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  1. Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology.Guy Kahane, Jim A. C. Everett, Brian D. Earp, Lucius Caviola, Nadira S. Faber, Molly J. Crockett & Julian Savulescu - 2018 - Psychological Review 125 (2):131-164.
    Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a (...)
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  • (3 other versions)The Methods of Ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1903 - International Journal of Ethics 13 (2):251-254.
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  • A Theory of Justice: Original Edition.John Rawls - 2005 - Belknap Press.
    Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.
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  • Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements.Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser & Antonio Damasio - 2007 - Nature 446 (7138):908-911.
    The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...)
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  • Utilitarian moral judgment in psychopathy.Michael Koenigs, Michael Kruepke, Joshua Zeier & Joseph Newman - 2011 - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (6):1-7.
    Psychopathic behavior is characteristically amoral, but to date research studies have largely failed to identify any systematic differences in moral judgment capability between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. In this study, we investigate whether significant differences in moral judgment emerge when taking into account the phenotypic heterogeneity of the disorder through a well-validated distinction between psychopathic subtypes. Three groups of incarcerated participants [low-anxious psychopaths (n 1⁄4 12), high-anxious psychopaths (n 1⁄4 12) and non-psychopaths (n 1⁄4 24)] completed a moral judgment test involving (...)
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  • Philosophers’ biased judgments persist despite training, expertise and reflection.Eric Schwitzgebel & Fiery Cushman - 2015 - Cognition 141 (C):127-137.
    We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle case (the “trolley problem”) and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman “Asian disease” scenario. Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider “different variants of the (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics.Joshua Greene - 2014 - Ethics 124 (4):695-726.
    In this article I explain why cognitive science (including some neuroscience) matters for normative ethics. First, I describe the dual-process theory of moral judgment and briefly summarize the evidence supporting it. Next I describe related experimental research examining influences on intuitive moral judgment. I then describe two ways in which research along these lines can have implications for ethics. I argue that a deeper understanding of moral psychology favors certain forms of consequentialism over other classes of normative moral theory. I (...)
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  • (1 other version)Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment.Joshua D. Greene, Sylvia A. Morelli, Kelly Lowenberg, Leigh E. Nystrom & Jonathan D. Cohen - 2008 - Cognition 107 (3):1144-1154.
    Traditional theories of moral development emphasize the role of controlled cognition in mature moral judgment, while a more recent trend emphasizes intuitive and emotional processes. Here we test a dual-process theory synthesizing these perspectives. More specifically, our theory associates utilitarian moral judgment (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) with controlled cognitive processes and associates non-utilitarian moral judgment with automatic emotional responses. Consistent with this theory, we find that a cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference (...)
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  • Nonconsequentialist decisions.Jonathan Baron - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):1-10. Translated by Jonathan Baron.
    According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...)
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  • Models of morality.Molly J. Crockett - 2013 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (8):363-366.
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  • What do philosophers believe?David Bourget & David J. Chalmers - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (3):465-500.
    What are the philosophical views of contemporary professional philosophers? We surveyed many professional philosophers in order to help determine their views on 30 central philosophical issues. This article documents the results. It also reveals correlations among philosophical views and between these views and factors such as age, gender, and nationality. A factor analysis suggests that an individual's views on these issues factor into a few underlying components that predict much of the variation in those views. The results of a metasurvey (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.Philippa Foot - 1967 - Oxford Review 5:5-15.
    One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus we (...)
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  • I’m Number One! Does Narcissism Impair Ethical Judgment Even for the Highly Religious?Marjorie J. Cooper & Chris Pullig - 2013 - Journal of Business Ethics 112 (1):167-176.
    Can an assessment of individuals’ narcissism help explain the quality of a respondent’s ethical judgment? How is the relationship between religiosity and ethical judgment moderated by the effects of narcissism? With a sample of 385 undergraduate business majors, this study uses a taxonomic approach to examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity as well as orthodox Christian beliefs on ethical judgment. Three distinct clusters were identified: Skeptics, Nominals, and Devouts. Surprisingly, of the three clusters, Nominals and Devouts were the (...)
