Famine, Affluence, and Amorality

A interpretação padrão da teoria da motivação humeana considera que a mesma subscreveria um modelo conativista baseado em desejos (paixões), enquanto intrinsecamente motivadores, que nos comprometeriam com uma concepção de internalismo motivacional e, por conseguinte, com uma posição não-cognitivista. Basicamente, esta interpretação padrão de Hume, sustenta que os juízos morais são de natureza puramente conativa, fornecendo, assim, ao agente uma razão ou motivo intrínseco para agir (internalismo motivacional), não exprimindo, no entanto, nenhum conteúdo racional cognitivo (não-cognitivismo). Dada a aproximação entre verdade e conhecimento, os cognitivistas afirmam também a tese de que há autêntico conhecimento moral. Os juízos morais possuem conteúdo cognitivo e não apenas, como querem os não-cognitivistas, expressões de atitudes, de preferências, de desejos ou de prescrições. Desta forma, o contraste entre cognitivismo e não-cognitivismo gira primariamente em torno da questão sobre a natureza do juízo moral. E, na interpretação clássica de Hume, a natureza do juízo moral seria não-cognitiva. Com este trabalho exploro uma linha de argumentação alternativa, em defesa de uma posição que privilegia a possibilidade de um conhecimento moral, segundo a filosofia moral de Hume. Os fundamentos da moral em Hume examinam a exigência motivacional tendo como alvo, a ser criticado, não o conhecimento moral (cognitivismo) e sim o racionalismo moral. No entanto, essa linha alternativa, não representa uma adesão pura ao cognitivismo. A estratégia seguida por essa argumentação, consiste em apontar o aspecto “prático” dos juízos morais, ou seja, o seu papel na orientação e na motivação das ações morais, e, em seguida, argumentar que, dada essa função primordial dos juízos morais, repetindo, o seu caráter prático, orientador de ações, não exclui, também, um conhecimento moral. De certa forma, o argumento é que, segundo a teoria da motivação de Hume, a natureza do juízo moral teria uma dimensão objetiva e prática (aquilo que realmente nos move para a ação).

BOOK REVIEWS 155 believe, in showing the inadequacies of the views of Hare and Foot; he is surely correct in arguing that not everything can count as a moral reason and that the intelligibility of a moral argument depends on agreement over certain fundamental concepts and ideas. He is also quite right in stressing the role that cultural background, heritage, traditions, and membership in a given political and/or religious community play in providing these concepts and in offering us a framework within which meaningful discussion can take place. Yet his position logically leads to moral relativism, for he is incapable of offering any reasons why any particular moral code should be preferred to any other. In final analysis, this means that there is ultimately no irrefutable reason why any type of human activity should be considered right or wrong. The ultimate criterion, consequently, of the rightness or wrongness of a human act, must be non-rational. Although Beardsmore's position illuminates many aspects of the rational character of moral discourse, it finally issues in the absurd. Corpus lnstrumentorum Washington, D. C. WILLIAM E. MAY The Nature of Moral Judgment: A Study in Contemporary Moral Philosophy . By PATRICK McGRATH. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Pp. 327. $6.50. The decade of the 1960's may well be remembered by future historians of ethics as a period of stock-taking and consolidation. After nearly 50 years of unparalleled vitality and development, a growing number of moral philosophers in the Anglo-American world seem to be '-:'eady to slow the pace for a moment in order to assimilate and reevaluate the rapid steps of the recent past. The evidence for this is twofold: first, the rather surprising dearth of novel, groundbreaking work in ethics during the last ten years and, second, the near simultaneous appearance of a number of books devoted in large measure to the task of giving a critical, historical review of the development in Anglo-American ethical philosophy since G. E. Moore. The Nature of Moral Judgment falls squarely into this latter category and as such will inevitably be compared with such excellent recent works as The Revolution in Ethical Theory by George Kerner and G. J. Warnock's Contemporary Moral Philosophy. Any such comparison, however , is bound to yield a favorable judgment of Father McGrath's work. His treatment of individual theorists is remarkably fresh, and his view- 156 BOOK REVIEWS point provides a valuable and much needed perspective on the issues under consideration. All of the previous works of this genre have been written by philosophers who stand squarely in the tradition of linguistic-analytic philosophy itself. Warnock and Kerner, for example, are both students of the late J. L. Austin. And while their assessments of the fruitfulness of the direction which recent ethical thought has taken vary widely, they share many assumptions in common with the philosophers whose work they discuss. Father McGrath, by contrast, approaches the analytic tradition in ethics with the concerns of traditional moral philosophy uppermost in his mind. The result, however, is not an unsympathetic diatribe against "linguistic" philosophy of the sort which has been all too common in recent years. Instead, one finds a balanced and generally sympathetic presentation of the views of all the " classic " ethical theorists in the analytic tradition, along with constructive criticism of each. McGrath's book is divided into four parts, the first three devoted to exposition and criticism and the fourth to a development of the author's own constructive views. Part One, " The Emotive Theory of Moral Judgment," presents sketches of l\foore's refutation of naturalism and of the theories of meaning developed by Logical Atomism and Logical Positivism. It then goes on to probe the emotivist ethical theories of A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson, showing them to be a near inevitable response to Moore's work in view of the theory of meaning extant among the early analysts. Part Two, " The Function of Ethical Statements," is devoted to a careful analysis of the ethical writings of J. 0. Urmson, R. M. Hare and P. H. Nowell-Smith. What separates the work of these philosophers from that of the...

