Does autonomous moral reasoning favor consequentialism?

This paper addresses an important issue that has been commonly debated in moral psychology, namely the normative and metaethical implications of our differing intuitive responses to morally indistinguishable dilemmas. The prominent example of the asymmetry in our responses is that people often intuitively accept pulling a switch and deny pushing as a morally permissible way of sacrificing an innocent person to save more innocent people. Joshua Greene traces our negative responses to actions involving “up close and personal” harm back to our evolutionary past and argues that this undermines the normative power of deontological judgments. I reject Greene’s argument by arguing that our theoretical moral intuitions, as opposed to concrete and mid-level ones, are independent of direct evolutionary influence because they are the product of autonomous (gene-independent) moral reasoning. I then explain how both consequentialist and deontological theoretical intuitions, which enable us to make important moral distinctions and grasp objective moral facts, are produced by the exercise of autonomous moral reasoning and the process of cultural evolution. My conclusion will be that Greene is not justified in his claim that deontology is normatively inferior to consequentialism.

Harnessing Moral Psychology to Reduce Meat Consumption

How can we make moral progress on factory farming? Part of the answer lies in human moral psychology. Meat consumption remains high, despite increased awareness of its negative impact on animal welfare. Weakness of will is part of the explanation: acceptance of the ethical arguments doesn’t always motivate changes in dietary habits. However, we draw on scientific evidence to argue that many consumers aren’t fully convinced that they morally ought to reduce their meat consumption. We then identify two key psychological mechanisms—motivated reasoning and social proof—that lead people to resist the ethical reasons. Finally, we show how to harness these psychological mechanisms to encourage reductions in meat consumption. A central lesson for moral progress generally is that durable social change requires socially-embedded reasoning.

Moral psychology from the lab to the wild: Relief registries as a paradigm for studying real-world altruism

Experimental psychology’s recent shift toward low-effort, high-volume methods (e.g.,self-reports, online studies) and away from the more effortful study of naturalistic behavior raises concerns about the ecological validity of findings from these fields, concerns that have become particularly apparent in the field of moral psychology. To help address these concerns, we introduce a paradigm allowing researchers to investigate an important, widespread form of altruistic behavior – charitable donations – in a manner balancing competing concerns about internal validity, ecological validity, and ease of implementation: relief registries, which leverage existing online gift registry platforms to allow research subjects to choose among highly neededdonation items to ship directly to charitable organizations. Here, we demonstrate the use of relief registries in two experiments exploring the ecological validity of the finding from our own research that people are more willing to help others after having imagined themselves doing so. In this way, we sought to provide a blueprint for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their own research in a narrow sense (i.e., by using the relief registry paradigm we introduce) and in broader terms by adapting paradigms that take advantage of modern technology to directly impact others’ lives outside the lab.

The Islamic Concept of Happiness: Psychological Analysis

The article is devoted to the study of the Islamic concept of happiness from the standpoint of psychological science. Two approaches to the understanding of happiness, originating in Antiquity, are considered: hedonistic and eudemonistic; the cultural specifi city of happiness is investigated through the prism of ethnocultural values. It outlines the views on psychological health and well-being in Islam, as well as the views on social and individual predictors of happiness of medieval and modern Muslim scholars. The author concludes that the concept of happiness and the idea of it has its own specifi city in diff erent cultures. The concept of happiness among Muslims is directly related to their religious values and worldview, as well as to the peculiarities of ethnic culture. Since Muslim communities are collectivist, the happiness of an individual is seen as closely related to the public good. For a Muslim, the path to happiness is associated with improving his character and the formation of moral values and behavior. Modern Psychology and Psychotherapy are developing the ideas about moral psychology and the ways of its formation as the basis for the psychological wellbeing of an individual.

Measuring Impartial Beneficence: A Kantian Perspective on the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale

To capture genuine utilitarian tendencies, (Kahane et al., Psychological Review 125:131, 2018) developed the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS) based on two subscales, which measure the commitment to impartial beneficence and the willingness to cause harm for the greater good. In this article, I argue that the impartial beneficence subscale, which breaks ground with previous research on utilitarian moral psychology, does not distinctively measure utilitarian moral judgment. I argue that Kantian ethics captures the all-encompassing impartial concern for the well-being of all human beings. The Oxford Utilitarianism Scale draws, in fact, a point of division that places Kantian and utilitarian theories on the same track. I suggest that the impartial beneficence subscale needs to be significantly revised in order to capture distinctively utilitarian judgments. Additionally, I propose that psychological research should focus on exploring multiple sources of the phenomenon of impartial beneficence without categorizing it as exclusively utilitarian.

Rationalizing (Vernünfteln)

Kant was a keen psychological observer and theorist of the forms, mechanisms and sources of self-deception. In this Element, the author discusses the role of rationalizing/Vernünfteln for Kant's moral psychology, normative ethics and philosophical methodology. By drawing on the full breadth of examples of rationalizing Kant discusses, the author shows how rationalizing can extend to general features of morality and corrupt rational agents thoroughly (albeit not completely and not irreversibly). Furthermore, the author explains the often-overlooked roles common human reason, empirical practical reason and even pure practical reason play for rationalizing. Kant is aware that rationality is a double-edged sword; reason is the source of morality and of our dignity, but it also enables us to seemingly justify moral transgressions to ourselves, and it creates an interest in this justification in the first place. Finally, this Element discusses whether Kant's ethical theory itself can be criticised as a product of rationalizing.

Agency and Moral Psychology

This chapter articulates a view of Buddhist agency grounded in the theory of dependent origination. It addresses the Augustinian concepts of caused and uncaused actions. It argues that Buddhist conception of agency and moral evaluation are not grounded in this Western theory of freedom of the will, but of participation in a web of dependent origination, resulting in a deterministic action theory. The chapter explores the implications of this determinism, and the problems that arise from it. Also discussed is the distinction between the self and a person, the concept of twofold self-grasping and the duality it creates

Reseña del libro The Moral Psychology of Hope de Claudia Blöser y Titus Stahl (2019)

«Claudia Blöser y Titus Stahl han reunido un volumen amplio sobre la naturaleza, la historia y el significado social de la esperanza. El volumen no escatima en historia; seis de sus quince capítulos se centran en la historia filosófica de la esperanza, y otros incluyen una discusión extensa de figuras históricas y tradiciones. El volumen también hace contribuciones a nuestra comprensión de la naturaleza de la esperanza, considerada tanto como una actitud como un rasgo (quizás una virtud) del carácter. El volumen se cierra con una sección sobre los contextos sociales de la esperanza, donde se presta atención a temas como el papel de la esperanza en la justificación política y la racionalidad de esperar una prosperidad humana generalizada ante un posible colapso ambiental. Es un volumen rico. Tendré ocasión a continuación para tocar cada uno de sus capítulos.»

Zdolność reagowania na racje a odpowiedzialność moralna

Przekład na podstawie: „Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility”, w: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, red. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 81–106; przedruk w: John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 63–83. Przekład za zgodą Autora. Autor przedstawia model odpowiedzialności moralnej oparty na faktycznej sekwencji i pojęciu zdolności reagowania na racje, a następnie przeprowadza analogię między tym modelem a opracowanym przez Roberta Nozicka modelem wiedzy opartej na faktycznej sekwencji, oraz wprowadza pojęcie semikompatybilizmu.