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.

THE IMPACT OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ON THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY

OpenAIRE

Umaru Zubairu

2016-01-01

Two decades of financial scandals have seriously damaged the credibility of accountants as guardians of financial information. To repair this credibility, the Malaysian government released a blueprint that mandated Malaysian educational institutions to produce morally competent professionals. This study assessed the progress of Malaysian universities in meeting this important mandate by evaluating the moral development of accounting students enrolled at the International Islami...

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.

Rethinking the objectivity of ethics

OpenAIRE

Kurth, Charles Burke

2011-01-01

Commonsense says that morality is objective. But skeptics deny that the normativity and fallibility that characterize this objectivity really exist. I disagree. I develop an account of moral facts that vindicates the objectivity of ethics. Moreover, I do this without relying on either the strong foundational claims of realism and constructivism, or the revisionary logic of expressivism. Instead, I build from a moral psychology that is modest and familiar--one that focuses on the distinctive, ...

Relativism, Objectivity and Moral Judgment.

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Partington, Geoffrey

1979-01-01

Reaction against the naive moral absolutism of past historical writing has frequently led to unconditional moral and cultural relativism which is equally dangerous. A viable solution is contingent relativism in historical judgments, combining explicit and examinable criteria of human values and concern for contexts of time and place. (Author/SJL)

The metaphysics of morality : a dispositionalist account

OpenAIRE

Robinson, William Luke

2005-01-01

Each of the following theses is independently plausible: Principle. Morality is principled: right-making factors or moral reasons entail corresponding moral principles. Conflict. Conflicts of moral obligation are possible and metaphysically unproblematic (even if they can be quite difficult--or even impossible--to resolve). Holism. Whether a given factor contributes to the rightness or wrongness of an action may depend on factors other than itself; hence, what is a right-making factor or mora...

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.

A study about the relation between religiousness and the moral reasoning of accounting undergraduate students

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Leandro da Costa Santos

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to verify the relation between religiousness and the moral reasoning of Accounting undergraduate students. To achieve that, the religiousness and moral reasoning of the subjects were first described and, subsequently, correlated. In order to measure religiousness, the Faith Maturity Scale developed by Benson, Donahue, Erickson (1993 was used. The measuring of moral reasoning, on the other hand, was carried out using the Defining Issues Test -2 created by Rest and Narvaez (1988. The sample was drawn from 67 Accounting undergraduate students, in their last semester of College, from two universities in Paraíba, and the internal consistency reliability test of the research instruments was carried out using the model defined by Cronbach (1951. To verify whether there is a relation between religiousness and moral reasoning, the Spearman (rs non-parametric correlation coefficient was used. The main results revealed that the majority of the subjects have their faith classified as integrated. As for moral reasoning, most of the subjects were classified in the level of maintaining the norms, which indicates that, for the bulk of subjects, the conformity to the laws and norms is the most important thing. Still on moral reasoning, it has been shown that, when analysed by type, most individuals fall into type 2 (personal interest, but in transition, with the important observation that individuals of this type, when involved in moral dilemmas, tend to prioritise their own interests. With regards to the analysis of the relation between religiousness and moral reasoning, it’s been demonstrated that there is no relevant evidence that confirms it, since the relation between both variables was not significant.

Moral differences in deep continuous palliative sedation and euthanasia.

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Juth, Niklas; Lindblad, Anna; Lynöe, Niels; Sjöstrand, Manne; Helgesson, Gert

2013-06-01

In palliative care there is much debate about which end of life treatment strategies are legitimate and which are not. Some writers argue that there is an important moral dividing-line between palliative sedation and euthanasia, making the first acceptable and the latter not. We have questioned this. In a recent article, Lars Johan Materstvedt has argued that we are wrong on two accounts: first, that we fail to account properly for the moral difference between continuous deep palliative sedation at the end of life and euthanasia, and, second, that we fail to account properly for the difference between permanent loss of consciousness and death. Regarding the first objection, we argue that Materstvedt misses the point: we agree that there is a difference in terms of intentions between continuous deep palliative sedation and euthanasia, but we question whether this conceptual difference makes up for a moral difference. Materstvedt fails to show that it does. Regarding the second objection, we argue that if nothing else is at stake than the value of the patient's life, permanent unconsciousness and death are morally indifferent.

Influencers of ethical beliefs and the impact on moral distress and conscientious objection.

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Davis, Shoni; Schrader, Vivian; Belcheir, Marcia J

2012-11-01

Considering a growing nurse shortage and the need for qualified nurses to handle increasingly complex patient care situations, how ethical beliefs are influenced and the consequences that can occur when moral conflicts of right and wrong arise need to be explored. The aim of this study was to explore influencers identified by nurses as having the most impact on the development of their ethical beliefs and whether these influencers might impact levels of moral distress and the potential for conscientious objection. Nurses whose ethical beliefs were most influenced by their religious beliefs scored higher in levels of moral distress and demonstrated greater differences in areas of conscientious objection than did nurses who developed their ethical beliefs from influencers such as family values, life and work experience, political views or the professional code of ethics.

Religiosity And Moral Competence: A Study Of Malaysia's Accounting Students

OpenAIRE

Zubairu, Umaru Mustapha; Dauda, Chetubo Kuta; Paiko, Isah Imam; Sakariyau, Olalekan Busra

2017-01-01

In the earliest part of the twenty-first century, the world was rocked by several financial scandals; from Enron to WorldCom; Tyco to Parmalat; Arthur Andersen to Shell, and more recently, the global financial crisis; these scandals directed the world’s attention towards the seemingly ever-growing moral malaise amongst accountants and business people. In order to address this alarming increase in unethical and immoral behaviours among accountants and business people in Malaysia, the governmen...

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…

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.

Morality is real, objective, and supernatural.

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Miller, Christian B

2016-11-01

The goal of this paper is to briefly introduce and defend the idea that God is the source of our moral obligations. In contrast to Michael Shermer's paper, which defends a naturalistic position about the foundations of morality, this approach is explicitly supernaturalistic. The paper begins by defining how "God" will be understood, and then spells out some of the details of how, on the proposed view, moral obligations are to depend upon God. The third section briefly reviews some of the leading arguments for this view, before the paper concludes with a discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

The paradox of conscientious objection and the anemic concept of 'conscience': downplaying the role of moral integrity in health care.

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Giubilini, Alberto

2014-06-01

Conscientious objection in health care is a form of compromise whereby health care practitioners can refuse to take part in safe, legal, and beneficial medical procedures to which they have a moral opposition (for instance abortion). Arguments in defense of conscientious objection in medicine are usually based on the value of respect for the moral integrity of practitioners. I will show that philosophical arguments in defense of conscientious objection based on respect for such moral integrity are extremely weak and, if taken seriously, lead to consequences that we would not (and should not) accept. I then propose that the best philosophical argument that defenders of conscientious objection in medicine can consistently deploy is one that appeals to (some form of) either moral relativism or subjectivism. I suggest that, unless either moral relativism or subjectivism is a valid theory--which is exactly what many defenders of conscientious objection (as well as many others) do not think--the role of moral integrity and conscientious objection in health care should be significantly downplayed and left out of the range of ethically relevant considerations.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

Morale and Productivity

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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

The moral emotions: a social-functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt.

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Hutcherson, Cendri A; Gross, James J

2011-04-01

Recent research has highlighted the important role of emotion in moral judgment and decision making (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). What is less clear is whether distinctions should be drawn among specific moral emotions. Although some have argued for differences among anger, disgust, and contempt (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), others have suggested that these terms may describe a single undifferentiated emotional response to morally offensive behavior (Nabi, 2002). In this article, we take a social-functionalist perspective, which makes the prediction that these emotions should be differentiable both in antecedent appraisals and in consequent actions and judgments. Studies 1-3 tested and found support for our predictions concerning distinctions among antecedent appraisals, including (a) a more general role for disgust than has been previously been described, (b) an effect of self-relevance on anger but not other emotions, and (c) a role for contempt in judging incompetent actions. Studies 4 and 5 tested and found support for our specific predictions concerning functional outcomes, providing evidence that these emotions are associated with different consequences. Taken together, these studies support a social-functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt and lay the foundation for future research on the negative interpersonal emotions.

From moral agents to moral factors: the structural ethics approach

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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

Brogaard's Moral Contextualism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

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...

Advancing Kohlberg through Codes: Using Professional Codes To Reach the Moral Reasoning Objective in Undergraduate Ethics Courses.

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Whitehouse, Ginny; Ingram, Michael T.

The development of moral reasoning as a key course objective in undergraduate communication ethics classes can be accomplished by the critical and deliberate introduction of professional codes of ethics and the internalization of values found in those codes. Notably, "fostering moral reasoning skills" and "surveying current ethical…

PENGARUH PERILAKU TIDAK JUJUR DAN KOMPETENSI MORAL TERHADAP KECURANGAN AKADEMIK (ACADEMIC FRAUD MAHASISWA AKUNTANSI

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Dyon Santoso

2017-02-01

Full Text Available The objectives of this research is to analyze and provide empirical proves about the influences of dishonesty behavior dan moral competence towards academic fraud of accounting students. The variable used in the research are dishonesty behavior and moral competence. The population of the research is the accounting students from Trisakti University, Bina Nusantara University, and Indonesia Banking School. 242 respondents has been involved as sampels in the research. Data used in the research consist of primary data collected using a questionaire.  Multiple regression analysis will be used in the data analysis to test the hypotheses, and the data will be tested using the 20 version of SPSS The result of the test shows us that dishonesty behavior is proven to have an effect on the academic fraud of accounting students. While moral competence has not shown an effect on the academic fraud of accounting students. Key words : Dishonesty Behavior, Moral Competence, Academic Fraud

"Righteous minds" in health care: measurement and explanatory value of social intuitionism in accounting for the moral judgments in a sample of U.S. physicians.

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Tilburt, Jon C; James, Katherine M; Jenkins, Sarah M; Antiel, Ryan M; Curlin, Farr A; Rasinski, Kenneth A

2013-01-01

The broad diversity in physicians' judgments on controversial health care topics may reflect differences in religious characteristics, political ideologies, and moral intuitions. We tested an existing measure of moral intuitions in a new population (U.S. physicians) to assess its validity and to determine whether physicians' moral intuitions correlate with their views on controversial health care topics as well as other known predictors of these intuitions such as political affiliation and religiosity. In 2009, we mailed an 8-page questionnaire to a random sample of 2000 practicing U.S. physicians from all specialties. The survey included the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ30), along with questions on physicians' judgments about controversial health care topics including abortion and euthanasia (no moral objection, some moral objection, strong moral objection). A total of 1032 of 1895 (54%) physicians responded. Physicians' overall mean moral foundations scores were 3.5 for harm, 3.3 for fairness, 2.8 for loyalty, 3.2 for authority, and 2.7 for sanctity on a 0-5 scale. Increasing levels of religious service attendance, having a more conservative political ideology, and higher sanctity scores remained the greatest positive predictors of respondents objecting to abortion (β = 0.12, 0.23, 0.14, respectively, each p<0.001) as well as euthanasia (β = 0.08, 0.17, and 0.17, respectively, each p<0.001), even after adjusting for demographics. Higher authority scores were also significantly negatively associated with objection to abortion (β = -0.12, p<0.01), but not euthanasia. These data suggest that the relative importance physicians place on the different categories of moral intuitions may predict differences in physicians' judgments about morally controversial topics and may interrelate with ideology and religiosity. Further examination of the diversity in physicians' moral intuitions may prove illustrative in describing and addressing moral differences that

Sentimentalist Moral Education

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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…

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

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)

Hume, liberty and the object of moral evaluation

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André Klaudat

2003-12-01

Full Text Available Hume's project concerning the conflict between liberty and necessity is ";reconciliatory";. But what is the nature of Hume's project? Does he solve a problem in metaphysics only? And when Hume says that the dispute between the doctrines of liberty and necessity is merely verbal, does he mean that there is no genuine metaphysical dispute between the doctrines? In the present essay I argue for: (1 there is room for liberty in Hume's philosophy, and not only because the position is pro forma compatibilist, even though this has importance for the recognition that Hume's main concern when discussing the matter is with practice; (2 the position does not involve a ";subjectivization"; of every form of necessity: it is not compatibilist because it creates a space for the claim that the operations of the will are non-problematically necessary through a weakning of the notion of necessity as it applies to external objects; (3 Hume holds that the ordinary phenomena of mental causation do not preempt the atribuition of moral responsibility, which combines perfectly with his identification of the object of moral evaluation: the whole of the character of a person, in relation to which there is, nonetheless, liberty. I intend to support my assertions by a close reading of what Hume states in section 8 of the first Enquiry.O projeto de Hume em relação ao conflito entre liberdade e necessidade é ";reconciliatório";. Mas qual é a natureza do projeto de Hume? Resolve ele um problema que diz respeito à metafísica somente? E quando Hume afirma que a disputa entre as doutrinas da liberdade e da necessidade é meramente verbal, quer ele dizer que não há nenhuma disputa metafísica genuína entre as doutrinas? No presente trabalho eu argumento a favor de (1 que há lugar para a liberdade na filosofia de Hume, e não somente porque a posição é pro forma compatibilista, mesmo que isto tenha importância para o reconhecimento de que a preocupação maior de

MORALITIES AND ETHICS. THE PARADOX OF THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD AND THE PARADOX OF CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

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Balaciu Diana

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The paper targets the approach of the implications regarding the compliance or non-compliance with ethical principles in the accounting profession, the interest for this debate being the profound crisis we are experiencing which makes us come back to fundamentals, the current world trying to discover them morally and ethically. In order to reach the purpose of our research, we have carried out an exploratory research, as a specific research method, using the analysis of secondary data. In this view, starting from the behaviour of the characters of the controversial biblical parable of the unjust steward bringing it into the context of our days, we can notice that the wit of the above mentioned steward mentioned above, it cannot be underestimated and we cannot, even now, underestimate the creativity of a “good” accountant when he has “to solve” a problem or to reach a certain purpose. Also, we have used a descriptive research, too, the research method used being the survey. In making up the surveys, we used the 5 level Likert scale, this type of scale targeting aspects related to the relation ethics-morality-religious values with which, the respondents, in our case represented by a sample made up of the managers of large enterprises and those of the SMEs in the Bihor County, agreed or disagreed. This paper shows that, from a philosophical and spiritual point of view, the contemporary crisis is a conscience crisis and a crisis of the humanity’s moral values, emphasising the idea that humankind must enter a phase of new humanism, meant to cultivate the features of a morally developed man, endowed with responsibility regarding the choices that he makes as well as the capacity to suffer the consequences of his choices. In our opinion, the parable mentioned has in view the accentuation of the moral aspects of the steward’s behaviour and, extrapolating, of the accounting professional in creating a solid basis for

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…

An Integrated Account of Generalization across Objects and Features

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Kemp, Charles; Shafto, Patrick; Tenenbaum, Joshua B.

2012-01-01

Humans routinely make inductive generalizations about unobserved features of objects. Previous accounts of inductive reasoning often focus on inferences about a single object or feature: accounts of causal reasoning often focus on a single object with one or more unobserved features, and accounts of property induction often focus on a single…

Physicians' strikes and the competing bases of physicians' moral obligations.

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MacDougall, D Robert

2013-09-01

Many authors have addressed the morality of physicians' strikes on the assumption that medical practice is morally different from other kinds of occupations. This article analyzes three prominent theoretical accounts that attempt to ground such special moral obligations for physicians--practice-based accounts, utilitarian accounts, and social contract accounts--and assesses their applicability to the problem of the morality of strikes. After critiquing these views, it offers a fourth view grounding special moral obligations in voluntary commitments, and explains why this is a preferable basis for understanding physicians' moral obligations in general and especially as pertaining to strikes.

The Content of Accountability in Corporate governance

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Natalya Mosunova

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This essay examines such aspects of corporate accountability as accounts and financial reporting, compliance to certain efficiency indicators and stakeholders’ interests including moral values, their roles for various groups of stakeholders. For these purposes author analyses the development of agency and stakeholders’ theories in regard to financial reporting, provides evidences of stakeholder accountability in case law and legislation are provide and identifies difficulties of stakeholder accountability. It is argued that there is no universal definition of efficiency as a type of accountability and it may be defined through risk management and internal control systems only. Morality is also an ambiguous category for corporate accountability originated rather from political science than jurisprudence and may be used only like upplementary remedy.That analysis allows justification of the absence of conflict between different definitions of accountability, inextricably links between them and their joint application as a guarantee of the achievement of accountability objectives.

Human health and stoic moral norms.

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Becker, Lawrence C

2003-04-01

For the philosophy of medicine, there are two things of interest about the stoic account of moral norms, quite apart from whether the rest of stoic ethical theory is compelling. One is the stoic version of naturalism: its account of practical reasoning, its solution to the is/ought problem, and its contention that norms for creating, sustaining, or restoring human health are tantamount to moral norms. The other is the stoic account of human agency: its description of the intimate connections between human health, rational agency, and moral norms. There is practical guidance to be gained from exploring those connections, whether or not one is ready to follow stoic moral theory all the way to its austere end.

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.

“Righteous Minds” in Health Care: Measurement and Explanatory Value of Social Intuitionism in Accounting for the Moral Judgments in a Sample of U.S. Physicians

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Tilburt, Jon C.; James, Katherine M.; Jenkins, Sarah M.; Antiel, Ryan M.; Curlin, Farr A.; Rasinski, Kenneth A.

2013-01-01

The broad diversity in physicians’ judgments on controversial health care topics may reflect differences in religious characteristics, political ideologies, and moral intuitions. We tested an existing measure of moral intuitions in a new population (U.S. physicians) to assess its validity and to determine whether physicians’ moral intuitions correlate with their views on controversial health care topics as well as other known predictors of these intuitions such as political affiliation and religiosity. In 2009, we mailed an 8-page questionnaire to a random sample of 2000 practicing U.S. physicians from all specialties. The survey included the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ30), along with questions on physicians’ judgments about controversial health care topics including abortion and euthanasia (no moral objection, some moral objection, strong moral objection). A total of 1032 of 1895 (54%) physicians responded. Physicians’ overall mean moral foundations scores were 3.5 for harm, 3.3 for fairness, 2.8 for loyalty, 3.2 for authority, and 2.7 for sanctity on a 0–5 scale. Increasing levels of religious service attendance, having a more conservative political ideology, and higher sanctity scores remained the greatest positive predictors of respondents objecting to abortion (β = 0.12, 0.23, 0.14, respectively, each pmoral intuitions may predict differences in physicians’ judgments about morally controversial topics and may interrelate with ideology and religiosity. Further examination of the diversity in physicians’ moral intuitions may prove illustrative in describing and addressing moral differences that arise in medical practice. PMID:24023864

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 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.

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.

Strategic Management Accounting Corporate Objective and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

No organisation operates without a focus and this focus can be termed objective or goal; which should be clearly slated. This study therefore looked at Strategic Management Accounting Corporate Strategy and Production objectives. The study samples are selected manufacturing firms in Port Harcourt. Questionnaires were ...

The Forms and Functions of Real-Life Moral Decision-Making.

Science.gov (United States)

Krebs, Dennis L.; Denton, Kathy; Wark, Gillian

1997-01-01

Observes that the Kohlbergian model of morality does not give a good account of the ways in which people make moral decisions in their everyday lives. Argues that a functional model of moral judgment and moral behavior derived from evolutionary theory may supply a better account of real-life morality. (DSK)

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...

Moral Understanding in the Psychopath*

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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

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...

The Technological Mediation of Morality - A Post-Phenomenological Approach to Moral Subjectivity and Moral Objectivity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verbeek, Peter P.C.C.

2007-01-01

This paper analyzes the moral relevance of technological artifacts and its possible role in ethical theory, by taking the postphenomenological approach that has developed around the work of Don Ihde into the domain of ethics. By elaborating a postphenomenological analysis of the mediating role of

The International Accounting Standards Board’s Progress in Promoting Judgement Through Objectives-Oriented Accounting Standards

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Tanja Lakovic

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This study analyzes how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB promotes professional judgement by issuing objectives-oriented accounting standards and exposure drafts.  We focus on the the role of judgement as outlined in Phase I of the IASB Conceptual Framework (CF, Chapter 1, “Objective of General Purpose Financial Statements” and Chapter 3, “Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information” (IASB 2010. We discuss how the framework, when viewed through the prism of 'objectives-oriented accounting standards' as recommended by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC Report in its “Study Pursuant to Section 108(d of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on the Adoption by the United States Financial Reporting System of a Principles-Based Accounting System” (July 2003, encourages professional judgement. We analyze International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS and Exposure Drafts (ED issued by the IASB since its inception in 2002 to determine if those documents are consistent with objectives-oriented accounting standards. Our analysis is useful for gaining insights into how the IASB integrates the CF with the SEC’s recommended objectives-oriented accounting approach to promote judgement in the interest of IASB/FASB convergence of accounting standards.

Pragmatism, metaphysics, and bioethics: beyond a theory of moral deliberation.

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Pamental, Matthew

2013-12-01

Pragmatism has been understood by bioethicists as yet another rival in the "methods wars," as yet another theory of moral deliberation. This has led to criticism of pragmatic bioethics as both theoretically and practically inadequate. Pragmatists' responses to these objections have focused mainly on misunderstandings of pragmatism's epistemology. These responses are insufficient. Pragmatism's commitment to radical empiricism gives it theoretical resources unappreciated by critics and defenders alike. Radical empiricism, unlike its more traditional ancestors, undercuts the gaps between theory and practice, and subjective and objective accounts of experience, and in so doing provides the metaphysical and epistemological basis for a thoroughgoing empirical naturalism in ethics. Pragmatism's strength as an approach to moral problems thus emerges as a result of a much wider array of resources than contemporary interpreters have acknowledged, which makes it a richer, deeper framework for understanding moral deliberation in general and bioethical decision making in particular.

Iris Murdoch's Criticism of Traditional Views of the Moral Self: An Alternative Account of "seeing" the Others

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Ana Lita

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The main objective of this article is to reconstruct Iris Murdoch's criticism of the moral self as it was developed by liberalism, romanticism, existentialism and linguistic empiricism that interpreted the moral person as entangled either in a world of essences (Kant's view or in a world of mere existence in which the interplay of both necessity and freedom is at stake. Thus what is missing from all these theories is a sufficient development of what it is to have a regard for others through aesthetic perception, which is the most important aspect of the moral self. At the difference of these conceptions Murdoch offers an alternative view, both to liberal ethics in the Kantian tradition and to contemporary ethics, as she argues that to have regard for others demands responsiveness which can also be explained in terms of aesthetic sensibility. Murdoch's ethics rests on an analogy between aesthetic sensibility and moral sensibility based upon the model of the artist's unconditional love for his characters, which she interprets as being a matter of seeing and loving others. The author's thesis is that love is the crucial point of Murdoch's conception of the moral self where the moral and aesthetical sensibility, as well cognition, intersect each other, because seeing others incorporates emotions of respect and compassion that characterize love and such seeing is cognitive love.