The article deals with the study of human moral functioning in the framework of neurobiological and psychological research. Presents the views of John. Green and John. Haidt about the nature of moral judgments. Studies of the neurobiological mechanism of moral judgment do not explain their individual variability. This question relates to the subject of psychological research. The psychological concepts of morality of L. Kohlberg and D. Forsythe are compared. It is argued that the concept of ethical positions of Foresight has an advantage, since it considers the individual variability of moral judgments from metaethical positions. The analysis of neurobiological and psychological approaches to morality concluded that they did not represent the behavioral component of moral functioning.

The existence of the phenomenon of Indonesian citizens who joined ISIS, the number of teens who become "bride" Islamic worshipers and teenagers orientation that supports the defense of religion by radical is an indication there is a judgment about the moral disorientation of terrorism in Indonesian teenagers. Logic exercises can embed logic values which someone can take a moral decision and act logically. That is why the researcher conducting research on the influence toward logic exercises on moral judgment disorientation terrorism case study students to design an appropriate solution to the problem of moral disorientation student judgment in the case of terrorism. Testing the influence of logic exercises against the judgment of moral disorientation of the students is done by using a quasi-experimental study used data collection techniques and tools in the form of documentation, and questionnaires. The research instrument in this study is the logic exercises student worksheets, assessment rubrics Questionnaire DIT and moral judgment. The data analysis technique used in this study is the technique of quantitative analysis using independent sample t-tes. The results showed that there are differences in moral judgment ability of PGSD UPY students which use logic exercises method. Moreover, it can also be concluded logic exercises method is effective in improving PGSD UPY students moral judgment.

Do individuals intuitively favor certain moral actions over others? This study explores the role of intuitive thinking—induced by time pressure and cognitive load—in moral judgment and behavior. We conduct experiments in three different countries (Sweden, Austria, and the United States) involving over 1,400 subjects. All subjects responded to four trolley type dilemmas and four dictator games involving different charitable causes. Decisions were made under time pressure/time delay or while experiencing cognitive load or control. Overall we find converging evidence that intuitive states do not influence moral decisions. Neither time-pressure nor cognitive load had any effect on moral judgments or altruistic behavior. Thus we find no supporting evidence for the claim that intuitive moral judgments and dictator game giving differ from more reflectively taken decisions. Across all samples and decision tasks men were more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments and act selfishly compared to women, providing further evidence that there are robust gender differences in moral decision-making. However, there were no significant interactions between gender and the treatment manipulations of intuitive versus reflective decision-making.

Research on how cognitive and affective factors shape bilinguals’ moral judgments in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages remains limited. This study advances our understanding of both language-related variables (L2 proficiency, age of onset of L2 acquisition, length of L2 immersion) and nonlinguistic variables (emotional intelligence, executive functions) in relation to the moral judgments and emotional intensity experienced by 90 Chinese–English bilingual speakers. Participants read five moral dilemmas and completed a set of questionnaires and cognitive ability tests. Mixed-effects models revealed no evidence of a moral foreign language effect, raising questions about the robustness of this phenomenon. Specifically, neither language-related variables nor emotional intelligence had a significant effect. However, participants with stronger updating ability made more deontological judgments in both their L1 and L2, while those with better inhibitory control also made more deontological decisions, but only in their L1. These findings offer new insights into the relationship between language and cognition.

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed.

Consumer rights or unethical behaviors: Exploring the impacts of retailer return policies

The Foreign-Language effect (FLe) on morality describes how late bilinguals make different decisions on moral judgements, when presented in either their native or foreign language. However the relevance of this phenomenon to early bilinguals, where a language's “nativeness” is less distinct, is unknown. This study aims to verify the effect of early bilinguals' languages on their moral decisions and examine how language experience may influence these decisions. Eighty-six early English-Chinese bilinguals were asked to perform a moral dilemmas task consisting of personal and impersonal dilemmas, in either English or Mandarin Chinese. Information on language experience factors were also collected from the participants. Findings suggest that early bilinguals do show evidence of a language effect on their moral decisions, which is dependent on how dominant they are in the language. Particularly, the more dominant participants were in their tested language, the larger the difference between their personal and impersonal dilemma response choice. In light of these findings, the study discusses the need to re-examine how we conceptualize the FLe phenomenon and its implications on bilinguals' moral judgement. It also addresses the importance of treating bilingualism as multidimensional, rather than a unitary variable.

