The Psychological Basis Of Moral Judgments

This volume examines the psychological basis of moral judgments and asks what theories of concepts apply to moral concepts. By combining philosophical reasoning and empirical insights from the fields of moral psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience, it considers what mental states not only influence, but also constitute our moral concepts and judgments. On this basis, Park proposes a novel pluralistic theory of moral concepts which includes three different cognitive structures and emotions. Thus, our moral judgments are shown to be a hybrid that express both cognitive and conative states. In part through analysis of new empirical data on moral semantic intuitions, gathered via cross-cultural experimental research, Park reveals that the referents of individuals’ moral judgments and concepts vary across time, contexts, and groups. On this basis, he contends for moral relativism, where moral judgments cannot be universally true across time and location but only relative to groups. This powerfully argued text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in cognitive science, moral theory, philosophy of psychology, and moral psychology more broadly. Those interested in ethics, applied social psychology, and moral development will also benefit from the volume.

This fascinating new book examines diversity in moral judgements, drawing on recent work in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, reviewing the factors that influence the moral judgments people make. Why do reasonable people so often disagree when drawing distinctions between what is morally right and wrong? Even when individuals agree in their moral pronouncements, they may employ different standards, different comparative processes, or entirely disparate criteria in their judgments. Examining the sources of this variety, the author expertly explores morality using ethics position theory, alongside other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology, and shows how it can relate to contemporary social issues from abortion to premarital sex to human rights. Also featuring a chapter on applied contexts, using the theory of ethics positions to gain insights into the moral choices and actions of individuals, groups, and organizations in educational, research, political, medical, and business settings, the book offers answers that apply across individuals, communities, and cultures. Investigating the relationship between people’s personal moral philosophies and their ethical thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is fascinating reading for students and academics from psychology and philosophy and anyone interested in morality and ethics.

This volume examines the psychological basis of moral judgments and asks what theories of concepts apply to moral concepts. By combining philosophical reasoning and empirical insights from the fields of moral psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience, it considers what mental states not only influence, but also constitute our moral concepts and judgments. On this basis, Park proposes a novel pluralistic theory of moral concepts which includes three different cognitive structures and emotions. Thus, our moral judgments are shown to be a hybrid that express both cognitive and conative states. In part through analysis of new empirical data on moral semantic intuitions, gathered via cross-cultural experimental research, Park reveals that the referents of individuals’ moral judgments and concepts vary across time, contexts, and groups. On this basis, he contends for moral relativism, where moral judgments cannot be universally true across time and location but only relative to groups. This powerfully argued text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in cognitive science, moral theory, philosophy of psychology, and moral psychology more broadly. Those interested in ethics, applied social psychology, and moral development will also benefit from the volume.

An argument that moral reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment through episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Rationalists about the psychology of moral judgment argue that moral cognition has a rational foundation. Recent challenges to this account, based on findings in the empirical psychology of moral judgment, contend that moral thinking has no rational basis. In this book, Hanno Sauer argues that moral reasoning does play a role in moral judgment—but not, as is commonly supposed, because conscious reasoning produces moral judgments directly. Moral reasoning figures in the acquisition, formation, maintenance, and reflective correction of moral intuitions. Sauer proposes that when we make moral judgments we draw on a stable repertoire of intuitions about what is morally acceptable, which we have acquired over the course of our moral education—episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Moral judgments are educated and rationally amenable moral intuitions. Sauer engages extensively with the empirical evidence on the psychology of moral judgment and argues that it can be shown empirically that reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment. He offers detailed counterarguments to the anti-rationalist challenge (the claim that reason and reasoning play no significant part in morality and moral judgment) and the emotionist challenge (the argument for the emotional basis of moral judgment). Finally, he uses Joshua Greene's Dual Process model of moral cognition to test the empirical viability and normative persuasiveness of his account of educated intuitions. Sauer shows that moral judgments can be automatic, emotional, intuitive, and rational at the same time.

The study of morality is an empirical as well as conceptual task, one that involves data collection, statistical analysis, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. This volume is about moral judgment, especially its exercise in selected social settings. The contributors are psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers of morality, most of whom have collaborated on long-ranged research projects in Europe involving socialization. These essays make it clear that moral judgment is a complex phenomena. The book fuses developmental psychology, sociology, and social psychology. It relates this directly to the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who wrote the introduction to the book. Whether moral reasoning has a content-specific domain, or whether its structures transcend specific issues of justice, obedience, and rights, these and similar questions suggest that moral philosophers and ethical theorists have much to say about the human condition. The contributors represent diverse disciplines; but they have as their common concern the topic of the interaction of individual or group-specific moral development and social milieu. Although deeply involved in empirical research, they maintain that research on moral development can be pursued properly only in conjunction with a well-formulated theory of the relationship between society, cognition, and behavior. Moral development is an institutional as well as individual concern for schools, universities, and the military. It is rooted in the ability to formulate genuine and coherent moral judgments that reflect social conditions at two levels: individual socialization and historical development of the social system. This classic volume, now available in paperback, not only exemplifies that framework, but also makes an important contribution to it.

Shaun Nichols' theory is that emotions play a critical role in both the psychological and the cultural underpinnings of basic moral judgement, in that the norms prohibiting the harming of others are fundamentally associated with our emotional responses to those harms.

Sentimental Rules is an ambitious and highly interdisciplinary work, which proposes and defends a new theory about the nature and evolution of moral judgment. In it, philosopher Shaun Nichols develops the theory that emotions play a critical role in both the psychological and the cultural underpinnings of basic moral judgment. Nichols argues that our norms prohibiting the harming of others are fundamentally associated with our emotional responses to those harms, and that such 'sentimental rules' enjoy an advantage in cultural evolution, which partly explains the success of certain moral norms. This has sweeping and exciting implications for philosophical ethics. Nichols builds on an explosion of recent intriguing experimental work in psychology on our capacity for moral judgment and shows how this empirical work has broad import for enduring philosophical problems. The result is an account that illuminates fundamental questions about the character of moral emotions and the role of sentiment and reason in how we make our moral judgments. This work should appeal widely across philosophy and the other disciplines that comprise cognitive science.

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning brings together the contributions of many of the leading researchers in thinking and reasoning to create the most comprehensive overview of research on thinking and reasoning that has ever been available.