scholarly journals Moral Reasoning Performance Determines Epistemic Peerdom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

scholarly journals Moral reasoning performance determines epistemic peerdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

Abstract We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

scholarly journals Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Better Than

Moral error theorists hold that morality is deeply mistaken, thus raising the question of whether and how moral judgments and utterances should continue to be employed. Proposals include simply abolishing morality (Richard Garner), adopting some revisionary fictionalist stance toward morality (Richard Joyce), and conserving moral judgments and utterances unchanged (Jonas Olson). I defend a fourth proposal, namely revisionary moral expressivism, which recommends replacing cognitivist moral judgments and utterances with non-cognitivist ones. Given that non-cognitivist attitudes are not truth apt, revisionary expressivism does not involve moral error. Moreover, revisionary expressivism has the theoretical resources to retain many of the useful features of morality, such as moral motivation, moral disagreement, and moral reasoning. Revisionary expressivism fares better than the three major alternatives in both avoiding moral error and preserving these useful features of morality. I also show how this position differs from the “revolutionary expressivism” of Sebastian Köhler and Michael Ridge.

scholarly journals Edgcumbe. 2019 - The relationship between cognitive reflection and morality judgments are mediated by thinking dispositions.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Edgcumbe
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Cognitive Reflection Test ◽  
Thinking Dispositions ◽  
Intuitive Thinking ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Experiential Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:Performance on Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is thought to predict moral judgments concerning the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). This relationship is hypothesised to be mediated by the tendency toward thinking dispositions such as actively open-minded thinking (AOT), rational (REI-R) and experiential thinking (REI-E), and religiosity. The relationship between cognitive reflection, intuitive thinking and moral judgments with thinking dispositions are examined. As the MFQ measures five types of moral judgments which include ‘individualising values’ – harm and fairness, and ‘binding values’ - loyalty, authority and purity it was hypothesised that performance on these moral foundations would be influenced by thinking dispositions and cognitive reflection. Results indicate that the relationship between cognitive reflection and moral judgments were mediated differently by thinking dispositions. Religious participants and intuitive thinkers alike scored highly on binding moral values. Analytic thinkers and non-religious participants scored highly on individualising moral values. The data is consistent with religiosity and intuition being inherently linked and suggests that moral values are influenced by individual differences in thinking dispositions and cognitive style.

Moral Perception

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Perception

We can see a theft, hear a lie, and feel a stabbing. These are morally important perceptions. But are they also moral perceptions—distinctively moral responses? This book develops an original account of moral perceptions, shows how they figure in human experience, and argues that they provide moral knowledge. The book offers a theory of perception as an informative representational relation to objects and events. It describes the experiential elements in perception, illustrates moral perception in relation to everyday observations, and explains how moral perception justifies moral judgments and contributes to objectivity in ethics. Moral perception does not occur in isolation. Intuition and emotion may facilitate it, influence it, and be elicited by it. The book explores the nature and variety of intuitions and their relation to both moral perception and emotion, providing the broadest and most refined statement to date of this widely discussed intuitionist view in ethics. It also distinguishes several kinds of moral disagreement and assesses the challenge it poses for ethical objectivism. Philosophically argued but interdisciplinary in scope and interest, the book advances our understanding of central problems in ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and the theory of the emotions.

Sex Differences in Moral Judgments? A Test of Gilligan's Theory

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Friedman ◽  
Amy B. Robinson ◽  
Britt L. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Sex Differences ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Confidence Intervals ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Personality Measures ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Rank Orders

This study was designed to test Gilligan's (1982) claim that men and women differ in moral judgments. One hundred and one college students read four traditional moral dilemmas and rated the importance of 12 considerations for deciding how the protagonist should respond. Six of the statements were derived from the description by Kohlberg et al. (1978) of post-conventional moral reasoning, and six were derived from Gilligan's description of women's style of moral reasoning. Subjects also rated themselves on a measure of sex-typed personality attributes. There were no reliable sex differences on either of the types of moral reasoning, and confidence intervals allowed the rejection of all but negligible differences in the directions predicted by Gilligan's model. Furthermore, men and women showed highly similar rank orders of the items for each dilemma. The personality measures also failed to predict individual differences in moral judgments.

Cautiously optimistic rationalism may not be cautious enough

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin F. Landy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments

Abstract May expresses optimism about the source, content, and consequences of moral judgments. However, even if we are optimistic about their source (i.e., reasoning), some pessimism is warranted about their content, and therefore their consequences. Good reasoners can attain moral knowledge, but evidence suggests that most people are not good reasoners, which implies that most people do not attain moral knowledge.

