Resisting Empathy Bias with Pragmatist Ethics

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
William Kidder
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Group I ◽  
Moral Problems

The paper employs a pragmatist perspective on ethics to address the problem of empathy bias, an empirically documented phenomenon in which one’s ability to empathize with another is diminished simply because of that other’s membership in a perceived out-group. I first argue that the philosophical commitments that I take to be distinctive of pragmatism, specifically fallibilism, anti-absolutism, and democracy, require proactive empathetic engagement as a central component of moral inquiry. While this may initially seem to leave pragmatism vulnerable to concerns about empathy bias, I argue that the pragmatist is uniquely equipped to provide a particular sort of response to the problem: a response that does not jettison empathy from moral judgment, but rather seeks to utilize awareness of bias to appropriately correct empathetic engagement when addressing moral problems.

Overtreatment of Neonates? A Personal Retrospective

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 90 (6) ◽  
pp. 971-976
Author(s):  
William A. Silverman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Birth Weight ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Premature Neonate ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Small Hospital ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Over Time

Man's power over Nature is really the power of some men over other men, with Nature as their instrument. —C. S. Lewis The question of overtreatment of seriously compromised neonates with life-prolonging hardware is, in the end, a weighing of values—a moral judgment. The most pressing issues of our time, it has been said, are not matters of engineering, but of human values. And, didactic opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, I am prepared to argue that moral judgment is not monolithic. A system of values is not the same everywhere and for everyone. Nor is it an unchanging construct over time—even throughout one's own lifetime. Piaget,1 Kohlberg,2 and Rest3 have all made a strong case for the view that differences among people, in the way they evaluate moral problems, are determined, largely, by their concepts of fairness. A sense of right grows more discerning with age and is influenced by the amount and the complexity of social experience. Let me explain what I am getting at, by relating the growth of my own social experience as a rescuer of extremely small neonates. It began 47 years ago, when I was on the housestaff at The Babies Hospital in New York City. On January 27, 1945, a premature neonate was born in a small hospital in the Bronx, at 5½ months of gestation; birth weight was 600 g. The obstetrician was astounded that this extremely small girl breathed spontaneously and he was even more amazed to find her still alive the following day.

Disgust and Moral Judgment: Distinguishing Between Elicitors and Feelings Matters

2020 ◽  
pp. 194855062091956
Author(s):  
Michał Białek ◽  
Rafał Muda ◽  
Jonathan Fugelsang ◽  
Ori Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Sensitive Measure ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Exposure Levels

We investigated the scope of the effect of disgust on moral judgments. In two field experiments (Experiment 1, N = 142, Experiment 2, N = 248), we manipulated whether participants were exposed to a disgusting odor. Participants then rated the permissibility of actions in two kinds of moral problems: dilemmas and transgressions. In both experiments, disgust did not affect moral judgments when we compared across exposure levels. However, self-reported disgust did predict moral judgments in the following cases: In Experiment 1, it was linked with decreased acceptability for dilemmas and transgressions alike; in Experiment 2, it was linked with decreased acceptability for dilemmas only. Findings also differed across the experiments when we regressed feelings of disgust onto participants’ utilitarian and deontological inclinations. Overall, the findings suggest that subjective feelings of disgust may provide a more sensitive measure of the effect of disgust on moral judgment than basing analysis on the presence of disgust elicitors.

scholarly journals Ethical Theories as Methods of Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 247-269
Author(s):  
Jussi Suikkanen
Keyword(s):  
Theory Choice ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
First Order ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This chapter presents a new argument for thinking of traditional ethical theories not as criteria of rightness and wrongness, but rather as methods that can be used in first-order moral inquiry. It begins from outlining how ethical theories such as consequentialism and contractualism are flexible frameworks in which different versions of these theories can be formulated to correspond to different first-order ethical views. This chapter then argues that, as a result, the traditional ethical theories cannot be evaluated in terms of their truth or correctness. Instead, it suggests that these theories should be understood as providing different kinds of ways of thinking about difficult moral problems. Finally, the chapter recommends a certain kind of an attitude of pragmatic pluralism as something that should guide our theory choice in normative ethics—it may well be that different moral problems are better approached through different ethical theories.

