Cognitive Media Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-39
Author(s):  
Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
Literary Ethics

This chapter surveys a breadth of approaches to the ethics of film and other narrative media, both contemporary and historic, and positions them in relation to developments in cognitive media ethics. These include cine-ethics and film philosophy, phenomenological approaches, literary ethics and hermeneutics, notions of aesthetic autonomy, and ethics in narratology. The contributions and challenges of each approach are summarized, as are their uses in the development of a normative ethics for cognitive media studies. Throughout this chapter, a case emerges for the complementary, elaborative rigors of cognitive science, normative ethics, and consequentialism. The chapter concludes by indicating how methods for analysis developed at the center of these areas of study will inform the remainder of the book.

A Discourse on Mass Media and Society

2018 ◽  
pp. 422-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nneoma A. Anozie
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Medical Diagnosis ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Medical Issues ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
The Media

Mass media and society, a popular concept in media studies, has constituted much discourse due to roles media play in society and perceived effects that can result thereof. This chapter is inspired by the term ‘medicalization of the society' whereby ailments are regarded as medical issues and subjected to medical diagnosis and treatment, regardless of their true causes. Similarly, the violence, moral decadence and ethno-religious crises witnessed in the society are largely ascribed to the media. This chapter examined the said effects of mass media with society's social systems, cultures and values, with a view to finding a relationship. It argues that these societal makeups especially ones as formidable as Africa's also affect largely members' conducts and reactions to media contents. However, it advocates children's news segment, adherence to media ethics, and use of media programmes to enhance learning, proper socialization, abolishment of negative cultures, media literacy among others.

Problems in Cognitive Media Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-86
Author(s):  
Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach

This chapter surveys key problems emerging at the intersection of cognitive science and media ethics, and further refines a hermeneutic approach that will account for each dilemma. Problems discussed include the moral policing of fictive thought experiments rather than actions taken in the world, the confounding heteronomies of cultural and personality variation, issues of selfhood and determinism, and confusions between the ethical and the political. This chapter explains how each problem will be navigated over ensuing chapters, presenting a union of theories in autobiographical memory, social cognition, and textual hermeneutics as a model for unearthing the lived impact—and therefore the ethics—of narrative media and storytelling.

scholarly journals Media Ethics

Communication ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Christians
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Descriptive Ethics ◽  
Good And Evil

As with professional ethics as a whole, media ethics is divided into three parts: metaethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics. Metaethics addresses the validity of theories, the nature of good and evil in media programming, the question of universals, problems of relativism, and the rationale for morality in a secular age. Normative ethics fuses practice with principles. It concerns the best ways for professionals to lead their lives and the standards to be promoted. Normative ethics concentrates on the justice or injustice of societies and institutions. Descriptive ethics uses social science methodologies to report on how ethical decision making actually works in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment. Normative ethics has received the most attention in media ethics, but for media ethics to flourish, research and teaching need to be strong on all three levels.

Cognitive Film and Media Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Television News ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
Family Drama

Cognitive Film and Media Ethics provides a grounding in the use of cognitive science to address key questions in film, television, and screen media ethics. This book extends prior works in cognitive media studies to answer normative and ethically prescriptive questions: what could make media morally good or bad, and what, then, are the respective responsibilities of media producers and consumers? Moss-Wellington makes a primary claim that normative propositions are a kind of rigor, in that they force media theorists to draw more active ought conclusions from descriptive is arguments. Cognitive Film and Media Ethics presents the rigors of normative reasoning, cognitive science, and consequentialist ethics as complementary, arguing that each seeks progressive elaboration on its own models of causality, and causal projections are crucial for any reflection on our moral responsibilities in the world. A hermeneutics of “ethical cognitivism” is applied in the latter half of the book, with each essay addressing a different case study in film, television, news, and social media: cinema that sets out to inspire moral dissonance in the viewer, satirical and humorous depictions of family drama in film and television, the politics of the romantic comedy, formal aspects of screen media bullying in an era dubbed the “television renaissance,” and contemporary problems in the conflation of news and social media. Cognitive Film and Media Ethics synthesizes current research in social psychology, anthropology, memory studies, emotion and cognition, personality and media selection, and evolutionary biology, integrating wide-ranging concepts from the various disciplines that make up cognitive theory to provide new vantages on the applied ethics of film and screen media.

Meaningful Relations

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Enactive Cognitive Science ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind

This collection of works is a contribution to the current debates on the mind-body-problem. It discusses how mind and body make contact in sense-making processes from the point of view of enactive cognitive science and 4E approaches to cognition. It also offers a critical view on non-representational approaches to cognition. The book covers sociology, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, computer science and HRI, media studies, literature and cognitive science. It offers cutting-edge research both for students and for junior and senior researchers in the fields mentioned above.

Kant, Aesthetic Autonomy, and Literary Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-100
Author(s):  
Philipp Hunnekuhl
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
Literary Ethics ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
The Mind

Chapter three reveals the paradigm shift in Robinson’s theorization of literature that his ‘conversion’ from the empiricism of Locke, Hume, and Godwin to Kant’s critical philosophy prompted. Yet Kant’s notion of aesthetic autonomy – of art’s detachment from the motives of the mind and the causality governing the laws of nature – occasioned an impasse in Robinson’s conceptualization of literature’s ethical relevance. He resolved this in an ingenious move by skilfully locating in Kant’s critical philosophy, and then developing, an analogy between art and morals: the self-contained structure and dynamic of a work of literature find their corresponding parameters in the reader’s mind, in her or his moral compass. On the basis of this analogy, chapter three argues, Robinson conducted his own ‘ethical turn’ away from notions of absolute aesthetic autonomy, and developed the ground-breaking critical principle of ‘Free Moral Discourse’ (Hunnekuhl) that from here onwards underpinned his literary activities. Against the backdrop of various unpublished manuscripts, this chapter discusses Robinson’s articles on Hume and causality, and on Moses Mendelssohn and the Pantheism Controversy, in the Monthly Magazine (1799–1801), as well as his letters ‘On the Philosophy of Kant’ in the Monthly Register and Encyclopaedian Magazine (1802–03).

Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Dual Process Theory ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Bright Future

Abstract In this article I explain why cognitive science (including some neuroscience) matters for normative ethics. First, I describe the dual-process theory of moral judgment and briefly summarize the evidence supporting it. Next I describe related experimental research examining influences on intuitive moral judgment. I then describe two ways in which research along these lines can have implications for ethics. I argue that a deeper understanding of moral psychology favors certain forms of consequentialism over other classes of normative moral theory. I close with some brief remarks concerning the bright future of ethics as an interdisciplinary enterprise.

A Discourse on Mass Media and Society

2017 ◽  
pp. 200-216
Author(s):  
Nneoma A. Anozie
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Medical Diagnosis ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Media Ethics ◽  
Medical Issues ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
The Media

Mass media and society, a popular concept in media studies, has constituted much discourse due to roles media play in society and perceived effects that can result thereof. This chapter is inspired by the term ‘medicalization of the society' whereby ailments are regarded as medical issues and subjected to medical diagnosis and treatment, regardless of their true causes. Similarly, the violence, moral decadence and ethno-religious crises witnessed in the society are largely ascribed to the media. This chapter examined the said effects of mass media with society's social systems, cultures and values, with a view to finding a relationship. It argues that these societal makeups especially ones as formidable as Africa's also affect largely members' conducts and reactions to media contents. However, it advocates children's news segment, adherence to media ethics, and use of media programmes to enhance learning, proper socialization, abolishment of negative cultures, media literacy among others.

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