Capacity For Moral Judgment Research Articles

The disunity of moral judgment: Implications for the study of psychopathy

ABSTRACT Since the 18th century, one of the key features of diagnosed psychopaths has been “moral colorblindness” or an inability to form moral judgments. However, attempts at experimentally verifying this moral incapacity have been largely unsuccessful. After reviewing the centrality of “moral colorblindness” to the study and diagnosis of psychopathy, I argue that the reason that researchers have been unable to verify that diagnosed psychopaths have an inability to make moral judgments is because their research is premised on the assumption that there is a specific moral faculty of the brain, or specific “moral” emotions, and that this faculty or set of emotions can become “impaired”. I review recent research and argue that we have good reason to think that there is no such distinct capacity for moral judgment, and that, as a result, it is impossible for someone’s “moral judgment faculty” to become selectively disabled. I then discuss the implications of such a position on psychopathy research, the coherence of the disorder, and the moral responsibility of psychopaths.

Moral Agency in Charities and Business Corporations: Exploring the Constraints of Law and Regulation

For centuries in the UK and elsewhere, charities have been widely regarded as admirable and virtuous organisations. Business corporations, by contrast, have been characterised in the popular imagination as entities that lack a capacity for moral judgement. Drawing on the philosophical literature on the moral agency of organisations, we examine how the law shapes the ability of charities and business corporations headquartered in England to exercise moral agency. Paradoxically, we find that charities are legally constrained in exercising moral agency in ways in which business corporations are not. Implications for charities and business corporations are then explored.

Psychopathy and internalism

AbstractDo psychopaths make moral judgments but lack motivation? Or are psychopaths’ judgments are not genuinely moral? Both sides of this debate seem to assume either externalist or internalist criteria for the presence of moral judgment. However, if moral judgment is a natural kind, we can arrive at a theory-neutral criterion for moral judgment. A leading naturalistic criterion suggests that psychopaths have an impaired capacity for moral judgment; the capacity is neither fully present nor fully absent. Psychopaths are therefore not counterexamples to internalism. Nonetheless, internalism is empirically problematic because it is unable to explain psychopaths’ moral deficits.

Hannah Arendt and the ‘freedom’ to think

ABSTRACTDissatisfied with the Western tradition of political philosophy, Arendt maintained a tension between the political, which she associates primarily with the freedom to act, and the philosophical, which she associates principally with the activity of thinking, throughout her works. Whilst Arendt's work is underpinned by a focus on political action, her work on the thinking/non-thinking dichotomy is of significant educational value. Taking a broadly phenomenological approach, and reading Arendt through an educational lens, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the thinking/non-thinking dichotomy and the perils of ‘non-thinking’ reveal the wider dangers of instrumentalism and the performative models of education that accompanies it. It is suggested here that Arendt's work exposes ‘non-thinking’ as a form of instrumental thinking, which is not only a threat to the development of the capacity for critical thought but also to the development autonomy and the capacity for moral judgement.

PERSONAL IDENTITY, MORAL AGENCY AND LIANG-ZHI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF KORSGAARD AND WANG YANGMING

Christine Korsgaard bases her interpretation of personal identity upon the notion of moral agency and thereby refutes the Reductionist thesis of Derek Parfit. Korsgaard indicates that actions and choices, from the practical standpoint, must be viewed as having agents and choosers. This is what makes them our own actions and choices as well as contributes to the process of self-constitution. Personal identity as the chooser of our desires and author of our actions can be thought of as the common denominator between Korsgaard and Wang Yangming (王陽明); for liang-zhi (良知) is none other than the agency that acts as the capacity for moral judgment and the motivation of performing moral actions. Given liang-zhi is the authentic self that make laws for us, our true identities are exhibited in the performance of moral behaviors. Moreover, further engagement between the two sides reveals that Wang's characterizations of liang-zhi, particularly those of practical experience, law-embodying identity, and zhi-zhi (致知) can be seen as both a complement to Korsgaard's practical standpoint argument and an approach of consummating self-constitution..

Contractualism and the Significance of Perspective-Taking

Many of us think that perspective-taking is relevant to moral judgment. In this paper I claim that Scanlon’s contractualism provides an appealing and distinctive account of why this is so. Contractualism interprets our moral judgments as making claims about the reasons of individuals in various situations, reasons that we can only recognise by considering their perspectives. Contractualism thereby commits itself to the view that our capacity for moral judgment depends on our capacity for perspective-taking. I show that neither utilitarianism nor Kantianism assign a similar significance to our capacity for perspective-taking.

