Care and Justice in Real-Life Moral Reasoning

Moral reasoning of 57 (Time 1) and 59 (Time 2) nursing, social-work and law-enforcement students was investigated in terms of care and justice reasoning about hypothetical and real-life dilemmas. The analysis methods were the Ethic of Care Interview, the Moral Judgment Interview, Lyons' Moral Orientation Scheme and Wark and Krebs' classification of real-life dilemmas. The type of dilemma predicted moral orientation usage. Prosocial dilemmas pulled for care and antisocial dilemmas for justice orientation. Level of justice reasoning varied according to the type of dilemma. Real-life care reasoning was consistent with participants' competence, with the exception of transgression-type dilemmas at Time 2. Levels of care and justice reasoning were highly correlated with each other. These results underscore the importance of the dilemma type and suggest that care reasoning is a significant part of real life morality. The study recommends the ECI as a new model to account for real-life care reasoning.     

Culture and moral judgment: how are conflicts between justice and interpersonal responsibilities resolved?

A 2-session study examined Indian and American adults' and children's (N = 140) reasoning about moral dilemmas involving conflicts between interpersonal and justice expectations. Most Indians gave priority to the interpersonal expectations, whereas most Americans gave priority to the justice expectations. Indians tended to categorize their conflict resolutions in moral terms. In contrast, when Americans gave priority to the interpersonal alternatives, they tended to categorize their resolutions in personal terms. Results imply that Indians possess a postconventional moral code in which interpersonal responsibilities are seen in as fully principled terms as justice obligations and may be accorded precedence over justice obligations. Findings also suggest that a personal morality of interpersonal responsiveness and caring is linked to highly rights-oriented cultural views, such as those emphasized in the United States.     

Gender differences in moral reasoning

This research tests Gilligan's hypothesis that men are more likely to consider moral dilemmas chiefly in terms of justice and individual rights, whereas women are more likely to be chiefly concerned with questions of care and relationships with others. In addition, we have investigated the effects of dilemma content upon orientation of moral judgment. Protocols from interviews with 50 college students, half women and half men, to three moral dilemmas were coded according to moral orientation. Results indicated that both moral orientations were widely used by both men and women, but that women were more likely to employ prodominantly care considerations. In a test of mean differences in proportion of justice responses, content of the specific moral dilemma showed a strong influence upon moral reasoning. Results suggest that both gender and situational factors need to be considered in our understanding of moral reasoning.     

Moral judgment: Theory and research on differences between males and females

That men and women differ in their moral orientations is a commonly held stereotype. The view that men are morally superior can be found in the writings of philosophers and psychologists (most notably Freud). Recently, Carol Gilligan (Harvard Educational Review, 1977, 47, 431–517) has entered this discussion bringing to it what she calls a “different [woman's] voice.” In this paper, the theory of an ethic of care is described and contrasted with Kohlberg's morality of justice. The empirical support for Gilligan's claim that men and women differ in their moral orientations is examined and a discussion of Gilligan's contribution to an integrated theory of morality is offered.     

Care and Justice Moral Orientation: A Scale for Its Assessment

A quantitative measure of adult moral orientation, based on the theoretical frameworks of Kohlberg and Gilligan, was developed to measure preference for "justice" or "care"-oriented moral thinking. The Moral Orientation Scale Using Childhood Dilemmas (MOS), a short, objective measure, presents adults with a series of dilemmas frequently faced by children, each followed by two care-oriented and two justice-oriented responses to the dilemma. The procedures for developing and scoring the measure are discussed, and validity and reliability data are presented. Used with both male and female social work and law students, as expected, the MOS shows males to be more justice-oriented in their moral reasoning than females who are shown to be more care-oriented. Moreover, in further agreement with Gilligan's theory that gender and experience, taken together, are related to moral reasoning style, male lawyers and female social workers are shown to have the strongest preferences.     