The Role of Feelings in Kant's Account of Moral Education

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Cohen, Alix

2016-01-01

In line with familiar portrayals of Kant's ethics, interpreters of his philosophy of education focus essentially on its intellectual dimension: the notions of moral catechism, ethical gymnastics and ethical ascetics, to name but a few. By doing so, they usually emphasise Kant's negative stance towards the role of feelings in moral education. Yet…

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…

Evaluating the inverse reasoning account of object discovery.

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Carroll, Christopher D; Kemp, Charles

2015-06-01

People routinely make inferences about unobserved objects. A hotel guest with welts on his arms, for example, will often worry about bed bugs. The discovery of unobserved objects almost always involves a backward inference from some observed effects (e.g., welts) to unobserved causes (e.g., bed bugs). The inverse reasoning account, which is typically formalized as Bayesian inference, posits that the strength of a backward inference is closely connected to the strength of the corresponding forward inference from the unobserved causes to the observed effects. We evaluated the inverse reasoning account of object discovery in three experiments where participants were asked to discover the unobserved "attractors" and "repellers" that controlled a "particle" moving within an arena. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that participants often failed to provide the best explanations for various particle motions, even when the best explanations were simple and when participants enthusiastically endorsed these explanations when presented with them. This failure demonstrates that object discovery is critically dependent on the processes that support hypothesis generation-processes that the inverse reasoning account does not explain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that people sometimes generate explanations that are invalid even according to their own forward inferences, suggesting that the psychological processes that support forward and backward inference are less intertwined than the inverse reasoning account suggests. The experimental findings support an alternative account of object discovery in which people rely on heuristics to generate possible explanations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotion and moral judgment

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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

From Optimisation to Transformation - My Path to the Well-spring of Rationality, Morality and Spirituality

OpenAIRE

Peter Pruzan

2003-01-01

The author summarises his intellectual and personal journey from rationality and morality to spirituality. As internationally renowned expert in operation research and multi-objective optimisation, he developed a strong interest in organisational ethics, social and ethical accounting, values-based leadership and corporate social responsibility. Influenced by Eastern (especially Indian) spirituality he went further to explore the well-spring of rationality, morality and spirituality. In this w...

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.

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.

Normativity, moral realism, and unmasking explanations

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Josep CORBÍ

2010-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, I argue that moral projectivism cannot be coherently fix the content of our moral responses. To this purpose, I develop a number of arguments against moral dispositionalism and, in this context, I challenge both David Lewis' dispositionalist account of colour and Chistine Korsgaard's procedural realism.

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.

Moral Education in Pakistan.

Science.gov (United States)

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.…

Academic Instructors or Moral Guides? Moral Education in America and the Teacher's Dilemma

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Brimi, Hunter

2009-01-01

In this article, the author examines the role that teachers play in the moral development of American students. Historically, one of public education's purposes in America has been the development of moral citizens. However, educators currently face more academic accountability due to No Child Left Behind. Consequently, teachers must strike a…

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

The use of moral dilemmas for teaching agricultural engineers.

Science.gov (United States)

Lozano, J Félix; Palau-Salvador, Guillermo; Gozálvez, Vincent; Boni, Alejandra

2006-04-01

Agricultural engineers' jobs are especially related to sustainability and earth life issues. They usually work with plants or animals, and the aim of their work is often linked to producing food to allow people to improve their quality of life. Taking into account this dual function, the moral requirements of their day-to-day professional practice are arguably greater than those of other professions. Agricultural engineers can develop their ability to live up to this professional responsibility by receiving ethical training during their university studies, not only by taking courses specifically devoted to ethics, but also by having to deal with moral questions that are integrated into their technical courses through a program of Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC). The authors feel that a suitable pedagogical technique for achieving this goal is the use of moral dilemmas, following Kohlberg's theory of levels of morality (1981), with the final objective of attaining a post-conventional level. This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of using moral dilemmas as a pedagogical technique for training agricultural engineers. The cases, discussions, and evaluation used in the Agricultural Engineering Department of the Technical University of Valencia (Spain) are also presented.

Education without Moral Worth? Kantian Moral Theory and the Obligation to Educate Others

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Martin, Christopher

2011-01-01

This article examines the possibility of a Kantian justification of the intrinsic moral worth of education. The author critiques a recent attempt to secure such justification via Kant's notion of the Kingdom of Ends. He gives four reasons why such an account would deny any intrinsic moral worth to education. He concludes with a tentative…

Common morality: comment on Beauchamp and Childress.

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Rauprich, Oliver

2008-01-01

The notion of common morality plays a prominent role in some of the most influential theories of biomedical ethics. Here, I focus on Beauchamp and Childress's models in the fourth and fifth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics as well as on a revision that Beauchamp proposed in a recent article. Although there are significant differences in these works that require separate analysis, all include a role for common morality as starting point and normative framework for theory construction in combination with a coherence theory of moral justification. I defend to some extent the existence and empirical significance of common morality, as delineated by Beauchamp and Childress in different versions, but criticize its normative role. It is neither convincing as a moral foundation nor well compatible with a standard coherentist justification. I suggest that the authors should give up the foundational account for a more modest account of common morality as resource of well-established moral insights and experiences, which have proved generally valid but neither sufficient nor infallible. Beauchamp's latest proposal appears as a step in this direction; indeed, it may be the beginning of the end of his common-morality theory.

Can the Knobe Effect Be Explained Away? Methodological Controversies in the Study of the Relationship Between Intentionality and Morality.

Science.gov (United States)

Cova, Florian; Lantian, Anthony; Boudesseul, Jordane

2016-10-01

Based on the "Knobe Effect," Knobe has argued that moral evaluations can influence intentionality judgments. However, two methodological objections have been raised against this claim: first, that participants' answers do not accurately reflect what they think and, second, that the Knobe Effect can be fully explained by non-moral factors, such as the agent's desires or beliefs. In this article, we discuss these two methodological objections to the existence of the Knobe Effect and provide new evidence that moral evaluations can shape intentionality judgments. First, Study 1 shows that standard measures of intentionality do not overestimate participants' intentionality judgments. Second, Studies 2 and 3 suggest that participants' moral evaluations still mediate the impact of positive versus negative side-effects on judgments about intentional action, even when taking into account a whole range of non-moral factors. Results suggest that moral evaluations play an irreducible role in shaping our judgments about intentional action. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Justifying group-specific common morality.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

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...

Strawsonian Libertarianism: A Theory of Free Will and Moral Responsibility

OpenAIRE

Franklin, Christopher

2010-01-01

My dissertation develops a novel theory of free will and moral responsibility, Strawsonian libertarianism, which combines Strawsonianism about the concept of moral responsibility with event-causal libertarianism concerning its conditions of application. I construct this theory in light of and response to the three main objections to libertarianism: the moral shallowness objection, the intelligibility objection, and the empirical plausibility objection.The moral shallowness objection contends...

Critics raise moral objections to Federal AIDS education classes.

Science.gov (United States)

1995-07-28

Lawmakers and a handful of government employees have objected to the Federal government's programs to educate its employees about AIDS. At the June 22, 1995 hearing of the civil service subcommittee of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, protests were raised on religious or moral grounds. Thomas Herron, a supervisory logistics manager at the Naval Air Technical Services Facility in Philadelphia found the training to be against the principles of his faith. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Calif) said his office was flooded with calls and letters from employees who raised concern that the training is being used to advance a redefinition of the family and is a blatant pro-homosexual agenda. Robert L. Maginnis, policy analyst for the conservative Family Research Council, faulted the training, saying it does little to change behavior that puts people at risk for HIV infection. Clinton administration officials testified at the meeting that the program is necessary to ensure both the safety of the workforce and employees' freedom from discrimination and harassment. Individual departments and agencies are responsible for developing their own AIDS training programs. According to Alan Heuerman, associate director for human resource systems service with the Office of Personnel Management, relatively few objections have been raised about the training.

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

Accounting mortgage transactions: directions of improvement

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I.M. Vygivska

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Fragmentation methods of accounting of contractual obligations secured by mortgage, discussion questions evaluating the object of mortgage at the stage of conclusion of loan agreements (credit and the probability of default and foreclosure with the mortgagor necessitated a comprehensive research and development of methodical maintenance of accounting mortgage transactions in subjects of its implementation (the mortgagor and mortgagee, including the improvement of the order of accounting reflection operations with a mortgage of property rights, hypothec, «solid mortgage», mortgage securities, the mortgage of goods in circulation or processing. The article also provides the procedure of evaluating the object of mortgage at default of the mortgagor conditions of the contract taking into account its depreciation (physical and moral deterioration during the loan repayment period; the author specifies the procedure for recording of transactions related to the sale of such objects as the basis for providing contractual management process obligations of the debtor with relevant information.

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 Kantian ethics approach to moral bioenhancement.

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Carter, Sarah

2017-11-01

It seems, at first glance, that a Kantian ethics approach to moral enhancement would tend towards the position that there could be no place for emotional modulation in any understanding of the endeavour, owing to the typically understood view that Kantian ethics does not allow any role for emotion in morality as a whole. It seems then that any account of moral bioenhancement which places emotion at its centre would therefore be rejected. This article argues, however, that this assumption is incorrect. Given later writings by Kant on the role of sympathy, and taking into account other concerns in Kantian ethics (such as bodily integrity), it may in fact be the case that Kantian ethics would allow for an account of moral bioenhancement through emotional modulation, and that in some (rare) cases such an intervention might even be considered to be a duty. © 2017 The Authors Bioethics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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.

The Role of Moral Reasoning and Order Effects on Ethical Decision Making Ability: Novice vs. Experienced Accounting Students

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pillalamarri, Sudarshan Kumar; Holm, Claus

that novice accounting students cannot differentiate between these two types of reasoning, but would exhibit order effects while making ethical decisions. One hundred forty graduate accounting students from universities in Denmark respond to an audit-specific DIT instrument, measuring prescriptive...... investigates the order effects of presentation of dilemmas on ethical decision making ability of novice and experienced accounting students. Rest (1979, 1983, 1991) categorizes moral reasoning into prescriptive reasoning i.e. consideration of what should ideally be done to resolve a particular ethical dilemma...... and deliberative reasoning i.e. consideration of what would actually be done in resolving ethical dilemmas. Because of lack of work experience, novice accounting students often do not face scenarios where there is a difference between their prescriptive and deliberative reasoning. This study hypothesizes...

Análisis de la Naturaleza de los valores ético morales Ethical-moral values: an analysis of their nature

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Arturo José Sánchez Hernández

2003-08-01

Full Text Available El autor comienza planteando la posibilidad de que este estudio pudiera no ser válido para los valores de todas las zonas axiológicas por lo que se referirá solamente a los valores ético -morales. Continúa definiendo los conceptos de valor ético moral, exigencia de autorregulación ético moral, sujeto, objeto, actividad, conciencia, voluntad, lo subjetivo, lo objetivo y lo objetivo subjetivo. Más adelante argumenta que aunque la voluntad y la conciencia tienen una gran importancia en el dominio de los valores ético morales, no los determinan, por lo que no son subjetivos, al menos de manera absoluta. Prosigue planteando que aunque las características del objeto, de las circunstancias y del contexto socio histórico, son también imprescindibles en el análisis de los valores ético morales, tampoco los determina, por lo que los valores de este dominio axiológico no son objetivos de manera absoluta. Concluye argumentando que los valores ético morales se dan en una relación sujeto objeto, y en este tipo de relación participan al mismo tiempo factores tanto objetivos como subjetivos, por lo que estos valores tienen una naturaleza objetivo subjetivaThe author begins outlining the possibility that this study could not be valid for all values of every axiologic area. For that reason, the moral-ethical values will be the only one analyzed. It continues defining the concepts of moral-ethical value, moral-ethical self-regulation demand, subject, object, activity, consciousness, will, the subjective, the objective and the objective-subjective. Later on it is argued that although will and consciousness have a great importance in the moral ethical values domain, they don't determine them, and so they are not subjective, at least in an absolute way. It continues outlining that although the characteristics of the object, the circumstances and the social-historical context are also indispensable in the analysis of the moral-ethical values

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.

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...

Dissolving the Puzzle of Resultant Moral Luck.

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Levy, Neil

The puzzle of resultant moral luck arises when we are disposed to think that an agent who caused a harm deserves to be blamed more than an otherwise identical agent who did not. One popular (but controversial) perspective on resultant moral luck explains our dispositions to produce different judgments with regard to the agents who feature in these cases as a product not of what they genuinely deserve but of our epistemic situation. On this account, there is no genuine resultant moral luck; there is only luck in what evidence becomes available to observers. In this paper, I develop an evolutionary account of our inclination to take the results of actions as evidence for the mental states of agents, thereby explaining why the resulting intuitions are recalcitrant to correction. The account explains why the puzzle of resultant moral luck arises: because our disposition to take the harms agents cause as evidence of their mental states can produce intuitions which conflict with those that arise when we examine agents' mental states without reference to the results of their actions. The account also helps to solve the puzzle of resultant moral luck, by providing a strong reason to ignore the intuitions caused by our disposition to regard actual harms as evidence of mental states. Since these intuitions arise using an unreliable proxy for agents' mental states, they ought to be trumped by more reliable evidence.

Synthetic Biology and the Moral Significance of Artificial Life: A Reply to Douglas, Powell and Savulescu.

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Christiansen, Andreas

2016-06-01

I discuss the moral significance of artificial life within synthetic biology via a discussion of Douglas, Powell and Savulescu's paper 'Is the creation of artificial life morally significant'. I argue that the definitions of 'artificial life' and of 'moral significance' are too narrow. Douglas, Powell and Savulescu's definition of artificial life does not capture all core projects of synthetic biology or the ethical concerns that have been voiced, and their definition of moral significance fails to take into account the possibility that creating artificial life is conditionally acceptable. Finally, I show how several important objections to synthetic biology are plausibly understood as arguing that creating artificial life in a wide sense is only conditionally acceptable. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The International Accounting Standards Board’s Progress in Promoting Judgement Through Objectives-Oriented Accounting Standards

OpenAIRE

Tanja Lakovic; Jayne Fuglister

2013-01-01

This study analyzes how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) promotes professional judgement by issuing objectives-oriented accounting standards and exposure drafts.  We focus on the the role of judgement as outlined in Phase I of the IASB Conceptual Framework (CF), Chapter 1, “Objective of General Purpose Financial Statements” and Chapter 3, “Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information” (IASB 2010). We discuss how the framework, when viewed through the prism of...

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.

Location mortgage in accounting objects

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I.M. Vygiska

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article analyzes the mechanism of the implementation of all kinds of mortgage (mortgage, pledge, mortgage of securities, security of property rights, the mortgage of goods in circulation or processing, tax lien defined the specificity of receipt/return of the mortgage, particularly payments between mortgagor and the mortgagee. Determine the subject property entities that can act as mortgage; identified by their place in the system of objects of accounting mortgagor and the mortgagee. The peculiarities of the balance sheet and off-balance sheet assets as a reflection of your collateral. Identified two groups of mortgage transactions: transactions with mortgage for its receipt and transmission; business transactions related to the conditions of loan agreements (loan and mortgage. The results are shown in the research paper proposals allow for further research to develop mortgage organizational and methodological support the operations accounting for the effective management of financial resources and obligations, collateralised.

Disgust and Anger Relate to Different Aggressive Responses to Moral Violations

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Molho, Catherine; Tybur, Joshua M.; Güler, Ezgi; Balliet, Daniel; Hofmann, Wilhelm

2017-01-01

In response to the same moral violation, some people report experiencing anger, and others report feeling disgust. Do differences in emotional responses to moral violations reflect idiosyncratic differences in the communication of outrage, or do they reflect differences in motivational states? Whereas equivalence accounts suggest that anger and disgust are interchangeable expressions of condemnation, sociofunctional accounts suggest that they have distinct antecedents and consequences. We tested these accounts by investigating whether anger and disgust vary depending on the costs imposed by moral violations and whether they differentially correspond with aggressive tendencies. Results across four studies favor a sociofunctional account: When the target of a moral violation shifts from the self to another person, anger decreases, but disgust increases. Whereas anger is associated with high-cost, direct aggression, disgust is associated with less costly indirect aggression. Finally, whether the target of a moral violation is the self or another person influences direct aggression partially via anger and influences indirect aggression partially via disgust. PMID:28485700

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

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

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...

Do we have moral duties towards information objects?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brey, Philip A.E.

2008-01-01

In this paper, a critique will be developed and an alternative proposed to Luciano Floridi’s approach to Information Ethics (IE). IE is a macroethical theory that is to both serve as a foundation for computer ethics and to guide our overall moral attitude towards the world. The central claims of IE

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

A Spinozistic Model of Moral Education

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Dahlbeck, Johan

2017-01-01

Spinoza's claim that self-preservation is the foundation of virtue makes for the point of departure of this philosophical investigation into what a Spinozistic model of moral education might look like. It is argued that Spinoza's metaphysics places constraints on moral education insofar as an educational account would be affected by Spinoza's…

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.

Ethics before Equality: Moral Education after Levinas.

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Standish, Paul

2001-01-01

Discusses nihilism as a characteristic of contemporary discourse regarding morality and moral education. Examines this discourse in light of Emmanuel Levinas' account of the primacy of ethics: absolute responsibility in the face of the other, of the asymmetry of relations to each other. (CAJ)

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

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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 Development and Citizenship Education in Vocational Schools

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Hélène Leenders

2012-01-01

Full Text Available We investigate the objectives, practical application, and learning outcomes of moral education and citizenship education at three vocational schools in the Netherlands (VMBO. We explore teachers’ and students’ pedagogical, sociopolitical, and moral development objectives and how they deal with values, dialogue, and diversity. We continue with how the objectives get materialized in practice and teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the learning outcomes. The study shows that there is a strong agreement between teachers and students about the importance of objectives of moral education and citizenship education. Schools differ in how sharply they focus on social and political aspects, and in how reflective and dialogical their approaches are. The differences revealed in the moral education approaches can be largely linked with differences in their cultural environment.

Impairment in judgement of the moral emotion guilt following orbitofrontal cortex damage.

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Funayama, Michitaka; Koreki, Akihiro; Muramatsu, Taro; Mimura, Masaru; Kato, Motoichiro; Abe, Takayuki

2018-04-19

Although neuroimaging studies have provided evidence for an association between moral emotions and the orbitofrontal cortex, studies on patients with focal lesions using experimental probes of moral emotions are scarce. Here, we addressed this topic by presenting a moral emotion judgement task to patients with focal brain damage. Four judgement tasks in a simple pairwise choice paradigm were given to 72 patients with cerebrovascular disease. These tasks consisted of a perceptual line judgement task as a control task; the objects' preference task as a basic preference judgement task; and two types of moral emotion judgement task, an anger task and a guilt task. A multiple linear regression analysis was performed on each set of task performance scores to take into account potential confounders. Performance on the guilt emotion judgement task negatively correlated with the orbitofrontal cortex damage, but not with the other variables. Results for the other judgement tasks did not reach statistical significance. The close association between orbitofrontal cortex damage and a decrease in guilt emotion judgement consistency might suggest that the orbitofrontal cortex plays a key role in the sense of guilt, a hallmark of morality. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

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.

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.

Pendidikan Etika dan Perkembangan Moral Mahasiswa Akuntansi

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Nujmatul Laily

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this research was to comprehend ethical education differences among level 1 (pre-conventional, level 2 (conventional, and level 3 (post-conventional toward moral development steps of accountancy students. This research is quantitative research using survey which is held in X University in Malang. The sampleof this research are 176 accountancy students. Sampling method used proportional random sampling technique in choosing the responden.The instrumentof this research is questionnaire related to ethical education or ethical courses and moral development questionnaireusing defining issues test. The results showed that ethical education differ among level 1 (pre-conventional, level 2 (conventional, and level 3 (post-conventional of accountancy students.

Leadership and Moral Imagination: Beyond the Decision-making Context

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Alan Preti

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Moral imagination is often viewed as a necessary condition for ethical leadership on account of its role in managerial decision-making and organizational management. This article argues that an extension of the notion beyond this limited context sheds light on recent reconceptualizations of the nature of business and the relation of business and society proffered by several well-known business leaders. It is suggested that an account of moral imagination which takes into consideration its contribution to the development of a morally deeper and broader perspective and its bearing on character is of particular value for business leaders.

Moral development and citizenship education in vocational schools

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leenders, H.; Veugelers, W.; de Kat, E.

2012-01-01

We investigate the objectives, practical application, and learning outcomes of moral education and citizenship education at three vocational schools in the Netherlands (VMBO). We explore teachers’ and students’ pedagogical, sociopolitical, and moral development objectives and how they deal with

Aliens Behaving Badly: Children's Acquisition of Novel Purity-Based Morals

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Rottman, Joshua; Kelemen, Deborah

2012-01-01

The traditional cognitive developmental perspective on moral acquisition posits that children actively construct moral beliefs by assessing the negative impacts of antisocial behaviors. This account is not easily applied to actions that are considered immoral despite lacking consequences for others' welfare. We studied the moralization of…

The moral code in Islam and organ donation in Western countries: reinterpreting religious scriptures to meet utilitarian medical objectives.

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Rady, Mohamed Y; Verheijde, Joseph L

2014-06-02

End-of-life organ donation is controversial in Islam. The controversy stems from: (1) scientifically flawed medical criteria of death determination; (2) invasive perimortem procedures for preserving transplantable organs; and (3) incomplete disclosure of information to consenting donors and families. Data from a survey of Muslims residing in Western countries have shown that the interpretation of religious scriptures and advice of faith leaders were major barriers to willingness for organ donation. Transplant advocates have proposed corrective interventions: (1) reinterpreting religious scriptures, (2) reeducating faith leaders, and (3) utilizing media campaigns to overcome religious barriers in Muslim communities. This proposal disregards the intensifying scientific, legal, and ethical controversies in Western societies about the medical criteria of death determination in donors. It would also violate the dignity and inviolability of human life which are pertinent values incorporated in the Islamic moral code. Reinterpreting religious scriptures to serve the utilitarian objectives of a controversial end-of-life practice, perceived to be socially desirable, transgresses the Islamic moral code. It may also have deleterious practical consequences, as donors can suffer harm before death. The negative normative consequences of utilitarian secular moral reasoning reset the Islamic moral code upholding the sanctity and dignity of human life.

Medical education as moral formation: an Aristotelian account of medical professionalsim.

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Kinghorn, Warren A

2010-01-01

The medical professionalism movement, bolstered by many influential medical organizations and institutions, has in the last decade produced a number of conceptual definitions of professionalism and a number of concrete proposals for its measurement and teaching. These projects, however laudable, are misguided when they treat professionalism as a unitary descriptive concept rather than as a contested and therefore primarily evaluative one; when they conceive professionalism as a domain of medical practice separable in principle from other domains; and when they treat professionalism as, in principle, a specifiable goal or product of sufficiently well designed educational curricula. The logic of professionalism-as-product corresponds to the logic of techne (art or practical skill) in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle provides a cogent argument, however, that the moral excellences denoted by "professionalism" cannot be "produced" or even prespecified in the concrete; rather, they must be acquired through long practice under the careful concrete guidance of teachers who themselves embody these moral excellences. Phronesis (practical wisdom) rather than techne must therefore be the guiding logic of educational initiatives in medical professional formation, with particular emphasis on close mentorship and on the moral character both of students and of those who teach them.

