Assigning and Empowering Moral Decision Making: Acuna v. Turkish and Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life Jurisprudence in New Jersey

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-196
Author(s):  
Carmel Shachar
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Value Of Life ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Wrongful Life ◽  
Wrongful Birth

The New Jersey Supreme Court has continually avoided making moral judgments about the value of life and emphasized that such decision making should be the province of the potential parents. Recently, in Acuna v. Turkish, the court elaborated on the limitations of the decision-making right of the potential parents, and its decision demonstrated that New Jersey courts were only willing to require physicians to disclose all relevant medical information, and not moral statements that had not been agreed upon by the state's medical community, people, or legislature. Acuna might be read as a departure from the trend displayed by New Jersey courts in “wrongful birth” and “wrongful life” actions toward empowering potential parents to decide if they want to bring the pregnancy to term. However, the decision actually fits squarely within this trend in that the reluctance to expand the information to which potential parents are entitled from their physicians can be directly tied to the reluctance of the New Jersey Supreme Court to weigh in on the value of life in wrongful birth and wrongful life suits.

Framing Morality: How Antecedent-Focused Strategies Can Shape Moral Judgments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
First Response ◽  
High Conflict

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.

scholarly journals Famine, Affluence, and Amorality

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sackris
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
First Person ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
Ordinary Case ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.

scholarly journals Political Dogma Stroll’s non political moral decision making

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Noorani ◽  
Khurram Shakir ◽  
Muddasir Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions

Ethical enigma kernelling concerns about actions against concerns about consequences have been dealt by philosophers and psychologists to measure “universal” moral intuitions. Although these enigmas contain no evident political content, we decipher that liberals are more likely than conservatives to be concerned about consequences, whereas conservatives are more likely than liberals to be concerned about actions. This denouement is exhibited in two large, heterogeneous samples and across several different moral dilemmas. In addition, manipulations of dilemma averseness and order of presentation suggest that this political difference is due in part to different sensitivities to emotional reactions in moral decision-making: Conservatives are very much inclined to “go with the gut” and let affective responses guide moral judgments, while liberals are more likely to deliberate about optimal consequences. In this article, extracting a sample from Western Europe, we report evidence that political differences can be found in moral decisions about issues that have no evident political content. In particular, we find that conservatives are more likely than liberals to attend to the action itself when deciding whether something is right or wrong, whereas liberals are more likely than conservatives to attend to the consequences of the action. Further, we report preliminary evidence that this is partly explained by the kernel of truth from the parodies – conservatives are more likely than liberals to “go with the gut” by using their affective responses to guide moral judgment.

scholarly journals The Doctrine of Double Effect: An Aid in Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavol Dancák
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Principle Of Double Effect

Human society of the modern world, which is greatly affected by technological and economic advancements, has to address moral problems with a new urgency. In many instances, the decision does not bring only positive effects. Such cases can be found in applied ethics: bio-medical ethics, business ethics, and legal ethics, but also in other areas of human activity, too, most recently,  in debates, concerning the use of autonomous vehicles or autonomous machines in general. This paper aims to describe and explain the principle of ‘double effect’, when solving complicated and, from the perspective of morality, profoundly dilemmatic situations. The principle of double effect was gradually developed as a means of seeking the right moral decisions. It has a firm and respected position within Catholic medical ethics, but also in secular legislation. The paper presents current thought experiments, which clarify moral decision-making in dilemmatic situations. What seems to be a shortcoming here, is that ethical thought experiments are far too abstract. On the one hand, they refine our knowledge, but on the other hand, they are very partial. The  evolution of medical imaging methods, has enabled us to take a closer look at the relationship between the deontological and utilitarian approaches to making moral judgments, but it does not relieve us of our responsibility for the decisions that we have made. The positive side of the principle of double effect, is that it protects us from the slippery slope of utilitarian consequentialism, where the admission of a lesser evil, is only a step away from committing evil in the name of the greater good.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Reliability of Moral Decision Making: Evidence from the Trolley Dilemma

