity formation. Interviews were conducted with 23 students at three Hong Kong senior secondary schools to address the following research question: How does community service help adolescents develop their…

The argument from moral psychology

OpenAIRE

Milevski, Voin

2015-01-01

The argument from moral psychology is one of the strongest arguments that non-cognitivists use against cognitivism-the metaethical position according to which our moral judgements express beliefs. According to this argument, once we put together the Humean theory of motivation and motivational internalism, we yield the conclusion that cognitivism cannot represent the correct view about the semantic function of moral discourse. I will first attempt to show that a neurological syndrome, called ...

KANTIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM IN MORAL THEORY

OpenAIRE

Rawls, John

2005-01-01

The author outlines the chief features of the constructivist moral conception in its Kantian variant and argues that such a moral conception had been unjustifiably looked over in relation to the traditional moral conceptions such as utilitariarism, intuitionism and perfectionism. The central idea of Kantian constructivism is linking certain notions of the person and principles of justice that should regulate basic social institutions by means of the constructivist procedure. The author’s star...

Origins of human cooperation and morality.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomasello, Michael; Vaish, Amrisha

2013-01-01

From an evolutionary perspective, morality is a form of cooperation. Cooperation requires individuals either to suppress their own self-interest or to equate it with that of others. We review recent research on the origins of human morality, both phylogenetic (research with apes) and ontogenetic (research with children). For both time frames we propose a two-step sequence: first a second-personal morality in which individuals are sympathetic or fair to particular others, and second an agent-neutral morality in which individuals follow and enforce group-wide social norms. Human morality arose evolutionarily as a set of skills and motives for cooperating with others, and the ontogeny of these skills and motives unfolds in part naturally and in part as a result of sociocultural contexts and interactions.

A philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress.

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Tessy A; McCullough, Laurence B

2015-02-01

Moral distress is one of the core topics of clinical ethics. Although there is a large and growing empirical literature on the psychological aspects of moral distress, scholars, and empirical investigators of moral distress have recently called for greater conceptual clarity. To meet this recognized need, we provide a philosophical taxonomy of the categories of what we call ethically significant moral distress: the judgment that one is not able, to differing degrees, to act on one's moral knowledge about what one ought to do. We begin by unpacking the philosophical components of Andrew Jameton's original formulation from his landmark 1984 work and identify two key respects in which that formulation remains unclear: the origins of moral knowledge and impediments to acting on that moral knowledge. We then selectively review subsequent literature that shows that there is more than one concept of moral distress and that explores the origin of the values implicated in moral distress and impediments to acting on those values. This review sets the stage for identifying the elements of a philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress. The taxonomy uses these elements to create six categories of ethically significant moral distress: challenges to, threats to, and violations of professional integrity; and challenges to, threats to, and violations of individual integrity. We close with suggestions about how the proposed philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress sheds light on the concepts of moral residue and crescendo effect of moral distress and how the proposed taxonomy might usefully guide prevention of and future qualitative and quantitative empirical research on ethically significant moral distress. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The moral problem of worse actors

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