Losing Moral Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 151-191
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Difference

Some philosophers—including Gilbert Ryle, Ronald Dworkin, and Thomas Nagel—have held that there are important respects in which our cognitive relationship to morality is more secure than our cognitive relationship to ordinary empirical knowledge. I defend the claim that moral knowledge is susceptible to being lost in the same ways in which non-moral knowledge is, including by being forgotten and by being debunked. I offer a novel solution to Ryle’s puzzle about “forgetting the difference between right and wrong.” The chapter raises, and suggests answers to, a number of underexplored questions, including questions about the extent to which some cases of moral corruption are best understood as cognitive processes (i.e. processes involving a loss of knowledge), as well as questions about the kinds of considerations that could in principle make it reasonable for us to lose confidence even in moral claims that strike us as obviously correct.

EXPRESS: The Effects of Experimentally Induced Emotions on Revising Common Vaccine Misconceptions

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110178
Author(s):  
Greg Trevors ◽  
Catherine Bohn-Gettler ◽  
Panayiota Kendeou
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Emotion Induction ◽  
Correct Information ◽  
Knowledge Revision ◽  
Refutation Texts ◽  
Experimentally Induced

Knowledge revision is the process of updating incorrect prior knowledge in light of new, correct information. Although theoretical and empirical knowledge has advanced regarding the cognitive processes involved in revision, less is known about the role of emotions, which have shown inconsistent relations with key revision processes. The present study examined the effects of experimentally induced emotions on online and offline knowledge revision of vaccination misconceptions. Before reading refutation and non-refutation texts, 96 individuals received either a positive, negative, or no emotion induction. Findings showed that negative emotions, more than positive emotions, resulted in enhanced knowledge revision as indicated by greater ease of integrating correct information during reading and higher comprehension test scores after reading. Findings are discussed with respect to contemporary frameworks of knowledge revision and emotion in reading comprehension and implications for educational practice.

Das Recht auf Asyl bei Emer de Vattel 1758: unvollkommenes Recht, vollkommenes Recht, Menschenrecht

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-254
Author(s):  
Rainer Keil
Keyword(s):  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Perfect Duties ◽  
Xxist Century ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right ◽  
Specific Country

When, within the framework of a highly controversial debate of the early 1990s in Germany on the right to asylum, Winfrid Brugger argued, a human right to asylum could not be based on sound reason, he referred to the supposed impossibility of an imputation of the plight of refugees to certain foreign states. In more recent debates, similar arguments have been brought forward and formulated as a problem of imperfect or perfect duties and rights. Much earlier, in 1758, Emer de Vattel already had discussed the right to asylum as a right that has aspects of both an imperfect right and a perfect right. This has mostly been ignored in the recent debate. In this article, I try to show how de Vattel reasoned. His argumentation limited the otherwise strong sovereignty of states by referring to the reasons of the moral legitimacy of their powers. This led him to the result that the per se perfect right to asylum, imperfect in relation to specific states, can, if states collectively fail to admit a refugee in urgent danger, become a claim against a specific country in the shape of a perfect right to self-help. I will briefly try to reconstruct some of de Vattel‘s ideas with concepts of Ronald Dworkin and Robert Alexy. The difference between Dworkin’s rule and Alexy’s Regel becomes relevant for understanding de Vattel’s perfect and human right to asylum. In the end, I will briefly investigate how much of de Vattel’s thought depends on assumptions a XXIst century thinker would probably not be ready to suppose any more. It will become clear that de Vattel’s thought on asylum is mostly independent from rather controversial assumptions of his work; it fits rather well to some recent approaches limiting sovereignty by human rights and concepts of territorial justice.

Can't We All Just Respect One Another a Little Less?

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-484
Author(s):  
Michael Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Moral Claims

Contemporary moral philosophy and much contemporary moralizing almost radiate respect for persons. Thomas Nagel is one of many who take its primacy for granted. In a review of Scanion he says:Scanlon's theory addresses a number of its central questions: first, the question of the objectivity or truth of moral Claims, their relation to reason, and whether or not they should be regarded as in some sense relative or subjective; second, the question of the kind of concern or respect for persons that is at the foundation of morality…Many others take the centrality and foundational role of such respect as a given. This is a big change from the days when moralists held that all human beings deserved a certain basic and equal disrespect.

Conclusions

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-200
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Difference

In this chapter, I summarize the main claims that I endorse in the book. The claims are organized thematically, and I provide references to the specific sections and chapters in which I discuss the themes. The main themes are: 1. General Theses and Methodological Assumptions; 2. Reflective Equilibrium and Coherence as a Source of Moral Knowledge; 3. Social Aspects of Moral Knowledge; 4. Experience and Observation as Sources of Moral Knowledge; 5. Knowing the Difference Between Right and Wrong, Ryle’s Puzzle, and Losing Moral Knowledge. My hope is that this chapter will be useful for those who wish to read selectively.

