The naturalistic approach to metaethics is sometimes identified with a supervenience theory relating moral properties to underlying descriptive properties, thereby securing the possibility of objective knowledge in morality as in chemistry. I reject this approach along with the purely anthropological approach which leads to an objectionable form of relativism. There is no single method for arriving at moral objectivity any more than there is a single method that has taken us from alchemy to modern chemistry. Rather, there is an ensemble (...) of instruments, techniques, experiments and observations that contribute to eliminating moral error, delivering what we are entitled to call greater objectivity. (shrink)

While philosophers have discussed the emotion of contempt from antiquity to the present day, contempt has received less attention in psychological research. We review the defining features of contempt, both as a short-term emotion and as a more long-lasting sentiment. Contempt is similar to anger in that it may occur after social or moral transgressions, but it differs from anger in its appraisals, actions, and emotivational goals. Unlike anger, contempt arises when a person’s or group’s character is appraised as bad (...) and unresponsive to change, leading to attempts to socially exclude the target. We discuss associative, self-regulatory, and social distancing functions of contempt and present a dynamic social model of contempt versus anger. (shrink)

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action (...) to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision. (shrink)

Recent experiments in moral psychology have been taken to imply that moral reasoning only serves to reaffirm prior moral intuitions. More specifically, Jonathan Haidt concludes from his moral dumbfounding experiments, in which people condemn other people’s behavior, that moral reasoning is biased and ineffective, as it rarely makes people change their mind. I present complementary evidence pertaining to self-directed reasoning about what to do. More specifically, Albert Bandura’s experiments concerning moral disengagement reveal that moral reasoning often does contribute effectively to (...) the formation of moral judgments. And such reasoning need not be biased. Once this evidence is taken into account, it becomes clear that both cognition and affect can play a destructive as well as a constructive role in the formation of moral judgments. (shrink)

In this article, I provide a guide to some current thinking in empirical moral psychology on the nature of moral intuitions, focusing on the theories of Haidt and Narvaez. Their debate connects to philosophical discussions of virtue theory and the role of emotions in moral epistemology. After identifying difficulties attending the current debate around the relation between intuitions and reasoning, I focus on the question of the development of intuitions. I discuss how intuitions could be shaped into moral expertise, outlining (...) Haidt’s emphasis on innate factors and Narvaez’s account in terms of a social-cognitive model of personality. After a brief discussion of moral relativism, I consider the implications of the account of moral expertise for our understanding of the relation between moral intuitions and reason. I argue that a strong connection can be made if we adopt a broad conception of reason and a narrow conception of expertise. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that philosophical theories about the psychological nature of moral judgment can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the kind of evidence gathered by natural and social scientists (especially experimental psychologists and neuroscientists). I argue that this assumption is mistaken. For the most part, empirical evidence can do no work in these philosophical debates, as the metaphorical heavy-lifting is done by the pre-experimental assumptions that make it possible to apply empirical data to these philosophical debates. For the purpose of (...) this paper, I emphasize two putatively empirically-supported theories about the psychological nature of moral judgment. The first is the Sentimental Rules Account, which is defended by Shaun Nichols. The second is defended by Jesse Prinz, and is a form of sentimentalist moral relativism. I show that both of the arguments in favour of these theories rely on assumptions which would be rejected by their philosophical opponents. Further, these assumptions carry substantive moral commitments and thus cannot be confirmed by further empirical investigation. Because of this shared methodological assumption, I argue that a certain form of empirical moral psychology rests on a mistake. (shrink)