Making researchers moral: Why trustworthiness requires more than ethics guidelines and review

Research ethics, once a platform for declaring intent, discussing moral issues and providing advice and guidance to researchers, has developed over time into an extra-legal regulatory system, complete with steering documents (ethics guidelines), overseeing bodies (research ethics committees) and formal procedures (informed consent). The process of institutionalizing distrust is usually motivated by reference to past atrocities committed in the name of research and the need to secure the trustworthiness of the research system. This article examines some limitations of this approach. First, past atrocities cannot provide the necessary justification unless institutionalized distrust is a necessary or efficient means to prevent future ones – and there are several reasons to doubt this. Second, the efficacy of ethics review in safeguarding morally acceptable research depends on the moral competence and integrity of individual researchers – the very qualities that institutionalized distrust calls into question. Third, ethics guidelines cannot, as is sometimes assumed, educate or guide researchers in moral behaviour unless they already possess considerable capacity for moral judgment. Fourth, institutionalized distrust is a potential threat to the moral competence and integrity of researchers by encouraging a blinkered view of ethical issues, inducing moral heteronomy through incentives, and alienating them to research ethics. We conclude that the moral problem posed by inappropriate short-term behaviour on behalf of researchers is dwarfed by the potential long-term consequences if their moral competence is allowed to deteriorate. Measures must therefore be taken to ensure that researchers are equipped to take their individual responsibility and are not obstructed from so doing.

Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

Psychopathy is often used to settle disputes about the nature of moral judgment. The "trolley problem" is a familiar scenario in which psychopathy is used as a test case. Where a convergence in response to the trolley problem is registered between psychopathic subjects and non-psychopathic (normal) subjects, it is assumed that this convergence indicates that the capacity for making moral judgments is unimpaired in psychopathy. This, in turn, is taken to have implications for the dispute between motivation internalists and motivation externalists, for instance. In what follows, we want to do two things: firstly, we set out to question the assumption that convergence is informative of the capacity for moral judgment in psychopathy. Next, we consider a distinct feature of psychopathy which we think provides strong grounds for holding that the capacity for moral judgment is seriously impaired in psychopathic subjects. The feature in question is the psychopathic subject's inability to make sincere apologies. Our central claim will be this: convergence in response to trolley problems does not tell us very much about the psychopathic subject's capacity to make moral judgments, but his inability to make sincere apologies does provide us with strong grounds for holding that this capacity is seriously impaired in psychopathy.

Principle-Based Moral Judgement

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.

Emotions and moral agency

In this paper, I present a general profile of individuals with psychopathy, autism, and acquired sociopathy as well as look specifically at the abilities of these individuals with respect to the moral domain. These individuals are individually and collectively interesting because of their significant affective and social impairments. I argue that none of these individuals should be considered full moral agents based on a proposed account of moral agency consisting of the following two necessary conditions: (1) the capacity for moral judgment and (2) the capacity for moral motivation. Since each of these groups of individuals fails to satisfy the criteria in a different way, these arguments help to distinguish three primary ways in which emotion contributes to moral motivation. I conclude with a suggested general implication of this discussion for related debates in moral theory.

The Caveman's Conscience: Evolution and Moral Realism

An increasingly popular moral argument has it that the story of human evolution shows that we can explain the human disposition to make moral judgments without relying on a realm of moral facts. Such facts can thus be dispensed with. But this argument is a threat to moral realism only if there is no realist position that can explain, in the context of human evolution, the relationship between our particular moral sense and a realm of moral facts. I sketch a plausible evolutionary story that illuminates this relationship. First, the sorts of adaptive pressures facing early humans would have produced more than just potent prosocial emotions, as evolutionary antirealists like to claim; it would have produced judgments—often situated within emotions—to the effect that others could reasonably disapprove of some bit of conduct, for an early human who cared deeply about how others might respond to her action enjoyed the benefits of more cooperative exchanges than those early humans who did not. Second, according to objectivist versions of moral constructivism, moral facts just are facts about how others, ideally situated, would respond to one's conduct. Thus if any objectivist moral constructivism story is true, then we can intelligibly assert that a) our capacity for moral judgment is the product of adaptive pressures acting on early humans and b) some moral judgments are objectively true.