Figure-ground organization and object recognition processes: an interactive account.

Science.gov (United States)

Vecera, S P; O'Reilly, R C

1998-04-01

Traditional bottom-up models of visual processing assume that figure-ground organization precedes object recognition. This assumption seems logically necessary: How can object recognition occur before a region is labeled as figure? However, some behavioral studies find that familiar regions are more likely to be labeled figure than less familiar regions, a problematic finding for bottom-up models. An interactive account is proposed in which figure-ground processes receive top-down input from object representations in a hierarchical system. A graded, interactive computational model is presented that accounts for behavioral results in which familiarity effects are found. The interactive model offers an alternative conception of visual processing to bottom-up models.

Cognition and norms: toward a developmental account of moral agency in social dilemmas.

Science.gov (United States)

Meyer, Leandro F F; Braga, Marcelo J

2014-01-01

Most recent developments in the study of social dilemmas give an increasing amount of attention to cognition, belief systems, valuations, and language. However, developments in this field operate almost entirely under epistemological assumptions which only recognize the instrumental form of rationality and deny that "value judgments" or "moral questions" have cognitive content. This standpoint erodes the moral aspect of the choice situation and obstructs acknowledgment of the links connecting cognition, inner growth, and moral reasoning, and the significance of such links in reaching cooperative solutions to many social dilemmas. Concurrently, this standpoint places the role of communication and mutual understanding in promoting cooperation in morally relevant conflicts of action in a rather mysterious situation. This paper draws on Habermas's critique of instrumental action, and on the most recent developments in institutional and behavioral economics with a view to enhancing our knowledge of the interventions used to cope with social dilemmas. We conclude the paper with a brief presentation of a research strategy for examining the capacity of alternative developmental models to predict dissimilar choices under similar incentive conditions in social dilemmas.

Moral distress in nursing personnel

OpenAIRE

Barlem,Edison Luiz Devos; Lunardi,Valéria Lerch; Lunardi,Guilherme Lerch; Tomaschewski-Barlem,Jamila Geri; Silveira,Rosemary Silva da; Dalmolin,Graziele de Lima

2013-01-01

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 dialogu...

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.

ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS: AN APPROACH FOCUSED ON OBJECTS WITH INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcelo Botelho da Costa Moraes

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Accounting aims at the treatment of information related to economic events within organizations. In order to do so, the double entry method is used (debt and credit accounting, which only considers monetary variations. With the development of information technologies, accounting information systems are born. In the 1980’s, the REA model (economic Resources, economic Events and economic Agents is created, which focuses on accounting information records, based on the association of economic resources, economic events and economic agents. The objective of this work is to demonstrate an object-oriented modeling with intelligent agents use, for information development and analysis focused on users. The proposed model is also analyzed according to accounting information quality, necessary for accounting information users, capable to comply with the needs of different user groups, with advantages in applications.

Revisiting Folk Moral Realism.

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Pölzler, Thomas

2017-01-01

Moral realists believe that there are objective moral truths. According to one of the most prominent arguments in favour of this view, ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming, and we have therefore prima facie reason to believe that realism is true. Some proponents of this argument have claimed that the hypothesis that ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming is supported by psychological research on folk metaethics. While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (by Goodwin and Darley, Wainryb et al., Nichols, and Nichols and Folds-Bennett) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as "pluralist-" rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed.

The Trouble with Moral Citizens: A Response to "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education" by Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury

Science.gov (United States)

Westheimer, Joel

2016-01-01

In "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education," Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury argue that teacher education licensure and accreditation standards largely ignore matters of values, character, and morality. "The moral-character formation of children," they note, "is the instructional objective that dare not speak…

A subjective utilitarian theory of moral judgment.

Science.gov (United States)

Cohen, Dale J; Ahn, Minwoo

2016-10-01

Current theories hypothesize that moral judgments are difficult because rational and emotional decision processes compete. We present a fundamentally different theory of moral judgment: the Subjective Utilitarian Theory of moral judgment. The Subjective Utilitarian Theory posits that people try to identify and save the competing item with the greatest "personal value." Moral judgments become difficult only when the competing items have similar personal values. In Experiment 1, we estimate the personal values of 104 items. In Experiments 2-5, we show that the distributional overlaps of the estimated personal values account for over 90% of the variance in reaction times (RTs) and response choices in a moral judgment task. Our model fundamentally restructures our understanding of moral judgments from a competition between decision processes to a competition between similarly valued items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

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

Science.gov (United States)

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

Moral actor, selfish agent.

Science.gov (United States)

Frimer, Jeremy A; Schaefer, Nicola K; Oakes, Harrison

2014-05-01

People are motivated to behave selfishly while appearing moral. This tension gives rise to 2 divergently motivated selves. The actor-the watched self-tends to be moral; the agent-the self as executor-tends to be selfish. Three studies present direct evidence of the actor's and agent's distinct motives. To recruit the self-as-actor, we asked people to rate the importance of various goals. To recruit the self-as-agent, we asked people to describe their goals verbally. In Study 1, actors claimed their goals were equally about helping the self and others (viz., moral); agents claimed their goals were primarily about helping the self (viz., selfish). This disparity was evident in both individualist and collectivist cultures, attesting to the universality of the selfish agent. Study 2 compared actors' and agents' motives to those of people role-playing highly prosocial or selfish exemplars. In content (Study 2a) and in the impressions they made on an outside observer (Study 2b), actors' motives were similar to those of the prosocial role-players, whereas agents' motives were similar to those of the selfish role-players. Study 3 accounted for the difference between the actor and agent: Participants claimed that their agent's motives were the more realistic and that their actor's motives were the more idealistic. The selfish agent/moral actor duality may account for why implicit and explicit measures of the same construct diverge, and why feeling watched brings out the better angels of human nature.

A Kantian ethics approach to moral bioenhancement

OpenAIRE

Carter, Sarah

2017-01-01

Abstract It seems, at first glance, that a Kantian ethics approach to moral enhancement would tend towards the position that there could be no place for emotional modulation in any understanding of the endeavour, owing to the typically understood view that Kantian ethics does not allow any role for emotion in morality as a whole. It seems then that any account of moral bioenhancement which places emotion at its centre would therefore be rejected. This article argues, however, that this assump...

WORKPLACE AS AN OBJECT OF ACCOUNTING AT COAL MINES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valeriy Nikolaevich Kuletskoy

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The paper presents an approach to evaluating the effectiveness of the workplace on the coal-mining enterprise based on an integrated consideration of three aspects: organizational, technological, social, labor, organizational and economic. In accordance with the definition given to aspects of the workplace: as part of the organization of production, the labor process, organizational and economic relations. Shows the structure of the workplace as an object of accounting, including: objective function, the subject of labor, means of labor, the subject of labor.Defined parameters describing the results obtained in the workplace, and the cost of its operation.The experience in the organization poobektnogo accounting efficiency in the use of jobs in the "Cut Tugnuisky."

Cognition and Norms: Toward a Developmental Account of Moral Agency in Social Dilemmas

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leandro Frederico Ferraz Meyer

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Most recent developments in the study of social dilemmas give an increasing amount of attention to cognition, belief systems, valuations, and language. However, developments in this field operate almost entirely under epistemological assumptions which only recognize the instrumental form of rationality and deny that value judgments or moral questions have cognitive content. This standpoint erodes the moral aspect of the choice situation and obstructs acknowledgment of the links connecting cognition, inner growth, and moral reasoning, and the significance of such links in reaching cooperative solutions to many social dilemmas. Concurrently, this standpoint places the role of communication and mutual understanding in promoting cooperation in morally relevant conflicts of action in a rather mysterious situation. This paper draws on Habermas’s critique of instrumental action, and on the most recent developments in institutional and behavioral economics with a view to enhancing our knowledge of the interventions used to cope with social dilemmas. We conclude the paper with a brief presentation of a research strategy for examining the capacity of alternative developmental models to predict dissimilar choices under similar incentive conditions in social dilemmas.

Cognition and norms: toward a developmental account of moral agency in social dilemmas

Science.gov (United States)

Meyer, Leandro F. F.; Braga, Marcelo J.

2015-01-01

Most recent developments in the study of social dilemmas give an increasing amount of attention to cognition, belief systems, valuations, and language. However, developments in this field operate almost entirely under epistemological assumptions which only recognize the instrumental form of rationality and deny that “value judgments” or “moral questions” have cognitive content. This standpoint erodes the moral aspect of the choice situation and obstructs acknowledgment of the links connecting cognition, inner growth, and moral reasoning, and the significance of such links in reaching cooperative solutions to many social dilemmas. Concurrently, this standpoint places the role of communication and mutual understanding in promoting cooperation in morally relevant conflicts of action in a rather mysterious situation. This paper draws on Habermas’s critique of instrumental action, and on the most recent developments in institutional and behavioral economics with a view to enhancing our knowledge of the interventions used to cope with social dilemmas. We conclude the paper with a brief presentation of a research strategy for examining the capacity of alternative developmental models to predict dissimilar choices under similar incentive conditions in social dilemmas. PMID:25610414

Introduction to Psychology and Leadership. Part Nine; Morale and Esprit De Corps. Content Outline, Terminal and Enabling Objectives.

Science.gov (United States)

Westinghouse Learning Corp., Annapolis, MD.

The content is outlined and the terminal and enabling objectives are provided for a curriculum area on morale and esprit de corps (see EM 010 439, EM 010 440, and EM 010 461), part of an introduction to psychology and leadership course for the United States Naval Academy (see the final reports which summarize the course development project, EM 010…

The humanistic approach in the Public Accountant Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

José Carlos Dextre Flores

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The objective of this article is to show the importance of the humanistic approach of the accounting student considering the social orientation of accounting knowledge whose main objectives are the preparation, interpretation and assessing of the financial information of the different economical events. These reflections results from three years work devoted to the preparation and implementation of a new career program based on competences for the Facultad de Administración y Contabilidad of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP and the result of a research about the needs and interests of the academic, social and business agents related to the accounting field. The career program adopted take the graduated of the career to prepare moral positive judgments and to understand that the occupation training is just a part of the human approach.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

From Folk Morality to Moral Philosophy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

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…

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...

Moral education and citizenship education at pre-university schools

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leenders, H.; Veugelers, W.; de Kat, E.; Oser, F.; Veugelers, W.

2008-01-01

This survey investigates the objectives, practical application and learning outcomes of moral education at three pre-university (VWO) schools with differing views on citizenship. We explore teachers’ and students’ pedagogical, socialpolitical and moral development objectives, and how they deal with

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.

The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Associations between Children's Social Goals and Aggression

Science.gov (United States)

Visconti, Kari Jeanne; Ladd, Gary W.; Kochenderfer-Ladd, Becky

2015-01-01

The construct of moral disengagement has increasingly been used by researchers to account for the asymmetry between children's moral reasoning and their moral behavior. According to this theory, moral disengagement occurs most aptly when children are motivated to violate their moral beliefs, such as when they hold antisocial goals during social…

Moral emotions and moral behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

ACCOUNTING BETWEEN LAW, ETHICS AND MORALITY

OpenAIRE

Anca-Simona N. HROMEI; Maria-Madalina I. VOINEA

2013-01-01

This paper deals with the fact that nowadays, society and business, show high expectations regarding the accounting discipline, and therefore professionals in this area should expand their horizons to meet all requirements. First of all, accounting assumed a certain responsibility to the public interest, by its fundamental purpose, namely to provide financial-accounting information, information that will form the basis of decision making. Second of all, for the successful fulfilment of the pu...

On Teaching Morality to Law Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Modjeska, Lee

1991-01-01

Within the limits of law and process, the lawyer's concern must be the client's cause, not his own agenda. Effective legal representation requires objectivity. The lawyer's role is to counsel legality, not morality, and the law school's responsibility is to teach law, not moral obligation. (MSE)

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.

Synthetic biology and the moral significance of artificial life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christiansen, Andreas

2016-01-01

, Powell and Savulescu's definition of artificial life does not capture all core projects of synthetic biology or the ethical concerns that have been voiced, and their definition of moral significance fails to take into account the possibility that creating artificial life is conditionally acceptable......I discuss the moral significance of artificial life within synthetic biology via a discussion of Douglas, Powell and Savulescu's paper 'Is the creation of artificial life morally significant’. I argue that the definitions of 'artificial life’ and of 'moral significance’ are too narrow. Douglas...

Inference of trustworthiness from intuitive moral judgments.

Science.gov (United States)

Everett, Jim A C; Pizarro, David A; Crockett, M J

2016-06-01

Moral judgments play a critical role in motivating and enforcing human cooperation, and research on the proximate mechanisms of moral judgments highlights the importance of intuitive, automatic processes in forming such judgments. Intuitive moral judgments often share characteristics with deontological theories in normative ethics, which argue that certain acts (such as killing) are absolutely wrong, regardless of their consequences. Why do moral intuitions typically follow deontological prescriptions, as opposed to those of other ethical theories? Here, we test a functional explanation for this phenomenon by investigating whether agents who express deontological moral judgments are more valued as social partners. Across 5 studies, we show that people who make characteristically deontological judgments are preferred as social partners, perceived as more moral and trustworthy, and are trusted more in economic games. These findings provide empirical support for a partner choice account of moral intuitions whereby typically deontological judgments confer an adaptive function by increasing a person's likelihood of being chosen as a cooperation partner. Therefore, deontological moral intuitions may represent an evolutionarily prescribed prior that was selected for through partner choice mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The moral problem of health disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

On the Role of Attention and Emotion in Morality: Attentional Control Modulates Unrelated Disgust in Moral Judgments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dillen, L.F. van; Wal, R.C. van der; Bos, K. van den

2012-01-01

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,

Tax Morality and Progressive Wage Tax

OpenAIRE

Andras Simonovits

2010-01-01

We analyze the impact of tax morality on progressive income (wage) taxation. We assume that transfers (cash-back) and public expenditures are financed from linear wage taxes. We derive the reported wages from individual utility maximization, when individuals obtain partial satisfaction from reporting wages (depending on their tax morality), and cannot be excluded from the use of public services. The government maximizes a utilitarian social welfare function, also taking into account the utili...

Problems with pragmatic approaches to setting a moral scope

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

James Henderson

2010-12-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2008v7n2p309In Towards Justice and Virtue and "Distant Strangers, Moral Standing, and State Boundaries, "Onora O´Neil argues that questions of the form "To whom is one obliged to accord ethical treatment?" may be decides based purely on the actions of the agent in question. In particular, she claims that metaphysical accounts of personhood are not necessary to set a moral scope and that such accounts have failed in any case. While there can be no doubt that no account of personhood has achieved unanious acceptance, her account is found wanting based on the observation that actions are not sufficiente to separate all of those within our moral scope from aal of those outside it. Indeed, clear examples of entities not deserving ethical treatment fall under her umbrella of protection. Solving this problem requires just what she seeks to exclude from her theory - an account of personhood. By paper´s end, ir should be clear that any theory based purel y on the actions of agents will be insufficient to separate all the ethical wheat from chaff.

THE EFFECT OF INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND INTERNAL CONTROL ON THE PROPENSITY TO COMMIT FRAUD: EVIDENCE FROM LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Novita Puspasari

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to examine the influence of individual morality and internal controls on individuals’ propensity to commit accounting fraud at the local government level. This is a quasi-experimental research paper. Individual morality and internal controls are hypothesized to be having an interaction with each other in influencing the propensity to commit accounting fraud. Individuals who have low levels of moral principles are hypothesized to have the tendency to commit accounting fraud in the absence of any internal controls. To test this, a 2x2 factorial experiment was conducted involving 57 students from the Masters in Economics Development programme at Gadjah Mada University. The result shows that there is an interaction between individual morality and internal controls. The absence of internal controls does not cause an individual with high moral principles to commit accounting fraud. However, individuals with low morality levels tend to commit accounting fraud when internal controls are absent.

Education by Objectives: Putting Teacher Accountability into Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Valentine, Ivan E.; Larson, Milton E.

1976-01-01

If education by objectives is to be firmly established as an instructional approach, teachers must insist on a validated curriculum that truly prepares students to secure employment and to function effectively in society. This means members of the community responsible for fund allocation and resource selection must also be accountable. (Author/BP)

[The contribution of neuroscience to the understanding of moral behavior].

Science.gov (United States)

Slachevsky, Andrea; Silva, Jaime R; Prenafeta, María Luisa; Novoa, Fernando

2009-03-01

The neuro-scientific study of moral actions and judgments is particularly relevant to medicine, especially when assessing behavior disorders secondary to brain diseases. In this paper, moral behavior is reviewed from an evolutionary and neuro-scientific perspective. We discuss the role of emotions in moral decisions, the role of brain development in moral development and the cerebral basis of moral behavior. Empirical evidence shows a relationship between brain and moral development: changes in cerebral architecture are related to changes in moral decision complexity. Moral development takes a long time, achieving its maturity during adulthood. It is suggested that moral cognition depends on cerebral regions and neural networks related to emotional and cognitive processing (i.e. prefrontal and temporal cortex) and that moral judgments are complex affective and cognitive phenomena. This paper concludes with the suggestion that a satisfactory clinical/legal evaluation of a patient requires that the neural basis of moral behavior should be taken into account.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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 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

Discussing the theological grounds of moral principles.

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Heller, Jan C

2005-01-01

Discussing the theological beliefs that ground Catholic moral principles can make some people uncomfortable, even while others will appreciate it. But these reactions will sometimes be revealed not as the emotions they are, but as objections to the relative independence or dependence of morality on foundational beliefs. In the end, context should dictate whether one displays the theological beliefs that ground Catholic moral principles.

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.

'Moral distress'--time to abandon a flawed nursing construct?

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Johnstone, Megan-Jane; Hutchinson, Alison

2015-02-01

Moral distress has been characterised in the nursing literature as a major problem affecting nurses in all healthcare systems. It has been portrayed as threatening the integrity of nurses and ultimately the quality of patient care. However, nursing discourse on moral distress is not without controversy. The notion itself is conceptually flawed and suffers from both theoretical and practical difficulties. Nursing research investigating moral distress is also problematic on account of being methodologically weak and disparate. Moreover, the ultimate purpose and significance of the research is unclear. In light of these considerations, it is contended that the notion of moral distress ought to be abandoned and that concerted attention be given to advancing inquiries that are more conducive to improving the quality and safety of moral decision-making, moral conduct and moral outcomes in nursing and healthcare domains. © The Author(s) 2013.

Moral objections to suicide and suicidal ideation among mood disordered Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics.

Science.gov (United States)

Richardson-Vejlgaard, Randall; Sher, Leo; Oquendo, Maria A; Lizardi, Dana; Stanley, Barbara

2009-01-01

Understanding the beliefs that protect individuals against suicide can help to enhance suicide prevention strategies. One measure of suicide non-acceptability is the moral objections to suicide (MOS) sub-scale of the reasons for living inventory (RFLI). This study examined the MOS and suicidal ideation of White, Black, and Hispanic individuals with mood disorders. We expected minority individuals to have stronger objections to suicide. Eight hundred and four, White (588), Black (122) and Hispanic (94) participants with DSM-IV diagnoses of MDD or bipolar disorder were administered the scale for suicide ideation, the reasons for living inventory and several measures of clinical distress. Higher suicidal ideation was modestly correlated with lower MOS scores overall (r=0.15, p=0.001). Among Blacks however the relationship was inverted: despite having higher suicidal ideation than Whites or Hispanics, Blacks reported the least accepting attitudes toward suicide. These results suggest that attitudes regarding the acceptability of suicide may be independent of suicidal ideation.

Moral Emotions and Morals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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

Where in the brain is morality? Everywhere and maybe nowhere.

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Young, Liane; Dungan, James

2012-01-01

The neuroscience of morality has focused on how morality works and where it is in the brain. In tackling these questions, researchers have taken both domain-specific and domain-general approaches-searching for neural substrates and systems dedicated to moral cognition versus characterizing the contributions of domain-general processes. Where in the brain is morality? On one hand, morality is made up of complex cognitive processes, deployed across many domains and housed all over the brain. On the other hand, no neural substrate or system that uniquely supports moral cognition has been found. In this review, we will discuss early assumptions of domain-specificity in moral neuroscience as well as subsequent investigations of domain-general contributions, taking emotion and social cognition (i.e., theory of mind) as case studies. Finally, we will consider possible cognitive accounts of a domain-specific morality: Does uniquely moral cognition exist?

Morality, justice and the challenge of execution of witches in Africa ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

An attempt to fill this gap facilitates an investigation into the nexus between morality and social justice. The fundamental problem now is, is it morally right to kill? Should witches be killed? If witches should be executed, are there moral and legal bases for such killing? How should we account for the question of sanctity of ...

Moral hazard and prescription medicine use in Australia--the patient perspective.

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Doran, Evan; Robertson, Jane; Henry, David

2005-04-01

All Australian citizens are provided affordable access to prescription medicines through the nation's system of universal pharmaceutical subsidies--the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. The rapid increase in pharmaceutical related expenditure has generated the concern that Australians are taking advantage of prescription subsidies and are using more medicines than are necessary, thereby creating a 'moral hazard'. This concern is predicated on a number of assumptions about patient behaviour rather than on empirical observation. These assumptions amount to a view that patients are consumers who treat prescription medicines as common goods subject to informed and rational calculation of the cost and benefits of their use. This paper reports the findings of an in-depth interview study undertaken to explore how prescription cost influences Australians' medicine use. Qualitative data were analysed to compare medicine users' descriptions of the role of prescription cost in medicine use against the assumptions that underlie the belief in moral hazard. Moral hazard did not appear to be significantly operating in the accounts of medicine use collected for this study. Interviewees' accounts of medicine use revealed an act characterised by ambivalence, a mix of desire and antipathy, faith and suspicion. Medicines appeared in interviewees' accounts as both pharmacologically and symbolically potent substances, which despite their familiarity as objects, are often mysterious to non-expert patients. Cost appeared as a secondary factor in patients' decision to access a prescription medicine. Using a prescription was predicated on the medicine being necessary, with necessity typically established by an expert doctor prescribing the medicine. Prescription medicines did not appear as 'common goods' where subsidised access motivates a 'consumer' to demand more or make the prospect of prescription use more attractive or necessary.

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...

Evolutionary biology and the determinants of morality 2 | Odozor ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This second essay continues the reflection on this problem through an exploration of the extra-biological factors and how they effect human moral development—a facet which is only too obvious, but which the evolutionary approach sidelines in its desperate effort to put up purely biological accounts of morality and ethics.

The importance of moral emotions for effective collaboration in culturally diverse healthcare teams.

