INTENT-BASED MORALITY IN THIRD-PARTY INTERACTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM COLOMBIAN AND SPANISH CHILDREN

Most developmental studies of the role of outcomes and intentions in third-party moral evaluations sampled children from English-speaking countries and focused on harm and property transgressions. We tested instead 5- to 11-year-old children from Colombia and Spain (N = 123) employing moral scenarios involving disloyalty and unfairness. We found that the outcome-to-intent shift in judgements of transgression severity was moral domain-dependent in Colombian but not Spanish children. More specifically, by age 5 Spanish children judged failed intentional transgressions more severely than accidental transgressions regarding both disloyalty and unfairness. In comparison, Colombian children judged failed intentional transgressions more severely than accidental transgressions in the case of disloyalty but not unfairness. This suggests that it may be adaptive for children to develop sensitivity to intentionality earlier within the moral domain their own culture is more concerned about (e.g., loyalty in collectivistic cultures). Regarding punishment severity, we observed an outcome-to-intent shift in Spanish but not Colombian children. In other words, while Colombian children punished failed intentional transgressions and accidental transgressions equally for the whole age range, Spanish children began to punish failed intentional transgressions of both moral domains more severely than accidental transgressions around 8 years of age. Finally, neither Colombian nor Spanish children enjoyed engaging in punishment. Colombian children even anticipated administering punishment to feel worse than it actually felt during and after punishment allocation. These enjoyment findings suggest that retribution is unlikely to be the primary motive for children’s third-party punishment in this context.

Beliefs about Men’s Sexual Self-Control Predict Attitudes toward Women’s Immodest Clothing and Public Breastfeeding

Why do some people have negative views toward mundane behaviors such as women breastfeeding in public or wearing revealing clothing? We suggest that moral opposition to these behaviors may partly stem from their perceived effects on men’s sexual responses. We hypothesized that (a) people would stereotype men as having relatively less control of their sexual urges (i.e., lower sexual self-control) compared to women and that (b) stereotypes about men’s sexual self-control would uniquely predict attitudes about women’s mundane (but potentially sexually arousing) behaviors. Five studies show that (a) people stereotyped men (vs. women) as lacking sexual self-control (Study 1) and (b) endorsement of this stereotype was associated with opposition to public breastfeeding and immodest clothing (Studies 2-5). The effects hold even after controlling for potential confounds and seem specific to relevant moral domains, although women (vs. men) tend not to view these behaviors as moral issues.

Normative Principles are Synthetic A Priori

I argue for the claim that there are instances of a priori justified belief – in particular, justified belief in moral principles – that are not analytic, i.e., that cannot be explained solely by the understanding we have of their propositions. §1–2 provides the background necessary for understanding this claim: in particular, it distinguishes between two ways a proposition can be analytic, Basis and Constitutive, and provides the general form of a moral principle. §§3–5 consider whether Hume's Law, properly interpreted, can be established by Moore's Open Question Argument, and concludes that it cannot: while Moore's argument – appropriately modified – is effective against the idea that moral judgments are either (i) reductively analyzable or (ii) Constitutive-analytic, a different argument is needed to show that they are not (iii) Basis-analytic. Such an argument is supplied in §6. §§7–8 conclude by considering how these considerations bear on recent discussions of “alternative normative concepts”, on the epistemology of intuitions, and on the differences between disagreement in moral domains and in other a priori domains such as logic and mathematics.

noción de daño y su rol en los juicios morales. Un debate abierto

Investigadores pertenecientes a la tradición de la psicología del desarrollo cognitivo han llevado a cabo estudios que sugieren que existe un vínculo entre la percepción de daño y el dominio moral. Frente a esta propuesta unificadora del dominio moral han surgido críticas desde la psicología cultural. Haidt publicó en 1993 uno de los estudios más influyentes en esta línea, afirmando haber encontrado evidencia que sugiere la existencia de dominios morales no vinculados a la noción de daño. En este artículo se hará una presentación general del debate en torno al contenido del dominio moral. Luego presentaremos y evaluaremos el estudio de Haidt et al. (1993). Por último, presentamos resultados experimentales que cuestionan las conclusiones de ese estudio y sugieren que el debate sigue abierto. Researchers belonging to the tradition of cognitive-developmental psychology have suggested studies that the perception of harm is central to the Moral Domain. This unifying proposal of the Moral Domain has provoked the criticisms of researchers working in Cultural Psychology. Haidt published in 1993 a very influential study, claiming to have found evidence for the existence of Moral Domains not linked to the notion of harm. In this paper, we briefly present the debate around the content of the moral domain. We then critically examine the study by Haidt et al. (1993). Finally, we present experimental results that question the conclusions of their study and suggest that the debate is still open.

Developing Leaders to Serve and Servants to Lead

In this paper, we propose a model of how balanced and integrated development across spiritual, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral domains can result in a servant leader orientation for both those who are predisposed to serve but might not be leaders, and those who are leaders but might not be predisposed to serve. First, we review the benefits of servant leadership in today’s organizations and the commonly agreed upon dimensions of servant leadership. We then propose how balanced and integrated development can facilitate a transition to a servant-oriented style of leadership for both those that serve and those that lead. We discuss organizational barriers to servant leadership development, and how organizations can overcome these barriers by creating contexts in which such integrated vertical development can facilitate a cycle of servant leadership. Lastly, we make suggestions for how organizations’ human resource functions might develop servant leaders.

Moral Context, Moral Complicity And Ethical Theory

One of the dominant traditions in normative ethics is characterised by the attempt to develop a comprehensive moral theory that can distinguish right from wrong in a range of cases by drawing on a philosophical account of the good. Familiar versions of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics have emerged from this tradition. Yet such theories often seem to lack the resources needed to evaluate the broader contexts in which moral dilemmas arise, which may cause them to encourage moral complicity. Context-insensitive complicity of this sort receives surprisingly little direct philosophical attention, despite its being a ubiquitous concern for ordinary moral agents and despite the threat it poses to this form of ethical theorising. The present paper sketches the problem more formally and canvasses some leading responses before locating its source in the implicit distinction between moral and non-moral domains at the root of much traditional normative theorising.

The Moral Psychology of AI and the Ethical Opt-Out Problem

This chapter discusses the limits of normative ethics in new moral domains linked to the development of AI. In these new domains, people have the possibility to opt out of using a machine if they do not approve of the ethics that the machine is programmed to follow. In other words, even if normative ethics could determine the best moral programs, these programs would not be adopted (and thus have no positive impact) if they clashed with users’ preferences—a phenomenon that can be called “ethical opt-out.” The chapter then explores various ways in which the field of moral psychology can illuminate public perception of moral AI and inform the regulations of such AI. The chapter’s main focus is on self-driving cars, but it also explores the role of psychological science for the study of other moral algorithms.

Edith Landmann-Kalischer on Aesthetic Demarcation and Normativity

Two perennial questions in aesthetics, among others, are the demarcation question, viz., what, if anything, distinguishes the aesthetic domain from the cognitive or moral domains, and the normative question, viz., what kind of normativity, if any, does the aesthetic domain involve. Although recent attempts to answer these questions can be found in contemporary literature, in this paper I examine the answers defended by the early phenomenologist Edith Landmann-Kalischer. I show that Landmann-Kalischer answers the demarcation question by blending together a cognitivist account of aesthetic judgment with an objectivist account of beauty, and that she builds an account of aesthetic normativity on this cognitivist and objectivist basis. I contend that her subtle and unified account of aesthetic demarcation and normativity has advantages over other competing hedonist and Kantian views and, as such, merits further consideration in contemporary debates.