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  • Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem.Judith Jarvis Thomson - 1976 - The Monist 59 (2):204-217.
    Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.
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  • The Role of Conscious Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgment.Fiery Cushman, Liane Young & Marc Hauser - 2006 - Psychological Science 17 (12):1082-1089.
    ��Is moral judgment accomplished by intuition or conscious reasoning? An answer demands a detailed account of the moral principles in question. We investigated three principles that guide moral judgments: (a) Harm caused by action is worse than harm caused by omission, (b) harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal, and (c) harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm involving no physical contact. Asking whether (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1958 - Philosophy 33 (124):1 - 19.
    The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...)
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  • Methodological Issues in the Neuroscience of Moral Judgement.Guy Kahane & Nicholas Shackel - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (5):561-582.
    Neuroscience and psychology have recently turned their attention to the study of the subpersonal underpinnings of moral judgment. In this article we critically examine an influential strand of research originating in Greene's neuroimaging studies of ‘utilitarian’ and ‘non-utilitarian’ moral judgement. We argue that given that the explananda of this research are specific personal-level states—moral judgments with certain propositional contents—its methodology has to be sensitive to criteria for ascribing states with such contents to subjects. We argue that current research has often (...)
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  • Turning the trolley.Judith Jarvis Thomson - 2008 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 36 (4):359-374.
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  • (2 other versions)Famine, affluence, and morality.Peter Singer - 1972 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3):229-243.
    As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...)
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  • A process dissociation framework: Separating automatic from intentional uses of memory.Larry L. Jacoby - 1991 - Journal of Memory and Language 30:513-41.
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  • (1 other version)Ethics and Intuitions.Peter Singer - 2005 - The Journal of Ethics 9 (3-4):331-352.
    For millennia, philosophers have speculated about the origins of ethics. Recent research in evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences has shed light on that question. But this research also has normative significance. A standard way of arguing against a normative ethical theory is to show that in some circumstances the theory leads to judgments that are contrary to our common moral intuitions. If, however, these moral intuitions are the biological residue of our evolutionary history, it is not clear why we should (...)
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  • Increased DLPFC activity during moral decision- making in psychopathy.A. L. Glenn, A. Raine, R. A. Schug, L. Young & M. Hauser - 2009 - Molecular Psychiatry 14:909–911.
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  • Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers.Eric Schwitzgebel & Fiery Cushman - 2012 - Mind and Language 27 (2):135-153.
    We examined the effects of order of presentation on the moral judgments of professional philosophers and two comparison groups. All groups showed similar-sized order effects on their judgments about hypothetical moral scenarios targeting the doctrine of the double effect, the action-omission distinction, and the principle of moral luck. Philosophers' endorsements of related general moral principles were also substantially influenced by the order in which the hypothetical scenarios had previously been presented. Thus, philosophical expertise does not appear to enhance the stability (...)
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  • ‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good.Guy Kahane, Jim Everett, Brian Earp, Miguel Farias & Julian Savulescu - 2015 - Cognition 134 (C):193-209.
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  • Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment.Joshua D. Greene, Fiery A. Cushman, Lisa E. Stewart, Kelly Lowenberg, Leigh E. Nystrom & Jonathan D. Cohen - 2009 - Cognition 111 (3):364-371.
    In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...)
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  • Cold or calculating? Reduced activity in the subgenual cingulate cortex reflects decreased emotional aversion to harming in counterintuitive utilitarian judgment.Katja Wiech, Guy Kahane, Nicholas Shackel, Miguel Farias, Julian Savulescu & Irene Tracey - 2013 - Cognition 126 (3):364-372.
    Recent research on moral decision-making has suggested that many common moral judgments are based on immediate intuitions. However, some individuals arrive at highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions about when it is permissible to harm other individuals. Such utilitarian judgments have been attributed to effortful reasoning that has overcome our natural emotional aversion to harming others. Recent studies, however, suggest that such utilitarian judgments might also result from a decreased aversion to harming others, due to a deficit in empathic concern and social (...)
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  • Reflection and Reasoning in Moral Judgment.Joshua D. Greene - 2012 - Cognitive Science 36 (1):163-177.