The moral enhancement of humans by biological or genetic means has recently been urged as a response to the pressing concerns facing human civilization. In this paper, I argue that proponents of biological moral enhancement have misrepresented the facts of human moral psychology. As a result, the likely effectiveness of traditional methods of moral enhancement has been underestimated, relative to biological or genetic means. I review arguments in favor of biological moral enhancement and argue that the complexity of moral psychology (...) raises serious problems for such interventions. I offer a programmatic sketch of the ways in which our improved understanding of moral psychology can help facilitate more traditional methods of moral enhancement. I conclude that the best response to the dangers faced by human civilization is the continued use of traditional methods of moral enhancement and the use of our improved understanding of moral psychology to further refine and develop these methods. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that moral principles are not sufficient to guide moral thought and action: they need to be supplemented by a capacity for judgement. However, why can we not rely on this capacity for moral judgement alone? Why do moral principles need to be supplemented, but are not supplanted, by judgement? So-called moral particularists argue that we can, and should, make moral decisions on a case-by-case basis without any principles. According to particularists, the person of moral judgement is (...) a person of empathy, sensibility and virtue, rather than a person of principle. In this paper I argue that this is a false dichotomy. The person of good moral judgement is a person of principle. I propose that we think of moral principles as internalised long-term commitments that form our moral character and sensitivity, and, as such, are constitutive of moral judgement. (shrink)

Concepts are mental representations that are the constituents of thought. EdouardMachery claims that psychologists generally understand concepts to be bodies of knowledge or information carrying mental states stored in long term memory that are used in the higher cognitive competences such as in categorization judgments, induction, planning, and analogical reasoning. While most research in the concepts field generally have been on concrete concepts such as LION, APPLE, and CHAIR, this paper will examine abstract moral concepts and whether such concepts may (...) have prototype and exemplar structure. After discussing the philosophical importance of this project and explaining the prototype and exemplar theories, criticisms will be made against philosophers, who without experimental support from the sciences of the mind, contend that moral concepts have prototype and/or exemplar structure. Next, I will scrutinize Mark Johnson’s experimentally-based argument that moral concepts have prototype structure. Finally, I will show how our moral concepts may indeed have prototype and exemplar structure as well as explore the further ethical implications that may be reached by this particular moral concepts conclusion. (shrink)

There seems to be a large gulf between percepts and concepts. In particular, con- cepts seem to be capable of representing things that percepts cannot. We can conceive of things that would be impossible to perceive. (The converse may also seem true, but I will leave that to one side.) In one respect, this is trivially right. We can conceive of things that we cannot encounter, such as unicorns. We cannot literally perceive unicorns, even if we occasionally.

Moral rationalism has long been an attractive position within moral philosophy. However, among empirical-minded philosophers, it is widely dismissed as scientifically untenable. In this essay, I argue that moral rationalism’s lack of uptake in the empirical domain is due to the widespread supposition that moral rationalists must hold that moral judgments and actions are produced by rational capacities. But this construal is mistaken: moral rationalism’s primary concern is not with the relationship between moral judgments and rational capacities per se, but (...) rather with developing a conception objectivity normativity that avoids Platonism. In light of this, I develop an alternative approach to translating moral rationalism into the empirical domain that builds on the common rationalist view that normative requirements are explained by the relationship between agents and the social structures and practices in which they are embedded. I propose that this social conception of normativity can be translated into a scientific framework by interpreting it as a claim about the importance of constraint-based explanation when accounting for norm-governed behavior. In order to develop this point more concretely and show that it is empirically tractable, I turn to research on macaque social organization that highlights the ways in which normative standards are generated by empirically observable social structures. The insights garnered from the macaque case allow me to then locate moral rationalism’s core claims about the relationship between morality and the standards of practical rationality within an empirically plausible framework. (shrink)

The role of religion in clinical ethics consultations is contested. The religion of the ethics consultant _can be_ an important part of the consultation process and improve the quality of a consultation. Practicing neighbor love leads to empathy, which not only can improve the quality of ethics consultations but also creates a space for religion to be part of, but not imposed on, the consultation. The practice of empathy will build trust, rapport, and an intersubjective connection that improves the quality (...) of the consultation. (The views expressed are the author’s and not representative of any institution or employer). (shrink)

