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  1. The Indolent Sympathy: An Explanation from Haidt’s Perspective.José Oliverio Tovar-Bohórquez - 2022 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 19:203-219.
    In this paper, I use Jonathan Haidt’s theory to explore an affective disposition that I call “indolent sympathy”. I argue that this disposition prevents a considerable group of human beings from showing solidarity with the millions of people who find themselves in conditions of poverty or extreme poverty. To demonstrate this, I will first present two dissimilar cases that show the type of affective disposition that I wish to submit to the reader’s consideration. Secondly, I will discuss the main characteristics (...)
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  • High levels of psychopathic traits alters moral choice but not moral judgment.Sébastien Tassy, Christine Deruelle, Julien Mancini, Samuel Leistedt & Bruno Wicker - 2013 - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7.
    Psychopathy is a personality disorder frequently associated with immoral behaviors. Previous behavioral studies on the influence of psychopathy on moral decision have yielded contradictory results, possibly because they focused either on judgment (abstract evaluation) or on choice of hypothetical action, two processes that may rely on different mechanisms. In this study, we explored the influence of the level of psychopathic traits on judgment and choice of hypothetical action during moral dilemma evaluation. A population of 102 students completed a questionnaire with (...)
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  • Disgust Talked About.Nina Strohminger - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (7):478-493.
    Disgust, the emotion of rotting carcasses and slimy animalitos, finds itself at the center of several critical questions about human culture and cognition. This article summarizes recent developments, identify active points of debate, and provide an account of where the field is heading next.
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  • Disgust Talked About.Nina Strohminger - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (7):478-493.
    Disgust, the emotion of rotting carcasses and slimy animalitos, finds itself at the center of several critical questions about human culture and cognition. This article summarizes recent developments, identify active points of debate, and provide an account of where the field is heading next.
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  • The limits of early social evaluation: 9-month-olds fail to generate social evaluations of individuals who behave inconsistently.Conor M. Steckler, Brandon M. Woo & J. Kiley Hamlin - 2017 - Cognition 167 (C):255-265.
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  • The difference between ice cream and Nazis: Moral externalization and the evolution of human cooperation.P. Kyle Stanford - 2018 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41.
    A range of empirical findings is first used to more precisely characterize our distinctive tendency to objectify or externalize moral demands and obligations, and it is then argued that this salient feature of our moral cognition represents a profound puzzle for evolutionary approaches to human moral psychology that existing proposals do not help resolve. It is then proposed that such externalization facilitated a broader shift to a vastly more cooperative form of social life by establishing and maintaining a connection between (...)
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  • Current knowledge in moral cognition can improve medical ethics.S. Tassy, P. Le Coz & B. Wicker - 2008 - Journal of Medical Ethics 34 (9):679-682.
    Physicians frequently face ethical dilemmas when caring for patients. To help them to cope with these, biomedical ethics aims to implement moral norms for particular problems and contexts. As a means of studying the cognitive and neurobiological features underlying the respect for these norms, moral cognitive neuroscience could help us to understand and improve ethical questioning. The article reviews recent developments in the field and presents neurobiological arguments to highlight why some moral rules are universally shared and why some ethical (...)
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  • On testing the 'moral law'.Paulo Sousa - 2009 - Mind and Language 24 (2):209-234.
    Abstract: In a previous article in this journal, Daniel Kelly, Stephen Stich, Kevin Haley, Serena Eng and Daniel Fessler report data that, according to them, foster scepticism about an association between harm and morality existent in the Turiel tradition ( Kelly et al. , 2007 ). This article challenges their interpretation of the data. It does so by explicating some methodological problems in the Turiel tradition that Kelly et al. themselves in a way inherit and by drawing on new evidence (...)
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  • Adam Smith’s relevance for contemporary moral cognition.Sarah Songhorian - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 35 (5):662-683.
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  • Is sociopathy a type or not? Will the “real” sociopathy please stand up?James Snyder - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):575-576.
    The validity of the classification of “primary sociopaths” as a qualitatively distinct group in the general population is questioned. Cenetic variation in the experience and expression of emotions may play a role in the development of antisocial behavior. However, research clearly documents that socialization environments powerfully modify the expression of genetic biases in a manner that increases or decreases the risk for “sociopathy.”.