Common Sentiment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bosko Tripkovic
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
The People ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Specific Community

The chapter analyses the metaethical foundations of the argument from common sentiment. This argument holds that moral emotions of the people in a community indicate the solution to moral problems. Drawing on comparative constitutional practice, the chapter contends that the argument from common sentiment consists of two elements: the emotivist element makes moral judgment dependent on moral feelings, and the relativist element ties these feelings to a specific community. The chapter argues that these elements are incompatible and fail to account for the role of reasoning and reflection in moral judgments. The chapter concludes that the argument from common sentiment is inadequate as an exclusive approach to judicial moral judgment.

scholarly journals The Metaethics of Constitutional Adjudication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bosko Tripkovic
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
The Self ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Moral Perspective ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication ◽  
Universal Reason ◽  
Constitutional Identity

The book explores the metaethical foundations of value-based arguments in constitutional adjudication. The argument develops in four steps. First, the book identifies three dominant types of value-based arguments in comparative constitutional practice: the arguments from constitutional identity, common sentiment, and universal reason. Second, it examines the assumptions about the nature of moral value implicit in these arguments and subjects them to a critique. The book maintains that these arguments presuppose inadequate conceptions of value and fail as self-standing approaches to moral judgment. Third, the book develops an account of moral value and explains its practical consequences. It argues that a credible understanding of value suggests that the appropriate moral judgment emerges from the dynamics between practical confidence, which denotes the inescapability of the self and evaluative attitudes it entails, and reflection, which denotes the process of challenging and questioning these attitudes. Fourth, departing from this conception of value, the book reconstructs the existing value-based arguments of constitutional courts. It applies the notions of confidence and reflection to constitutional reasoning and shows how the arguments from constitutional identity, common sentiment, and universal reason can be combined to refashion the moral perspective of a constitutional court so that it coheres with a sound understanding of value. The book argues that the moral inquiry of the constitutional court ought to depart from the emotive intuitions of the constitutional community and then challenge these intuitions through reflective exposure to different perspectives in order to better understand and develop the underlying constitutional identity.

What sentimentalists should say about emotion

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Kurth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Multilevel Structure

Abstract Recent work by emotion researchers indicates that emotions have a multilevel structure. Sophisticated sentimentalists should take note of this work – for it better enables them to defend a substantive role for emotion in moral cognition. Contra May's rationalist criticisms, emotions are not only able to carry morally relevant information, but can also substantially influence moral judgment and reasoning.

The faces of pessimism

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Moral Inquiry

Abstract In this commentary on May's Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind, I argue that many of the interdisciplinary moral psychologists whom May terms “pessimists” are often considerably more optimistic about the prospects for progress in moral inquiry than he contends.

Ultrastructural Lesions Produced by Alcohol and Sucrose in the Heart and Liver of C57BL Mice

1970 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 208-209
Author(s):  
K.K. SEKHRI ◽  
C.S. ALEXANDER ◽  
H.T. NAGASAWA
Keyword(s):  
Osmium Tetroxide ◽  
Male Mice ◽  
Alcohol Group ◽  
Group Iii ◽  
Group I ◽  
C57bl Mice ◽  
Group Ii

C57BL male mice (Jackson Lab., Bar Harbor, Maine) weighing about 18 gms were randomly divided into three groups: group I was fed sweetened liquid alcohol diet (modified Schenkl) in which 36% of the calories were derived from alcohol; group II was maintained on a similar diet but alcohol was isocalorically substituted by sucrose; group III was fed regular mouse chow ad lib for five months. Liver and heart tissues were fixed in 2.5% cacodylate buffered glutaraldehyde, post-fixed in 2% osmium tetroxide and embedded in Epon-araldite.

The Quantitative Ultrastructure of the Heart Muscle of Japanese Quail by Hypergravitation, Hypodynamy and Combination

1990 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-189
Author(s):  
Anton Bózner ◽  
Mikuláš Gažo ◽  
Jozef Dostál
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Quail ◽  
Heart Muscle ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Combination Group ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Group V ◽  
Group Iii ◽  
Space Flights ◽  
Group I ◽  
Quantitative Ultrastructure

It is anticipated that Japanese quail /Coturnix coturnix japonica/ will provide animal proteins in long term space flights. Consequently this species of birds is of research interest of international space program INTERCOSMOS. In the year 1987 we reported on an experiment /2/ in which the effect of chronic acceleration of 2 G hypergravitation, the hypodynamy and the simultaneous effect of chronic acceleration and the location in the centre of the turntable of the centrifuge on the protein fractions in skeletal muscles was studied. The ultrastructure of the heart muscle was now in this experiments examined as well.Japanese quail cockerels, aged 48 days were exposed to 2 G hypergravitation /group IV/ in a 6,4 m diameter centrifuge, to hypodynamy /group III/ and their combination /group V/, respectively for 6 days / Fig.1/. The hypodynamy in group III was achieved by suspending the birds in jackets without contact the floor. The group II was located in the centre ofthe turntable of the centrifuge. The control group I. was kept under normal conditions. The quantitative ultrastructure of myocard was evaluated by the methods of Weibel/3/ - this enables to determine the number, relative size and volume of mitochondria volume of single mitochondria, defficiency of mitochondrial cristae and volume of myofibrils.

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