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 (...) fewer moral judgments much more carefully. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the question of what makes expressions meaningful according to the conception of meaning offered by Donald Davidson. It addresses this question by reflecting on Kathrin Glüer’s recent response to it. It argues that Glüer misconstrues both the evidence for meaning that the radical interpreter must rely on and the way in which the principle of charity must be deployed. The articulation of the correct construal of the evidence and the principle reveals the thoroughly non-reductionist aspect of Davidson’s (...) conception of meaning. This aspect becomes even clearer in his later work, through the articulation of the triangulation argument. I try to show how this argument, which is reconstructed in accordance with Claudine Verheggen’s interpretation of it, helps answer the initial question. The question whether the conception has the resources to account for the objectivity of meaning is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Empirical moral psychology is sometimes dismissed as normatively insignificant because it plays no decisive role in settling ethical disputes. But that conclusion, even if it is valid for normative ethics, does not extend to bioethics. First, in contrast to normative ethics, bioethics can legitimately proceed from a presupposed moral framework. Within that framework, moral psychology can be shown to play four significant roles: it can improve bioethicists’ understanding of the decision situation, the origin and legitimacy of their moral concepts, efficient (...) options for implementing decisions, and how to change and improve some parts of their moral framework. Second, metaethical considerations suggest that moral psychology may lead to the radical revision of entire moral frameworks and thus prompt the radical revision of entire moral frameworks in bioethics. However, I show that bioethics must either relinquish these radical implications of moral psychology and accept that there are limits to progress in bioethics based on moral psychology or establish an epistemic framework that guides radical revision. (shrink)

Researchers who argue that moral judgment is based on emotions (`emotion-backers') and those who believe that it is based on reasoning and deliberation (`reasoning-backers') have both struggled to account for the notorious moral deviance of incarcerated psychopaths. Emotion-backers, such as Jonathan Haidt, focus on psychopaths' lack of a affect,or defciencies in particular emotions, such as sympathy. Reasoning-backers, such as Lawrence Kohlberg, focus instead on psychopaths' de cient reasoning. Both accounts offer separate descriptions of what goes wrong in the disorder, but (...) neither can fully explain psychopathic moral deviance. The moral account that I built, bridges these accounts in an attempt to better and more fully describe the empirical data available on psychopathic moral judgment. I argue that their judgment is best explained with a dual-process account of moral judgment that incorporates a large system of moral emotions as well as integrates multiple bases of morality, such as concerns of fairness, harm, and purity. It is only by focusing on both the reasoning and emotional de cits in psychopaths that we can begin to understand psychopaths' use of utilitarian reasoning, general population psychopaths, and psychopaths' di erential presence in the prison popu- lation. All of these issues are best described using a dual-process account of moral judgment that incorporates a larger system of moral emotions than other accounts of morality as well as a pluralistic conception of moral foundations. I used psychopaths because their moral deviance can teach us about morality more broadly. By understanding the cognitive processes implicated in the moral judgment of psychopaths, I better explain how moral judgment works in the general population more broadly. My account of moral judgment has both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretically, it o ers a new dual-process paradigm for describing moral behaviour which bridges reasoning-based and emotion-based accounts. This description can explain both the moral deviance of psychopaths as well as, more broadly, moral judgment in non-psychopaths. Additionally, my theory challenges accounts of moral emotion that narrowly focus on speci c emotions, such as guilt or empathy. It in- stead integrates all emotions, including disgust, fear, and sympathy, and links speci c emotions to moral judgments. Practically, my paradigm of moral judgment encourages the development of new moral judgment measurements such as new self-report questionnaires of moral reasoning. According to my research, in order for these tools to accurately measure morality, they need to account for both emotion-based and reasoning-based judgments. (shrink)

Emotion theorists in contemporary discussion have divided into two camps. The one claims that emotions are reducible to bodily feelings; the other holds that emotions are reducible to belief, desire or evaluative judgement. In an effort to avoid such reductionist view, Goldie suggests that emotions involve two kinds of feelings: bodily feel­ings and feeling towards. In spite of Goldie’s efforts, I argue that ex­plaining our emotional disposition in terms of ‘feeling toward’ re­mains distinctly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, though sympathetic to his project, (...) I give reasons for doubting that there are two such distinct kinds of feeling, one of which has only borrowed intentionality, while the other has intentionality intrinsically. (shrink)