    While there is much evidence for the influence of automatic emotional responses on moral judgment, the roles of reflection and reasoning remain uncertain. In Experiment 1, we induced subjects to be more reflective by completing the Cognitive Reflection Test prior to responding to moral dilemmas. This manipulation increased utilitarian responding, as individuals who reflected more on the CRT made more utilitarian judgments. A follow-up study suggested that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. In Experiment 2, subjects considered (...)
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  • (1 other version)Moral dilemmas and moral rules.Shaun Nichols & Ron Mallon - 2006 - Cognition 100 (3):530-542.
    Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find (...)
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  • (5 other versions)An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.J. H. Burns, H. L. A. Hart & Jeremy Bentham - 1972 - Philosophy 47 (179):74-79.
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  • Moral heuristics.Cass R. Sunstein - 2005 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (4):531-542.
    With respect to questions of fact, people use heuristics – mental short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that generally work well, but that also lead to systematic errors. People use moral heuristics too – moral short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that lead to mistaken and even absurd moral judgments. These judgments are highly relevant not only to morality, but to law and politics as well. Examples are given from a number of domains, including risk regulation, punishment, reproduction and sexuality, and the (...)
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  • Serotonin Selectively Influences Moral Judgment and Behavior through Effects on Harm Aversion.Molly Crockett, Luke Clark, Marc Hauser & Trevor Robbins - 2010 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (40):17433–17438.
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  • Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more?Linda Skitka, Christopher Bauman & Edward Sargis - 2005 - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 (6):895.
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  • (1 other version)The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul (Spanish Translation).Joshua Greene - 2022 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 20:183-229.
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  • Are Thoughtful People More Utilitarian? CRT as a Unique Predictor of Moral Minimalism in the Dilemmatic Context.Edward B. Royzman, Justin F. Landy & Robert F. Leeman - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (2):325-352.
    Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT (...)
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  • The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas.Daniel M. Bartels & David A. Pizarro - 2011 - Cognition 121 (1):154-161.
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  • The rat-a-gorical imperative: Moral intuition and the limits of affective learning.Joshua D. Greene - 2017 - Cognition 167 (C):66-77.
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  • The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment.Joshua D. Greene - 2004 - Neuron 44 (2):389–400.
    In philosophy, a debate can live forever. Nowhere is this more evident than in ethics, a field that is fueled by apparently intractable dilemmas. To promote the wellbeing of many, may we sacrifice the rights of a few? If our actions are predetermined, can we be held responsible for them? Should people be judged on their intentions alone, or also by the consequences of their behavior? Is failing to prevent someone’s death as blameworthy as actively causing it? For generations, questions (...)
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  • The drunk utilitarian: Blood alcohol concentration predicts utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas.Aaron A. Duke & Laurent Bègue - 2015 - Cognition 134 (C):121-127.
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  • The role of moral commitments in moral judgment.Tania Lombrozo - 2009 - Cognitive Science 33 (2):273-286.
    Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in (...)
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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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  • (1 other version)Cognitive Load Selectively Interferes with Utilitarian Moral Judgment.Jonathan D. Cohen Joshua D. Greene, Sylvia A. Morelli, Kelly Lowenberg, Leigh E. Nystrom - 2008 - Cognition 107 (3):1144.
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  • Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment.Guy Kahane - 2015 - Social Neuroscience 10 (5):551-560.
    Research into moral decision-making has been dominated by sacrificial dilemmas where, in order to save several lives, it is necessary to sacrifice the life of another person. It is widely assumed that these dilemmas draw a sharp contrast between utilitarian and deontological approaches to morality, and thereby enable us to study the psychological and neural basis of utilitarian judgment. However, it has been previously shown that some sacrificial dilemmas fail to present a genuine contrast between utilitarian and deontological options. Here, (...)
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  • The Organ Conscription Trolley Problem.Adam Kolber - 2009 - American Journal of Bioethics 9 (8):13-14.
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  • Mortality salience and morality: Thinking about death makes people less utilitarian.Bastien Trémolière, Wim De Neys & Jean-François Bonnefon - 2012 - Cognition 124 (3):379-384.
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