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Cook, Catherine; Brunton, Margaret

2018-04-01

Moral emotions shape the effectiveness of culturally diverse teams. However, these emotions, which are integral to determining ethically responsive patient care and team relationships, typically go unrecognised. The contribution of emotions to moral deliberation is subjugated within the technorational environment of healthcare decision-making. Contemporary healthcare organisations rely on a multicultural workforce charged with the ethical care of vulnerable people. Limited extant literature examines the role of moral emotions in ethical decision-making among culturally diverse healthcare teams. Moral emotions are evident in ethnocentric moral perspectives that construct some colleagues' practices as 'other'. This article examines how moral emotions are evoked when cultural dissonance influences nurses' moral perceptions. We use a qualitative investigation of teamwork within culturally diverse healthcare organisations. We use Haidt's () account of moral emotions to examine practice-based accounts of 36 internationally educated and 17 New Zealand educated nurses practising in New Zealand. The study provides evidence that moral emotions are frequently elicited by communication and care practices considered 'foreign'. The main implication is that although safe practice in healthcare organisations is reliant on highly functioning teams, collaboration is challenged by interprofessional power relations of contested culturally shaped values. We address practice-based strategies that enable engagement with moral emotions to enhance effective teamwork. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Color-Object Interference: Further Tests of an Executive Control Account

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La Heij, Wido; Boelens, Harrie

2011-01-01

Young children are slower in naming the color of a meaningful picture than in naming the color of an abstract form (Stroop-like color-object interference). The current experiments tested an executive control account of this phenomenon. First, color-object interference was observed in 6- and 8-year-olds but not in 12- and 16-year-olds (Experiment…

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.

The development of risk acceptance and moral valuation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sjoeberg, L.; Torell, G.

1991-12-01

The relationship between acceptability of risk and moral valuation of risky activities was investigated in children, 10-16 years old. It was found that all age groups exhibited a strong correlation between the two dimensions of risky activities. Older children were more tolerant of risk taking than younger children. Individual actions were judged in a more lenient manner than collective actions. Girls tended to be more morally condemning towards risk taking, but the youngest girls were not less prone to accept risks than boys. General measures of moral development according to Piaget and Kohlberg were not associated with perceived acceptability of risk or the judged morality of risky activities but relations were found between risk taking and assertiveness and perceived freedom, which were the most important factors in accounting for risk and morality attitudes. 22 refs, 9 figs, 4 tabs

The development of risk acceptance and moral valuation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sjoeberg, L [Stockholm School of Economics, Center for Risk Research, Stockholm (Sweden); Torell, G [Univ. of Gothenburg, Dept. of Psychology (Sweden)

1991-12-01

The relationship between acceptability of risk and moral valuation of risky activities was investigated in children, 10-16 years old. It was found that all age groups exhibited a strong correlation between the two dimensions of risky activities. Older children were more tolerant of risk taking than younger children. Individual actions were judged in a more lenient manner than collective actions. Girls tended to be more morally condemning towards risk taking, but the youngest girls were not less prone to accept risks than boys. General measures of moral development according to Piaget and Kohlberg were not associated with perceived acceptability of risk or the judged morality of risky activities but relations were found between risk taking and assertiveness and perceived freedom, which were the most important factors in accounting for risk and morality attitudes. 22 refs, 9 figs, 4 tabs.

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.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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…

“Correcting an Erring Wife Is Normal”: Moral Discourses of Spousal Violence in Ghana

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Adjei, Stephen Baffour

2015-01-01

, blame their victims, and manage their moral accountability; victims position husband-to-wife abuse as normal, legitimate, disciplinary, and corrective. These moral discourses of spousal violence apparently serve to relieve perpetrators of moral agency; prime battered women to accept abuse; and devastate...

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)...

Can model-free reinforcement learning explain deontological moral judgments?

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Ayars, Alisabeth

2016-05-01

Dual-systems frameworks propose that moral judgments are derived from both an immediate emotional response, and controlled/rational cognition. Recently Cushman (2013) proposed a new dual-system theory based on model-free and model-based reinforcement learning. Model-free learning attaches values to actions based on their history of reward and punishment, and explains some deontological, non-utilitarian judgments. Model-based learning involves the construction of a causal model of the world and allows for far-sighted planning; this form of learning fits well with utilitarian considerations that seek to maximize certain kinds of outcomes. I present three concerns regarding the use of model-free reinforcement learning to explain deontological moral judgment. First, many actions that humans find aversive from model-free learning are not judged to be morally wrong. Moral judgment must require something in addition to model-free learning. Second, there is a dearth of evidence for central predictions of the reinforcement account-e.g., that people with different reinforcement histories will, all else equal, make different moral judgments. Finally, to account for the effect of intention within the framework requires certain assumptions which lack support. These challenges are reasonable foci for future empirical/theoretical work on the model-free/model-based framework. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The moral problem of worse actors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Scott Wisor

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Individuals and institutions sometimes have morally stringent reasons to not do a given action. For example, an oil company might have morally stringent reasons to refrain from providing revenue to a genocidal regime, or an engineer might have morally stringent reasons to refrain from providing her expertise in the development of weapons of mass destruction. But in some cases, if the agent does not do the action, another actor will do it with much worse consequences. For example, the oil company might know their assets will be bought by a company with worse environmental and labor practices. Or the engineer might know her position will be filled by a more ambitious and amoral engineer. I call this the moral problem of worse actors (MPWA. MPWA gives reason, at least some of the time, to consider otherwise morally impermissible actions permissible or even obligatory. On my account, doing the action in the circumstances of MPWA remains morally objectionable even if permissible or obligatory, and this brings additional moral responsibilities and obligations to the actor. Similarly, not doing the action in the circumstances of MPWA may also bring additional (but different moral responsibilities and obligations. Acknowledging MPWA creates considerable challenges, as many bad actors may appeal to it to justify morally objectionable action. In this paper, I develop a set of strategies for individuals and institutions to handle MPWA. This includes appeals to integrity and the proper attribution of expressive responsibility, regulatory responsibility, and compensatory responsibility. I also address a set of related concerns, including worries about incentivizing would-be bad actors, concerns about epistemic uncertainty, and the problem of mala in se exceptions.

Beyond Dominance and Competence: A Moral Virtue Theory of Status Attainment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bai, Feng

2017-08-01

Recognition has grown that moral behavior (e.g., generosity) plays a role in status attainment, yet it remains unclear how, why, and when demonstrating moral characteristics enhances status. Drawing on philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and organizational behavior, I critically review a third route to attaining status: virtue, and propose a moral virtue theory of status attainment to provide a generalized account of the role of morality in status attainment. The moral virtue theory posits that acts of virtue elicit feelings of warmth and admiration (for virtue), and willing deference, toward the virtuous actor. I further consider how the scope and priority of moralities and virtues endorsed by a moral community are bound by culture and social class to affect which moral characteristics enhance status. I end by outlining an agenda for future research into the role of virtue in status attainment.

Bioethics of life programs: taking seriously moral pluralism in clinical settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Niebroj, Leslaw

2010-11-04

In the more and more globalized world, the experience of moral pluralism (often related to, or based upon, religious pluralism) has become a common issue which ethical importance is undeniable. Potential conflicts between patients' and therapeutic teams' moral views and between moral beliefs of the particular member of this team are being resolved in the light of bioethical theories, among which principlism remains the mainstream approach to biomedical ethics. The question arises, however, whether this approach, in itself, as being strictly bound to the specific and distinct American philosophical tradition, is to be considered the tool for so called ?moral imperialism'. Also architectures of principlism, in particular by elaborating the concept of common morality, defend the applicability of their theory to the pluralistic settings, it should be emphasized that the idea that some norms and standards of moral character are shared by all morally serious people in every culture has attracted criticism both from empirical as well as theoretical backgrounds. This paper aims at reconsidering principlism so that it would be more suitable for resolving moral dilemma in ethically pluralistic clinical settings. Lakatos' sophisticated methodological falsification is used into two different ways: (1) to construct a concept of 'life programs' and (2) to confront a newly elaborated ethical theory with principlism. The reflection is limited to the norms related to the key issue in clinical ethics, i.e., respecting the patient's autonomy. The concepts of common morality and particular moralities are interpreted (in the light of Lakatos' philosophy of sciences) as "hard core" and "protective belt" of life programs, respectively. Accepting diversity of research programs, Lakatos maintains the idea of the objectivity of truth. Analogously, the plurality of life programs does not put into question the objectivity of moral values. The plurality of moral norms not only respects the

The difference of being human: Morality

Science.gov (United States)

Ayala, Francisco J.

2010-01-01

In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871, Charles Darwin wrote: “I fully … subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.” I raise the question of whether morality is biologically or culturally determined. The question of whether the moral sense is biologically determined may refer either to the capacity for ethics (i.e., the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong), or to the moral norms accepted by human beings for guiding their actions. I propose that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature, whereas moral codes are products of cultural evolution. Humans have a moral sense because their biological makeup determines the presence of three necessary conditions for ethical behavior: (i) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one's own actions; (ii) the ability to make value judgments; and (iii) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself but as a necessary consequence of man's eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. That is, morality evolved as an exaptation, not as an adaptation. Moral codes, however, are outcomes of cultural evolution, which accounts for the diversity of cultural norms among populations and for their evolution through time. PMID:20445091

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.…

Accounting and the Virtues of Anarchy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Warwick Funnell

2007-03-01

Full Text Available The ability of accounting to be used for the purposes of economic, social and political oppressionis now well recognised in the critical accounting literature. Accounting is far more than aninnocuous technology of rational calculation and accountability upon which management and theefficient operation of markets depend. Its contributions to maintaining the hegemony of the stateare primarily through its close association with the protection and promotion of property rights.For the anarchist this relationship is the source of entrenched injustice which alienatesindividuals from their fundamental, moral nature. Elimination of the state allows justice to bereasserted and society to operate on moral principles. When the very existence of the state isquestioned, as does anarchism, understanding of the fundamental nature and contributions ofaccounting need to be renegotiated.

No Absolutism Here: Harm Predicts Moral Judgment 30× Better Than Disgust-Commentary on Scott, Inbar, & Rozin (2016).

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Kurt; Schein, Chelsea

2016-05-01

Moral absolutism is the idea that people's moral judgments are insensitive to considerations of harm. Scott, Inbar, and Rozin (2016, this issue) claim that most moral opponents to genetically modified organisms are absolutely opposed-motivated by disgust and not harm. Yet there is no evidence for moral absolutism in their data. Perceived risk/harm is the most significant predictor of moral judgments for "absolutists," accounting for 30 times more variance than disgust. Reanalyses suggest that disgust is not even a significant predictor of the moral judgments of absolutists once accounting for perceived harm and anger. Instead of revealing actual moral absolutism, Scott et al. find only empty absolutism: hypothetical, forecasted, self-reported moral absolutism. Strikingly, the moral judgments of so-called absolutists are somewhat more sensitive to consequentialist concerns than those of nonabsolutists. Mediation reanalyses reveal that moral judgments are most proximally predicted by harm and not disgust, consistent with dyadic morality. © The Author(s) 2016.

Neural basis of moral verdict and moral deliberation

Science.gov (United States)

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

Three Strikes Out: Objections to Segall's Luck Egalitarian Justice in Health

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Lasse; Axelsen, David Vestergaard

2012-01-01

Setting out to defend luck egalitarianism in matters of justice in health, Shlomi Segall outlines a pluralistic version of the luck egalitarian framework allowing egalitarian justice to be traded-off against other moral requirements. The suggested pluralism enables luck egalitarian justice...... to coexist with a concern for meeting everyone’s basic needs thereby avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s ‘abandonment objection’. In this article, we present three objections to Segall’s luck egalitarian justice in health. Firstly, the account is vulnerable to the common objection that luck egalitarianism becomes...... too expansive, and that Segall’s defence against this is inadequate. Secondly, Segall’s pluralist attempt to balance luck egalitarian justice and other moral requirements ends up compromising its own ideal of justice. Due to the fact that resource scarcity is the reality of health and health care...

14 CFR Section 18 - Objective Classification-Cumulative Effect of Changes in Accounting Principles

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... of Changes in Accounting Principles Section 18 Section 18 Aeronautics and Space OFFICE OF THE... Objective Classification—Cumulative Effect of Changes in Accounting Principles 98Cumulative Effect of Changes in Accounting Principles. Record here the difference between the amount of retained earnings at...

Beliefs in moral luck: When and why blame hinges on luck.

Science.gov (United States)

Lench, Heather C; Domsky, Darren; Smallman, Rachel; Darbor, Kathleen E

2015-05-01

Belief in moral luck is represented in judgements that offenders should be held accountable for intent to cause harm as well as whether or not harm occurred. Scores on a measure of moral luck beliefs predicted judgements of offenders who varied in intent and the outcomes of their actions, although judgements overall were not consistent with abstract beliefs in moral luck. Prompting participants to consider alternative outcomes, particularly worse outcomes, reduced moral luck beliefs. Findings suggest that some people believe that offenders should be punished based on the outcome of their actions. Furthermore, prompting counterfactuals decreased judgements consistent with moral luck beliefs. The results have implications for theories of moral judgement as well as legal decision making. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Evaluating moral reasoning in nursing education.

Science.gov (United States)

McLeod-Sordjan, Renee

2014-06-01

Evidence-based practice suggests the best approach to improving professionalism in practice is ethics curricula. However, recent research has demonstrated that millennium graduates do not advocate for patients or assert themselves during moral conflicts. The aim of this article is the exploration of evaluation techniques to evaluate one measurable outcome of ethics curricula: moral reasoning. A review of literature, published between 1995 and 2013, demonstrated that the moral orientations of care and justice as conceptualized by Gilligan and Kohlberg are utilized by nursing students to solve ethical dilemmas. Data obtained by means of reflective journaling, Ethics of Care Interview (ECI) and Defining Issues Test (DIT), would objectively measure the interrelated pathways of care-based and justice-based moral reasoning. In conclusion, educators have an ethical responsibility to foster students' ability to exercise sound clinical judgment, and support their professional development. It is recommended that educators design authentic assessments to demonstrate student's improvement of moral reasoning. © The Author(s) 2013.

Children's and Adolescents' Accounts of Helping and Hurting Others: Lessons About the Development of Moral Agency.

Science.gov (United States)

Recchia, Holly E; Wainryb, Cecilia; Bourne, Stacia; Pasupathi, Monisha

2015-01-01

This study examined children's and adolescents' narrative accounts of everyday experiences when they harmed and helped a friend. The sample included 100 participants divided into three age groups (7-, 11-, and 16-year-olds). Help narratives focused on the helping acts themselves and reasons for helping, whereas harm narratives included more references to consequences of acts and psychological conflicts. With age, however, youth increasingly described the consequences of helping. Reasons for harming others focused especially on the narrator's perspective whereas reasons for helping others were centered on others' perspectives. With age, youth increasingly drew self-related insights from their helpful, but not their harmful, actions. Results illuminate how reflections on prosocial and transgressive experiences may provide distinct opportunities for constructing moral agency. © 2015 The Authors. Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Moral Decision-Making among Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) Case Managers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lerbæk, Birgitte; Aagaard, Jørgen; Andersen, Mette Braendstrup

2015-01-01

The context of care in assertive community treatment (ACT) can be precarious and generate ethical issues involving the principles of autonomy and paternalism. This focus group study examined case managers' situated accounts of moral reasoning. Our findings show how they expressed strong moral...... obligation towards helping the clients. Their moral reasoning reflected a paternalistic position where, on different occasions, the potential benefits of their interventions would be prioritised at the expense of protecting the clients' personal autonomy. The case managers' reasoning emphasised situational...

Moral experience: a framework for bioethics research.

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Hunt, Matthew R; Carnevale, Franco A

2011-11-01

Theoretical and empirical research in bioethics frequently focuses on ethical dilemmas or problems. This paper draws on anthropological and phenomenological sources to develop an alternative framework for bioethical enquiry that allows examination of a broader range of how the moral is experienced in the everyday lives of individuals and groups. Our account of moral experience is subjective and hermeneutic. We define moral experience as "Encompassing a person's sense that values that he or she deem important are being realised or thwarted in everyday life. This includes a person's interpretations of a lived encounter, or a set of lived encounters, that fall on spectrums of right-wrong, good-bad or just-unjust". In our conceptualisation, moral experience is not limited to situations that are heavily freighted with ethically-troubling ramifications or are sources of debate and disagreement. Important aspects of moral experience are played out in mundane and everyday settings. Moral experience provides a research framework, the scope of which extends beyond the evaluation of ethical dilemmas, processes of moral justification and decision-making, and moral distress. This broad research focus is consistent with views expressed by commentators within and beyond bioethics who have called for deeper and more sustained attention in bioethics scholarship to a wider set of concerns, experiences and issues that better captures what is ethically at stake for individuals and communities. In this paper we present our conceptualisation of moral experience, articulate its epistemological and ontological foundations and discuss opportunities for empirical bioethics research using this framework.

Educating Moral Emotions or Moral Selves: A False Dichotomy?

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

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

Books and Becoming Good: Demonstrating Aristotle's Theory of Moral Development in the Act of Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Cain, Amanda

2005-01-01

In the Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle sets down a scattered and fractional account of the development of moral virtue within young people. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum defends Aristotle's neglect of a systematic account of moral development and argues that more complex expressions of character-building, such as learning to expose oneself to proper…

A Study of 8 Fundamental Moral Characteristics among Thai Undergraduate Students

Science.gov (United States)

Ngammuk, Patariya

2011-01-01

The objective of this study is to explore the eight fundamental moral characteristics of undergraduate students in order to benefit instructional model development. The eight moral characteristics are diligence, frugality, honesty, discipline, politeness, cleanliness, unity and generosity. The study findings rank these eight moral characteristics…

Morals Matter in Economic Games

Science.gov (United States)

Brodbeck, Felix C.; Kugler, Katharina G.; Reif, Julia A. M.; Maier, Markus A.

2013-01-01

Contrary to predictions from Expected Utility Theory and Game Theory, when making economic decisions in interpersonal situations, people take the interest of others into account and express various forms of solidarity, even in one-shot interactions with anonymous strangers. Research in other-regarding behavior is dominated by behavioral economical and evolutionary biological approaches. Psychological theory building, which addresses mental processes underlying other-regarding behavior, is rare. Based on Relational Models Theory (RMT, [1]) and Relationship Regulation Theory (RRT, [2]) it is proposed that moral motives influence individuals’ decision behavior in interpersonal situations via conscious and unconscious (automatic) processes. To test our propositions we developed the ‘Dyadic Solidarity Game’ and its solitary equivalent, the ‘Self-Insurance Game’. Four experiments, in which the moral motives “Unity” and “Proportionality” were manipulated, support the propositions made. First, it was shown that consciously activated moral motives (via framing of the overall goal of the experiment) and unconsciously activated moral motives (via subliminal priming) influence other-regarding behavior. Second, this influence was only found in interpersonal, not in solitary situations. Third, by combining the analyses of the two experimental games the extent to which participants apply the Golden Rule (“treat others how you wish to be treated”) could be established. Individuals with a “Unity” motive treated others like themselves, whereas individuals with a “Proportionality” motive gave others less then they gave themselves. The four experiments not only support the assumption that morals matter in economic games, they also deliver new insights in how morals matter in economic decision making. PMID:24358115

Morals matter in economic games.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Felix C Brodbeck

Full Text Available Contrary to predictions from Expected Utility Theory and Game Theory, when making economic decisions in interpersonal situations, people take the interest of others into account and express various forms of solidarity, even in one-shot interactions with anonymous strangers. Research in other-regarding behavior is dominated by behavioral economical and evolutionary biological approaches. Psychological theory building, which addresses mental processes underlying other-regarding behavior, is rare. Based on Relational Models Theory (RMT, [1] and Relationship Regulation Theory (RRT, [2] it is proposed that moral motives influence individuals' decision behavior in interpersonal situations via conscious and unconscious (automatic processes. To test our propositions we developed the 'Dyadic Solidarity Game' and its solitary equivalent, the 'Self-Insurance Game'. Four experiments, in which the moral motives "Unity" and "Proportionality" were manipulated, support the propositions made. First, it was shown that consciously activated moral motives (via framing of the overall goal of the experiment and unconsciously activated moral motives (via subliminal priming influence other-regarding behavior. Second, this influence was only found in interpersonal, not in solitary situations. Third, by combining the analyses of the two experimental games the extent to which participants apply the Golden Rule ("treat others how you wish to be treated" could be established. Individuals with a "Unity" motive treated others like themselves, whereas individuals with a "Proportionality" motive gave others less then they gave themselves. The four experiments not only support the assumption that morals matter in economic games, they also deliver new insights in how morals matter in economic decision making.

Morals matter in economic games.

Science.gov (United States)

Brodbeck, Felix C; Kugler, Katharina G; Reif, Julia A M; Maier, Markus A

2013-01-01

Contrary to predictions from Expected Utility Theory and Game Theory, when making economic decisions in interpersonal situations, people take the interest of others into account and express various forms of solidarity, even in one-shot interactions with anonymous strangers. Research in other-regarding behavior is dominated by behavioral economical and evolutionary biological approaches. Psychological theory building, which addresses mental processes underlying other-regarding behavior, is rare. Based on Relational Models Theory (RMT, [1]) and Relationship Regulation Theory (RRT, [2]) it is proposed that moral motives influence individuals' decision behavior in interpersonal situations via conscious and unconscious (automatic) processes. To test our propositions we developed the 'Dyadic Solidarity Game' and its solitary equivalent, the 'Self-Insurance Game'. Four experiments, in which the moral motives "Unity" and "Proportionality" were manipulated, support the propositions made. First, it was shown that consciously activated moral motives (via framing of the overall goal of the experiment) and unconsciously activated moral motives (via subliminal priming) influence other-regarding behavior. Second, this influence was only found in interpersonal, not in solitary situations. Third, by combining the analyses of the two experimental games the extent to which participants apply the Golden Rule ("treat others how you wish to be treated") could be established. Individuals with a "Unity" motive treated others like themselves, whereas individuals with a "Proportionality" motive gave others less then they gave themselves. The four experiments not only support the assumption that morals matter in economic games, they also deliver new insights in how morals matter in economic decision making.

Moral Communities and Moral Leadership.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

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

Kant on mental disorder. Part 2: philosophical implications of Kant's account.

Science.gov (United States)

Frierson, Patrick

2009-09-01

This paper considers various philosophical problems arising from Kant's account of mental disorder. Starting with the reasons why Kant considered his theory of mental disorder important, I then turn to the implications of this theory of Kant's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Given Kant's account of insanity as 'a totally different standpoint... from which one sees all objects differently' (7: 216), the Critique of Pure Reason should be read as offering a more social epistemology than typically recognized. Also, mental disorders that seem to undermine human freedom and rationality raise problems for Kant's moral philosophy that his pragmatic anthropology helps to mitigate. Finally, I propose some implications of Kant's account of mental disorder for contemporary work on mental illness.

Exploring moral conflicts in speech : Multidisciplinary analysis of affect and stress

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lee, M.; Kim, J.; Truong, K.; de Kort, Y.A.W.; Beute, F.; IJsselsteijn, W.A.