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  • A social model of moral dumbfounding: Implications for studying moral reasoning and moral judgment.Andrew Sneddon - 2007 - Philosophical Psychology 20 (6):731 – 748.
    Moral psychologists have recently turned their attention to a phenomenon they call 'moral dumbfounding'. Moral dumbfounding occurs when someone confidently pronounces a moral judgment, then finds that he or she has little or nothing to say in defense of it. This paper addresses recent attempts by Jonathan Haidt and Marc Hauser to make sense of moral dumbfounding in terms of their respective theories of moral judgment; Haidt in terms of a 'social intuitionist' model of moral judgment, and Hauser in terms (...)
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  • Unequal Vividness and Double Effect.Neil Sinhababu - 2013 - Utilitas 25 (3):291-315.
    I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence from Schnall and others, and recent neuroscientific research from Greene, Klein, Kahane, and Schaich (...)
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  • Explaining rule of rescue obligations in healthcare allocation: allowing the patient to tell the right kind of story about their life.Sean Sinclair - 2021 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 25 (1):31-46.
    I consider various principles which might explain our intuitive obligation to rescue people from imminent death at great cost, even when the same resources could produce more benefit elsewhere. Our obligation to rescue is commonly explained in terms of the identifiability of the rescuee, but I reject this account. Instead, I offer two considerations which may come into play. Firstly, I explain the seeming importance of identifiability in terms of an intuitive obligation to prioritise life-extending interventions for people who face (...)
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  • Responsibility and disability.David Shoemaker - 2009 - Metaphilosophy 40 (3-4):438-461.
    This essay explores the boundaries of the moral community—the collection of agents eligible for moral responsibility—by focusing on those just inside it and those just outside it. In particular, it contrasts mild mental retardation with psychopathy, specifically among adults. For those who work with and know them, adults with mild mental retardation are thought to be obvious members of the moral community (albeit not full-fledged members). For those who work with and theorize about adult psychopaths, by contrast, they are not (...)
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  • Theory of Mind and conduct problems in children: Deficits in reading the “emotions of the eyes”.Carla Sharp - 2008 - Cognition and Emotion 22 (6):1149-1158.
    Theory of Mind (ToM, also referred to as mentalising; Fonagy, 1991; Frith & Frith, 2006) was coined by primatologists, Premack and Woodruff (1978) and adapted in developmental psychology to refer t...
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  • Pathways to sociopathy: Twin analyses offer direction.Nancy L. Segal - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):574-575.
    Understanding the bases of complex behavioral phenotypes, such as sociopathy, is assisted by an evolutionary approach, in addition to other theoretical perspectives. Unraveling genetic and environmental factors underlying variant forms of sociopathy remains a key challenge for behavioral science investigators. Twin research methods (e.g., longitudinal analyses; twins reared apart) offer informative means of assessing novel hypotheses relevant to sociopathic behaviors.
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  • Educated intuitions. Automaticity and rationality in moral judgement.Hanno Sauer - 2012 - Philosophical Explorations 15 (3):255-275.
    Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance (...)
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  • Psychopaths and Filthy Desks: Are Emotions Necessary and Sufficient for Moral Judgment?Hanno Sauer - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1):95-115.
    Philosophical and empirical moral psychologists claim that emotions are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment. The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence in favor of both claims and to show how a moderate rationalist position about moral judgment can be defended nonetheless. The experimental evidence for both the necessity- and the sufficiency-thesis concerning the connection between emotional reactions and moral judgment is presented. I argue that a rationalist about moral judgment can be happy to accept the (...)
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  • No excuses for moral realism.Hanno Sauer - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):553-578.
    Many believe that there is at least some asymmetry between the extent to which moral and non-moral ignorance excuse. I argue that the exculpatory force of moral ignorance—or lack thereof—poses a thus far overlooked challenge to moral realism. I show, firstly, that if there were any mind-independent moral truths, we would not expect there to be an asymmetry in exculpatory force between moral and ordinary ignorance at all. I then consider several attempts the realist might make to deny or accommodate (...)
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  • Morally irrelevant factors: What's left of the dual process-model of moral cognition?Hanno Sauer - 2012 - Philosophical Psychology 25 (6):783-811.