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110015
Author(s):  
Corentin J Gosling ◽  
Bastien Trémolière
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Sensitivity Analyses ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Equivalence Tests ◽  
Trolley Dilemma

The application of framing effects in the field of moral judgment has offered a golden opportunity to assess the reliability of people’s moral judgments and decisions. To date, however, these studies are still scarce and they suffer from multiple methodological issues. Therefore, the present study aims to provide further insights into the reliability of moral judgments while fixing these methodological shortcomings. In the current study, we employed the classic trolley dilemma moral decision-making paradigm to determine the extent to which moral decisions are susceptible to framing effects. A total of 1040 participants were included in the study. The data revealed that choices of participants did not significantly differ between the two frames. Equivalence tests confirmed that the associated effect size was very small. Further exploratory analyses revealed an unplanned interaction between the framing effect and the target of the framing manipulation. This result became from marginally statistically significant to insignificant following different sensitivity analyses. The implications and limitations of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

scholarly journals Reliability of Moral Decision Making: Evidence from the Trolley Dilemma

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastien Trémolière ◽  
Corentin J Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Sensitivity Analyses ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Equivalence Tests ◽  
Trolley Dilemma

The application of framing effects in the field of moral judgment has offered a golden opportunity to assess the reliability of people’s moral judgments and decisions. To date, however, these studies are still scarce and they suffer from multiple methodological issues. Therefore, the present study aims to provide further insights into the reliability of moral judgments while fixing these methodological shortcomings. In the current study, we employed the classic trolley dilemma moral decision-making paradigm to determine the extent to which moral decisions are susceptible to framing effects. A total of 1040 participants were included in the study. The data revealed that choices of participants did not significantly differ between the two frames. Equivalence tests confirmed that the associated effect size was very small. Further exploratory analyses revealed an unplanned interaction between the framing effect and the target of the framing manipulation. This result became from marginally statistically significant to insignificant following different sensitivity analyses. The implications and limitations of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Evolutionary Psychology

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Jeffares ◽  
Kim Sterelny
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Biological World

The article presents several models of evolutionary psychology. Nativist evolutionary psychology is built around a most important insight that ordinary human decision-making has a high cognitive load. Evolutionary nativists defend a modular solution to the problem of information load on human decision-making. Human minds comprises of special purpose cognitive devices or modules. One of the modules is a language module, a module for interpreting the thoughts and intentions of others, another is a ‘naive physics’ module for causal reasoning about sticks, stones, and similar inanimate objects, a natural history module for ecological decisions, and a social exchange module for monitoring economic interactions with peers. These modules evolved in response to the distinctive, independent, and recurring problems faced by the ancestors. Domain specific modules handle information about human language, human minds, inanimate causal interactions, the biological world, and other constant adaptive demands faced by human ancestors. Nativist evolutionary psychologists have turned to moral decision making, arguing that cross-cultural moral judgments are invariant in an unexpected way. Natural selection can build and equip a special purpose module only if the information an agent needs to know is stable over evolutionary time. Automatized skills are an alternative means of coping with high-load problems. These skills are phenomenologically rather like modules, but they have very different developmental and evolutionary histories.

scholarly journals Moral Decision-Making during COVID-19: Moral judgments, moralisation, and everyday behaviour

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Francis ◽  
Carolyn Beth McNabb
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Health Economic ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Relevance ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Significant Health

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose significant health, economic, and social challenges. Given that many of these challenges have moral relevance, the present study investigates whether the COVID-19 pandemic is influencing moral decision-making and whether moralisation of behaviours specific to the crisis predict adherence to government-recommended behaviours. While proto-utilitarian tendencies and utilitarian moral judgments remain unchanged during the pandemic, individuals have moralised non-compliant behaviours associated with the pandemic such as failing to physically distance from others. Importantly, our findings show that this moralisation predicts individual compliance with government-recommended behaviours and as such, provides significant implications for public messaging strategies during the pandemic.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document