2017-01-01

Our moral conscience as the "inner light" that guides us shines brighter during moments of ethical conflicts, when we notice a tension between our many oughts and/or wants. We present the first analyses on speech related stress and affect in accounts of moral conflicts. For our exploratory study, we

Exploring Moral Conflicts in Speech: Multidisciplinary Analysis of Affect and Stress

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lee, Minha; Kim, Jaebok; Truong, Khiet; de Kort, Yvonne; Beute, Femke; IJsselsteijn, Wijnand

2017-01-01

Our moral conscience as the “inner light” that guides us shines brighter during moments of ethical conflicts, when we notice a tension between our many oughts and/or wants. We present the first analyses on speech related stress and affect in accounts of moral conflicts. For our exploratory study, we

"Correcting an Erring Wife Is Normal": Moral Discourses of Spousal Violence in Ghana.

Science.gov (United States)

Adjei, Stephen Baffour

2018-06-01

This study draws insights from discursive psychology to explore moral discourses of spousal violence in Ghana. In particular, it investigates how sociocultural norms and practices are invoked in talk of perpetrators and victims as moral warrants for husband-to-wife abuse in Ghana. Semi-structured focus group and personal interviews were conducted with a total of 40 participants: 16 victims, 16 perpetrators, and eight key informants from rural and urban Ghana. Participants' discursive accounts suggest that husbands have implicit moral right and obligation to punish their wives for disobedience and other infractions against male authority in marriage. Both perpetrators and victims build their talk around familiar normative discourses and practices that provide tacit support for spousal violence in Ghana. While perpetrators mobilize culturally resonant and normative repertoires to justify abuse, blame their victims, and manage their moral accountability; victims position husband-to-wife abuse as normal, legitimate, disciplinary, and corrective. These moral discourses of spousal violence apparently serve to relieve perpetrators of moral agency; prime battered women to accept abuse; and devastate their agency to leave abusive marital relationships. The findings contribute to our understanding of how cultural and social norms of spousal violence are morally constituted, reproduced, and sustained in talk of perpetrators, victims, and other key members of society.

DILEMAS MORALES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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. ...

Could Moral Enhancement Interventions be Medically Indicated?

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Carter, Sarah

2017-12-01

This paper explores the position that moral enhancement interventions could be medically indicated (and so considered therapeutic) in cases where they provide a remedy for a lack of empathy, when such a deficit is considered pathological. In order to argue this claim, the question as to whether a deficit of empathy could be considered to be pathological is examined, taking into account the difficulty of defining illness and disorder generally, and especially in the case of mental health. Following this, Psychopathy and a fictionalised mental disorder (Moral Deficiency Disorder) are explored with a view to consider moral enhancement techniques as possible treatments for both conditions. At this juncture, having asserted and defended the position that moral enhancement interventions could, under certain circumstances, be considered medically indicated, this paper then goes on to briefly explore some of the consequences of this assertion. First, it is acknowledged that this broadening of diagnostic criteria in light of new interventions could fall foul of claims of medicalisation. It is then briefly noted that considering moral enhancement technologies to be akin to therapies in certain circumstances could lead to ethical and legal consequences and questions, such as those regarding regulation, access, and even consent.

Perceived vulnerability as a common basis of moral emotions.

Science.gov (United States)

Dijker, Anton J M

2010-06-01

It is theorized that many moral emotions are triggered when a mechanism for (parental) care is activated by perceived vulnerability, and changes in the care object's well-being are subsequently evaluated and causally attributed. Participants reported different moral emotions (tenderness, concern, sympathy, guilt, and moral anger) in relation to different photographs of males and females widely differing in age. Using variation between emotion objects, it was shown that emotional reactions were highly intercorrelated and strongly related to perceived vulnerability and aroused protective tendency; with children and elderly arousing the strongest, and adult males the weakest, emotions. Moreover, these intercorrelations largely disappeared when vulnerability and protective tendency were statistically controlled. Theoretical implications are discussed.

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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

Nudging the Public Sphere: A Habermasian Perspective on Public Deliberation as an Aim of Moral Education

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Martin, Christopher

2015-01-01

This article offers an account of the understanding citizens need in order to justify moral principles in the public sphere and it identifies an important role for moral education in the promotion of that civic understanding. I develop this account through a contrastive analysis of Phillip Kitcher's conception of public knowledge and Jurgen…

* Ethical Issues in the Use of Animal Models for Tissue Engineering: Reflections on Legal Aspects, Moral Theory, Three Rs Strategies, and Harm-Benefit Analysis.

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Liguori, Gabriel R; Jeronimus, Bertus F; de Aquinas Liguori, Tácia T; Moreira, Luiz Felipe P; Harmsen, Martin C

2017-12-01

Animal experimentation requires a solid and rational moral foundation. Objective and emphatic decision-making and protocol evaluation by researchers and ethics committees remain a difficult and sensitive matter. This article presents three perspectives that facilitate a consideration of the minimally acceptable standard for animal experiments, in particular, in tissue engineering (TE) and regenerative medicine. First, we review the boundaries provided by law and public opinion in America and Europe. Second, we review contemporary moral theory to introduce the Neo-Rawlsian contractarian theory to objectively evaluate the ethics of animal experiments. Third, we introduce the importance of available reduction, replacement, and refinement strategies, which should be accounted for in moral decision-making and protocol evaluation of animal experiments. The three perspectives are integrated into an algorithmic and graphic harm-benefit analysis tool based on the most relevant aspects of animal models in TE. We conclude with a consideration of future avenues to improve animal experiments.

Disrupting the right prefrontal cortex alters moral judgement.

Science.gov (United States)

Tassy, Sébastien; Oullier, Olivier; Duclos, Yann; Coulon, Olivier; Mancini, Julien; Deruelle, Christine; Attarian, Sharam; Felician, Olivier; Wicker, Bruno

2012-03-01

Humans daily face social situations involving conflicts between competing moral decision. Despite a substantial amount of studies published over the past 10 years, the respective role of emotions and reason, their possible interaction, and their behavioural expression during moral evaluation remains an unresolved issue. A dualistic approach to moral evaluation proposes that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFc) controls emotional impulses. However, recent findings raise the possibility that the right DLPFc processes emotional information during moral decision making. We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to transiently disrupt rDLPFc activity before measuring decision making in the context of moral dilemmas. Results reveal an increase of the probability of utilitarian responses during objective evaluation of moral dilemmas in the rTMS group (compared to a SHAM one). This suggests that the right DLPFc function not only participates to a rational cognitive control process, but also integrates emotions generated by contextual information appraisal, which are decisive for response selection in moral judgements. © The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press.

Determinants of Accounting Frauds:Perceptions of Indonesian Civil Servants

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Hadri Kusuma

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to examine a number of factors that affect the accounting fraud. This study used the variables consisting of information asymmetry, organizational commitment and individual morality. Theauthors study surveyed the employees at the Office for Management of Regional Revenue, Finance and Assets (Dinas Pendapatan Pengelolaan Keuangan Aset, Yogyakarta Province. This study uses convenience sampling technique method. The data from 96 respondents revealed that the variables of information asymmetry and organizational commitment significantly enhanced the accounting fraud while the individual morality significantly diminished the accounting fraud.

The Responsibilities of Accountants

OpenAIRE

Ronald F Duska

2005-01-01

An accountant is a good accountant if in practicing his craft he is superb in handling the numbers. But a good accountant in handling the numbers can use that skill to misstate earnings to cover a multitude of problems with a company's books while staying within the law. So, the notion of a moral or ethical accountant is not the same as the notion of a good accountant. Our general principle would be that to be ethical a person has a responsibility to fulfil one's role or roles, as long as tha...

Underachievement, Failing Youth and Moral Panics

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Emma

2010-01-01

This paper considers contemporary "moral panics" around the underachievement of boys in school examinations in the UK and America. In the UK, in particular, the underachievement of boys is central to current "crisis accounts" about falling standards and failing pupils. "Underachievement" is a familiar word to those…

The Dilemma of Science and Morals

Science.gov (United States)

Stent, Gunther S.

1974-01-01

The conflicts between science and morals which still continue to arise despite the apparent hegemony of atheistic scientism over traditional Judeo-Christianity in the twentieth century reflect a basic contradiction in the metaphysical foundation of Western lives. As was set forth by Machiavelli, the contradiction inherent in Western ethics is that it is based on the simultaneous belief in both objectively valid moral truths and purely relative values of communal purpose. The achievements of twentieth century science have intensified these contradictions. Modern physics has put in question the validity of its own metaphysical basis, namely the belief in Natural Law, and modern biology has been unable to come to terms with the Cartesian dualism of body and soul. By contrast, Chinese lives are comparatively free of these contradictions, being founded on the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism, to which the concepts of objectively valid truth or Natural Law are foreign. Recent developments in Western attitudes regarding science and morals can be interpreted as a movement away from the traditional belief in absolute truths towards a Chinese relativism. PMID:4531410

Structural similarities between the tradition of moral philosophy and Durkheim’s social theory

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Ana Marta González

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The first sociological theories are indebted to Enlightenment philosophy of history, which first appeared to provide a framework of meaning for moral action once moral theory had renounced the metaphysical commitments of early modern moral philosophy. While defending the autonomy of sociology from philosophy, Durkheim prescribed a specific task for sociological thought, namely: develop a moral science which, by keeping together the two features with which moral facts appear before conscience —solidarity and coercion— could account for the moral sense of the division of labour, a phenomenon previously considered almost a natural process. The purpose of this article is to show how Durkheim’s approach makes room for us to establish a structural similarity between sociological analysis and the perspective of mutual obligations characteristic of the moral philosophical tradition.

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

OpenAIRE

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. ...

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism.

Science.gov (United States)

Patil, Indrajeet; Melsbach, Jens; Hennig-Fast, Kristina; Silani, Giorgia

2016-03-29

This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics' hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare. Results showed that they exhibited a normal pattern of moral judgments despite the deficits in social cognition and emotional processing. Further analyses revealed that this was due to mutually conflicting biases associated with autistic and alexithymic traits after accounting for shared variance: (a) autistic traits were associated with reduced utilitarian bias due to elevated personal distress of demanding social situations, while (b) alexithymic traits were associated with increased utilitarian bias on account of reduced empathic concern for the victim. Additionally, autistics relied on their non-verbal reasoning skills to rigidly abide by harm-norms. Thus, utilitarian moral judgments in autism were spared due to opposite influences of autistic and alexithymic traits and compensatory intellectual strategies. These findings demonstrate the importance of empathy and alexithymia in autistic moral cognition and have methodological implications for studying moral judgments in several other clinical populations.

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

Science.gov (United States)

Patil, Indrajeet; Melsbach, Jens; Hennig-Fast, Kristina; Silani, Giorgia

2016-01-01

This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics’ hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare. Results showed that they exhibited a normal pattern of moral judgments despite the deficits in social cognition and emotional processing. Further analyses revealed that this was due to mutually conflicting biases associated with autistic and alexithymic traits after accounting for shared variance: (a) autistic traits were associated with reduced utilitarian bias due to elevated personal distress of demanding social situations, while (b) alexithymic traits were associated with increased utilitarian bias on account of reduced empathic concern for the victim. Additionally, autistics relied on their non-verbal reasoning skills to rigidly abide by harm-norms. Thus, utilitarian moral judgments in autism were spared due to opposite influences of autistic and alexithymic traits and compensatory intellectual strategies. These findings demonstrate the importance of empathy and alexithymia in autistic moral cognition and have methodological implications for studying moral judgments in several other clinical populations. PMID:27020307

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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…

Chinese business managers' moral decision-making

OpenAIRE

LIN, NASA

2011-01-01

The topic of this thesis is about moral decision-making, and the main objective of this study is to research the moral decision-making of Chinese business managers based on the analysis of data. The study adopts systematic literature of qualitative research method and is constructed by means of qualitative analysis of 64 data articles. The 64 data articles are the journals from the Database of Chinese Academic Journals, Journal of Business Ethics and other leading business journals from the y...

What does morality require when we disagree?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Martin Marchman

2017-01-01

In “Principled Compromise and the Abortion Controversy” Simon C. May argues that we do not have a principled moral reason to compromise. While I seek to understand how more precisely we are to understand this suggestion, I also object to it: I argue that we have a principled moral reason to accept...... democratic decisions that we disagree with, and that this can only be so if disagreement can change what the all things considered right political position is. But if this is so, then also a principled moral reason to compromise is possible. I suggest that there is a class of procedures, including compromise...

Accounting-information support investment in object of tourism industry

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Ya.D. Krupka

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The article reveals the peculiarities of investments in tourism, their financial support through various sources. Given the branching system of travel, and additional related services offered by the author, each of the objects viewed as an investment project which, in turn, provides investment and obtaining from them certain benefits. In the article the system of investment projects, including the relationship of forms of investment (own cash and property investments of investors, credit and other borrowed resources, funds from sponsors and donations and the effects of investment (profit from operations, related income, social benefits for citizens and other benefits for society. Given the fact that every project goes through several stages since its launch and completion stages of submitted investment projects include the following phases: pre, investment process and control the results and return on capital investment projects under operation. The scheme of the project life cycle, which provided a way out of the project, corresponding interpretation investing activities international and national accounting standards and financial reporting. In this paper, special attention is paid to the rehabilitation of tourist visits, keeping investments in them, as well as an attempt to give an objective assessment of the effectiveness of such investments on the basis of accounting information.

The Relation Between Policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility and Philosophical Moral Theories

OpenAIRE

Frederiksen, Claus S.

2009-01-01

This paper examines the relation between policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and philosophical moral theories. The objective is to determine which moral theories form the basis for CSR policies. Are they based on ethical egoism, libertarianism, utilitarianism or some kind of common-sense morality? To address this issue, I conducted an empirical investigation examining the relation between moral theories and CSR policies, in companies engaged in CSR. Based ...

Does Incidental Disgust Amplify Moral Judgment? A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental Evidence.

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Landy, Justin F; Goodwin, Geoffrey P

2015-07-01

The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology. One specific claim made by many researchers is that irrelevant feelings of disgust can amplify the severity of moral condemnation. Numerous researchers have found this effect, but there have also been several published failures to replicate it. Clarifying this issue would inform important theoretical debates among rival accounts of moral judgment. We meta-analyzed all available studies--published and unpublished--in which incidental disgust was manipulated prior to or concurrent with a moral judgment task (k = 50). We found evidence for a small amplification effect of disgust (d = 0.11), which is strongest for gustatory/olfactory modes of disgust induction. However, there is also some suggestion of publication bias in this literature, and when this is accounted for, the effect disappears entirely (d = -0.01). Moreover, prevalent confounds mean that the effect size that we estimate is best interpreted as an upper bound on the size of the amplification effect. On the basis of the results of this meta-analysis, we argue against strong claims about the causal role of affect in moral judgment and suggest a need for new, more rigorous research on this topic. © The Author(s) 2015.

Rethinking infant knowledge: toward an adaptive process account of successes and failures in object permanence tasks.

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Munakata, Y; McClelland, J L; Johnson, M H; Siegler, R S

1997-10-01

Infants seem sensitive to hidden objects in habituation tasks at 3.5 months but fail to retrieve hidden objects until 8 months. The authors first consider principle-based accounts of these successes and failures, in which early successes imply knowledge of principles and failures are attributed to ancillary deficits. One account is that infants younger than 8 months have the object permanence principle but lack means-ends abilities. To test this, 7-month-olds were trained on means-ends behaviors and were tested on retrieval of visible and occluded toys. Means-ends demands were the same, yet infants made more toy-guided retrievals in the visible case. The authors offer an adaptive process account in which knowledge is graded and embedded in specific behavioral processes. Simulation models that learn gradually to represent occluded objects show how this approach can account for success and failure in object permanence tasks without assuming principles and ancillary deficits.

On the Adaptive Value of Moralized Revulsion from an Evolutionist Perspective

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María Natalia Zavadivker

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The article addresses the role played by “moralized revulsion”, understood as the emotional disgust we feel against individuals and social practices that we deem to be the object of moral evaluation, from an evolutionist perspective. The first part provides a general analysis of the emotion of revulsion and its triggers. Then, the paper discusses two opposing positions regarding the reliability and instrumental value of revulsion in promoting “adequate” moral judgments and inciting to moral action. It then proposes a reinterpretation of the problem from an evolutionist perspective, attempting to correlate the diverse value judgments promoted by moralized revulsion with different adaptive strategies. Finally, it correlates those strategies with liberal and conservative moral positions.

Moral competence among nurses in Malawi: A concept analysis approach.

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Maluwa, Veronica Mary; Gwaza, Elizabeth; Sakala, Betty; Kapito, Esnath; Mwale, Ruth; Haruzivishe, Clara; Chirwa, Ellen

2018-01-01

Nurses are expected to provide comprehensive, holistic and ethically accepted care according to their code of ethics and practice. However, in Malawi, this is not always the case. This article analyses moral competence concept using the Walker and Avant's strategy of concept analysis. The aim of this article is to analyse moral competence concept in relation to nursing practice and determine defining attributes, antecedents and consequences of moral competence in nursing practice. Analysis of moral competence concept was done using Walker and Avant's strategy of concept analysis. Deductive analysis was used to find the defining attributes of moral competence, which were kindness, compassion, caring, critical thinking, ethical decision making ability, problem solving, responsibility, discipline, accountability, communication, solidarity, honesty, and respect for human values, dignity and rights. The identified antecedents were personal, cultural and religious values; nursing ethics training, environment and guidance. The consequences of moral competence are team work spirit, effective communication, improved performance and positive attitudes in providing nursing care. Moral competence can therefore be used as a tool to improve care in nursing practice to meet patients' problems and needs and consequently increase public's satisfaction in Malawi.

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.

Moral distress reexamined: a feminist interpretation of nurses' identities, relationships, and responsibilites.

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Peter, Elizabeth; Liaschenko, Joan

2013-10-01

Moral distress has been written about extensively in nursing and other fields. Often, however, it has not been used with much theoretical depth. This paper focuses on theorizing moral distress using feminist ethics, particularly the work of Margaret Urban Walker and Hilde Lindemann. Incorporating empirical findings, we argue that moral distress is the response to constraints experienced by nurses to their moral identities, responsibilities, and relationships. We recommend that health professionals get assistance in accounting for and communicating their values and responsibilities in situations of moral distress. We also discuss the importance of nurses creating "counterstories" of their work as knowledgeable and trustworthy professionals to repair their damaged moral identities, and, finally, we recommend that efforts toward shifting the goal of health care away from the prolongation of life at all costs to the relief of suffering to diminish the moral distress that is a common response to aggressive care at end-of-life.

MacIntyre's Moral Theory and Moral Relativism

OpenAIRE

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...

From gulf to bridge: when do moral arguments facilitate political influence?

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Feinberg, Matthew; Willer, Robb

2015-12-01

Much of contemporary American political rhetoric is characterized by liberals and conservatives advancing arguments for the morality of their respective political positions. However, research suggests such moral rhetoric is largely ineffective for persuading those who do not already hold one's position because advocates advancing these arguments fail to account for the divergent moral commitments that undergird America's political divisions. Building on this, we hypothesize that (a) political advocates spontaneously make arguments grounded in their own moral values, not the values of those targeted for persuasion, and (b) political arguments reframed to appeal to the moral values of those holding the opposing political position are typically more effective. We find support for these claims across six studies involving diverse political issues, including same-sex marriage, universal health care, military spending, and adopting English as the nation's official langauge. Mediation and moderation analyses further indicated that reframed moral appeals were persuasive because they increased the apparent agreement between the political position and the targeted individuals' moral values. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Utilitarian Moral Judgment Exclusively Coheres with Inference from Is to Ought.

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Elqayam, Shira; Wilkinson, Meredith R; Thompson, Valerie A; Over, David E; Evans, Jonathan St B T

2017-01-01

Faced with moral choice, people either judge according to pre-existing obligations ( deontological judgment), or by taking into account the consequences of their actions ( utilitarian judgment). We propose that the latter coheres with a more general cognitive mechanism - deontic introduction , the tendency to infer normative ('deontic') conclusions from descriptive premises (is-ought inference). Participants were presented with vignettes that allowed either deontological or utilitarian choice, and asked to draw a range of deontic conclusions, as well as judge the overall moral rightness of each choice separately. We predicted and found a selective defeasibility pattern, in which manipulations that suppressed deontic introduction also suppressed utilitarian moral judgment, but had little effect on deontological moral judgment. Thus, deontic introduction coheres with utilitarian moral judgment almost exclusively. We suggest a family of norm-generating informal inferences, in which normative conclusions are drawn from descriptive (although value-laden) premises. This family includes deontic introduction and utilitarian moral judgment as well as other informal inferences. We conclude with a call for greater integration of research in moral judgment and research into deontic reasoning and informal inference.

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

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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.

Human altruism, evolution and moral philosophy

Science.gov (United States)

2017-01-01

This paper has two central aims. The first is to explore philosophical complications that arise when we move from (i) explaining the evolutionary origins of genetically influenced traits associated with human cooperation and altruism, to (ii) explaining present manifestations of human thought, feeling and behaviour involving cooperation and altruism. While the former need only appeal to causal factors accessible to scientific inquiry, the latter must engage also with a distinctive form of explanation, i.e. reason-giving explanation, which in turn raises important philosophical questions, the answers to which will affect the nature of the ultimate explanations of our moral beliefs and related actions. On one possibility I will explore, this explanatory project cannot avoid engaging with first-order ethical theory. The second aim is to apply lessons from these explanatory complications to the critique of ‘evolutionary debunking arguments’, which seek to debunk morality, or at least objective construals of it (i.e. moral realism), by appeal to allegedly scientific debunking explanations of our moral beliefs that would defeat our justification for them. The explanatory complications brought out in the first half raise difficulties for such debunking arguments. If we avoid begging central philosophical questions then such debunking arguments pose little threat of saddling us with moral scepticism or subjectivism, though they do pose an important challenge for those developing a moral realist view. PMID:28878990

Physician morality and perinatal decisions.

Science.gov (United States)

Minkoff, Howard; Zafra, Katherine; Amrita, Sabharwal; Wilson, Tracey E; Homel, Peter

2016-11-01

Given the same set of "facts" (e.g. fetal prognosis) different physicians may not give the same advice to patients. Studies have shown that people differ in how they prioritize moral domains, but how those domains influence counseling and management has not been assessed among obstetricians. Our objective was to see if, given the same set of facts, obstetricians' counseling would vary depending on their prioritization of moral domains. Obstetricians completed questionnaires that included validated scales of moral domains (e.g. autonomy, community, divinity), demographic data, and hypothetical scenarios (e.g. how aggressively they would pursue the interests of a potentially compromised child, the degree of deference they gave to parents' choices, and their relative valuation of fetal rights and women's rights). Multivariate logistic regression using backwards conditional selection was used to explore how participants responded to the moral dilemma scenarios. Among the 249 participating obstetricians there was wide variation in counseling, much of which reflected differences in prioritization of moral domains. For example, requiring a higher likelihood of neonatal survival before recommending a cesarean section with cord prolapse was associated with Fairness/Reciprocity, an autonomy domain which emphasizes treating individuals equally (OR=1.42, 90% CI=1.06-1.89, p=0.05). Honoring parents' request to wait longer to suspend attempts to resuscitate an infant with no heart rate or pulse was associated with the community domains (involving concepts of loyalty and hierarchy) of In-Group/Loyalty; OR 1.30, 90% CI=1.04-1.62, p=0.05 and Authority/Respect (OR=1.34, 90% CI=1.06-1.34, p=0.045). Carrying out an unconsented cesarean section was associated with In-Group Loyalty (OR=1.26, 90% CI=1.01-1.56, p=0.08) and religiosity (OR=1.08, 90% CI=1.00-1.16, p=0.08). The advice that patients receive may vary widely depending on the underlying moral values of obstetricians. Physicians

The same-location cost is unrelated to attentional settings: an object-updating account.