Expressivism and Moral Dilemmas: A Response to Marino

Simon Blackburn’s expressivist logic of attitudes aims to explain how we can use non-assertoric moral judgements in logically valid arguments. Patricia Marino has recently argued that Blackburn’s logic faces a dilemma: either it cannot account for the place of moral dilemmas in moral reasoning or, if it can, it makes an illicit distinction between two different kinds of moral dilemma. Her target is the logic’s definition of validity as satisfiability, according to which validity requires an avoidance of attitudinal inconsistency. Against Marino’s arguments, I contend that expressivists following Blackburn are able to show how we appreciate the validity of arguments found in dilemma-contexts, and that Marino’s argument concerning the distinction between contingent moral dilemmas and logical moral dilemmas rests on a mistake concerning the logical representation of a contingent dilemma.     

Newsworthy Moral Dilemmas: Justice,Caring, and Gender

Gilligan (1982) put forth a care moralorientation based on women's responses to moraldilemmas. We tested in 2 studies Gilligan's predictedgender differences and the effect of dilemma content onmoral orientation. We used real-life dilemmasconsisting of the Baby M surrogate motherhood case andthe Kimberly Mays case where babies were switched atbirth;these dilemmas had the advantage of beingstandardized across all participants, and of being moreinvolving than hypothetical dilemmas. The Baby M dilemmaelicited primarily justice responses while the KimberlyMays case elicited care responses; yet in both these dilemmas, when compared to men, womenscored higher on care, and lower on justice.Additionally, moral orientation was related to specificresolutions ofthe dilemmas.Thus both genders wereflexible in their use of justice and care orientationsdepending on the dilemma, with gender differences stillapparent within dilemmas.     

Beyond physical harm: how preference for consequentialism and primary psychopathy relate to decisions on a monetary trolley dilemma

When is it appropriate to harm a single person to help multiple others? Psychologists have investigated this question through the study of hypothetical “trolley” dilemmas involving extreme physical harm life-or-death situations that contrast outcome-focussed, consequentialist moral reasoning with principle-focussed, deontological moral reasoning. The present studies investigate whether participants’ preference for consequentialism generalises across domains. We administered traditional physical harm dilemmas as well as a trolley-type dilemma involving monetary harm. Across four studies (N?=?809), an internal meta-analysis demonstrated that participants’ responses to the traditional dilemmas predicted their responses to the monetary dilemma. Additionally, previous research has uncovered that primary psychopathy predicts consequentialist responses on physical harm dilemmas. The current work uncovers that this association does not generalise to monetary harm dilemmas, suggesting that the association between primary psychopathy and consequentialist reasoning is not related to consequentialist reasoning per se, but to the idiosyncrasies of traditional harm-centric trolley dilemmas instead.     

Photographic depictions of the self: Gender and age differences in social connectedness

With primarily (88%) Caucasian participants, the autophotography method [R. C. Ziller (1990), Photographing the Self, Newbury Park, California: Sage] was used to test for gender differences in social connectedness as hypothesized by a number of scholars [e.g., M. F. Belenky, B. M. Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger, and J. M. Tarule (1986), Women's Ways of Knowing, New York: Basic Books; N. Chodorow (1978), The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley: University of California Press; C. Gilligan (1982), In a Different Voice, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; J. V. Jordan (1991), “The Relational Self: A New Perspective for Understanding Women's Development,” in J. Strauss and G. R. Goethals (Eds.), The Self: Interdisciplinary Approaches, New York: Springer-Verlag; N. P. Lyons (1983), “Two Perspectives: On Self, Relationships, and Mortality,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 53, pp. 125–145]. Relative to men (N=59), women (N=142) included more pictures of self-with-others, people smiling, people touching, groups of people, and family in their autophotographic essays. Relative to women, men had more photos of the self-alone and more photos involving physical activity and motor vehicles. Age trends suggested (a) increasing connectedness among women but not among men, and (b) greater transcendence of temporal and material concerns for both genders. When taken together with past findings employing more verbal methods, the results provide compelling evidence that women define themselves in more socially connected terms whereas men's self-definitions emphasize the quality of separateness.     