    Current developments in empirical moral psychology have spawned a new perspective on the traditional metaethical question of whether moral judgment is based on reason or emotion. Psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists such as Joshua Greene argue that there is empirical evidence that emotion is essential for one particularly important subclass of moral judgments: so-called ?deontological judgments.? In this paper, I scrutinize this claim and argue that neither the empirical evidence for Greene's dual process-theory of moral judgment nor the normative conclusions it (...)
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  • Educated Intuitions. Automaticity and rationality in moral judgement.Hanno Sauer - 2012 - Philosophical Explorations 15 (3):255-275.
    Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance (...)
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  • Against moral judgment. The empirical case for moral abolitionism.Hanno Sauer - 2021 - Philosophical Explorations 24 (2):137-154.
    In this paper, I argue that recent evidence regarding the psychological basis of moral cognition supports a form of (moderate) moral abolitionism. I identify three main problems undermining the epistemic quality of our moral judgments – contamination, reliability, and bad incentives – and reject three possible responses: neither moral expertise, nor moral learning, nor the possibility of moral progress succeed in solving the aforementioned epistemic problems. The result is a moderate form of moral abolitionism, according to which we should make (...)
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  • When sentimental rules collide: “Norms with feelings” in the dilemmatic context.Edward B. Royzman, Geoffrey P. Goodwin & Robert F. Leeman - 2011 - Cognition 121 (1):101-114.
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  • Unsentimental ethics: Towards a content-specific account of the moral–conventional distinction.Edward B. Royzman, Robert F. Leeman & Jonathan Baron - 2009 - Cognition 112 (1):159-174.
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  • Evolution, mating effort, and crime.David C. Rowe - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):573-574.
    Unlike some psychiatric illnesses, criminal lifestyles are not reproductive dead ends and may represent frequency-dependent adaptations. Sociopaths may gain reproductively from their greater relative to nonsociopaths. This mating-effort construct should be assessed directly in future studies of sociopathy. Collaboration between biologically oriented and environmentally oriented researchers is needed to investigate the biosocial basis of sociopathy.
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  • Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity: How Can Moral Psychology Save the Planet?Joshua Rottman, Deborah Kelemen & Liane Young - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (2):134-144.
    The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm or impurity . Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current or future generations, non-human animals, and anthropomorphized aspects of the environment. Concerns for purity are linked to viewing the environment as imbued with sacred value and therefore worthy of being (...)
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  • Aliens behaving badly: Children’s acquisition of novel purity-based morals.Joshua Rottman & Deborah Kelemen - 2012 - Cognition 124 (3):356-360.
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  • The phenomenal stance.Philip Robbins & Anthony I. Jack - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (1):59-85.
    Cognitive science is shamelessly materialistic. It maintains that human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems, ultimately and completely explicable in mechanistic terms. But this conception of humanity does not ?t well with common sense. To think of the creatures we spend much of our day loving, hating, admiring, resenting, comparing ourselves to, trying to understand, blaming, and thanking -- to think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintuitive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as (...)
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  • Feedback from moral philosophy to cognitive science.Regina A. Rini - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (4):569-588.
    A popular argument form uses general theories of cognitive architecture to motivate conclusions about the nature of moral cognition. This paper highlights the possibility for modus tollens reversal of this argument form. If theories of cognitive architecture generate predictions for moral cognition, then tests of moral thinking provide feedback to cognitive science. In certain circumstances, philosophers' introspective attention to their own moral deliberations can provide unique data for these tests. Recognizing the possibility for this sort of feedback helps to illuminate (...)
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  • El origen evolutivo de la agencia moral y sus implicaciones para la ética.Andrés Richart - 2016 - Pensamiento 72 (273):849-864.
    La agencia moral, entendida como la facultad que permite la moralidad, aparece gracias a las estructuras psicobiológicas que componen sus condiciones de posibilidad. Trataremos de comprender su origen evolutivo atendiendo a la posibilidad de que la agencia moral surgiese como un subproducto de la evolución, que no aparece con una función concreta, y que sería resultado de la concurrencia de otros elementos que surgieron y se desarrollaron adaptativamente. Tras ello haremos algunas consideraciones respecto a las competencias de las ciencias empíricas (...)
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  • Shame, Embarrassment, and the Subjectivity Requirement.Erick J. Ramirez - 2018 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 14 (1):97-114.