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Carmel, Tomer; Lamy, Dominique

2014-08-01

What mechanisms allow us to ignore salient yet irrelevant visual information has been a matter of intense debate. According to the contingent-capture hypothesis, such information is filtered out, whereas according to the salience-based account, it captures attention automatically. Several recent studies have reported a same-location cost that appears to fit neither of these accounts. These showed that responses may actually be slower when the target appears at the location just occupied by an irrelevant singleton distractor. Here, we investigated the mechanisms underlying this same-location cost. Our findings show that the same-location cost is unrelated to automatic attentional capture or strategic setting of attentional priorities, and therefore invalidate the feature-based inhibition and fast attentional disengagement accounts of this effect. In addition, we show that the cost is wiped out when the cue and target are not perceived as parts of the same object. We interpret these findings as indicating that the same-location cost has been previously misinterpreted by both bottom-up and top-down theories of attentional capture. We propose that it is better understood as a consequence of object updating, namely, as the cost of updating the information stored about an object when this object changes across time.

Art, clinical moral perception, and the moral psychology of healthcare professionalism.

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Rentmeester, Christy A; Severson, Susie

2014-01-01

This essay describes an example of how we-one professor of the elective course Art, Medicine, and Clinical Moral Perception at Creighton University School of Medicine, one Director of Adult Programs at the Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska, and fourth year medical students-practice perception skills using art objects. This essay presents one example of the journal assignments to which students respond in written narratives about their own perception habits. We also share questions any health professions educator can use to guide students' study of their habits of perception using art objects.

"Lean not on your own understanding": Belief that morality is founded on divine authority and non-utilitarian moral judgments

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Jared Piazza

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Recent research has shown that religious individuals are much more resistant to utilitarian modes of thinking than their less religious counterparts, but the reason for this is not clear. We propose that a meta-ethical belief that morality is rooted in inviolable divine commands (i.e., endorsement of Divine Command Theory may help explain this finding. We present a novel 20-item scale measuring a belief that morality is founded on divine authority. The scale shows good internal reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. Study 1 found that this scale fully mediated the relationship that various religiosity measures had with a deontological thinking style in our sample of American adults. It also accounted for the link between religiosity and social conservative values. Furthermore, the relationship between the scale and these outcome variables held after statistically controlling for variables related to actively open-minded thinking and the Big Five. Study 2 replicated the results using naturalistic moral dilemmas that placed deontological and utilitarian concerns in conflict, and showed that the results of Study 1 cannot be explained by differences in moral foundations (e.g., concern for authority more generally or differences in the perceived function of rules. Quite the contrary, endorsement of the divine origins of morality fully mediated the relationship religiosity had with the so-called ``binding'' foundations (i.e., Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Our findings highlight the importance of meta-ethical beliefs for understanding individual differences in moral judgment.

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.

Socioscientific Argumentation: The effects of content knowledge and morality

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Sadler, Troy D.; Donnelly, Lisa A.

2006-10-01

Broad support exists within the science education community for the incorporation of socioscientific issues (SSI) and argumentation in the science curriculum. This study investigates how content knowledge and morality contribute to the quality of SSI argumentation among high school students. We employed a mixed-methods approach: 56 participants completed tests of content knowledge and moral reasoning as well as interviews, related to SSI topics, which were scored based on a rubric for argumentation quality. Multiple regression analyses revealed no statistically significant relationships among content knowledge, moral reasoning, and argumentation quality. Qualitative analyses of the interview transcripts supported the quantitative results in that participants very infrequently revealed patterns of content knowledge application. However, most of the participants did perceive the SSI as moral problems. We propose a “Threshold Model of Knowledge Transfer” to account for the relationship between content knowledge and argumentation quality. Implications for science education are discussed.

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…

Virtue ethics: an approach to moral dilemmas in nursing.

Science.gov (United States)

Arries, E

2005-08-01

Nurses are increasingly confronted with situations of moral difficulty, such as not to feed terminally ill patients, whistle blowing, or participation in termination of pregnancy. Most of these moral dilemmas are often analyzed using the principle-based approach which applies the four moral principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and non-malificence. In some instances, consequentialism is considered, but these frameworks have their limitations. Their limitations has to do with a consideration for the interpersonal nature of clinical nursing practice on the one hand, and is not always clear on how to judge which consequences are best on the other hand. When principles are in conflict it is not always easy to decide which principle should dominate. Furthermore, these frameworks do not take into account the importance of the interpersonal and emotional element of human experience. On the contrary, decision-making about moral issues in healthcare demands that nurses exercise rational control over emotions. This clearly focuses the attention on the nurse as moral agent and in particular their character. In this article I argue that virtue ethics as an approach, which focus of the character of a person, might provide a more holistic analysis of moral dilemmas in nursing and might facilitate more flexible and creative solutions when combined with other theories of moral decision-making. Advancing this argument, firstly, I provide the central features of virtue ethics. Secondly I describe a story in which a moral dilemma is evident. Lastly I apply virtue ethics as an approach to this moral dilemma and in particular focusing on the virtues inherent in the nurse as moral agent in the story.

Virtue ethics: an approach to moral dilemmas in nursing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

E Arries

2005-09-01

Full Text Available Nurses are increasingly confronted with situations of moral difficulty, such as not to feed terminally ill patients, whistle blowing, or participation in termination of pregnancy. Most of these moral dilemmas are often analyzed using the principle-based approach which applies the four moral principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and nonmalificence. In some instances, consequentialism is considered, but these frameworks have their limitations. Their limitations has to do with a consideration for the interpersonal nature of clinical nursing practice on the one hand, and is not always clear on how to judge which consequences are best on the other hand. When principles are in conflict it is not always easy to decide which principle should dominate. Furthermore, these frameworks do not take into account the importance of the interpersonal and emotional element of human experience. On the contrary, decision making about moral issues in healthcare demands that nurses exercise rational control over emotions. This clearly focuses the attention on the nurse as moral agent and in particular their character. In this article I argue that virtue ethics as an approach, which focus of the character of a person, might provide a more holistic analysis of moral dilemmas in nursing and might facilitate more flexible and creative solutions when combined with other theories of moral decision-making. Advancing this argument, firstly, I provide the central features of virtue ethics. Secondly I describe a story in which a moral dilemma is evident. Lastly I apply virtue ethics as an approach to this moral dilemma and in particular focusing on the virtues inherent in the nurse as moral agent in the story.

Overriding Moral Intuitions – Does It Make Us Immoral? Dual-Process Theory of Higher Cognition Account for Moral Reasoning

OpenAIRE

Michał Białek; Simon J. Handley

2013-01-01

Moral decisions are considered as an intuitive process, while conscious reasoning is mostly used only to justify those intuitions. This problem is described in few different dual-process theories of mind, that are being developed e.g. by Frederick and Kahneman, Stanovich and Evans. Those theories recently evolved into tri-process theories with a proposed process that makes ultimate decision or allows to paraformal processing with focal bias.. Presented experiment compares...

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.

Pedagogical Formation Students' Resistance Behaviors towards Teaching-Learning Processes and Their Moral Maturity

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Argon, Türkan; Sezen-Gültekin, Gözde

2016-01-01

Moral maturity, defined as the competence in moral emotions, thoughts, judgments, attitudes and behaviors, is one of the most important qualities that the would-be teachers at Faculties of Education must possess. Teachers with moral maturity will train students with the qualities of reliability, responsibility, fairness, objectivity, consistency…

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.

Accountability in Family Discourse: Socialization into Norms and Standards and Negotiation of Responsibility in Italian Dinner Conversations

Science.gov (United States)

Sterponi, Laura

2009-01-01

This article explores morality as situated activity and approaches the discursive practice of accountability in Italian family dinner conversations as an avenue for understanding the construction of moral behaviour in everyday interpersonal interaction. The article focuses in particular on "vicarious" accounts, namely accounts, or…

Ethics and Moral

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Antônio Macena Figueiredo

2008-08-01

Full Text Available Ethics and moral are terms frequently used in our every-day life; however, defining their meanings is not an easy task. If we just ask people whether there is any distinction between these terms, we will notice that it is very difficult for them to answer. This essay has the objective to present the theoretical-philosophical principles related to the conceptual inaccuracies from the analysis of the primitive root of the terms. Thus, it begins from a brief review on the etymological origin of the terms ethos and mos. The several meanings in which these terms can be employed and the concepts used are presented. At the end, there is a reflection on the comprehension of Ethics as science or as a branch of study of philosophy. Keywords: Ethics; Moral; Virtues; Social values

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....

Memorable objects are more susceptible to forgetting: Evidence for the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting.

Science.gov (United States)

Reppa, I; Williams, K E; Worth, E R; Greville, W J; Saunders, J

2017-11-01

Retrieval of target information can cause forgetting for related, but non-retrieved, information - retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). The aim of the current studies was to examine a key prediction of the inhibitory account of RIF - interference dependence - whereby 'strong' non-retrieved items are more likely to interfere during retrieval and therefore, are more susceptible to RIF. Using visual objects allowed us to examine and contrast one index of item strength -object typicality, that is, how typical of its category an object is. Experiment 1 provided proof of concept for our variant of the recognition practice paradigm. Experiment 2 tested the prediction of the inhibitory account that the magnitude of RIF for natural visual objects would be dependent on item strength. Non-typical objects were more memorable overall than typical objects. We found that object memorability (as determined by typicality) influenced RIF with significant forgetting occurring for the memorable (non-typical), but not non-memorable (typical), objects. The current findings strongly support an inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Analysis of the moral habitability of the nursing work environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Peter, Elizabeth H; Macfarlane, Amy V; O'Brien-Pallas, Linda L

2004-08-01

Following health reform, nurses have experienced the tremendous stress of heavy workloads, long hours and difficult professional responsibilities. In recognition of these problems, a study was conducted that examined the impact of the working environment on the health of nurses. After conducting focus groups across Canada with nurses and others well acquainted with nursing issues, it became clear that the difficult work environments described had significant ethical implications. The aim of this paper is to report the findings of research that examined the moral habitability of the nursing working environment. A secondary analysis was conducted using the theoretical work of Margaret Urban Walker. Moral practices and responsibilities from Walker's perspective cannot be extricated from other social roles, practices and divisions of labour. Moral-social orders, such as work environments in this research, must be made transparent to examine their moral habitability. Morally habitable environments are those in which differently situated people experience their responsibilities as intelligible and coherent. They also foster recognition, cooperation and shared benefits. Four overarching categories were developed through the analysis of the data: (1) oppressive work environments; (2) incoherent moral understandings; (3) moral suffering and (4) moral influence and resistance. The findings clearly indicate that participants perceived the work environment to be morally uninhabitable. The social and spatial positioning of nurses left them vulnerable to being overburdened by and unsure of their responsibilities. Nevertheless, nurses found meaningful ways to resist and to influence the moral environment. We recommend that nurses develop strong moral identities, make visible the inseparability of their proximity to patients and moral accountability, and further identify what forms of collective action are most effective in improving the moral habitability of their work

Determinants of moral distress in daily nursing practice: a cross sectional correlational questionnaire survey.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Veer, A.J.E. de; Francke, A.L.; Struijs, A.; Willems, D.L.

2013-01-01

Background: Moral distress is associated with job dissatisfaction, turnover and early retirement. Because of these negative consequences moral distress should be reduced. Little research has been done on what job factors contribute to whether or not a situation causes moral distress. Objective: To

The Fundamentals Of Kants Moral Theory

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Adriana Saraiva Lamounier Rodrigues

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article intends to study the moral thought in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, considered the first of the philosophers who composes the movement known as German Idealism, especially in the book "Critique of Practical Reason". To achieve the objective the article begins with the traces of the moral studies at Kants time and its fundamental questions as well as traces of his formation that influenced his writings. Soon after, it analyzes the Kantian thought itself, through the work "The Idea of Justice in Kant", from Joaquim Carlos Salgado, theoretical framework of this research. It will be analyzed the postulate of freedom and its relationship with the sollen and the moral law, the species of imperatives, the categorical imperative and equality, connections that the moral theory makes for the existence of positive law and that the author considers the greater pillar of the Idea of justice from the Prussian philosophers point of of view. The methodology used in the research is theoretical, based on the analysis of the theoretical framework and its relationship to other publications concerning the same subject.

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

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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

Doing business with animals : moral entrepreneurship and ethical room for manoeuvre in livestock related sector

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Pompe, V.M.M.

2011-01-01

The overall objective of this dissertation is to study moral entrepreneurship within animal and business ethics in relation to moral change. In particular the current capability in bringing about moral change and its potential to do so.

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.

Conversational Effects of Gender and Children's Moral Reasoning

OpenAIRE

Björnberg, Marina

2007-01-01

This thesis aimed partly to examine the effects of gender on conversation dynamics, partly to investigate whether interaction between participants with contrasting opinions promotes cognitive development on a moral task. Another objective was to explore whether particular conversational features of interaction would have any impact upon a pair’s joint response or on each child’s moral development. The conversations were coded with regard to simultaneous speech acts, psychosocial behaviour and...

Implications Of The Crisis Of Objectivity In Accounting Measurement On The Development Of Finance Theory

OpenAIRE

Saratiel Wedzerai Musvoto

2011-01-01

Studies in accounting measurement indicate the absence of empirical relational structures that should form the basis for accounting measurement. This suggests the lack of objectivity of accounting information. Landmarks in the development of finance theory indicate the use of accounting measurement information as a basis for their development. This indicates that subjective accounting information is incorporated in finance theory. Consequently, this questions the status of finance as a univer...

Influences of Economic Theories on Accounting Theory: the case of the Objective Function of the Firm

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Lineker Costa Passos

2016-10-01

Full Text Available This essay aims to establish the relationship between the theoretical precepts that guide the accounting disclosure procedures for its stakeholders, both internal and external, and the two main theoretical trends that address the firm’s objective function: the Shareholder theory and the Stakeholder theory. In the perspective of the Shareholder theory, the firm has to define a single objective, which is to maximize shareholder wealth. In the context of Stakeholders theory, the firm must establish a multiple objective, which is to meet the interests of all those involved with its activities. We discuss to what extent theories, standards and accounting practices emanate from the concepts of the two models, especially regarding the users’ demand for useful and relevant information. There is a predominance of Shareholder theory in influencing accounting principles that guide the disclosure of information, although different accounting reports are already discussed and presented, oriented to the Stakeholders of the firm, without establishing a set of concepts that explain and justify them within the scope of Accounting theory. Additionally, it is argued that, all things taken into consideration, both currents of the Economic theory point in the same direction: to seek the wellbeing of the firm’s stakeholders. The research contributes to the accounting literature, in the sense of clarifying the impacts arising from the two economic models that deal with the objective function of the firm in the evolution of Accounting theory, not yet captured directly in the discussion of the fundamentals of accounting theory.

Are emotions necessary and sufficient for making moral judgments?

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Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves

2013-07-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2013v12n1p113 Jesse Prinz (2006, 2007 claimed that emotions are necessary and sufficient for moral judgments. First of all, I clarify what this claim amounts to. The view that he labels emotionism will then be critically assessed. Prinz marshals empirical findings to defend a series of increasingly strong theses about how emotions are essential for moral judgments. I argue that the empirical support upon which his arguments are based is not only insufficient, but it even suggests otherwise, if properly interpreted. My criticism is then extended to his sentimentalist theory, that accounts for how emotions are integrated into moral judgments. The central problem is that Prinz’s view fails to capture the rational aspect of moral evaluation. I make this failure explicit and defend that some version or other of neosentimentalism is a more promising route.

Utilitarian Moral Judgment Exclusively Coheres with Inference from Is to Ought

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Shira Elqayam

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Faced with moral choice, people either judge according to pre-existing obligations (deontological judgment, or by taking into account the consequences of their actions (utilitarian judgment. We propose that the latter coheres with a more general cognitive mechanism – deontic introduction, the tendency to infer normative (‘deontic’ conclusions from descriptive premises (is-ought inference. Participants were presented with vignettes that allowed either deontological or utilitarian choice, and asked to draw a range of deontic conclusions, as well as judge the overall moral rightness of each choice separately. We predicted and found a selective defeasibility pattern, in which manipulations that suppressed deontic introduction also suppressed utilitarian moral judgment, but had little effect on deontological moral judgment. Thus, deontic introduction coheres with utilitarian moral judgment almost exclusively. We suggest a family of norm-generating informal inferences, in which normative conclusions are drawn from descriptive (although value-laden premises. This family includes deontic introduction and utilitarian moral judgment as well as other informal inferences. We conclude with a call for greater integration of research in moral judgment and research into deontic reasoning and informal inference.

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.

Beyond economic games: a mutualistic approach to the rest of moral life.

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Graham, Jesse

2013-02-01

Mutualism provides a compelling account of the fairness intuitions on display in economic games. However, it is not yet clear how well the approach holds up as an explanation of all human morality. The theory needs to be tested outside the methodological neighborhood it was born in; such testing has the potential to greatly improve our understanding of morality in general.

Is equal moral consideration really compatible with unequal moral status?

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Rossi, John

2010-09-01

The issue of moral considerability, or how much moral importance a being's interests deserve, is one of the most important in animal ethics. Some leading theorists--most notably David DeGrazia--have argued that a principle of "equal moral consideration" is compatible with "unequal moral status." Such a position would reconcile the egalitarian force of equal consideration with more stringent obligations to humans than animals. The article presents arguments that equal consideration is not compatible with unequal moral status, thereby forcing those who would justify significantly different moral protections for humans and animals to argue for unequal consideration.

Longitudinal Relationships between Bullying and Moral Disengagement among Adolescents.

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Wang, Cixin; Ryoo, Ji Hoon; Swearer, Susan M; Turner, Rhonda; Goldberg, Taryn S

2017-06-01

Moral disengagement is a series of cognitive processes used to disengage moral standards to achieve absolved guilt and permit immoral conduct and has been found to be an important connection to bullying and aggressive behaviors among adolescents. This study examined the longitudinal relationship between moral disengagement and bullying behavior among a group of adolescents from fifth grade to ninth grade (n = 1180, mean age = 12.2, SD = 1.29, 46.5 % female, 80.2 % Caucasian/White, 7.1 % Black/African American, 5.4 % Latino/Hispanic, 2.4 % Asian American, and 1.7 % other) over three semesters. The objectives were to investigate (a) whether moral disengagement was a precursor to bullying behavior, vice versa, or whether the relationship was reciprocal and (b) whether gender and grade predicted moral disengagement and bullying behavior. The results showed that moral disengagement predicted bullying perpetration 6 months later. Also, older students and males utilized more moral disengagement than younger students and females and younger students and males engaged in greater bullying perpetration. Indirect paths linking gender and grade to bullying via moral disengagement at previous time points were identified and implications for bullying prevention are discussed. The findings underscore the importance of examining moral disengagement when studying bullying and across gender and development.

CONCEPT OF FORMATION OF RESERVES AS AN OBJECT OF ACCOUNTING

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Dubinina M.

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction. To achieve increase of profitability of agricultural producers it is possible at the expense of: increase of agricultural production in the final realization price of products; use of cooperative principles to eliminate intermediaries; introduction of guaranteed minimum prices, etc. However, in resolving these tasks, along with state support, it is important to create an agricultural holding company own reserves, the funds of which are formed in accordance with the economic opportunities of the agricultural producer and are spent on the needs that the producer considers most promising at this time. Creation of own reserves is considered as a reduction of the financial burden of the state in providing assistance to rural economy. Purpose. The main tasks are to identify the essence of the concepts of “reserve” and “reserve”, as well as the rationale for the need to create them in agricultural enterprises. Study of existing accounting techniques for reserves. Results. The article highlights the accounting for the formation and use of reserves in agricultural organizations. Summarizing the definition of the term “reserve” in the general sense, we consider that the reserve is the source of the necessary new means and forces, formed initially in the form of a stock of opportunities in case of need for them in the future. The considered term is represented in the form of a scheme as a set of tools and capabilities that are considered in its characteristic from the position of three time reference points: the past, present and future. Reserves are created to cover future losses of the enterprise. Conclusions. As a result of studying the historical development of the system of reservation as an object of accounting, the link between the application of the object under consideration and the emergence of categories of accounting for profits and losses, income and expenses of the enterprise is traced. Reserves are created to

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.

Two Accounts of Moral Diversity: The Cognitive Science of Pluralism and Absolutism

OpenAIRE

Bolender, Asst. Prof. John

2004-01-01

Advances in cognitive science are relevant to the debate between moral pluralism and absolutism. Parametric structure, which plausibly underlies syntax, gives some idea of how pluralism might be true. The cognitive mechanisms underlying mathematical intelligence give some idea of how far absolutism is right. Advances in cognitive science should help us better understand the extent to which we are divided and how far we are potentially harmonious in our values.

Accounting Conservatism and Managerial Incentives

OpenAIRE

Young K. Kwon

2005-01-01

There are two sources of agency costs under moral hazard: (1) distortions in incentive contracts and (2) implementation of suboptimal decisions. In the accounting literature, the relation between conservative accounting and agency costs of type (1) has received considerable attention (cf. Watts 2002). However, little appears to be known about the effects of accounting conservatism on agency costs of type (2) or trade-offs between agency costs of types (1) and (2). The purpose of this study is...

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…

Effects of Incidental Emotions on Moral Dilemma Judgments: An Analysis Using the CNI Model.

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

2018-02-01

Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments have garnered interest because they demonstrate the context-dependent nature of moral decision-making. Six experiments (N = 727) investigated the effects of incidental happiness, sadness, and anger on responses in moral dilemmas that pit the consequences of a given action for the greater good (i.e., utilitarianism) against the consistency of that action with moral norms (i.e., deontology). Using the CNI model of moral decision-making, we further tested whether the three kinds of emotions shape moral dilemma judgments by influencing (a) sensitivity to consequences, (b) sensitivity to moral norms, or (c) general preference for inaction versus action regardless of consequences and moral norms (or some combination of the three). Incidental happiness reduced sensitivity to moral norms without affecting sensitivity to consequences or general preference for inaction versus action. Incidental sadness and incidental anger did not show any significant effects on moral dilemma judgments. The findings suggest a central role of moral norms in the contribution of emotional responses to moral dilemma judgments, requiring refinements of dominant theoretical accounts and supporting the value of formal modeling approaches in providing more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The good, the bad and the 'not so bad': reflecting on moral appraisal in practice.