Recent behavioral experiments, along with imaging experiments and neuropsychological studies appear to support the hypothesis that emotions play a causal or constitutive role in moral judgment. Those who resist this hypothesis tend to suggest that affective mechanisms are better suited to play a modulatory role in moral cognition. But I argue that claims about the role of emotion in moral cognition frame the debate in ways that divert attention away from other plausible hypotheses. I suggest that the available data may (...) be more plausibly explained by appeal to predictive and evaluative mechanisms, which are neither wholly affective nor straightforwardly cognitive. By recognizing this fact, we can begin to see why questions about the role of emotion in moral psychology are likely to be empirically misguided. (shrink)

In the first part of the article, an account of moral judgment in terms of emotional dispositions is given. This account provides an expressivist explanation of three important features of moral demands: inescapability, authority independence and meriting. In the second part of the article, some ideas initially put forward by Christopher Boehm are developed and modified in order to provide a hypothesis about the evolution of the ability to token moral judgments. This hypothesis makes evolutionary sense of inescapability, authority independence (...) and meriting. It does so by referring to the selection pressures generated in the Late Pleistocene by large-game hunting. If the hypothesis is correct, we can say that, in a sense, meat made us moral. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists have long argued that the capacity to distinguish moral and conventional transgressions develops across cultures and emerges early in life. Children reliably treat moral transgressions as more wrong, more punishable, independent of structures of authority, and universally applicable. However, previous studies have not yet examined the role of these features in mature moral cognition. Using a battery of adult-appropriate cases (including vehicular and sexual assault, reckless behavior, and violations of etiquette and social contracts) we demonstrate that these features (...) also distinguish moral from conventional transgressions in mature moral cognition. Each hypothesized moral transgressions was treated as strongly and clearly immoral. However, our data suggest that although the majority of hypothesized conventional transgressions also form an obvious cluster, social conventions seem to lie along a continuum that stretches from mere matters of personal preference (e.g., getting tattoos or wearing black shoes with a brown belt) to transgressions that are treated as matters for legitimate social sanction (e.g., violating traffic laws or not paying your taxes). We use these findings to discuss issues of universality, domain-specificity, and the importance of using a well-studied set of moral scenarios to examine clinical populations and the underlying neural architecture of moral cognition. (shrink)

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 (...) necessity-thesis. My argument draws on the idea that emotions play the same role for moral judgment that perceptions play for ordinary judgments about the external world. I develop a rationalist interpretation of the sufficiency-thesis and show that it can successfully account for the available empirical evidence. The general idea is that the rationalist can accept the claim that emotional reactions are sufficient for moral judgment just in case a subject’s emotional reaction towards an action in question causes the judgment in a way that can be reflectively endorsed under conditions of full information and rationality. This idea is spelled out in some detail and it is argued that a moral agent is entitled to her endorsement if the way she arrives at her judgment reliably leads to correct moral beliefs, and that this reliability can be established if the subject’s emotional reaction picks up on the morally relevant aspects of the situation. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how critical realism can resolve persistent theoretical debates in the human rights literature. Critical realism is a philosophy of science that proposes a complex ontological framework to study causal relations. Methodological and theoretical decisions in research are always premised on some ontological presumption whether they are explicitly stated or not. However, much of the social sciences follow the discipline’s empiricist orthodoxy which often dismisses ontological inquiry. As a consequence, theoretical and methodological debates persist without scholars recognizing how (...) they reflect deeper ontological differences. I argue that this is the case with human rights research and demonstrate how critical realism can resolve tensions between universalism and relativism. Critical realism proposes that social relations resolve across multiple ontological levels. This ontological framework can illustrate how universal structures on one level can generate diverse human rights standards on another level relative to the cultural conditions that bring them about. (shrink)