    Reactive theories of responsibility see moral accountability as grounded on the capacity for feeling reactive-attitudes. I respond to a recent argument gaining ground in this tradition that excludes psychopaths from accountability. The argument relies on what Paul Russell has called the 'subjectivity requirement'. On this view, the capacity to feel and direct reactive-attitudes at oneself is a necessary condition for responsibility. I argue that even if moral attitudes like guilt are impossible for psychopaths to deploy, that psychopaths, especially the "successful" (...)
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  • Psychopathy and violence: Arousal, temperament, birth complications, maternal rejection, and prefrontal dysfunction.Adrian Raine - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):571-573.
    The key questions arising from Mealey's analysis are: Do environmental factors such as early maternal rejection also contribute to the emotional deficits observed in psychopaths? Are there psychophysiological protective factors for antisocial behavior that have clinical implications? Does a disinhibited temperament and low arousal predispose to primary psychopathy? Would primary or secondary psychopaths be most characterized by prefrontal dysfunction?
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  • Two Problematic Foundations of Neuroethics and Pragmatist Reconstructions.Eric Racine & Matthew Sample - 2018 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 27 (4):566-577.
    Common understandings of neuroethics, i.e., of its distinctive nature, are premised on two distinct sets of claims: (1) neuroscience can change views about the nature of ethics itself and neuroethics is dedicated to reaping such an understanding of ethics; (2) neuroscience poses challenges distinct from other areas of medicine and science and neuroethics tackles those issues. Critiques have rightfully challenged both claims, stressing how the first may lead to problematic forms of reductionism while the second relies on debatable assumptions about (...)
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  • Psychopathy is a nonarbitrary class.Vernon L. Quinsey & Martin L. Lalumière - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):571-571.
    Recent evidence that psychopathy is a nonarbitrary population, such that the trait may be categorical rather than continuous, is consistent with Mealey's distinction between primary and secondary psychopaths. Thus, there are likely to be at least two routes to criminality, and psychopathic and nonpsychopathic criminals are likely to respond differently to interventions.
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  • Relationships Between Alexithymia and Psychopathy in Heroin Dependent Individuals.Elena Psederska, Svetoslav Savov, Nikola Atanassov & Jasmin Vassileva - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10:432568.
    Background: Psychopathy and substance use disorders are highly co-morbid and their co-occurrence is associated with higher severity of addictive behavior and increased risk of violent offending. Both substance use disorders and psychopathy are related to prominent impairments in emotion processing, which are also central features of alexithymia. The nature of the relationship between psychopathy and alexithymia is not well understood and has been particularly understudied among substance dependent individuals. Aims: Our goal was to evaluate the levels of psychopathy and alexithymia (...)
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  • The emotional basis of moral judgments.Jesse Prinz - 2006 - Philosophical Explorations 9 (1):29-43.
    Recent work in cognitive science provides overwhelming evidence for a link between emotion and moral judgment. I review findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and research on psychopathology and conclude that emotions are not merely correlated with moral judgments but they are also, in some sense, both necessary and sufficient. I then use these findings along with some anthropological observations to support several philosophical theories: first, I argue that sentimentalism is true: to judge that something is wrong is to have a (...)
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  • Can moral obligations be empirically discovered?Jesse J. Prinz - 2007 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):271-291.
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  • Against Empathy.Jesse Prinz - 2011 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (s1):214-233.
    Empathy can be characterized as a vicarious emotion that one person experiences when reflecting on the emotion of another. So characterized, empathy is sometimes regarded as a precondition on moral judgment. This seems to have been Hume's view. I review various ways in which empathy might be regarded as a precondition and argue against each of them: empathy is not a component, a necessary cause, a reliable epistemic guide, a foundation for justification, or the motivating force behind our moral judgments. (...)
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  • Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases.Stephanie D. Preston & Frans B. M. de Waal - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):1-20.
    There is disagreement in the literature about the exact nature of the phenomenon of empathy. There are emotional, cognitive, and conditioning views, applying in varying degrees across species. An adequate description of the ultimate and proximate mechanism can integrate these views. Proximately, the perception of an object's state activates the subject's corresponding representations, which in turn activate somatic and autonomic responses. This mechanism supports basic behaviors that are crucial for the reproductive success of animals living in groups. The Perception-Action Model, (...)