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Begley, Ann Marie

2011-03-01

The aim of this study is to facilitate reflection on the moral merit of practitioners in various contexts. Insight is gained from Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of moral character and an original framework for reflection is presented as an adjunct to ethical theory and principles considered when appraising others. In relation to states of character, there is an irreconcilable difference between Kantian (deontic) and Aristotelian (aretaic) conceptions of the nature of full virtue (excellence of character), but at the same time it can be argued that in relation to practice their approaches complement each other. It is also argued that in relation to caring for the vulnerable, Aristotle's conception of full virtue is more compelling than Kant's. On the other hand, Kant's notion of self-serving action is important in nursing and it therefore needs to be considered when reflecting on professional conduct. The conclusion reached is that Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of character appraisal should be used in a combined approach to moral appraisal. This approach draws on the accounts of both philosophers and offers valuable insight into moral character, professional conduct and, in a more formal setting, fitness to practise. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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.

Conscientious objection: a call to nursing leadership.

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Ford, Natalie J; Fraser, Kimberly D; Marck, Patricia B

2010-09-01

In this paper we argue that nurse leaders need to work actively to create morally supportive environments for nurses in Canada that provide adequate room to exercise conscientious objection. Morally supportive environments engender a safe atmosphere to engage in open dialogue and action regarding conflict of conscience. The CNA's 2008 Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses has recognized the importance of conscientious objection in nursing and has created key guidelines for the registered nurse to follow when a conflict in conscience is being considered or declared. Nurse leaders need to further develop the understanding of conflicts of conscience through education, well-written guidelines for conscientious objection in workplaces and engagement in research to uncover underlying barriers to the enactment of conscientious objections. With advancements in technology, changing healthcare policies and increasing scope of practice, both reflection and dialogue on conscientious objection are critical for the continuing moral development of nurses in Canada.

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…

Morality in everyday life.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

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

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

Computer programs as accounting object

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I.V. Perviy

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Existing approaches to the regulation of accounting software as one of the types of intangible assets have been considered. The features and current state of the legal protection of computer programs have been analyzed. The reasons for the need to use patent law as a means of legal protection of individual elements of computer programs have been discovered. The influence of the legal aspects of the use of computer programs for national legislation to their accounting reflection has been analyzed. The possible options for the transfer of rights from computer programs copyright owners have been analyzed that should be considered during creation of software accounting system at the enterprise. Identified and analyzed the characteristics of computer software as an intangible asset under the current law. General economic characteristics of computer programs as one of the types of intangible assets have been grounded. The main distinguishing features of software compared to other types of intellectual property have been all ocated

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 ENHANCEMENT VIA DIRECT EMOTION MODULATION: A REPLY TO JOHN HARRIS

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Douglas, Thomas

2013-01-01

Some argue that humans should enhance their moral capacities by adopting institutions that facilitate morally good motives and behaviour. I have defended a parallel claim: that we could permissibly use biomedical technologies to enhance our moral capacities, for example by attenuating certain counter-moral emotions. John Harris has recently responded to my argument by raising three concerns about the direct modulation of emotions as a means to moral enhancement. He argues (1) that such means will be relatively ineffective in bringing about moral improvements, (2) that direct modulation of emotions would invariably come at an unacceptable cost to our freedom, and (3) that we might end up modulating emotions in ways that actually lead to moral decline. In this article I outline some counter-intuitive potential implications of Harris' claims. I then respond individually to his three concerns, arguing that they license only the very weak conclusion that moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation is sometimes impermissible. However I acknowledge that his third concern might, with further argument, be developed into a more troubling objection to such enhancements. PMID:22092503

Moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation: a reply to John Harris.

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Douglas, Thomas

2013-03-01

Some argue that humans should enhance their moral capacities by adopting institutions that facilitate morally good motives and behaviour. I have defended a parallel claim: that we could permissibly use biomedical technologies to enhance our moral capacities, for example by attenuating certain counter-moral emotions. John Harris has recently responded to my argument by raising three concerns about the direct modulation of emotions as a means to moral enhancement. He argues (1) that such means will be relatively ineffective in bringing about moral improvements, (2) that direct modulation of emotions would invariably come at an unacceptable cost to our freedom, and (3) that we might end up modulating emotions in ways that actually lead to moral decline. In this article I outline some counter-intuitive potential implications of Harris' claims. I then respond individually to his three concerns, arguing that they license only the very weak conclusion that moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation is sometimes impermissible. However I acknowledge that his third concern might, with further argument, be developed into a more troubling objection to such enhancements. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Moral Geography and Exploration of the Moral Possibility Space

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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/

Moral Absolutism, Self-Deception, and Moral Self-Concept in Men Who Commit Intimate Partner Violence: A Comparative Study With an Opposite Sample.

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Vecina, María L; Chacón, F; Pérez-Viejo, J M

2016-01-01

The objective of this study is to show compatible data with the idea that men who commit intimate partner violence are uninhibited about the moral consequences of their behaviors, probably because they feel certainty about the rightness of their moral values and they strongly deceive themselves to maintain a good moral self-concept, and thus a good level of well-being. To do that, we compare their scores with those obtained by an opposite sample regarding the use of violence, made up of professional male psychologists who work in the social field trying to teach others alternative strategies to violence. © The Author(s) 2015.

Making the City "Second Nature": Freegan "Dumpster Divers" and the Materiality of Morality.

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Barnard, Alex V

2016-01-01

How do people maintain deeply held moral identities in a seemingly immoral social environment? Cultural sociologists and social psychologists have focused on how individuals cope with contexts that make acting on moral motivations difficult by building supportive networks and embedding themselves in communities of like-minded people. In this article, however, the author argues that actors can achieve a moral "sense of one's place" through a habitus that leverages the material dimensions of place itself. In particular, he shows how one community of radical environmental activists make affirming moral identities centered on living "naturally" seem like "second nature," even in a seemingly unnatural and immoral urban environment, by reconfiguring their physical world. The author shows how nonhuman objects serve as proofs of moral labor, markers of moral boundaries, and reminders of moral values, playing both a facilitating and constraining role in moral life.

Individualism and collectivism: cultural orientation in locus of control and moral attribution under conditions of social change.

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Santiago, Jose H; Tarantino, Santo J

2002-12-01

This study examined the validity of the view that the constructs of individualism and collectivism are coherent cultural manifestations necessarily reflected in an individual's attribution patterns. It was hypothesized that the attribution patterns of locus of control and moral accountability would show divergent individualistic and collectivistic influences in a culture during change from a collectivist culture to an individualist culture. 98 university students from the United States and Puerto Rico were administered the Singelis Individualism-Collectivism Scale, Rotter's Locus of Control Scale, and Miller and Luthar's justice-related moral accountability vignettes. Contrary to expectation, the Puerto Rican sample scored less external in locus of control than the United States sample. No cultural differences in moral accountability were found. No strong correlations were found among the variables at the individual level of analysis. Accounting for these results included the lack of representativeness of the samples, the independence of relation between variables at different levels of analysis, and social change.

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.

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…

European Portuguese adaptation and validation of dilemmas used to assess moral decision-making.

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Fernandes, Carina; Gonçalves, Ana Ribeiro; Pasion, Rita; Ferreira-Santos, Fernando; Paiva, Tiago Oliveira; Melo E Castro, Joana; Barbosa, Fernando; Martins, Isabel Pavão; Marques-Teixeira, João

2018-03-01

Objective To adapt and validate a widely used set of moral dilemmas to European Portuguese, which can be applied to assess decision-making. Moreover, the classical formulation of the dilemmas was compared with a more focused moral probe. Finally, a shorter version of the moral scenarios was tested. Methods The Portuguese version of the set of moral dilemmas was tested in 53 individuals from several regions of Portugal. In a second study, an alternative way of questioning on moral dilemmas was tested in 41 participants. Finally, the shorter version of the moral dilemmas was tested in 137 individuals. Results Results evidenced no significant differences between English and Portuguese versions. Also, asking whether actions are "morally acceptable" elicited less utilitarian responses than the original question, although without reaching statistical significance. Finally, all tested versions of moral dilemmas exhibited the same pattern of responses, suggesting that the fundamental elements to the moral decision-making were preserved. Conclusions We found evidence of cross-cultural validity for moral dilemmas. However, the moral focus might affect utilitarian/deontological judgments.

European Portuguese adaptation and validation of dilemmas used to assess moral decision-making

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Carina Fernandes

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Objective To adapt and validate a widely used set of moral dilemmas to European Portuguese, which can be applied to assess decision-making. Moreover, the classical formulation of the dilemmas was compared with a more focused moral probe. Finally, a shorter version of the moral scenarios was tested. Methods The Portuguese version of the set of moral dilemmas was tested in 53 individuals from several regions of Portugal. In a second study, an alternative way of questioning on moral dilemmas was tested in 41 participants. Finally, the shorter version of the moral dilemmas was tested in 137 individuals. Results Results evidenced no significant differences between English and Portuguese versions. Also, asking whether actions are “morally acceptable” elicited less utilitarian responses than the original question, although without reaching statistical significance. Finally, all tested versions of moral dilemmas exhibited the same pattern of responses, suggesting that the fundamental elements to the moral decision-making were preserved. Conclusions We found evidence of cross-cultural validity for moral dilemmas. However, the moral focus might affect utilitarian/deontological judgments.

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.

The structured-objective rorschach test (sort occupational profile for state accountants

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J. J. Gouws

1996-06-01

Full Text Available The objective of this study was to provide an occupational profile of performance on the Structured-Objective Rorschach Test (SORT by state accountants for use in guidance, election and placement of personnel. The sample comprised accountants and auditors from the financial sections in various state institutions who were selected for the Senior Financial Management Course at the University of Stellenbosch. As all participants were considered successful in their occupation and no significant differences were found between the profiles of various age and year groups, the SORT profile obtained for the total group can be used as a predictor to determine and evaluate the personality traits that are important in the profession of state accountant. Opsomming Die doel van hierdie studie was die daarstelling van 'n beroepsprofiel van staatsrekenmeesters se prestasie op die Gestruktureerd-Objektiewe Rorschachtoets (SORT wat vir voorligting/ keuring en plasing van personeel gebruik kan word. Die steekproef is saamgestel uit rekenmeesters en ouditeure van die finansiele afdelings in verskeie staatsinstansies wat geselekteer is vir die Senior Finansiele Bestuurskursus by die Universiteit van Stellenbosch. Aangesien alle deelnemers as suksesvol in hulle beroep beskou is en geen beduidende verskille in die profiele van verskillende ouderdomsgroepe en jaargroepe gevind is nie, kan die SORT profiel van die totale groep as 'n voorspeller gebruik word vir die bepaling en evaluering van die persoonlikheidseienskappe wat belangrik is in die beroep van staatsrekenmeester.

Menopause and the virtuous woman: the importance of the moral order in accounting for medical decision making.

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Stephens, Christine; Breheny, Mary

2008-01-01

Whether or not to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) around the time of menopause is seen as an important decision for many mid-aged women. Recent studies of information provided to women to assist them in making a medical decision about the use of HRT have highlighted the importance of understanding the broader social context of the decision. In this article we examine one important aspect of western mid-aged women's social world: the moral order and the imperative of virtue. Qualitative data from a survey, focus group discussions, and interviews with mid-aged women about HRT use are used to provide examples of the importance of the local moral order in women's talk about menopause and HRT use. The implications of these data will be discussed in terms of the different narrative resources available to construct menopause and HRT, the role of morality, and the demonstration of virtue in daily social life, including medical decision making.

A Prolegomenon to the Relation Between Accounting, Language and Ethics

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C. Edward Arrington

2007-06-01

Full Text Available This essay outlines the preliminary structure of a moral ontology of accounting understood as discourse. Tospeak of an ontology of accounting is to speak of the most general features of accounting, those features of itsexistence that are present irrespective of variations in observed “accountings,” of ways in which accountingmanifests itself in lived experience. To speak of a moral ontology is to construe those general features asproducts of human choices and actions which follow from axiological (value-based commitments to pursuethe good and just life, however that life might be understood, and indeed understood differently by differentpersons. Thus a moral ontology stands in distinction from, for example, a naturalistic ontology, one “freedfrom the freedom” of axiological horizons. Within its embeddedness in a moral ontology, the enactment ofaccounting takes empirical form as discourse – as an act of someone saying (writing something aboutsomething to someone else (Ricoeur, 1976; Arrington & Francis, 1993. Thus if we seek to understandaccounting’s force in the world, a force that is always valued and evaluated in terms of consequences for thegood and just life, we get our most general understandings from attending to the ethics of language and itsuse. My task in this essay is to introduce the structure of what the elements of accounting’s relation to theethics of language and its use might be. Expanding upon that structure remains a task for future work.

Searching for Moral Dumbfounding: Identifying Measurable Indicators of Moral Dumbfounding

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Cillian McHugh

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Moral dumbfounding is defined as maintaining a moral judgement, without supporting reasons. The most cited demonstration of dumbfounding does not identify a specific measure of dumbfounding and has not been published in peer-review form, or directly replicated. Despite limited empirical examination, dumbfounding has been widely discussed in moral psychology. The present research examines the reliability with which dumbfounding can be elicited, and aims to identify measureable indicators of dumbfounding. Study 1 aimed at establishing the effect that is reported in the literature. Participants read four scenarios and judged the actions described. An Interviewer challenged participants’ stated reasons for judgements. Dumbfounding was evoked, as measured by two indicators, admissions of not having reasons (17%, unsupported declarations (9% with differences between scenarios. Study 2 measured dumbfounding as the selecting of an unsupported declaration as part of a computerised task. We observed high rates of dumbfounding across all scenarios. Studies 3a (college sample and 3b (MTurk sample, addressing limitations in Study 2, replaced the unsupported declaration with an admission of having no reason, and included open-ended responses that were coded for unsupported declarations. As predicted, lower rates of dumbfounding were observed (3a 20%; 3b 16%; or 3a 32%; 3b 24% including unsupported declarations in open-ended responses. Two measures provided evidence for dumbfounding across three studies; rates varied with task type (interview/computer task, and with the particular measure being employed (admissions of not having reasons/unsupported declarations. Possible cognitive processes underlying dumbfounding and limitations of methodologies used are discussed as a means to account for this variability.

Hobbes and Selfish Morality in the State of Nature

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Maximiliano Martínez

2008-04-01

Full Text Available In this paper I explore the controversial claim that morality exists in the Hobbesian state of nature (represented in the rationality and prudence of natural laws, and how this moral is a necessary condition to achieve civil state. In order to accomplish this objective, I examine the work of G. Kavka on this topic, while analizing Hobbes's “reply to the fool”, using game theory. I propose, at the end of this paper, the necessity and justification of going from one state to another, emphasizing on the precariety of morality in the state of nature to guarantee the fulfilment of the natural laws.

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.

How moral disagreement may ground principled moral compromise

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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....

Accounting for unprotected sex: stories of agency and acceptability.

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Rhodes, Tim; Cusick, Linda

2002-07-01

Based on the idea that risks are knowable, calculable and preventable, dominant social scientific and health promotion discourses foster an image of individual risk control and responsibility. The presentation of the self is a moral enterprise. Accounts of unprotected sex by HIV positive people who have the potential to transmit HIV to their sexual partners can be particularly morally charged. Drawing on 73 depth qualitative interviews with HIV positive people and their sexual partners, this paper explores how the interview accounts of unprotected sex can illuminate the way in which the self is presented within the context of situated norms of risk acceptability and moral responsibility. We identify two forms of account: stories of agency; and stories of acceptability. Stories of agency tend to deny agency and abdicate individual responsibility given the circumstances, and were also a key feature of accounts in which the sexual partners of HIV positive people were placed at risk of HIV transmission. Categories of appeal included the denial of agency as a consequence of: risk calculus and condom accidents; alcohol and drug effects; powerlessness and coercion; and forces of nature. By contrast, stories of acceptability tend to justify unprotected sex as acceptable. Categories of appeal included: HIV positive concordance; and commitment in relationships. Other forms of justification included: alter responsibility; and intentional HIV transmission. We conclude that accounts of risk management are risk managed. We call for greater attention by social scientists to the way in which accounts are constructed, and in particular, to 'anti-rational' forms of explanation within accounts.

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.…

A virtue ethics approach to moral dilemmas in medicine.

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Gardiner, P

2003-10-01

Most moral dilemmas in medicine are analysed using the four principles with some consideration of consequentialism but these frameworks have limitations. It is not always clear how to judge which consequences are best. When principles conflict it is not always easy to decide which should dominate. They also do not take account of the importance of the emotional element of human experience. Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the character of the moral agent rather than the rightness of an action. In considering the relationships, emotional sensitivities, and motivations that are unique to human society it provides a fuller ethical analysis and encourages more flexible and creative solutions than principlism or consequentialism alone. Two different moral dilemmas are analysed using virtue ethics in order to illustrate how it can enhance our approach to ethics in medicine.

A virtue ethics approach to moral dilemmas in medicine

Science.gov (United States)

Gardiner, P

2003-01-01

Most moral dilemmas in medicine are analysed using the four principles with some consideration of consequentialism but these frameworks have limitations. It is not always clear how to judge which consequences are best. When principles conflict it is not always easy to decide which should dominate. They also do not take account of the importance of the emotional element of human experience. Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the character of the moral agent rather than the rightness of an action. In considering the relationships, emotional sensitivities, and motivations that are unique to human society it provides a fuller ethical analysis and encourages more flexible and creative solutions than principlism or consequentialism alone. Two different moral dilemmas are analysed using virtue ethics in order to illustrate how it can enhance our approach to ethics in medicine. PMID:14519840

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

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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 Progress: A Present-day Perspective on the Leading Enlightenment Idea

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Andrzej Elżanowski

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Most Enlightenment thinkers believed that the World’s order (as ultimately based on divine laws is good and thus every gain of knowledge will have good consequences. Scientific process was assumed to entail moral progress. In fact some moral progress did occur in the Western civilization and science contributed to it, but it is widely incommensurate with the progress of science. The Enlightenment’s concept of a concerted scientific and moral progress proved largely wrong for several reasons. (1 Public morality and science evolve largely independently and may either enhance or inhibit each other. (2 There are no objective values to be read in the World’s order and simply followed. Instead, our real, subjective values and the moral systems they fuel have all been generated and shaped by evolution rather than designed to be universally good, and thus ought to be managed rather than simply followed. (3 Our evolved morality is flawed, deficient, prone to doctrinal manipulation and refractory to progress. (4 The majority of people show metaethical incompetence in failing to take a reasoned critical stand toward the principles and assumptions of received morals. This makes moral progress largely dependent on those who reach metaethical competence by transcending the conventional stages of moral development.

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…

From Human Nature to Moral Judgments : Reframing Debates about Disability and Enhancement

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Harnacke, C.E.

2015-01-01

My goal in my dissertation is to develop an account of how a theory of human nature should be integrated into bioethics and to show what bioethics can gain from using this account. I explore the relevance of human nature for moral argumentation, and especially for bioethics. Thereby, I focus on

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.

Natural Selection and Morality

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Alejandro Rosas

2006-12-01

Full Text Available Resumen:En este ensayo abordo los intentos, relativamente recientes, de dar una explicación de la moralidad como adaptación por selección natural. Mi exposición tiene una introducción y cuatro partes: en la primera explico en qué consiste la paradoja del altruismo biológico. En la segunda expongo la solución que apela a la selección de grupos, recientemente resurgida; la solución que presuntamente aplicó Charles Darwin cuando formuló sus reflexiones biológicas sobre la moralidad humana. En la tercera expongo la solución sociobiológica, que opta por negar que la selección natural pueda explicar directamente la moralidad humana. La moralidad se presenta más bien como opuesta a la naturaleza diseñada por selección natural. En la cuarta parte desarrollo brevemente una explicación de la moralidad como adaptación que beneficia a los individuos. No opone la moralidad a la naturaleza, ni apela a la selección de grupos. Se sirve de un mecanismo de selección que opera a través de preferencias en la interacción social.Abstract:In this essay, I address recent attempts to account for morality as an adaptation due to natural selection. After a brief introduction, my exposition has four sections. I first explain the paradox of biological altruism. Second, I explain the solution to the paradox in terms of group selection. This solution was presumably applied by Darwin himself as he discussed human morality, and it has experienced a recent revival, though it remains suspicious to most biologists. In the third section I offer a socio-biological solution that opts for denying that morality can be explained by any form of natural selection. Morality is opposed to human nature as designed by natural selection. In the fourth, I argue for an explanation in terms of individual selection. It does not oppose morality to nature, and does not need the workings of group selection; rather, it operates through the agents’ psychological preferences

The Role of Individual Differences in the Categorization (or Domain Placement) of Social Cues in Occurrences of Everyday Moral Conflicts.

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Lee, John Y.

This study examines the role of individual differences in categorizing or domain placing social situations as entailing or not entailing moral harm in accounting for occurrences of everyday moral incidents. It was hypothesized that (1) much of what is experienced as morally injurious in everyday social events between significant others stems from…

Educational Context: Preparing Accounting Students to Identify Ethical Dilemmas

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Billiot, Mary Jo; Daniel, David; Glandon, Sid; Glandon, TerryAnn

2012-01-01

We examine the effect of different contexts in an educational process on measures of ethical sensitivity and levels of moral reasoning of accounting majors in the first Intermediate Accounting course. The educational process compared a context that centers on ethical issues with one that focuses on technical accounting issues. At the end of the…

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.

Liturgy and Morality. Constitution  on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium in the Context of Moral Theology

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Bogusław Mielec

2013-09-01

Full Text Available The fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vaticanum II encourages attempts of its interpretation in the context of moral theology. It leads to the conclusion that there is a co-relation between liturgy and morality in the history of salvation. The Revelation of the Old Testament reveals the conjunction between worship and morality. Attempts to separate the two in the history of the Chosen People raise objections of prophets. Their criticism, however, comes together with the announcement of the future in which God will reveal the divisions between worship and morality. The New Testament shows the fulfilment of this promise in Jesus Christ. His salvific work establishes the Christian liturgy, in which man participates as a physical, as well as a spiritual being. The salvation, made present in the liturgy of the Church, is a relation, the co-operation of God and man, grace and freedom. Sacrosantum Concilium presents this revealed truth, emphasising the objective and subjective dimensions of liturgy as the work of Christ, in which a Christian participates actively, freely and consciously (participatio actuosa. The participation is mostly spiritual, therefore moral at the same time. Only than can the external elements of liturgy take place, including its detailed forms, gestures, attitudes and behaviours of the sacred liturgy participants. It means that the liturgical participatio actuosa requires moral works through imitation of Christ leading to conversion. That is when “faith works through love” (cf. Gal 5 : 6. It leads us to the notion of sacrifice, which, as far as man is concerned, requires a total change. Sinful man presented with the love of the Triune God may respond to it with his own, gradually maturing love. The process constitutes the drama of God and man, which is the tension between grace and freedom, which is then represented by the co-relation between liturgy and morality

Academic misconduct and research productivity of business scholars : Researchers’ moral posture in the context of autonomy and competition

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Hatak, Isabella; Harms, Rainer; Gartner, Johannes

This study investigates whether business scholars’ moral posture is related to their productivity in terms of peer-reviewed publications and research funds. We distinguish between deontological and consequentialist moral postures and take account of the moderating role of researchers’ perceived

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

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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.