Reasonable Pluralism,Interculturalism, and Sterba on Question-Beggingness

In From Rationality to Equality, James Sterba (From rationality to equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) argues that the non-moral, and non-controversial, principle of logic, the principle that good arguments do not beg-the-question, provides a rationally conclusive response to egoism. He calls this “the principle of non-question-beggingness” and it is supposed to justify a conception of “Morality as Compromise.” Sterba’s basic idea is that principles of morality provide a non-question-begging compromise between self-interested reasons and other-regarding reasons. I will focus, first, on Sterba’s rejection of the alternative Kantian rationalist justification of morality, and second, I discuss the logical principle of non-question-beggingness and I argue that Sterba is wrong to assume that there is a formal, logical requirement that a rational egoist must provide a non-question-begging defense of egoism. I argue that, like the Kantian, Sterba needs a more substantial conception of practical reason to derive his conclusion. My third focus is the problem of reasonable pluralism and public reason (Rawls in Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; The law of peoples with the idea of public reason revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999). The Rawlsian principle of public reason is analogous to Sterba’s principle of non-question-beggingness. Sterba recognizes that public policies should respect competing perspectives and that a public conception of justice must be justifiable to all reasonable people. The problem is that that reasonable people disagree about fundamental moral questions. Rawls calls this the fact of reasonable pluralism. I argue that an intercultural conception of justice is necessary to provide a response to reasonable pluralism and a shared basis for public reason.     

The Influences of Sex and Gender-Role Identity on Moral Cognition and Prosocial Personality Traits

The relations of sex and gender-role identity to moral thought and prosocial personality traits were examined. Two hundred and nine men and women rated the importance of real-life, care-related, justice-related, and mixed (both care- and justice-related) moral dilemmas. Responses on the real-life and mixed dilemmas also were scored for care and justice orientations. Women and feminine persons viewed moral conflicts as more important than did men and masculine people. On the mixed dilemmas, women scored higher than men on care reasoning, whereas men scored higher than women on justice reasoning. Regardless of sex or gender role, relational real-life dilemmas evoked higher importance and care reasoning scores than did nonrelational ones. Women and persons high in femininity showed more empathic concern for other people. Masculine persons scored lower on personal distress, whereas androgynous persons reported more helpful behaviors than did all others.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN MORAL REASONING Stable or Situational?

Some researchers have proposed that women prefer care reasoning, which considers issues of need and sacrifice, and men prefer justice reasoning, which considers issues of fairness and rights. However, differences in approach to moral reasoning may be due to the different types of dilemmas women and men encounter rather than to differences in the ways men and women approach moral problems. The present study employed parenting dilemmas to determine whether restriction of domain would reduce gender differences in moral reasoning orientation. Dilemmas were presented or elicited and differed in difficulty, importance, and personal relevance to investigate the relationship between situational characteristics and care or justice reasoning. Women and men did not differ in their use of care or justice reasoning when the domain was restricted, supporting the conclusion that differences in moral reasoning orientation result from differences in current life situations rather than from stable gender characteristics.     

Carol Gilligan's theory of sex differences in the development of moral reasoning during adolescence

Gilligan's work, which focuses on sex differences in moral reasoning, the perception of violence, the resolution of sexual dilemmas and abortion decisions, poses a major challenge to Kohlberg's theory by introducing a feminist perspective of moral development. Kohlberg had shown that the average female attained a moral judgment rating of stage three (good boy-nice girl), while adolescent males score at level four (law and order) and are more likely to move on to postconventional levels. Gilligan suggests that these findings reveal a gender bias, not that females are less mature than boys. Men and women follow different voices. Men tend to organize social relationships in a hierarchical order and subscribe to a morality of rights. Females value interpersonal connectedness, care, sensitivity, and responsibility to people. Kohlberg's scoring criteria give the interpersonal care orientations of females lower ratings than the principled justice orientation. Hence, Gilligan identifies different developmental stages for females. However, she does not claim that one system is better; both are equally valid. Only by integrating these complementary male (justice) and female (care) orientations will we be able to realize our full human potential in moral development.     

