scholarly journals Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

Cognition ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 104513
Author(s):  
Corey Cusimano ◽  
Tania Lombrozo
Keyword(s):  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Ethics Of Belief

Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Cusimano ◽  
Tania Lombrozo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Objective Evidence

When faced with a dilemma between believing what is supported by an impartial assessment of the evidence (e.g., that one’s friend is guilty of a crime) and believing what would better fulfill a moral obligation (e.g., that the friend is innocent), people often believe in line with the latter. But is this how people think beliefs ought to be formed? We addressed this question across three studies and found that, across a diverse set of everyday situations, people treat moral considerations as legitimate grounds for believing propositions that are unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning. We further document two ways in which moral evaluations affect how people prescribe beliefs to others. First, the moral value of a belief affects the evidential threshold required to believe, such that morally good beliefs demand less evidence than morally bad beliefs. Second, people sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and so sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others. Together these results show that, in the folk ethics of belief, morality can justify and demand motivated reasoning.

Reasoning and Lapses in James’ The Will to Believe

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 387-399
Author(s):  
Jonathan Adler
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Insufficient Evidence ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

James’ The Will to Believe is the most influential writing in the ethics of belief. In it, James defends the right and rationality to believe on non-evidential grounds. James’ argument is directed against Clifford’s “Evidentialism” presented in The Ethics of Belief in which Clifford concludes that “[i]t is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”. After an overview of the James-Clifford exchange and James’ argument, I reconstruct his argument in detail. Subsequently, I examine four steps in James’ argument, and try to show that these amount to fallacies – enticing to reason, but not cogent.

The Motivational Power of Moral Beliefs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Identity ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Difficult Case ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Normative Judgment ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Hypocrisy ◽  
Moral Licensing ◽  
Self Interest

Even if we can rise above self-interest, we may just be slaves of our passions. But the motivational power of reason, via moral beliefs, has been understated, even in the difficult case of temptation. Experiments show that often when we succumb, it is due in part to a change in moral (or normative) judgment. We can see this by carefully examining a range of experiments on motivated reasoning, moral licensing, moral hypocrisy, and moral identity. Rationalization, perhaps paradoxically, reveals a deep regard for reason, to act in ways we can justify to ourselves and to others. The result is that we are very often morally motivated or exhibit moral integrity. Even when behaving badly, actions that often seem motivated by self-interest are actually ultimately driven by a concern to do what’s right.

Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Formal Epistemology ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The Status ◽  
Important Field ◽  
Belief Justification

Oxford Studies in Epistemology is a biennial publication offering a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board composed of leading epistemologists in North America, Europe and Australasia, it publishes exemplary papers in epistemology, broadly construed. Topics within its purview include: (a) traditional epistemological questions concerning the nature of belief, justification, and knowledge, the status of skepticism, the nature of the a priori, etc.; (b) new developments in epistemology, including movements such as naturalized epistemology, feminist epistemology, social epistemology, and virtue epistemology, and approaches such as contextualism; (c) foundational questions in decision-theory; (d) confirmation theory and other branches of philosophy of science that bear on traditional issues in epistemology; (e) topics in the philosophy of perception relevant to epistemology; (f) topics in cognitive science, computer science, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology that bear directly on traditional epistemological questions; and (g) work that examines connections between epistemology and other branches of philosophy, including work on testimony, the ethics of belief, etc. Topics addressed in volume 6 include the nature of perceptual justification, intentionality, modal knowledge, credences, epistemic supererogation, epistemic and rational norms, expressivism, skepticism, and pragmatic encroachment. The various writers make use of a variety of different tools and insights, including those of formal epistemology and decision theory, as well as traditional philosophical analysis and argumentation.

The Foundations of James's Ethics of Belief

Ethics ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-166
Author(s):  
Peter Kauber
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Of Belief

scholarly journals Redistribution Preferences, Inequality Information, and Partisan Motivated Reasoning in the United States

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Clem Brooks ◽  
Elijah Harter
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
High Quality Data ◽  
Redistributive Policies ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The U.S

In an era of rising inequality, the U.S. public’s relatively modest support for redistributive policies has been a puzzle for scholars. Deepening the paradox is recent evidence that presenting information about inequality increases subjects’ support for redistributive policies by only a small amount. What explains inequality information’s limited effects? We extend partisan motivated reasoning scholarship to investigate whether political party identification confounds individuals’ processing of inequality information. Our study considers a much larger number of redistribution preference measures (12) than past scholarship. We offer a second novelty by bringing the dimension of historical time into hypothesis testing. Analyzing high-quality data from four American National Election Studies surveys, we find new evidence that partisanship confounds the interrelationship of inequality information and redistribution preferences. Further, our analyses find the effects of partisanship on redistribution preferences grew in magnitude from 2004 through 2016. We discuss implications for scholarship on information, motivated reasoning, and attitudes towards redistribution.

Sorting the File Drawer: A Typology for Describing Unpublished Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162097983
Author(s):  
David A. Lishner
Keyword(s):  
Decision Process ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Psychology Research ◽  
Research Dissemination ◽  
Unpublished Studies ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Publication Decision ◽  
Research Domains ◽  
File Drawer ◽  
Insight Into

A typology of unpublished studies is presented to describe various types of unpublished studies and the reasons for their nonpublication. Reasons for nonpublication are classified by whether they stem from an awareness of the study results (result-dependent reasons) or not (result-independent reasons) and whether the reasons affect the publication decisions of individual researchers or reviewers/editors. I argue that result-independent reasons for nonpublication are less likely to introduce motivated reasoning into the publication decision process than are result-dependent reasons. I also argue that some reasons for nonpublication would produce beneficial as opposed to problematic publication bias. The typology of unpublished studies provides a descriptive scheme that can facilitate understanding of the population of study results across the field of psychology, within subdisciplines of psychology, or within specific psychology research domains. The typology also offers insight into different publication biases and research-dissemination practices and can guide individual researchers in organizing their own file drawers of unpublished studies.

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