Psychologies of Ethics

Ethical Life ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Webb Keane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Social Existence ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Ethical Stance

This chapter explores some of the major findings in developmental, cognitive, and moral psychology that have been taken as evidence for the foundations of ethics. It looks at research on human capacities and propensities for things such as sharing and cooperation, intention-seeking, empathy, self-consciousness, norm-seeking and enforcement, discrimination, and role-swapping. While these human capacities are necessary, they are not sufficient conditions for ethical life. What they help explain is what it is about humans that makes them prone to taking an ethical stance. For the psychology of ethics to have a full social existence, it must be manifest in ways that are taken to be ethical by someone. Ethics must be embodied in certain palpable media such as words or deeds or bodily habits. The ethical implications must be at least potentially recognizable to other people.

I Eat, Therefore I Am

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Kelly ◽  
Nicolae Morar
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Eating Habits ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Run Up

This chapter examines the set of relations that hold between food and cuisine, eating and dining, and norms, social roles, and identities, in a way that continues to be informed by current work in empirical moral psychology. It unpacks the notion of a social role in terms of social norms, the often unwritten rules that regulate behavior and social interactions, and describes recent empirical work that illuminates the power and psychological underpinning of norm-based cognition, with an emphasis on how disgust animates many food norms. Finally, it discusses the ethical implications of this perspective for assessing food norms and considers how attempts to alter a person’s eating habits can run up against deep and distinctive forms of psychological resistance when they are also attempts to change who she is.

Ethical Life

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Webb Keane
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Conversational Interaction ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Theories Of Mind ◽  
Ethical Stance ◽  
Social Causes

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? This book offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, the book takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history—and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. The book looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. It explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others. Certain to provoke debate, the book presents an entirely new way of thinking about ethics, morals, and the factors that shape them.

Mood and Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Plantinga
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Ethical Significance

Our understanding of the moral psychology of screen stories is incomplete and underdeveloped unless we examine the ethical significance of moods, which are quite different than emotions. This chapter examines the role of moods in screen stories. More specifically, it shows how moods figure into the ethical implications of screen stories. To understand what moods in screen stories are, we must first distinguish between moods that screen stories have and moods that people have; they are different things. Moods are significant for an ethics of screen stories because (a) moods express a perspective, (b) moods are closely related to moral understanding, and (c) moods have effects on the spectator that have ethical implications.

scholarly journals An ethical perspective for researchers using travel blog analysis as a method of data collection

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979911774813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayley Stainton ◽  
Elitza Iordanova
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Ethical Stance ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Travel Blog

Social researchers have been required to consider the potential ethical implications of their research since research began. Recently however, the importance placed upon research ethics has undoubtedly increased, evident through the formation of additional ethic committees, the production of various ethical guidelines and the increased number of publications addressing the concept. However, with the emergence of new and diverse research approaches, it can be suggested that there should also be the development of new and diverse ethical approaches. In this article, we consider the ethical stance taken when undertaking travel blog analysis and argue that due to the diverse and continuously evolving nature of travel blogs, the blanket approach that is so frequently adopted by researchers is not sufficient. We reflect on the ethics of utilising travel blog content as a method of data collection by considering the importance of whether the blogger is viewed as a human subject, whether data collected from blogs are public or private, the need for informed consent and whether the blogger should be viewed as an author or a respondent. We then proceed to contribute to the body of existing ethical research by proposing a set of broad ethical principles that can be applied for those undertaking travel blog analysis.

Some Contributions to the Theory of Near-Critical Bisexual Branching Processes

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (02) ◽  
pp. 492-505
Author(s):  
M. Molina ◽  
M. Mota ◽  
A. Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Branching Process ◽  
Branching Processes ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Positive Probability ◽  
Limit Laws ◽  
Bisexual Branching Processes ◽  
Probabilistic Evolution

We investigate the probabilistic evolution of a near-critical bisexual branching process with mating depending on the number of couples in the population. We determine sufficient conditions which guarantee either the almost sure extinction of such a process or its survival with positive probability. We also establish some limiting results concerning the sequences of couples, females, and males, suitably normalized. In particular, gamma, normal, and degenerate distributions are proved to be limit laws. The results also hold for bisexual Bienaymé–Galton–Watson processes, and can be adapted to other classes of near-critical bisexual branching processes.

The extinction time of a general birth and death process with catastrophes

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 851-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Brockwell
Keyword(s):  
Laplace Transform ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Death Process ◽  
Extinction Time ◽  
Birth And Death Process ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Laplace Transform ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

The Laplace transform of the extinction time is determined for a general birth and death process with arbitrary catastrophe rate and catastrophe size distribution. It is assumed only that the birth rates satisfyλ0= 0,λj> 0 for eachj> 0, and. Necessary and sufficient conditions for certain extinction of the population are derived. The results are applied to the linear birth and death process (λj=jλ, µj=jμ) with catastrophes of several different types.

Normal approximations to discrete unimodal distributions

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 1013-1018
Author(s):  
B. G. Quinn ◽  
H. L. MacGillivray
Keyword(s):  
Stationary Distribution ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Random Variables ◽  
Hypergeometric Distribution ◽  
Death Process ◽  
Normal Approximations ◽  
Discrete Random Variables ◽  
Birth Death

Sufficient conditions are presented for the limiting normality of sequences of discrete random variables possessing unimodal distributions. The conditions are applied to obtain normal approximations directly for the hypergeometric distribution and the stationary distribution of a special birth-death process.

Cooperation and obligation in early parent-child relationships

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Infant Survival ◽  
Peer Experiences ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
Early Parent ◽  
Collaborative Skills ◽  
Parent Child Relationships

Abstract Tomasello's moral psychology of obligation would be developmentally deepened by greater attention to early experiences of cooperation and shared social agency between parents and infants, evolved to promote infant survival. They provide a foundation for developing understanding of the mutual obligations of close relationships that contribute (alongside peer experiences) to growing collaborative skills, fairness expectations, and fidelity to social norms.

Socratic Moral Psychology

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Brickhouse ◽  
Nicholas D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology

Behavior in the Brain

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin M. Monti ◽  
Adrian M. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Motor Output ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Minimally Conscious ◽  
Brain Insults ◽  
Brain Behavior

Recent evidence has suggested that functional neuroimaging may play a crucial role in assessing residual cognition and awareness in brain injury survivors. In particular, brain insults that compromise the patient’s ability to produce motor output may render standard clinical testing ineffective. Indeed, if patients were aware but unable to signal so via motor behavior, they would be impossible to distinguish, at the bedside, from vegetative patients. Considering the alarming rate with which minimally conscious patients are misdiagnosed as vegetative, and the severe medical, legal, and ethical implications of such decisions, novel tools are urgently required to complement current clinical-assessment protocols. Functional neuroimaging may be particularly suited to this aim by providing a window on brain function without requiring patients to produce any motor output. Specifically, the possibility of detecting signs of willful behavior by directly observing brain activity (i.e., “brain behavior”), rather than motoric output, allows this approach to reach beyond what is observable at the bedside with standard clinical assessments. In addition, several neuroimaging studies have already highlighted neuroimaging protocols that can distinguish automatic brain responses from willful brain activity, making it possible to employ willful brain activations as an index of awareness. Certainly, neuroimaging in patient populations faces some theoretical and experimental difficulties, but willful, task-dependent, brain activation may be the only way to discriminate the conscious, but immobile, patient from the unconscious one.

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