Effects of dilemma type,language, and emotion arousal on utilitarian vs deontological choice to moral dilemmas in Chinese–English bilinguals

The present study examines how dilemma type (personal or impersonal moral dilemma), language (native or foreign) and emotion arousal to a dilemma could affect Chinese–English bilinguals' deontological vs utilitarian moral choices regarding 39 moral dilemmas. How emotion arousal plays a mediating role in the effects of dilemma type and language on moral choices is also investigated. As shown in multilevel analyses, participants made fewer utilitarian choices for personal dilemmas than impersonal dilemmas. Although emotion arousal of dilemmas significantly mediated this effect of dilemma type, the indirect effect of dilemma type through arousal on moral choices was inconsistent with the direct effect of dilemma type on moral choices. For the effect of language, participants made more utilitarian choices in the Footbridge (personal) dilemma that was presented in foreign language than in native language. However, this effect was not mediated by arousal, suggesting that it could not be attributed to the emotion‐reducing effect of foreign language. Moreover, there was no language effect on moral choices in analyses that included all 39 dilemmas or only 22 personal dilemmas, indicating the need in future research for further identifying the potential mediators that trigger the foreign language effect on moral choices.     

Ethical decision making among family therapists and individual therapists

In this study, we investigated the ethical decision making of 30 individual and 30 family therapists in order to detect the types of decision making used by practicing therapists. Informants responded to three ethical dilemmas. Two of the situations were hypothetical. The third dilemma was a situation the informant had experienced in practice. Each interview was assessed for decision-making style, using content analysis. Kohlberg's justice reasoning and Gilligan's care reasoning provided the conceptual foundations for this analysis. The results suggest that both family and individual therapists prefer care reasoning on all dilemma types. There was significantly more care reasoning demonstrated on the personal dilemma than on the hypothetical dilemmas. Characteristics of informants did not provide clear explanations for the differences found in reasoning.     

Variations in Level of Moral Judgment as a Function of Type of Dilemma and Moral Choice

This study compares the predictive power of two models of moral judgment: (a) Kohlberg's model, which predicts stage consistency across varying content, and (b) a model that predicts variations in stage as a function of complex interactions between people and social contexts. Forty university students were asked to make and justify choices on three moral dilemmas—a dilemma involving the sale of defective merchandise (selling dilemma) and two dilemmas from Kohlberg's test of moral judgment. Half the participants made hypothetical choices on the selling dilemma; the other half were offered a selfish incentive—money—for concealing the defects in the merchandise. In support of the interactional model, (a) participants scored lower on the selling dilemma than on Kohlberg's test, (b) the monetary incentive affected moral choices, (c) participants justified the choice to conceal defects in the merchandise with significantly lower stage moral judgments than they invoked in support of the decision to disclose its defects, and (d) participants who upheld the choice to disclose supported it with higher stage justifications than those who rejected it. Surprisingly, however, participants who stood to make money disclosed more about the defects in the article and charged less than participants who did not.     

Moral Reasoning and Rhetoric: The Acceptability of Arguments About AIDS-Related Dilemmas1

The disease AIDS has given rise to a host of social dilemmas. Here we explore the rhetoric that affects people's reasoning about actions taken in the face of such dilemmas. We presented a group of 514 undergraduates with vignettes depicting dilemmas having to do with the distribution of sexually explicit educational material to high school students and with the forced HIV blood testing of factory workers. Subjects rated the acceptability of arguments for and against courses of action taken by persons in the vignettes. The arguments embodied concerns typical of moral reasoning at each of Kohlberg's six stages. We found that the acceptability of stage-typical moral arguments about AIDS-related dilemmas depends on both the dilemma at hand and the course of action being argued for. We argue that knowledge of how people respond to different kinds of moral arguments concerning AIDS-related dilemmas is valuable for informing efforts to advocate humane and lifesaving policies to particular audiences.     

Moral Judgment in Extreme Social Contexts: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight and Physicians Who Strike?1