Previous studies have used various external variables and parameters as well as moderator variables such as emotional intelligence have been to understand emotional labor and its related problems. However, a comprehensive model to study such variables’ correlations with each other and their overall effect on emotional labor has not yet been established. This study used a structural equation model to understand the relationship between employees’ expression of emotional labor and perception of customer feedbacks. The study also looked at how the (...) perception of customer feedback affects emotional exhaustion in order to understand how emotional exhaustion affects job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Further, in order to fully understand the effects of emotion on emotional labor at the service contact points, this study developed and tested a model of emotional labor with 4 factors of emotional intelligence as moderating factors. 579 emotional labor workers in service industries in the U.S. were collected and 577 valid survey results have been analyzed. The result shows that there exists moderating effects of emotional intelligence on how employees’ Deep Acting and Surface Acting recognize customers’ reactions, both positive and negative, that would affect employees’ Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction, and hence, Turnover Intention. The result suggests that employees with better understanding of their own emotions, although they are more likely to recover from emotional exhaustion, experience a greater negative effect when there is a discrepancy between what they feel and how they should act. (shrink)

Claims that emotions are or can be rational, and crucially enabling of rationality, are now fairly common, also outside of philosophy, but with considerable diversity both in their assumptions about emotions and their conceptions of rationality. Three main trends are worth picking out, both in themselves and for the potential tensions between them: accounts that defend a case for the rationality of emotions A) by assimilating emotions closely to beliefs or judgements; B) in terms of the very features that traditional (...) views of emotions as irrational/a-rational emphasized; C) by arguing that emotions exhibit a more sui generis kind of rationality, often one based on a narrative or dramaturgic “inner logic”. (shrink)

Esse artigo pretende responder à seguinte pergunta: Emoções e sentimentos são necessários para a moralidade? Essa questão será desdobrada em três outras: 1) Emoções e sentimentos são necessários para a determinação do correto moralmente?; 2) Emoções e sentimentos são necessários para a motivação moral?; e 3) Emoções e sentimentos são necessários para a ação moral? Para responder a essas questões, usa dois modelos distintos: o de Prinz, tal como apresentado no livro The emotional constructions of morals e o de Kant. (...) Tenta mostrar que Prinz responde positivamente às três questões e que há dois modelos possíveis de compreender a teoria kantiana, que dariam respostas diferentes às questões 2 e 3. Palavras-chave: Emoção. Sentimento. Moralidade. Prinz. Kant. (shrink)

Emotions cannot be fully understood in purely cognitive terms. Nor can they be fully understood as mere feelings with no content. But it has not been easy to give an account of the relation of affect and cognition in a way that preserves the perceived unity of emotional experience. Consequently, emotion theories tend to lean either toward cognitivism, or, alternatively, the view that emotions are basically non-cognitive affairs. The aim of this paper is to argue for an account of emotion (...) as a unity of affect and cognition. Emotions, it will be suggested, do not combine, blend, add, or causally relate cognition to affect, or affect to cognition, but are rather original unities which should be viewed as coordinate with, rather than subordinate to, either cognition, perception, feeling, or any other basic mental category. (shrink)

Within the business and management literature, empathy has taken on increased importance as a central element to leadership, improving marketing strategies, corporate philanthropy, creating organizational connectedness, and as a strategy for preventing managerial wrongdoing. Although defining empathy is difficult, it is the identification with another’s thoughts and emotions through an imaginative process. This identification, ideally, will facilitate a wider connection with stakeholders beyond self-interest and motivate a better business environment. This article argues empathy is an overblown concept that is only (...) marginally supported by the philosophical and psychological research and, therefore, has limited application to business. Empathy is problematic because our inferences of mind are often inaccurate; not everyone is good at empathizing; it’s not necessary to understand action intention; doesn’t motivate helping behaviour; and could lead to immoral actions. My stance is definitively anti-empathy; perspective-taking is not sufficient or necessary as a management or business tool. Our understanding of people rests, not on empathy, but with our emotions, norms, and the social context in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