Cognitive Reflection Effects on Time Discounting

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Białek ◽  
Przemysław Sawicki
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Individual Difference ◽  
Delay Discounting ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Cognitive Reflection Test ◽  
Process Information ◽  
Time Discounting ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
The Way

Abstract. In this work, we investigated individual differences in cognitive reflection effects on delay discounting – a preference for smaller sooner over larger later payoff. People are claimed to prefer more these alternatives they considered first – so-called reference point – over the alternatives they considered later. Cognitive reflection affects the way individuals process information, with less reflective individuals relying predominantly on the first information they consider, thus, being more susceptible to reference points as compared to more reflective individuals. In Experiment 1, we confirmed that individuals who scored high on the Cognitive Reflection Test discount less strongly than less reflective individuals, but we also show that such individuals are less susceptible to imposed reference points. Experiment 2 replicated these findings additionally providing evidence that cognitive reflection predicts discounting strength and (in)dependency to reference points over and above individual difference in numeracy.

scholarly journals I think, therefore I forgive: The role of reasoning in forgiving accidental harms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Bastien Trémolière
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Condemnation

People experience a strong conflict while condemning someone who brought about an accidental harm, her innocent intention exonerating her, but the harmful outcome incriminating her. In the present research (total N = 4879), we explore how reasoning ability and cognitive style relate to how people choose to resolve this conflict and judge the accidental harms. A first set of studies (1a-c) showed that individual differences in cognitive style predicted severity of judgments in fictitious accidental harms scenarios, with more able (or willing) reasoners being less harsh in their judgments. A second set of studies (2a-c) relied on experimental manipulations of cognitive load (Dot matrix, Time pressure, Mortality Salience manipulations), aiming to tax available cognitive resources to participants while evaluating third-party harmful behaviors. These manipulations, however, failed to modulate people’s moral judgments for accidental harms. We discuss the importance of individual differences in reasoning ability in the assessment of accidental harms, and we also propose potential explanations for the failure of our experimental manipulations to affect severity of moral condemnation.

Publicity and the Development of Bentham’s Theory of Value

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Postema
Keyword(s):  
Simple Model ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Core Theory ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Law Making

Bentham was tempted to think of the welfare of the community as a grand composite of the pleasures and pains of individuals and he suggested that it is possible to construct a powerful ethical deliberating machine capable of churning out precise, determinate, and publicly verifiable judgments and prescriptions for all moral occasions (the “felicific calculus”). Yet, he also articulated a sophisticated critique of the assumptions on which this model rests. Although pleasure and pain must ultimately anchor all moral judgments, he insisted that the language of the ordinary business of utilitarian moral deliberation, policy making, and law making must be fully public. Despite his criticisms of the quale conception of pleasure, Bentham did not abandon rationality or the principle of utility. Proper utilitarian reasoning still, in Bentham’s view, involved “calculation”—that is, tracing out the consequences of all the options for action, laws, or institutions, consequencesassessed in terms of their impact on the welfare of all the members of the community in view. But these calculations need not fit the simple model, in fact, they must not, since the simple model cannot meet the demands of moral reasoning, in particular the demands of publicity. Bentham’s universal consequentialism took for its core theory of value concerns about expectations and interests, rather than immediate sensings of pleasure or pain.

scholarly journals Individual differences in anchoring effect: Evidence for the role of insufficient adjustment

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Predrag Teovanović
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Systematic Effect ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Anchoring Effect ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Process Theories ◽  
Dual Process Theories

Although the anchoring effect is one of the most reliable results of experimental psychology, researchers have only recently begun to examine the role of individual differences in susceptibility to this cognitive bias. Yet, first correlational studies yielded inconsistent results, failing to identify any predictors that have a systematic effect on anchored decisions. The present research seeks to remedy methodological shortcomings of foregoing research by employing modified within-subject anchoring procedure. Results confirmed the robustness of phenomenon in extended paradigm and replicated previous findings on anchor’s direction and distance as significant experimental factors of the anchoring effect size. Obtained measures of individual differences in susceptibility to anchoring were fairly reliable but shared only small portion of variability with intelligence, cognitive reflection, and basic personality traits. However, in a group of more reflective subjects, substantial negative correlation between intelligence and anchoring was detected. This finding indicates that, at least for some subjects, effortful cognitive process of adjustment plays role in the emergence of the anchoring effect, which is in line with expectations of dual-process theories of human reasoning.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document