This paper compares two examples of moral action within extreme social contexts: the refusal of Israeli reserve soldiers to perform their military service during the war in Lebanon (1982–1983), and the refusal of Israeli physicians to provide medical care during a “labor war”, that is a strike. This paper examines the cognitive developmental premise that with an increase in the actors' stage of moral development there will be a greater consistency between hypothetical and actual moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1984). Blasi's (1983) concept of personal integrity, that is, the consistency between the actors' judgment concerning the morality of an action and the action that was actually performed, is examined as well. The findings show that the “refusing” soldiers manifested stage consistency in their action, whereas the physicians failed to justify their action in line with their moral competence. Whereas the soldiers viewed their action as highly moral, the physicians viewed their strike action as unfortunate but necessary. The motivation of the two groups of actors to act in line with their behavioral choices is discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Models of Revelation. By Avery Dulles. Pp. xi, 345, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1983, £6.50. New and Old in Cod's Revelation. By Benedict Englezakis. Pp.122, Cambridge, James Clarke, 1982, £9.95. Divine Revelation: The Basic Issues. By Paul Helm. Pp.xii, 129, London, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1982, £5.25. Revelation and Its Interpretation. By Aylward Shorter. Pp.xiii, 277, London Geoffrey Chapman, 1983, £7.95. The Faith of the Old Testament: A History. By Werner H. Schmidt. Pp.x, 302, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983, £15.00. Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs. By Francis Landy. Pp.410 (Bible and Literature Series), Sheffield, The Almond Press, 1983, £17.95 (hardback), £8.95 (paperback). Situation and Theology: Old Testament Interpretations of the Syro-Ephraimite War. By Michael E.W. Thompson. Pp.179, Sheffield, The Almond Press, 1982, £15.95 (hardback), £6.95 (paperback). The Passion as Liturgy: A Study in the Origin of the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels. By Etienne Trocmé. Pp.ix, 116, London, SCM Press, 1983, £4.95. The Revival of the Griesbach Hypothesis: An Analysis and Appraisal. By C.M. Tuckett. Pp.viii, 255, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £18.00. The Cost of Authority: Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament. By Graham Shaw. Pp.xi, 292, London, SCM Press, 1983, £9.50. The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context. By Calvin J. Roetzel. Pp.viii, 149, London, SCM Press, 1983, £5.95. Authority in Paul and Peter: The Identification of a Pastoral Stratum in the Pauline Corpus and I Peter. By Winsome Munro. Pp.viii, 226 (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 45), Cambridge University Press, 1983, £15.00. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. By Bruce J. Malina. Pp.vi, 169, London, SCM, 1983, £5.95. Der Begriff des ‘rechten Gebrauchs’. By Christian Gnilka. Pp.151, Basel/Stuttgart, Schwabe, 1984, DM 30. Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King's Wife in the Early Middle Ages. By Pauline Stafford. Pp.xiii, 248, London, Batsford, 1983, £14.95. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. By Caroline Walker Bynum. Pp.xiv, 279. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1982, £21.50. Eschatology in Maimonidean Thought. Edited by Jacob I. Dienstag, Pp.cxx, 281, New York, Ktav, 1983, $39.50. Early Dominicans: Selected Writings. Edited with an introduction by Simon Tugwell. Pp.xiv, 508 (The Classics of Western Spirituality), New York, Paulist Press, 1982, £12.50. The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky. Edited and translated by David M. Goldfrank. Pp.xii, 247 (Cistercian Studies Series 36), Kalamazoo (Michigan), 1983, $14.95. Homo Spiritualis Nititur Fide. By Michael Proterra. Pp.vi, 84, Washington, University Press of America, 1983, $17.50 (hardback), $7.25 (paperback). Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume 31. Adages Iil to Iv100. Translated by Margaret Mann Phillips, annotated by R.A.E. Mynors. Pp.xiv, 493. University of Toronto Press, 1982, £48.75. Rhetoric and Reform. Erasmus's Civil Dispute with Luther. By Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle. Pp.215, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1983, £20.40. The Evangelical and Oxford Movements. Edited by Elizabeth Jay. Pp.x, 219 (Cambridge English prose texts), Cambridge University Press, 1983, £18.50 (hardback), £6.95 (paperback). Islam and Christianity Today: A Contribution to Dialogue. By W. Montgomery Watt, foreword by His Excellency Shaikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani. Pp.xiv, 157, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, £8.95. The Worth of Persons: A Study in Christian Ethics. By Neil Brown. Pp.ix, 134, Sydney, Catholic Institute, 1983, no price given. Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family. By James S. Fishkin. Pp.vii, 200, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983, £15.00. Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition. By Henry A. Giroux. Pp.xiv, 280, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983, £6.50. Language and Thought. By John L. Pollock. Pp.xii, 297, Princeton University Press, 1982, £21.70. Fonder l'Éthique en Psychanalyse. By Roland Sublon. Pp.138, Paris, FAC éditions, 1982, 60F. The Greeks on Pleasure. By J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor. Pp.xiv, 497, Oxford, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1982, £22.50. Augustine on Evil. By G.R. Evans. Pp.xi, 298, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £15.00. From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science. By Charles Webster. Pp.xii, 107, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £12.50. Hegel. By Peter Singer. Pp.ix, 97 (Past Master Series), Oxford University Press, 1983, £7.95. Nietzsche. By Richard Schacht. Pp.xxii, 546, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, £18.50. Bradley's Logic. By Anthony Manser. Pp.x, 220, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983, £17.50. Die Vollendung des Menschen: die Idee des Glaubensaktes und ihre philosophische Begründung in Frühwerk Maurice Blondels. By Anton E. van Hoof. Pp.x, 458, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder, 1983, DM 79. The Church. By Wolfhart Pannenberg. pp.175, Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1983, $10.95. Infallibility: the Crossroads of Doctrine. By Peter Chirico. Pp.xxxvii, 349, (Theology and Life Series 1), Wilmington, Michael Glazier, 1983, $12.95. Bioethics and Belief: Religion and Medicine in Dialogue. By John Mahoney. Pp.127, London, Sheed and Ward, 1984, £3.95. Metaphor and Religious Language. By Janet Martin Soskice. Pp.x, 191, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985, £17.50. Metaphorical Theology: Models of Cod in Religious Language. By Sallie McFague. Pp.xi, 225, London, SCM Press, 1983, £6.50. Karl Barth's Philosophy of Communication. By Donald E. Phillips. Pp.xvi, 404. Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1981, 48DM. Le merveilleux accord de l'homme et de Dieu: étude de l'analogie de l'ětre chez Hans Urs von Balthasar. By Georges De Schrijver. Pp.344, Leuven University Press, 1983, no price given. The von Balthasar Reader. Edited by Medard Kehl and Werner Löser, translated by Robert J. Daly and Fred Lawrence. Pp.xiv, 437, Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1982, £14.95. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. I: Seeing the Form. By Hans Urs von Balthasar, edited by Joseph Fessio and John Riches, translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. Pp.691, Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1982, £19.95. Charles Williams: Poet of Theology. By Glen Cavaliero. Pp.x, 199, London, Macmillan, 1983, £20.00. Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment. By Mary Lutyens. Pp.248, London, John Murray, 1983, £15.00. Vatican II: More Postconciliar Documents. Edited by Austin Flannery. Pp.xxi, 920, Grand Rapids (Mich.), William B. Eerdmans, 1983, £8.10. The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church. Edited by J. Neuner and J. Dupuis. Pp.xxxv, 740, New York, Alba House; London, Collins Liturgical, 1983, $13.95, £9.95 (hardback), £6.95 (paperback). Butler's Lives of the Saints: Concise Edition. Edited by Michael Walsh with a Foreword by Cardinal Basil Hume. Pp.xv, 466, Tunbridge Wells, Burns & Oates, in assocation with Dove Communications, Melbourne, 1985, £10.95 (hardback), £5.95 (paperback).     

Unsentimental ethics: Towards a content-specific account of the moral–conventional distinction

In this paper, we offer an overview and a critique of the existing theories of the moral–conventional distinction, with emphasis on Nichols’s [Nichols, S. (2002). Norms with feeling: Towards a psychological account of moral judgment. Cognition, 84, 221–236] neo-sentimentalist approach. After discussing some distinctive features of Nichols’s (2002) thesis and situating it within the context of his predecessors’ work [Blair, R. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: Investigating the psychopath. Cognition, 57, 1–29; Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], we review a number of arguments and findings within the developmental literature that, collectively, pose a serious challenge to the proposition that emotion is indispensable for or plays a substantial contributory role in the construction of the moral domain. Furthermore, we report two studies whose results contravene those of Nichols’s (2002) Experiments 1 and 2 (the empirical basis for his “norms with feelings” hypothesis), while favoring a version of Turiel’s (1983) harm-based approach instead.