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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

The place and role of (moral) anger in organizational behavior studies.

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Lindebaum, Dirk; Geddes, Deanna

2016-07-01

The aim of this article is to conceptually delineate moral anger from other related constructs. Drawing upon social functional accounts of anger, we contend that distilling the finer nuances of morally motivated anger and its expression can increase the precision with which we examine prosocial forms of anger (e.g., redressing injustice), in general, and moral anger, in particular. Without this differentiation, we assert that (i) moral anger remains theoretically elusive, (ii) that this thwarts our ability to methodologically capture the unique variance moral anger can explain in important work outcomes, and that (iii) this can promote ill-informed organizational policies and practice. We offer a four-factor definition of moral anger and demonstrate the utility of this characterization as a distinct construct with application for workplace phenomena such as, but not limited to, whistle-blowing. Next, we outline a future research agenda, including how to operationalize the construct and address issues of construct, discriminant, and convergent validity. Finally, we argue for greater appreciation of anger's prosocial functions and concomitant understanding that many anger displays can be justified and lack harmful intent. If allowed and addressed with interest and concern, these emotional displays can lead to improved organizational practice. © 2015 The Authors Journal of Organizational Behavior Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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

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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.

Is Moral Philosophy an Educationally Worthwhile Activity? Toward a Liberal Democratic Theory of Teacher Education

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Martin, Christopher

2017-01-01

This paper looks at the case of moral philosophy in order to assess the extent to which and ways in which teacher education should respond to the liberal principle of justification. This principle states that moral and political decisions made by citizens with special kinds of influence and other coercive powers should be accountable to other…

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.

Global precedence effects account for individual differences in both face and object recognition performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gerlach, Christian; Starrfelt, Randi

2018-01-01

examine whether global precedence effects, measured by means of non-face stimuli in Navon's paradigm, can also account for individual differences in face recognition and, if so, whether the effect is of similar magnitude for faces and objects. We find evidence that global precedence effects facilitate...... both face and object recognition, and to a similar extent. Our results suggest that both face and object recognition are characterized by a coarse-to-fine temporal dynamic, where global shape information is derived prior to local shape information, and that the efficiency of face and object recognition...

Moral Legitimacy: The Struggle Of Homeopathy in the NHS.

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Crawford, Louise

2016-02-01

This article deploys a well-established theoretical model from the accountability literature to the domain of bioethics. Specifically, homeopathy is identified as a controversial industry and the strategic action of advocates to secure moral legitimacy and attract public funding is explored. The Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital (GHH) is used as the location to examine legitimizing strategies, from gaining legitimacy as a National Health Service (NHS) hospital in 1948, followed by maintaining and repairing legitimacy in response to government enquires in 2000 and 2010. An analysis of legitimizing strategies leads to the conclusion that advocates have been unsuccessful in maintaining and repairing moral legitimacy for homeopathy, thus threatening continued public funding for this unscientific medical modality. This is an encouraging development towards open and transparent NHS accountability for targeting limited public resources in pursuit of maximizing society's health and well-being. Policy implications and areas for future research are suggested. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

"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…

Gender Differences in Emotion Explain Women's Lower Immoral Intentions and Harsher Moral Condemnation.

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Ward, Sarah J; King, Laura A

2018-05-01

Why do men view morally questionable behaviors as more permissible than women do? Five studies investigated emotional factors as explanations for gender differences in moral decision-making. In Study 1 ( N = 324), gender differences in perceptions of moral wrongness were explained by guilt and shame proneness. Studies 2a and 2b (combined N = 562) demonstrated that instructions to adopt an unemotional perspective (vs. standard instructions) led women to have higher immoral intentions, no longer lower than men's, as they were in the control group. Studies 3 and 4 ( N = 834) showed that men expected immoral actions to result in higher positive and lower self-conscious moral emotions than women do. Study 4 ( N = 424) showed that these emotional expectancies account for gender differences in immoral intentions. Study 5 ( N = 450) showed that women-but not men-experience heightened self-conscious moral emotions and regret when recalling past transgressions done for personal gain.

Reactions to morally motivated deviance

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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

Assessing Veterinary and Animal Science Students' Moral Judgment Development on Animal Ethics Issues.

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Verrinder, Joy M; Phillips, Clive J C

2015-01-01

Little has been done to assess veterinarians' moral judgment in relation to animal ethics issues. Following development of the VetDIT, a new moral judgment measure for animal ethics issues, this study aimed to refine and further validate the VetDIT, and to identify effects of teaching interventions on moral judgment and changes in moral judgment over time. VetDIT-V1 was refined into VetDIT-V2, and V3 was developed as a post-intervention test to prevent repetition. To test these versions for comparability, veterinary and animal science students (n=271) were randomly assigned to complete different versions. The VetDIT discriminates between stages of moral judgment, condensed into three schemas: Personal Interest (PI), Maintaining Norms (MN), and Universal Principles (UP). There were no differences in the scores for MN and UP between the versions, and we equated PI scores to account for differences between versions. Veterinary science students (n=130) who completed a three-hour small-group workshop on moral development theory and ethical decision making increased their use of UP in moral reasoning, whereas students (n=271) who received similar information in a 50-minute lecture did not. A longitudinal comparison of matched first- and third-year students (n=39) revealed no moral judgment development toward greater use of UP. The VetDIT is therefore useful for assessing moral judgment of animal and human ethics issues in veterinary and other animal-related professions. Intensive small-group workshops using moral development knowledge and skills, rather than lectures, are conducive to developing veterinary students' moral judgment.

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

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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.

Morality in everyday life

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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

When It's Bad to Be Friendly and Smart: The Desirability of Sociability and Competence Depends on Morality.

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Landy, Justin F; Piazza, Jared; Goodwin, Geoffrey P

2016-09-01

Morality, sociability, and competence are distinct dimensions in person perception. We argue that a person's morality informs us about their likely intentions, whereas their competence and sociability inform us about the likelihood that they will fulfill those intentions. Accordingly, we hypothesized that whereas morality would be considered unconditionally positive, sociability and competence would be highly positive only in moral others, and would be less positive in immoral others. Using exploratory factor analyses, Studies 1a and 1b distinguished evaluations of morality and sociability. Studies 2 to 5 then showed that sociability and competence are evaluated positively contingent on morality-Study 2 demonstrated this phenomenon, while the remaining studies explained it (Study 3), generalized it (Studies 3-5), and ruled out an alternative explanation for it (Study 5). Study 6 showed that the positivity of morality traits is independent of other morality traits. These results support a functionalist account of these dimensions of person perception. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Study on the morals of nuclear power engineers

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kosaka, Takashi; Kotani, Fumio; Morikawa, Shin'ichi; Hiramoto, Mitsuru; Koya, Masahiko

2000-01-01

Regarding the incident that occurred in October 1998 in which records of containers for transporting spent fuel were altered, the morals of engineers was pointed out as one reason for the problem. Since then, much effort has been exerted to prevent the re-occurrence of such an incident and to reform the corporate climate at electric power companies. From an objective point of view the Institute of Nuclear Safety Systems, inc., the Institute of Social Research conducted an analysis regarding of the conditions faced by that engineers are faced with and discussing how the engineers should deal with the issue of morals as professionals under such circumstances. In this research, teaching materials were compiled, such as a checklist and examples of case studies, to be used for morals education/training and others. This will be useful for engineers who are working for an organization and are in a number of complicated relationships, in dealing with a wide variety of moral issues in their day-to-day activities. (author)

Psychic and moral exhaustion in primary care workers

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Priscilla Brandão Bacci Pegoraro

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract OBJECTIVE To report the experience of developing a workshop proposal to assist local managers with the identification, management and prevention of primary care workers' psychic and moral exhaustion. METHOD The workshop was developed through a literature review performed between November 2014 and June 2015. The temporal cut considered studies of the ten previous years. The selection included studies describing collective interventions for situations generating psychic and moral exhaustion, preferably in primary care services. RESULTS Thirty-five articles were analyzed. The workshop provides five meetings with an average duration of one hour. The themes are: awareness; recognizing personal stress; dealing with personal stress; recognizing team stress; and dealing with team stress. The workshop is based on five key principles: detection and coping; attention to interpersonal relationships; communication; self-knowledge and mindfulness. CONCLUSION Psychic and moral exhaustion may reflect negatively on workers' health, the care, and the organization. The proposal of measures to recognize, deal with and prevent psychic and moral exhaustion is relevant and strategic in the constant search for improvement of satisfaction and quality.

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…

Curbing Creative Accounting: Do Religious Environment and Individual Attribute Matter?

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Ratna Candra Sari

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The flexibility of accounting standards is one of the drivers of creative accounting. Creative accounting is an ethical dilemma. It seems that creative accounting does not explicitly violate the rules, but led misinterpretation and misdirection in user’s decision- making. The purposes of this study are, to test the differences of ethical perceptions of creative accounting of undergraduate students in religious and public universities; Second, to examine the effects of moral disengagement on ethical perceptions. The data collection method involved a questionnaire to a total of 225 respondents from two religious-based universities and one public university. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis. The results show that there is a significant difference in students’ethical perceptions between public university and religious-based universities. Thus, there is a significant difference in students’ ethical perceptions students with high and low level moral disengagement. Educational implication and suggestion for future research are proposed.

Moral Judgment, Sensitivity To Reasons, and the Multi-system View

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Francesco Orsi

2012-11-01

Full Text Available In this paper I attempt a critical examination of the multi-system or dual-process view of moral judgment. This view aims to provide a psychological explanation of moral sensitivity, and in particular an explanation of conflicting moral sensitivities in dilemma cases such as the crying baby scenario. I argue that proponents of the multi-system view owe us a satisfactory account of the mechanisms underlying “consequentialist” responses to such scenarios. For one thing, the “cognitive” processes involved in consequentialist reasoning only seem to play a subserving role with respect to the final judgment (providing non-moral inputs to judgment, or exerting additional strength to override the immediate “deontological” response. In this sense, Greene and colleagues fail to identify a peculiar system of moral judgment specularly opposed to the affective “deontological” one. For another, Greene and colleagues’ work on the emotion-cognition dichotomy and the distinction between alarm-bell and currency emotions, though promising, still falls short of providing an adequate and consistent picture of the psychological mechanisms underlying “cognitive” evaluations and verdicts in dilemma scenarios. It is suggested that alongside further experimental work, proponents of this view should pay more attention to the conceptual underpinnings of their distinctions.

Religion and morality.

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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.

Peculiarities of accounting for depression morphosculptures during construction of the 'Vector' object

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shestopalov, V.M.; Bublyas', V.M.; Shebets'kij, Yu.O.

2001-01-01

The studied area of the object 'Vector' is situated in the near (10-km) zone of the Chornobyl NPP Exclusion zone (CEZ). Analysis of data about local structures and geomorphological structure of the region gives evidence about influence of some structures on present relief. It follows that without taking into account of the specifics of anomalous morphosculptures during construction of the 'Vector' object and its depositories for radioactive wastes, or during their exploitation, a series of negative geological processes may take place, which enhance the risk destruction of these buildings and deterioration of ecological state of adjacent areas

Morality and Ecological Moral: contributions to the teaching practice

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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)

The contribution of Kantian moral theory to contemporary medical ethics: a critical analysis.

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Heubel, Friedrich; Biller-Andorno, Nikola

2005-01-01

Kantian deontology is one of three classic moral theories, among virtue ethics and consequentialism. Issues in medical ethics are frequently addressed within a Kantian paradigm, at least --although not exclusively--in European medical ethics. At the same time, critical voices have pointed to deficits of Kantian moral philosophy which must be examined and discussed. It is argued that taking concrete situations and complex relationships into account is of paramount importance in medical ethics. Encounters between medical or nursing staff and patients are rarely symmetrical relationships between autonomous and rational agents. Kantian ethics, the criticism reads, builds on the lofty ideal of such a relationship. In addition to the charge of an individualist and rationalist focus on autonomy, Kantian ethics has been accused of excluding those not actually in possession of these properties or of its rigorism. It is said to be focussed on laws and imperatives to an extent that it cannot appreciate the complex nuances of real conflicts. As a more detailed analysis will show, these charges are inadequate in at least some regards. This will be demonstrated by drawing on the Kantian notion of autonomy, the role of maxims and judgment and the conception of duties, as well as the role of emotions. Nevertheless the objections brought forward against Kantian moral theory can help determine, with greater precision, its strengths and shortcomings as an approach to current problems in medical ethics.

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…

Morality, Normativity, and Economic Development in Slovakia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Karjanen

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This article examines debates over local economic development policies and practices in contemporary Slovakia, particularly regarding property and land development. Debates about economic development often occur in relation to economic outcomes, driven by quantitative data and empirical assessments provided by city officials or consultants. In this article, I find that such debates are more likely to be driven by normative concerns, including moral outcomes. I develop a theoretical framework to understand why policy debates occur not in purely objective terms, but the more subjective normative and moral frameworks. The analysis provides greater insight into political debates and policymaking in the postsocialist context.

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

Possibilities of consensus: toward democratic moral discourse.

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Jennings, B

1991-08-01

The concept of consensus is often appealed to in discussions of biomedical ethics and applied ethics, and it plays an important role in many influential ethical theories. Consensus is an especially influential notion among theorists who reject ethical realism and who frame ethics as a practice of discourse rather than a body of objective knowledge. It is also a practically important notion when moral decision making is subject to bureaucratic organization and oversight, as is increasingly becoming the case in medicine. Two models of consensus are examined and criticized: pluralistic consensus and overlapping consensus. As an alternative to these models, the paper argues that consensus refers to the dialogic aspects of a broader normative conception of democratic moral agency. When the preconditions for that dialogic democratic practice are met, consensus has a justificatory role in ethics; when they are not, consensus, as distinct from mere agreement, does not emerge and can have no moral authority.

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...

Investigating the actor effect in moral emotion expectancies across cultures: a comparison of Chinese and Canadian adolescents.

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Krettenauer, Tobias; Jia, Fanli

2013-09-01

The study investigated adolescents' moral emotion expectancies for actions versus inactions across cultures (Chinese vs. Canadian) and different moral rule contexts (rules that prohibit antisocial behaviour vs. rules that prescribe prosocial actions) while controlling for judgements of obligatoriness of moral actions. The sample consisted of 372 teenagers from three grade levels (7-8, 10-11, and 1st-2nd year university). Participants were provided with scenarios depicting moral and immoral actions of self or others. Moral emotion expectancies were assessed following each scenario by asking participants to rate the intensity of various emotions they anticipate for themselves in the given situation. Actions were related to stronger self-evaluative and other-evaluative moral emotion expectancies than inactions in both cultures. Whereas perceived obligatoriness of moral actions was associated with moral emotion expectancies, it did not account for the actor effect. Moreover, Chinese adolescents tended to report stronger negatively charged other-evaluative emotions when observing others engaging in antisocial behaviour and less positive emotions for moral actions. Overall, the study indicates that moral emotion expectancies hinge upon universal moral principles (as exemplified by the actor effect) that interact with cultural values and individuals' moral judgement in complex ways. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

The place and role of (moral) anger in organizational behavior studies

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Geddes, Deanna

2015-01-01

Summary The aim of this article is to conceptually delineate moral anger from other related constructs. Drawing upon social functional accounts of anger, we contend that distilling the finer nuances of morally motivated anger and its expression can increase the precision with which we examine prosocial forms of anger (e.g., redressing injustice), in general, and moral anger, in particular. Without this differentiation, we assert that (i) moral anger remains theoretically elusive, (ii) that this thwarts our ability to methodologically capture the unique variance moral anger can explain in important work outcomes, and that (iii) this can promote ill‐informed organizational policies and practice. We offer a four‐factor definition of moral anger and demonstrate the utility of this characterization as a distinct construct with application for workplace phenomena such as, but not limited to, whistle‐blowing. Next, we outline a future research agenda, including how to operationalize the construct and address issues of construct, discriminant, and convergent validity. Finally, we argue for greater appreciation of anger's prosocial functions and concomitant understanding that many anger displays can be justified and lack harmful intent. If allowed and addressed with interest and concern, these emotional displays can lead to improved organizational practice. © 2015 The Authors Journal of Organizational Behavior Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. PMID:27773966

Nuclear deterrence, morality, and realism

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Finnis, J.; Boyle, J.M. Jr.; Grisez, G.

1987-01-01

Nuclear deterrence deserves rigorous, objective ethical analysis. In providing it, the authors of this book face realities - the Soviet threat, possible nuclear holocaust, strategic imperatives - but they also unmask moral evasions - deterrence cannot be bluff, pure counterforce, the lesser (or greater) evil, or a step towards disarmament. They conclude that the deterrent is unjustifiable and examine the new questions of conscience that this raises for everyone.

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);…

Carácter moral y deberes éticos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rivera Castro, Faviola

2004-06-01

Full Text Available Proponents of virtue ethics usually charge Kantian ethics with being act-centered because, they claim, its main object of moral evaluation are particular acts. This has the unwelcome consequence that an act can be morally worthy though the character who performs it is not virtuous. They also claim that ethics should focus on the character of persons such that only those acts that are the expression of a virtuous characters can be morally good. My purpose in this article is to show that the main object of moral evaluation in Kantian ethics is the character of persons. The categorical imperative does not demand the performance of particular acts, but the adoption of maxims of ends, which maxims are principles to guide a complete life. I claim that the adoption of such maxims necessarily requires the acquisition of a virtuous character so that whoever commits herself to living according to ethical principles both performs good acts and acquires a virtuous character.

Los defensores de la ética de la virtud usualmente califican a la ética kantiana como una moralidad centrada en el acto porque, sostienen, su principal objeto de evaluación moral son los actos particulares, con lo cual un acto puede ser moralmente bueno a pesar de que el carácter de quien lo lleva a cabo no sea virtuoso. Sostienen que, por el contrario, la ética debe centrarse en el carácter de las personas, de modo que un acto es moralmente valioso sólo cuando es la expresión de un carácter virtuoso. El propósito de este artículo es mostrar que, en contra de lo que sostienen los partidarios de la ética de la virtud, el principal objeto de evaluación moral en la ética kantiana es el carácter de las personas. El imperativo categórico no exige la realización de actos particulares, sino la adopción de máximas de fines, las cuales son principios para una vida completa. Sostengo que la adopción de estas máximas necesariamente requiere la adquisición de un car

Long-term care: the family, post-modernity, and conflicting moral life-worlds.

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Engelhardt, H Tristram

2007-01-01

Long-term care is controversial because it involves foundational disputes. Some are moral-economic, bearing on whether the individual, the family, or the state is primarily responsible for long-term care, as well as on how one can establish a morally and financially sustainable long-term-care policy, given the moral hazard of people over-using entitlements once established, the political hazard of media democracies promising unfundable entitlements, the demographic hazard of relatively fewer workers to support those in need of long-term care, the moral hazard to responsibility of shifting accountability to third parties, and the bureaucratic hazard of moving from individual and family choice to bureaucratic oversight. These disputes are compounded by controversies regarding the nature of the family (Is it to be regarded primarily as a socio-biological category, a fundamental ontological category of social reality, or a construct resulting from the consent of the participants?), as well as its legal and moral autonomy and authority over its members. As the disputes show, there is no common understanding of respect and human dignity that will easily lead out of these disputes. The reflections on long-term care in this issue underscore the plurality of moralities defining bioethics.

Business ethics founded on christian moral theology: Perspectives for the 21st century

OpenAIRE

Mele, Domenec

2000-01-01

Religion influences the world of business through its influence on people's moral conscience and motivation, so it would be unrealistic not to take it into account. Theology does not see itself as being opposed to philosophy but, rather, as building on it. Through its rational and systematic justification of faith, theology opens up new horizons for business ethics. Furthermore, if public debate requires the contribution of acknowledged authorities on moral issues, then there is clearly a pla...

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.

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

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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.

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

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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

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.

The Role of Job Involvement as a Mediator in Employees’ Moral Values - Organizational Commitment Relationship: Bosnian Case

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Muhammet Sait Dinc

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint effects of employees' moral values and job involvement on their organizational commitment. Data were collected via a questionnaire survey of private educational institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a total of 100 valid responses were received. It was found that although both moral values and job involvement could enhance organizational commitment, once the effects of job involvement are accounted for, the direct effects of moral values on organizational commitment diminish to almost non-existent. This result provides strong evidence that the influence of employees’ moral values on organizational commitment is mediated by job involvement.

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...

In defense of a supernatural foundation to morality: reply to Shermer.

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Miller, Christian B

2016-11-01

In my original paper, I claimed that our moral obligations are real, objective, and grounded in the supernatural. In particular, I endorsed the claim that God's will is the basis or source of our moral obligations, where "God" is to be understood as the theistic being who is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, who created the universe, and who is still actively involved in the universe after creating it. In his critical article, Michael Shermer has raised a number of important challenges to my view. Here I try to defend the position and respond to at least his most serious objections. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

Predictors of Moral Disengagement in Sport.

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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.

African and Western moral theories in a bioethical context.

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Metz, Thaddeus

2010-04-01

The field of bioethics is replete with applications of moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. For a given dilemma, even if it is not clear how one of these western philosophical principles of right (and wrong) action would resolve it, one can identify many of the considerations that each would conclude is relevant. The field is, in contrast, largely unaware of an African account of what all right (and wrong) actions have in common and of the sorts of factors that for it are germane to developing a sound response to a given bioethical problem. My aim is to help rectify this deficiency by first spelling out a moral theory grounded in the mores of many sub-Saharan peoples, and then applying it to some major bioethical issues, namely, the point of medical treatment, free and informed consent, standards of care and animal experimentation. For each of these four issues, I compare and contrast the implications of the African moral theory with utilitarianism and Kantianism, my overall purposes being to highlight respects in which the African moral theory is distinct and to demonstrate that the field should take it at least as seriously as it does the Western theories.

The Need for Inclusion of Human Resources Accounting in the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Toshiba

terms of skill, sex etc. for effective human resources planning, control and management. ... accounting system to provide human resource accounting for its managers. ... A similar effort in disclosing human resource information in the financial ... Estimate the effect of managerial actions on employees' morale, productivity and ...

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

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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.

The Influence of Islamic Moral Values on the Students' Behavior in Aceh

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Nuriman; Fauzan

2017-01-01

This study shows the influence and relationship of Islamic moral values to the students' behavior in Aceh Province. Learning Objects are the moral values of Islam achieved in learning in high school and vocational institutions that are assumed to affect the students' behavior. The quantitative methods used in this study and was running by SPSS…

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.