Organizations and responsibility: A critical overview

AbstractWe start from the proposition that organizations' social and environmental policies and practices are influenced as much by stakeholders as by organizational management. Various types of organization–stakeholder relationship are outlined, from market‐based (e.g. ethical consumerism) to participative (e.g. consultation and coalition). This organization–stakeholder network constitutes the problematic system of concern. The concept of responsibility and its attribution is critically considered, as is the likelihood of value‐conflicts between members of this wider system. The tendency for ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) to be managed hierarchically within organizations, characterized by an over‐reliance on enforced codes of conduct is critiqued on ethical and practical grounds. It is argued that individuals require a capacity for moral judgement in applying codes and, more generally, when resolving conflict and dilemmas within the wider system of organization–stakeholder relations. An appropriate approach from ethical theory is therefore offered. The paper concludes with a summary of aspects of CSR to which the systems discipline could usefully contribute. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sentimental rules: on the natural foundations of moral judgment

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

An empirical reanalysis of the selection–socialization hypothesis: a research note

Ponemon [Ponemon, L. (1988). A cognitive–developmental approach to the analysis of Certified Public Accountants’ ethical judgments. PhD dissertation, Union College of Union University; Accounting, Organizations and Society 17 (1992) 239] contends that a selection–socialization process exists in which (1) senior-level public accountants in the United States have less capacity to comprehend and resolve basic ethical problems than do accountants in subordinate ranks, and (2) the senior-level accountants perpetuate their ranks by promoting persons of low moral reasoning capacity. Using large, national random samples from 1995 and 2001, and correcting for inherent problems in the key study supporting this hypothesis, the current study yields results that materially contradict that earlier research. The sample sizes provide ample statistical power to conclude that, in the United States, capacity for moral judgment does not differ across rank (position) and this is not a factor in promotion in the public accounting profession as a whole. The study examines both political conservatism and gender as potential confounding variables, but finds that they do not drive the results. A sample of attorneys also gives no hint of selection–socialization. Instead, differences in moral cognition seem to be most relevant when people are making a choice of profession and less so after entering a particular profession.

Norms with feeling: towards a psychological account of moral judgment

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. However, the prevailing account of the role of affect in moral judgment is problematic. This paper argues that the capacity to draw the moral/conventional distinction depends on both a body of information about which actions are prohibited (a Normative Theory) and an affective mechanism. This account leads to the prediction that other normative prohibitions that are connected to an affective mechanism might be treated as non-conventional. An experiment is presented that indicates that “disgust” violations (e.g. spitting at the table), are distinguished from conventional violations along the same dimensions as moral violations.

Law and Fancy

Martha Nussbaum's' graceful book Poetic Justice is an elegant brief for the importance of our capacity for imaginative fancy to our moral and legal lives.2 Imaginative fancy, Nussbaum argues, allows us to know the internal substance and quality of the lives of others. It allows us to come to appreciate, to understand, to share, and ultimately to resist others' suffering (pp. 72-77). It is, in short, the means by which we come to care about the fate and happiness of others. It is a part, but not the whole, of our capacity to transcend a narcissistic and infantile egoism. It is therefore central, not peripheral, to our capacity for moral judgment, and it is accordingly central, not peripheral, to our lives as public citizens (pp. 1-12). Fancy is a part, not the whole, of what prompts us toward a generous, humanistic, egalitarian, and democratic stance toward others. Fancy is a part, not the whole, of what enables us to give a due regard to the individuality, the dignity, and the irreducible worth of our fellows.

The importance of examples for moral education: An Aristotelian perspective

The paper develops and contrasts two views about the role of examples in moral education — one based on R.M. Hare's recent “two-level” conception of moral reasoning and one based on Aristotle's conception ofphronesis. It concludes that a Harean view leads to a harmful and impoverished form of moral education by encouraging children to ignore or distort the complexity of particular moral judgments. It also concludes that an Aristotelian view, by emphasizing the importance of rich examples such as those found in literature, enables children to develop and exercise a capacity for moral judgment that is sensitive to the complexities of particular moral judgments. Finally, the role of examples in public moral education in liberal pluralist societies is examined.