This paper raises three objections to the argument presented by Ostritsch in The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation, in which the amoralist’s mantra “it’s just a game” is viewed as an illegitimate rebuttal of all moral objections to video games. The first objection focuses on Ostritsch’s ‘strong sense’ of player enjoyment, which I argue is too crude, given the moral work it is meant to be doing. Next, I question the legitimacy of Ostritsch’s claim that certain (...) video games are immoral. I examine what is involved in making this claim and what would be required for a normative position to be established: none of which is addressed by Ostritsch. Finally, I challenge the legitimacy of his claim that players are obliged not to play certain video games in certain ways. I distinguish between immoral and suberogatory actions, arguing that the latter is in fact more applicable to cases Ostritsch has in mind, and that one is not obliged not to engage in these actions. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are (...) in agreement about the importance of emotions in our moral lives. I conclude by returning to the themes broached in the introduction to consider the extent to which the teleological concerns that motivate Schiller can be addressed within Kant's autonomist ethics. (shrink)

Do we empathize with the others because first we have recognized them as somehow equals, or do we recognize them as equals because first we have empathized with them? This article explores the relation between affective empathy, the moral recognition of the others, and personal identity. I defend that, to recognize others as valuable and act in line with this, one must be able to feel affective empathy for their situation, and, to do so, one has to 1) be curious (...) about them to surpass indifference, and 2) feel that your identity is not threatened by recognizing the others. Otherwise, rationalizations and justifications of antisocial behaviors would arise. Thus, I focus on how the construction of the self plays a key role in prosocial behaviors and the activation of affective empathy, which has been overlooked by moral philosophy in the debate on empathy. In order to do so, firstly, I explore cases where moral recognition is broken, secondly, I explore the dichotomic debate on the role of empathy for moral recognition and moral agency, and, thirdly, I try to enrich the debate by shifting the focus to the prerequisites to feel empathy, such as curiosity, a well-integrated self and healthy narcissism, addressing so how the construction of the self plays a key role in the possibility of empathizing with others and, therefore, in epistemic virtues and moral agency. As a result, I advocate the importance of psychological education for moral agency. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how fear in contexts of crisis shapes and is shaped by agents’ relationships. I survey a number of approaches to understanding fearing at the intersection of empirical psychology and philosophy, highlighting the extent to which interpersonal relationships are positioned as involved in processes of fearing, and establish what I take to insufficient attention paid by these approaches to the ways interpersonal relations shape the emotions we come to have. Contexts of acute crisis and uncertainty can (...) involve rapidly adjusting practices of fearing in response to other agents, both those we trust and those we do not. I call for the development of a model of ‘relational calibration’ for understanding the complex interpersonal dynamics of fearing during crises, including in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

We describe a form of moral artificial intelligence that could be used to improve human moral decision-making. We call it the “artificial moral advisor”. The AMA would implement a quasi-relativistic version of the “ideal observer” famously described by Roderick Firth. We describe similarities and differences between the AMA and Firth’s ideal observer. Like Firth’s ideal observer, the AMA is disinterested, dispassionate, and consistent in its judgments. Unlike Firth’s observer, the AMA is non-absolutist, because it would take into account the human (...) agent’s own principles and values. We argue that the AMA would respect and indeed enhance individuals’ moral autonomy, help individuals achieve wide and a narrow reflective equilibrium, make up for the limitations of human moral psychology in a way that takes conservatives’ objections to human bioenhancement seriously, and implement the positive functions of intuitions and emotions in human morality without their downsides, such as biases and prejudices. (shrink)

