Moral Domains | ScienceGate

AbstractI argue for the claim that there are instances of a priori justified belief – in particular, justified belief in moral principles – that are not analytic, i.e., that cannot be explained solely by the understanding we have of their propositions. §1–2 provides the background necessary for understanding this claim: in particular, it distinguishes between two ways a proposition can be analytic, Basis and Constitutive, and provides the general form of a moral principle. §§3–5 consider whether Hume's Law, properly interpreted, can be established by Moore's Open Question Argument, and concludes that it cannot: while Moore's argument – appropriately modified – is effective against the idea that moral judgments are either (i) reductively analyzable or (ii) Constitutive-analytic, a different argument is needed to show that they are not (iii) Basis-analytic. Such an argument is supplied in §6. §§7–8 conclude by considering how these considerations bear on recent discussions of “alternative normative concepts”, on the epistemology of intuitions, and on the differences between disagreement in moral domains and in other a priori domains such as logic and mathematics.

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INTENT-BASED MORALITY IN THIRD-PARTY INTERACTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM COLOMBIAN AND SPANISH CHILDREN

10.31234/osf.io/zxyjw ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rhea Luana Arini ◽

Juliana Bocarejo Aljure ◽

Nereida Bueno ◽

Clara Bayón González ◽

Estrella Fernández Alba ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Third Party ◽

Developmental Studies ◽

Moral Domain ◽

English Speaking ◽

Moral Domains ◽

Collectivistic Cultures ◽

Age Range

Most developmental studies of the role of outcomes and intentions in third-party moral evaluations sampled children from English-speaking countries and focused on harm and property transgressions. We tested instead 5- to 11-year-old children from Colombia and Spain (N = 123) employing moral scenarios involving disloyalty and unfairness. We found that the outcome-to-intent shift in judgements of transgression severity was moral domain-dependent in Colombian but not Spanish children. More specifically, by age 5 Spanish children judged failed intentional transgressions more severely than accidental transgressions regarding both disloyalty and unfairness. In comparison, Colombian children judged failed intentional transgressions more severely than accidental transgressions in the case of disloyalty but not unfairness. This suggests that it may be adaptive for children to develop sensitivity to intentionality earlier within the moral domain their own culture is more concerned about (e.g., loyalty in collectivistic cultures). Regarding punishment severity, we observed an outcome-to-intent shift in Spanish but not Colombian children. In other words, while Colombian children punished failed intentional transgressions and accidental transgressions equally for the whole age range, Spanish children began to punish failed intentional transgressions of both moral domains more severely than accidental transgressions around 8 years of age. Finally, neither Colombian nor Spanish children enjoyed engaging in punishment. Colombian children even anticipated administering punishment to feel worse than it actually felt during and after punishment allocation. These enjoyment findings suggest that retribution is unlikely to be the primary motive for children’s third-party punishment in this context.

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Disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity: The role of transgression weirdness

10.31234/osf.io/c5h42 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽

Mark John Brandt ◽

Marcel Zeelenberg

Keyword(s):

Moral Judgments ◽

Disgust Sensitivity ◽

Total N ◽

Moral Domains ◽

Moral Transgressions ◽

The Relationship

Disgust sensitivity is more strongly related to moral judgments in the purity domain than to moral judgments in other moral domains. While this finding highlights the distinctiveness of moral domains, anti-modularity accounts suggest that the relationship is caused by the relative weirdness of purity transgressions and come to the conclusion that moral domains do not represent distinct mechanisms. In two studies (total N = 2,307), we test whether transgression weirdness accounts for disgust sensitivity’s stronger association with moral judgments of the purity as compared to other moral domains, but find little evidence for this claim. The relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity even remains when taking into account both (perceived) weirdness and (perceived) harmfulness of moral transgressions. These studies show that transgression weirdness and harmfulness cannot explain the disgust sensitivity–purity link, contradicting predictions following from popular anti-modularity accounts.

