Elements Of Moral Cognition

John Mikhail explores whether moral psychology is usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar.

Analyzes the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of Rawls' ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with thought experiments can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgements.

John Mikhail explores whether moral psychology is usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar.

An overview of the latest interdisciplinary research on human morality, capturing moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms. Over the past decade, an explosion of empirical research in a variety of fields has allowed us to understand human moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms shaped through evolution, development, and culture. Evolutionary biologists have shown that moral cognition evolved to aid cooperation; developmental psychologists have demonstrated that the elements that underpin morality are in place much earlier than we thought; and social neuroscientists have begun to map brain circuits implicated in moral decision making. This volume offers an overview of current research on the moral brain, examining the topic from disciplinary perspectives that range from anthropology and neurophilosophy to justice and law. The contributors address the evolution of morality, considering precursors of human morality in other species as well as uniquely human adaptations. They examine motivations for morality, exploring the roles of passion, extreme sacrifice, and cooperation. They go on to consider the development of morality, from infancy to adolescence; findings on neurobiological mechanisms of moral cognition; psychopathic immorality; and the implications for justice and law of a more biological understanding of morality. These new findings may challenge our intuitions about society and justice, but they may also lead to more a humane and flexible legal system. Contributors Scott Atran, Abigail A. Baird, Nicolas Baumard, Sarah Brosnan, Jason M. Cowell, Molly J. Crockett, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Andrew W. Delton, Mark R. Dadds, Jean Decety, Jeremy Ginges, Andrea L. Glenn, Joshua D. Greene, J. Kiley Hamlin, David J. Hawes, Jillian Jordan, Max M. Krasnow, Ayelet Lahat, Jorge Moll, Caroline Moul, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Alexander Peysakhovich, Laurent Prétôt, Jesse Prinz, David G. Rand, Rheanna J. Remmel, Emma Roellke, Regina A. Rini, Joshua Rottman, Mark Sheskin, Thalia Wheatley, Liane Young, Roland Zahn

The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. This cross-disciplinary interchange coincides, not accidentally, with the renewed interest in ethical naturalism. In order to understand the nature and limits of moral reasoning, many new ethical naturalists look to cognitive science for an account of how people actually reason. At the same time, many cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in moral reasoning as a complex form of human cognition that challenges their theoretical models. The result of this collaborative, and often critical, interchange is an exciting intellectual ferment at the frontiers of research into human mentality. Sections and Contributors Ethics Naturalized, Owen Flanagan, Mark L. Johnson, Virginia Held - Moral Judgments, Representations, and Prototypes, Paul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Peggy DesAutels, Ruth Garrett Millikan - Moral Emotions, Robert M. Gordon, Alvin I. Goldman, John Deigh, Naomi Scheman - Agency and Responsibility James P. Sterba, Susan Khin-Zaw, Helen E. Longino, Michael E. Bratman A Bradford Book

This book brings together three distinct research programmes in moral psychology – Moral Foundations Theory, Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange, and the Linguistic Analogy in Moral Psychology – and shows that they can be combined to create a unified cognitive science of moral intuition. The book assumes evolution has furnished the human mind with two types of judgement: intuitive and deliberative. Focusing on moral intuitions (understood as moral judgments that were not arrived at via a process of conscious deliberation), the book explores the origins of these intuitions, examines how they are produced, and explains why the moral intuitions of different humans differ. Providing a unique synthesis of three separate established fields, this book presents a new research program that will further our understanding of the various different intuitive moral judgements at the heart of some of the moral tensions within human society.

With this new interpretation, Deborah Achtenberg argues that metaphysics is central to ethics for Aristotle and that the ethics can be read on two levels—imprecisely, in terms of its own dialectically grounded and imprecise claims, or in terms of the metaphysical terms and concepts that give the ethics greater articulation and depth. She argues that concepts of value—the good and the beautiful—are central to ethics for Aristotle and that they can be understood in terms of telos where 'telos' can be construed to mean 'enriching limitation' and contrasted with harmful or destructive limitation. Achtenberg argues that the imprecision of ethics for Aristotle results not simply from the fact that ethics has to do with particulars, but more centrally from the fact that it has to do with the value of particulars. She presents new interpretations of a wide variety of passages in Aristotle's metaphysical, physical, psychological, rhetorical, political, and ethical works in support of her argument and compares Aristotle's views to those of Plato, Marcus Aurelius, the Hebrew Bible, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Freud, and twentieth-century object relations theorists. Achtenberg also responds to interpretations of Aristotle's ethics by McDowell, Nussbaum, Sherman, Salkever, Williams, Annas, Irwin, Roche, Gomez-Lobo, Burnyeat, and Anagnostopoulos.

Advances in the social sciences are used to uncover cognitive foundations of social decision making.