Anger and disgust may have distinct roles in sexual morality; here, we tested hypotheses regarding the distinct foci, appraisals, and motivations of anger and disgust within the context of sexual offenses. We conducted four experiments in which we manipulated whether mutual consent (Studies 1–3) or desire (Study 4) was present or absent within a counter-normative sexual act. We found that anger is focused on the injustice of non-consensual sexual acts, and the transgressor of the injustice (Studies 1 and 3). Furthermore, (...) the sexual nature of the act was not critical for the elicitation of anger—as anger also responded to unjust acts of violence (Study 3). By contrast, we hypothesised and found that disgust is focused on whether or not a person voluntarily engaged in, desired or consented to a counter-normative sexual act (Studies 2–4). Appraisals of abnormality and degradation were the primary appraisals of disgust, and the sexual nature of the act was a critical elicitor of disgust (Study 3). A final study ruled out victimisation as the mechanism of the effect of consent on disgust and indicated that the consenter's sexual desire was the mechanism (Study 4). Our results reveal that anger and disgust have differential roles in consent-related sexual offenses due to the distinct appraisals and foci of these emotions. (shrink)

This paper considers whether proposition – “x is not immoral but it is in poor taste” – is morally contradictory when considered from the standpoint of constructive ecumenical expressivism. According to CEE, pronouncements about poor taste and immorality have the following in common: they each convey a negative attitude towards x and intimate that x ought not to be done. Given this, P1 is vulnerable to a charge of contradiction, as it intimates that x is both something and not something (...) that ought not to be done. To avoid the putative contradiction, it is argued that an accusation of poor taste amounts to a negative attitude towards the treatment of a morally pertinent matter, thereby making the former parasitic on the latter. A morally relevant means of distinguishing between poor taste and immorality is therefore provided that endorses the expressivist tradition, and provides an account of societal norms. (shrink)

Contemporary emotion research typically takes the phenomenon of emotion to be exhausted by a class of mental events that are intentional, conscious, and related to certain sorts of behaviour. Moreover, other affective phenomena, such as moods, are also considered to be relatively short-term, episodic, or occurrent states of the subject undergoing them. Emotions, and other putative emotional phenomena that common-sense takes as long-lasting, non-episodic, or dispositional are things that both philosophers and scientists sometimes recognise, but that are relatively neglected in (...) comparison to emotional episodes. This thesis aims at showing that this neglect is unjustified. I will argue that there is a class of entities, 'sentiments'—broadly characterised as dispositions to undergo emotional episodes—that are irreducible to emotional episodes or collections thereof and have properties that make them a suitable target of study by the emotion researcher.In the first chapter, I argue that an analysis of caring as a pattern of emotional episodes, while more plausible than alternative, non-emotional accounts, faces a number of counterexamples that motivate the search for an account of caring as related in a certain way to emotions but as irreducible to them. I argue that a dispositional account, according to which dispositions are conceived as distinct from their manifestations, is an account for which a strong case can be made.The second chapter is dedicated to defending a modest form of realism about dispositions in general and psychological dispositions in particular. According to realism, dispositions are genuine properties that, although perhaps reducible to non-dispositional properties, cannot be re-described in terms of events only. In the third chapter, I show in what ways emotional dispositions can positively contribute to the explanation of the occurrence of emotional episodes. In the fourth chapter, I argue that caring, understood as a species of sentiment, is not to be construed as a mere disposition to produce certain events; rather, we should allow that certain dispositions are genuinely mental or psychological. Assuming realism about the mental, I argue that some dispositions are mental in a way that others are not. I suggest that being intentional is the property that makes psychological dispositions genuinely mental. I end the chapter by drawing a connection between caring and the notion of character. On my view, caring is at least a necessary ingredient of certain character traits, in particular the virtues. In chapter five, I tackle a recent form of empirically informed scepticism about character and argue, on the basis of general considerations about psychological dispositions, that the sceptic’s case is not as strong as she makes out. Finally, in chapter six, I argue that at least certain forms of sentiment, for example romantic love, can be genuinely supported by reasons, thereby suggesting a way they can contribute to the value of our lives. Overall, the aim of this thesis is to establish the respectability of sentiments in a sophisticated account of the mind. (shrink)