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The Moral Psychology of AI and the Ethical Opt-Out Problem

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190905033.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 109-126

Author(s):

Jean-François Bonnefon ◽

Azim Shariff ◽

Iyad Rahwan

Keyword(s):

Moral Psychology ◽

Public Perception ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Normative Ethics ◽

Psychological Science ◽

Opt Out ◽

Moral Domains ◽

Self Driving Cars

This chapter discusses the limits of normative ethics in new moral domains linked to the development of AI. In these new domains, people have the possibility to opt out of using a machine if they do not approve of the ethics that the machine is programmed to follow. In other words, even if normative ethics could determine the best moral programs, these programs would not be adopted (and thus have no positive impact) if they clashed with users’ preferences—a phenomenon that can be called “ethical opt-out.” The chapter then explores various ways in which the field of moral psychology can illuminate public perception of moral AI and inform the regulations of such AI. The chapter’s main focus is on self-driving cars, but it also explores the role of psychological science for the study of other moral algorithms.

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Conceptualizing dispositions: intellectual, cultural, and moral domains of teaching

Teachers and Teaching ◽

10.1080/13540600903357041 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 15 (6) ◽

pp. 719-736 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Lisa M. Stooksberry ◽

Deborah L. Schussler ◽

Lynne A. Bercaw

Keyword(s):

Moral Domains

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Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments

10.31234/osf.io/tvs2b ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽

Mark John Brandt ◽

Marcel Zeelenberg

Keyword(s):

Moral Judgments ◽

Personality Characteristics ◽

Moral Foundations ◽

Moral Foundations Theory ◽

Disgust Sensitivity ◽

Moral Issues ◽

Total N ◽

Moral Domain ◽

Moral Domains ◽

Moral Condemnation

Individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with a range of judgments and attitudes related to the moral domain. Some perspectives suggest that the association between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments will be equally strong across all moral domains (purity, authority, loyalty, care, fairness, and liberty). Other perspectives predict that disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with judgments of specific moral domains (e.g., primarily purity). However, no study has systematically tested if disgust sensitivity is associated with moral judgments of the purity domain specifically, more generally to moral judgments of the binding moral domains, or to moral judgments of all of the moral domains equally. Across five studies (total N = 1104), we find consistent evidence for the notion that disgust sensitivity relates more strongly to moral condemnation of purity-based transgression (meta-analytic r = .40) than to moral condemnation of transgressions of any of the other domains (range meta-analytic r’s: .07 ̶ .27). Our findings are in line with predictions from Moral Foundations Theory, which predicts that personality characteristics like disgust sensitivity make people more sensitive to a certain set of moral issues.

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Specks of Dirt and Tons of Pain: Dosage Distinguishes Impurity From Harm

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797619855382 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (8) ◽

pp. 1151-1160 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Joshua Rottman ◽

Liane Young

Keyword(s):

Moral Judgment ◽

Outcome Severity ◽

Statistical Interactions ◽

Moral Domains ◽

Moral Condemnation ◽

Dosage Frequency ◽

Low Dosage

Levels of moral condemnation often vary with outcome severity (e.g., extreme destruction is morally worse than moderate damage), but this is not always true. We investigated whether judgments of purity transgressions are more or less sensitive to variation in dosage than judgments of harm transgressions. In three studies, adults ( N = 426) made moral evaluations of harm and purity transgressions that systematically varied in dosage (frequency or magnitude). Pairs of low-dosage and high-dosage transgressions were presented such that the same sets of modifiers (e.g., “occasionally” vs. “regularly,” “small” vs. “large”) or amounts (e.g., “millimeter” vs. “centimeter”) were reused across moral domains. Statistical interactions between domain and dosage indicated robust distinctions between the perceived wrongness of high-dosage and low-dosage harms, whereas moral evaluations of impure acts were considerably less influenced by dosage. Our findings support the existence of a cognitive distinction between purity-based and harm-based morals and challenge current wisdom regarding relationships between intentions and outcomes in moral judgment.

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