To assess reaction time and attributional complexity as factors contributing to the relatively high moral judgment of gifted youth, a sample of 30 gifted youth and 30 college students responded to a computerized measure of moral judgment development, which also indexed reaction time. Additionally, participants completed a measurement of attributional complexity and reported American College Test (ACT) scores. Statistically significant differences favored the gifted in moral judgment development, reaction time, and attributional complexity. Regression analysis revealed that attributional complexity explained a significant amount of variance, whereas ACT scores and reaction times accounted for minimal variance. Although reaction time did not predict moral judgment developmental difference, discussion is offered to suggest how gifted youth, such as those in this study, might benefit from using their reaction time when considering moral situations. Putting the Research to Use: The results of this study support the view that complex information processing and reaction time abilities of gifted youth are transferred to their moral judgment development. In sum, in comparison with a control group of college students, the gifted youth considered in this study appeared to process reasons for moral decisions in a more in-depth manner and were able to do so in a more efficient manner. Currently, it is unknown why and how this occurs, whether obstacles exist that could block this process, and whether practices exist that could help to facilitate these areas. Applications of these findings should therefore expound on these issues so that the utility of research on gifted moral judgment ability is increased. Applied research should also focus on transferring this understanding to general populations in the hopes of affecting the understanding of moral judgment development overall.

The study of moral judgement and decision making examines the way predictions made by moral and ethical theories fare in real world settings. Such investigations are carried out using a variety of approaches and methods, such as experiments, modeling, and observational and field studies, in a variety of populations. The current Collection on moral judgments and decision making includes works that represent this variety, while focusing on some common themes, including group morality and the role of affect in moral judgment. The Collection also includes a significant number of studies that made theoretically driven predictions and failed to find support for them. We highlight the importance of such null-results papers, especially in fields that are traditionally governed by theoretical frameworks.

Most of us would regard killing another person as morally wrong, but when the death of one saves multiple others, it can be morally permitted. According to a prominent computational dual-systems framework, in these life-and-death dilemmas, deontological (nonsacrificial) moral judgments stem from a model-free algorithm that emphasizes the intrinsic value of the sacrificial action, while utilitarian (sacrificial) moral judgments are derived from a model-based algorithm that emphasizes the outcome of the sacrificial action. Rodent decision-making research suggests that the model-based algorithm depends on the basolateral amygdala (BLA), but these findings have not yet been translated to human moral decision-making. Here, in five humans with selective, bilateral BLA damage, we show a breakdown of utilitarian sacrificial moral judgments, pointing at deficient model-based moral decision-making. Across an established set of moral dilemmas, healthy controls frequently sacrifice one person to save numerous others, but BLA-damaged humans withhold such sacrificial judgments even at the cost of thousands of lives. Our translational research confirms a neurocomputational hypothesis drawn from rodent decision-making research by indicating that the model-based algorithm which underlies outcome-based, utilitarian moral judgements in humans critically depends on the BLA.

Across two experiments (N = 303), we examined the effect of physical fatigue on moral decision-making. Participants were subjected to acute physical exercise. Half of the participants were presented with moral dilemmas before the physical exercise and the other half after the exercise. We measured moral judgement using a shortened version of the Process Dissociation procedure, allowing us to investigate (1) decisions in the traditional sacrificial dilemmas and (2) deontological and utilitarian moral inclinations. The results showed no significant differences in moral judgments between fatigued and nonfatigued participants in nine out of 10 statistical tests. This suggests a unique resilience of moral judgments to physical fatigue, in contrast to what is known about cognitive fatigue.

Moral dilemmas engender conflicts between two traditions: consequentialism, which evaluates actions based on their outcomes, and deontology, which evaluates actions themselves. These strikingly resemble two distinct decision-making architectures: a model-based system that selects actions based on inferences about their consequences; and a model-free system that selects actions based on their reinforcement history. Here, I consider how these systems, along with a Pavlovian system that responds reflexively to rewards and punishments, can illuminate puzzles in moral psychology.

Based on Rest's Four Stage Model (moral sensitivity, moral judgement, moral intention and moral behaviour), we aim to compare the effects of dispositional moral sensitivity and contextual moral sensitivity on moral decision-making among nursing students. A cross-sectional study. The participants were from nursing colleges in Shijiazhuang, Guangzhou and Chongqing, China. A total of 354 nursing students were recruited via the convenience sampling method. Data were collected via the dispositional moral sensitivity scale and a scenario experiment. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the relationships among the variables in the structural model via Mplus. While dispositional moral sensitivity and contextual moral sensitivity both influence moral intention, they do so in opposite directions. Moral judgement has a positive impact on moral intention and acts as a mediator between dispositional moral sensitivity/contextual moral sensitivity and moral intention. This study compares the various influence paths and mechanisms of dispositional moral sensitivity and contextual moral sensitivity in moral decision-making, thereby advancing research on nursing ethics education. Our findings suggest that nursing colleges should adopt diverse strategies to cultivate the dispositional moral sensitivity of nursing students, thus facilitating their ability to make moral decisions. These insights have valuable implications for the advancement of nursing ethics education. We adhered to the STROBE guidelines. No patient or public contribution.