Caring and Sharing: Moral Development of Gifted Students

Previous articleNext article No AccessCaring and Sharing: Moral Development of Gifted StudentsDorothy A. SiskDorothy A. Sisk Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 82, Number 3Jan., 1982Special Issue: Gifted Education Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/461259 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1982 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Adnan ÖZBEY, Fatıma Firdevs ADAM KARDUZ ÖZEL YETENEKLİ VE NORMAL GELİŞİM GÖSTEREN ÖĞRENCİLERİN AHLAKİ KİMLİK VE ÖZGECİLİK DÜZEYLERİNİN İNCELENMESİ, Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi 18, no.44 (Dec 2018): 2207–2226.https://doi.org/10.17240/aibuefd.2018.18.41844-432053Vivien S. Huan, Lay See Yeo, Rebecca P. Ang, Wan Har Chong Concerns and Coping in Asian Adolescents—Gender as a Moderator, The Journal of Educational Research 105, no.33 (Apr 2012): 151–160.https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2010.544341Seana Moran Changing the world: tolerance and creativity aspirations among American youth, High Ability Studies 21, no.22 (Dec 2010): 117–132.https://doi.org/10.1080/13598139.2010.525342Annemarie Roeper, Linda Kreger Silverman Giftedness and Moral Promise, (Feb 2009): 251–264.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89368-6_19Lynne Bailey Understanding Chris to Teach Him More Effectively, Middle School Journal 37, no.22 (Aug 2016): 37–46.https://doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2005.11461525Angela Spreacker Educating for Moral Development, Gifted Education International 15, no.22 (Jul 2016): 188–193.https://doi.org/10.1177/026142940101500209Christy Folsom From a distance: Joining the mind and moral character, Roeper Review 20, no.44 (May 1998): 265–270.https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199809553904Sandra N. Kaplan, Natasha Shumakova Learning side‐by‐side: The international curriculum project, Roeper Review 14, no.44 (May 1992): 193–196.https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199209553426Patrick C. F. Kwan On a Pedestal: effects of intellectual‐giftedness and some implications for programme planning, Educational Psychology 12, no.11 (Jan 1992): 36–62.https://doi.org/10.1080/0144341920120104Nancy Fichtman Dana, Carol Lynch‐Brown Moral development of the gifted: Making a case for children's literature, Roeper Review 14, no.11 (Sep 1991): 13–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199109553373Ronald S. Lenkowsky Bibliotherapy: A Review and Analysis of the Literature, The Journal of Special Education 21, no.22 (Aug 2016): 123–132.https://doi.org/10.1177/002246698702100211Carolyn H. Simmons, Connie Zumpf The Gifted Child: Perceived Competence, Prosocial Moral Reasoning, and Charitable Donations, The Journal of Genetic Psychology 147, no.11 (Mar 1986): 97–105.https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1986.9914484

An Interpretation of Dryden's Fables

T1HE INNER COHERENCE of Dryden's Fables (1700) quickly becomes evident as one notices the repeated situations and character types. Though Dryden has grouped together translations (from Boccaccio, Ovid, Chaucer, and Homer) with only four poems of his own, the effect of the total work is that it is original.' What Dryden was saying in the Fables is a further question. The meaning of each poem depends not on its original but on the surrounding context of poems between which one can draw parallels and concrete relationships. The series of comparisons between the poets in Dryden's Preface suggests that he expected his readers to find parallels, diverse as the poets are. However, the special praise of Chaucer's poetry and the attempt to make him an equal of Homer and Virgil imply that the comparisons are not wholly objective. The poets form a historical continuum, from the heroic age in Greece, to a civilized but still pagan Rome, to the fourteenth-century Boccaccio and Chaucer, and finally to Dryden himself. This distribution through time implies that Dryden's plan was typological-although these poets all had similar insights into human nature, their capacity for moral judgment improved with the development of civilization in time, with a crucial change occurring at the birth of Christ. Dryden's treatment of his central themes and the structure of the Fables bear this out. The Fables is a variety of epic,2 but one whose main action is to undermine the motives behind the violent actions of classical epic and to substitute the Christian virtues of charity and natience. which could

Education and the Growth of Conscience

Consciences are neither born nor made, they develop. Development in living beings is the outcome of interaction between the individual and the environment; specifically, in the case of moral development, between the individual person and the culture. The child is born with the potential ability to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in terms other than those of immediate personal satisfaction to which the infant is limited, but the growing child can make assessments only in terms of the values which he is taught. He has. as part of his human make-up, the tendency to pursue the perceived good and to shun the perceived bad. What he actually perceives as good and bad depends largely on what the society into which he is born teaches him so to perceive. This is not to say that the individual's capacity for moral judgment is wholly dependent on the influence of external agents; the ultimate structure of conscience is unique because no two environments are entirely alike and no two individuals are entirely alike.Though it has been said that moral development is the result of interaction between the individual and the culture one must be yet more precise. The child receives his values not from ‘the culture’ or from ‘ ‘society’ in a large and undefined sense but from a fairly circumscribed group of persons: parents and siblings, other adults in the family circle, school teachers and companions. This means that values are never transmitted to the child in a ‘pure’ state, they are always, in some way. modified by the person who mediates them.