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  • Moral judgments and emotions: A less intimate relationship than recently claimed.Thomas Pölzler - 2015 - Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 35 (3):177-195.
    It has long been claimed that moral judgements are dominated by reason. In recent years, however, the tide has turned. Many psychologists and philosophers now hold the view that there is a close empirical association between moral judgements and emotions. In particular, they claim that emotions (1) co-occur with moral judgements, (2) causally influence moral judgements, (3) are causally sufficient for moral judgements, and (4) are causally necessary for moral judgements. At first sight these hypotheses seem well-supported. In this paper (...)
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  • Emotions and sociopathy.Robert Plutchik - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):570-571.
    Questions are raised about several issues discussed by Mealey: (1) the nature of the distinction between primary and secondary sociopaths, (2) some difficulties with a general arousal theory of criminality, and (3) the possible role of countervailing forces in the development of sociopathy. An important area that calls for attention is the patterning of different specific emotions in the lives of sociopaths as compared to other groups.
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  • “Genetics” and DNA polymorphisms.Robert Plomin - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):570-570.
    Four questions are raised about Mealey's genetic argument: (1) Where is the evidence that secondary sociopathy is less heritable than primary sociopathy? (2) What is the genetic correlation between the two types of sociopathy? (3) How does genotype-environment interaction relate? (4) How strong are the links between our evolutionary past and current heritability?
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  • Evolution, Moral Justification, and Moral Realism.Uwe Peters - 2012 - Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Analitica Junior 3 (1):8-18.
    Does evolutionary theory have the potential to undermine morality? In his book The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce (2006) argues for a positive answer. He contends that an evolutionary account of morality would undermine moral judgements and lend support to moral scepticism. I offer a critique of Joyce’s argument. As it turns out, his case can be read in two different ways. It could be construed as an argument to establish a general scepticism about the justification of moral judgements. Or (...)
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  • Reduced empathic concern leads to utilitarian moral judgments in trait alexithymia.Indrajeet Patil & Giorgia Silani - 2014 - Frontiers in Psychology 5.
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  • Neuroscientific Challenges to deontological theory: Implications to Moral Education.Jang-Ho Park - 2011 - Journal of Ethics: The Korean Association of Ethics 1 (82):73-125.
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  • On the brain and personality substrates of psychopathy.Jaak Panksepp, Brian Knutson & Laura Bird - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):568-570.
    Further understanding at neuroscientific and personality levels should considerably advance our ability to deal with individuals that have strong sociopathic tendencies. An analysis of neurodynamic responses to emotional stimuli will eventually be able to detect sociopathic tendencies of the brain. Such information could be used to enhance the options available to individuals at risk without limiting their personal freedoms.
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  • Rational Learners and Moral Rules.Shaun Nichols, Shikhar Kumar, Theresa Lopez, Alisabeth Ayars & Hoi-Yee Chan - 2016 - Mind and Language 31 (5):530-554.
    People draw subtle distinctions in the normative domain. But it remains unclear exactly what gives rise to such distinctions. On one prominent approach, emotion systems trigger non-utilitarian judgments. The main alternative, inspired by Chomskyan linguistics, suggests that moral distinctions derive from an innate moral grammar. In this article, we draw on Bayesian learning theory to develop a rational learning account. We argue that the ‘size principle’, which is implicated in word learning, can also explain how children would use scant and (...)
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  • Norms with Feeling: Towards a Psychological Account of Moral Judgment.Shaun Nichols - 2002 - Cognition 84 (2):221–236.
    There is a large tradition of work in moral psychology that explores the capacity for moral judgment by focusing on the basic capacity to distinguish moral violations (e.g. hitting another person) from conventional violations (e.g. playing with your food). However, only recently have there been attempts to characterize the cognitive mechanisms underlying moral judgment (e.g. Cognition 57 (1995) 1; Ethics 103 (1993) 337). Recent evidence indicates that affect plays a crucial role in mediating the capacity to draw the moral/conventional distinction. (...)
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  • Moral dilemmas and moral rules.Shaun Nichols & Ron Mallon - 2006 - Cognition 100 (3):530-542.
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  • Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions.Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe - 2007 - Noûs 41 (4):663–685.
    An empirical study of people's intuitions about freedom of the will. We show that people tend to have compatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more concrete, emotional way but that they tend to have incompatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more abstract, cognitive way.
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