Observation and Experience

2019 ◽  
pp. 106-150
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Claims

This chapter explores how experience and observation contribute to moral knowledge. It defends the view that experience and observation can contribute to moral knowledge in any of the ways in which they contribute to our ordinary, non-moral knowledge of the world around us, including by empirically confirming and disconfirming moral claims. I argue that moral testimony has important implications for the possibility of confirming moral views by non-moral observations. I also argue that membership in a moral community, which puts one in a position to compare the moral opinions of others with one’s own, can contribute to moral knowledge not only by affording evidence for or against one’s opinions, but also by providing feedback that can serve to calibrate one’s capacity for judgment so that future exercises of that judgment are more likely to deliver knowledge. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a priori moral knowledge.

scholarly journals Dream Generation and Recall in Daytime NREM Sleep of Patients With Narcolepsy Type 1

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Cipolli ◽  
Fabio Pizza ◽  
Claudia Bellucci ◽  
Michela Mazzetti ◽  
Giovanni Tuozzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Rem Sleep ◽  
Healthy Subjects ◽  
Structural Organization ◽  
Sleep Onset ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Nrem Sleep ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Multiple Sleep Latency

The less rigid architecture of sleep in patients with narcolepsy type 1 (NT1) compared with healthy subjects may provide new insights into some unresolved issues of dream experience (DE), under the assumption that their DE frequencies are comparable. The multiple transition from wakefulness to REM sleep (sleep onset REM period: SOREMP) during the five trials of the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) appears of particular interest. In MSLT studies, NT1 patients reported a DE after about 80% of SOREMP naps (as often as after nighttime REM sleep of themselves and healthy subjects), but only after about 30% of NREM naps compared to 60% of daytime and nighttime NREM sleep of healthy subjects. To estimate accurately the “real” DE frequency, we asked participants to report DE (“dream”) after each MSLT nap and, in case of failure, to specify if they were unable to retrieve any content (“white dream”) or DE did not occur (“no-dream”). The proportions of dreams, white dreams, and no dreams and the indicators of structural organization of DEs reported after NREM naps by 17 adult NT1 patients were compared with those reported by 25 subjects with subjective complaints of excessive daytime sleepiness (sc-EDS), who take multiple daytime NREM naps. Findings were consistent with the hypothesis of a failure in recall after awakening rather than in generation during sleep: white dreams were more frequent in NT1 patients than in sc-EDS subjects (42.86 vs 17.64%), while their frequency of dreams plus white dreams were similar (67.86 and 61.78%) and comparable with that of NREM-DEs in healthy subjects. The longer and more complex NREM-DEs of NT1 patients compared with sc-EDS subjects suggest that the difficulty in DE reporting depends on their negative attitude toward recall of contents less vivid and bizarre than those they usually retrieve after daytime SOREMP and nighttime REM sleep. As this attitude may be reversed by some recall training before MSLT, collecting wider amounts of DE reports after NREM naps would cast light on both the across-stage continuity in the functioning of cognitive processes underlying DE and the difference in content and structural organization of SOREM-DEs preceded by N1 or also N2 sleep.

Truth and Certainty in Peter Auriol

Vivarium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Bolyard
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Scientific Certainty ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
The Difference

This paper investigates the nature of truth and certainty according to the French Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol (1280-1322). In the first section, I attempt to harmonize a few different sections of Auriol’s Scriptum on book i of the Sentences: the accounts of truth as conformity in question 2 of the Prologue and question 10 of distinction 2, and the account of truth as quiddity in question 3 of distinction 19. In the second section, I explore the notion of certainty in question 1 of the Prologue. Here, Auriol’s taxonomy of propositions is explained, and the difference between scientific certainty and the certitude of faith is outlined. God works in the background in the context of both truth and certainty, and the fact that our cognitive processes are generally trustworthy makes Auriol’s epistemological position into a species of reliabilism.

scholarly journals Cognitive Therapy for OCD – Beyond ERP

2016 ◽  
pp. 23-26
Author(s):  
Bidita Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Behavioural Therapy ◽  
Intrusive Thought ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Detailed Understanding ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Obsessional Thought

Delivering cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) for obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) requires a detailed understanding of the phenomenology and the mechanism by which specific cognitive processes and behaviours maintain the symptoms of the disorder. A cognitive–behavioural model of OCD begins with the observation that intrusive thoughts, doubts or images are almost universal in the general population and their content is indistinguishable from that of clinical obsessions(1). The difference between a normal intrusive thought and an obsessional thought lies both in the meaning that individuals with OCD attach to the occurrence or content of the intrusions and in their response to the thought or image.

On The Relevance of Signed Languages to Research in Interpretation

Target ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Isham
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Visual Channel ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Research Opportunity ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Research using interpreters who work with signed languages can aid us in understanding the cognitive processes of interpretation in general. Using American Sign Language (ASL) as an example, the nature of signed languages is outlined first. Then the difference between signed languages and manual codes for spoken languages is delineated, and it is argued that these two manners of communicating through the visual channel offer a unique research opportunity. Finally, an example from recent research is used to demonstrate how comparisons between spoken-language interpreters and signed-language interpreters can be used to test hypotheses regarding interpretation.

scholarly journals A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTIN MORTON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Standard Version ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Categorical Reasons

ABSTRACT:Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) claim that evolution has influenced our moral faculties in such a way that, if moral realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. I present several popular objections to the standard version of this argument before offering a new EDA that has clear advantages in responding to these objections. Whereas the Standard EDA argues that evolution has selected for many moral beliefs with certain contents, this New EDA claims that evolution has selected for one belief: belief in the claim that categorical reasons exist. If moral realism is true, then this claim is entailed by all positive moral claims, and belief in it is defeated due to evolutionary influence. This entails that if realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. While there may be objections against this New EDA, it is much stronger than the Standard EDA, and one realists ought to worry about.

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