In a methodological milieu characterized by efforts to bring the methods of philosophy closer to the methods of the sciences, one can find, with increasing regularity, meta-ethical arguments relying on scientific theory or data. The received view appears to be that, not only is it implausible to think that a scientific vindication of a non-mentalist moral semantics will be forthcoming but that evidence from a variety of sciences threatens to undermine non-mentalist views. My aim is to push back against this (...) apparent consensus. The well-established phenomenon whereby moral judgments influence our attributions of putatively purely descriptive properties has come to be known as the Knobe Effect. Joshua Knobe has attempted to explain this surprising phenomenon by arguing that our folk psychological judgments are partially constituted by moral judgments. Drawing on an argument originally offered by Moore, I argue that if some instantiation of Knobe’s explanatory strategy is accurate, we have good reason to believe that mentalist moral semantics are untenable. (shrink)

While many profound philosophical questions arise about psychopaths, I wish to draw attention to two limitations in current debates. First, philosophers mainly deal with offender and forensic populations neglecting so-called ‘successful’ psychopaths. Second, philosophers mainly focus on the issue of empathy and responsibility, while relatively little attention is paid to volitional aspects. I address these two limitations together and argue that ‘successful’ psychopaths are volitionally constrained. In order to grasp and explore this deficiency, I argue in favour of a more (...) refined and fine-grained understanding of identifications. (shrink)

People disagree about whether individuals in rich countries like the United States have an obligation to aid the world’s poorest people. A tempting thought is that this disagreement comes down to a non-moral matter. I argue that we should be suspicious of this view. Drawing on psychological evidence, I show that we should be more pessimistic about our ability to attribute the disagreement to a difference in factual beliefs.

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

Elqayam & Evans (E&E) suggest descriptivism as a way to avoid fallacies and research biases. We argue, first, that descriptive and prescriptive theories might be better off with a closer interaction between and Moreover, while we acknowledge the problematic nature of the discussed fallacies and biases, important aspects of research would be lost through a broad application of descriptivism.

Elqayam & Evans suggest descriptivism as a way to avoid fallacies and research biases. We argue, first, that descriptive and prescriptive theories might be better off with a closer interaction between and Moreover, while we acknowledge the problematic nature of the discussed fallacies and biases, important aspects of research would be lost through a broad application of descriptivism.

This article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, (...) health, social status and more. This suggests settings are selectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods. (shrink)

Sentimentalists claim that moral judgments essentially involve emotions. Some modern sentimentalists cite a growing body of neuropsychological evidence in support of this claim. Phillip Gerrans and Jeanette Kennett argue that these “neurosentimentalists” rely on evidence taken from studies of non-agents, and thus ignore a fundamental constraint facing any account of decision making or judgment. If, as Gerrans and Kennett claim, only agents can make judgments, then theories of moral judgment cannot rely on studies of non-agents for evidential support. If this (...) argument is correct, then neurosentimentalists face a dilemma: accept that their key evidence is inadmissible, or grant that non-agents can make moral judgments. I consider the adequacy of Gerrans and Kennett's critique by examining the evidence that they contest, and show that they are mistaken in claiming that this evidence comes from studies of non-agents. I conclude that the “neurosentimentalists’ dilemma” is thus dissolved, and that neurosentimentalists are vindicated in their use of this evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In the first part of this paper, I criticize the indexical interpretation of meta-ethical relativism. According to the indexical interpretation, the content of a moral statement varies with the context of its utterance. I argue that such an interpretation is not empirically plausible, and that it cannot explain the seriousness of radical moral disagreements. In the constructive part of the paper, I offer an alternative, minimalist interpretation of moral relativism, which is based upon an analogy with the case of (...) the relativity of motion. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.De la relativité des jugements morauxVolume 51, Issue 1Pascal Ludwig DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000248Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. De la relativité des jugements morauxVolume 51, Issue 1Pascal Ludwig DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000248Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. De la relativité des jugements morauxVolume 51, Issue 1Pascal Ludwig DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000248Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)