The difference between punishments and rewards in fostering moral concerns in social decision making

In social decision making, punishing non-cooperation and rewarding cooperation may not only affect cooperation because of instrumental reasons. They may also evoke moral concerns regarding cooperation as they signal that cooperation is socially approved of and non-cooperation socially disapproved of. I argue that punishments do this to a greater extent than rewards as punishments communicate an obligatory rule and rewards communicate a voluntary rule. Indeed, the first experiment shows that, in a social dilemma, the concept of punishment increased cooperation and the concept of a reward did not. The second experiment showed that participants showed more disapproval towards an offender when there was a punishment for non-compliance than when there was a reward for compliance. These findings suggest that punishing non-cooperation more strongly foster moral concerns regarding cooperation than rewarding cooperation. Possible implications for internalizations are discussed.     

Freeze or flee? Negative stimuli elicit selective responding

Humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli. A consequence of this automatic vigilance for negative valence is that negative words elicit slower responses than neutral or positive words on a host of cognitive tasks. Some researchers have speculated that negative stimuli elicit a general suppression of motor activity, akin to the freezing response exhibited by animals under threat. Alternatively, we suggest that negative stimuli only elicit slowed responding on tasks for which stimulus valence is irrelevant for responding. To discriminate between these motor suppression and response-relevance hypotheses, we elicited both lexical decisions and valence judgments of negative words and positive words. Relative to positive words (e.g., kitten), negative words (e.g., spider) elicited slower lexical decisions but faster valence judgments. Results therefore indicate that negative stimuli do not cause a generalized motor suppression. Rather, negative stimuli elicit selective responding, with faster responses on tasks for which stimulus valence is response-relevant.     

How young children judge whether a word is one they know: a dual criterion account

Word familiarity judgment may be important for word learning, yet little is known about how children make this judgment. We hypothesized that preschool-age children differ in the judgment criteria that they use and that this difference derives from individual differences in basic memory processes. Those who have superior phonological working memory, but who retrieve less semantic information than their peers, base the judgment on whether they recognize a word’s sound form. Those who show the opposite memory profile base the judgment on whether they retrieve a word’s meaning. The results of two studies of 3- and 4-year-olds were consistent with these claims. Among those performing poorly on one memory measure, judgment accuracy was directly related to performance on the other memory measure. These memory-judgment relations were also found to be highly specific. This is the first investigation to demonstrate the usefulness of an individual differences approach for identifying relations between linguistic judgment processes and basic memory processes during early childhood.     

Wayne Martin on judgment

Wayne Martin’s Theories of Judgment marks a significant advance in the philosophical analysis of judgment. He understands that the domain of judgment is so large that it allows only a selective treatment. We can expand Martin’s insight by acknowledging that this domain is, in fact, hypercomplex and therefore unsurveyable in Wittgenstein’s sense. Martin’s treatment of judgments can, however, be extended in a number of directions. Of particular importance is it to understand the linguistic aspect of theoretical judgments, the challenges to the synthetic conception of judgment constituted not only by existential, but also by impersonal and negative judgments, and the exploration of the links between the notions of judgment and truth.

Betting Against Hard Determinism

The perennial fear associated with the free will problem is the prospect of hard determinism being true. Unlike prevalent attempts to reject hard determinism by defending compatibilist analyses of freedom and responsibility, this article outlines a pragmatic argument to the effect that we are justified in betting that determinism is false even though we may retain the idea that free will and determinism are incompatible. The basic argument is that as long as we accept that libertarian free will is worth wanting, there is a defensible rationale, given the uncertainty which remains as to whether determinism is true or false, to refrain from acting on hard determinism, and thus to bet that libertarian free will exists. The article closes by discussing two potentially decisive objections to this pragmatic argument.     

Variability and moral phenomenology

Many moral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects of moral phenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whether moral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to which moral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly limits the extent to which moral phenomenology can constitute a reason to favor one moral theory over another. Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rival moral theories because moral phenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of how moral phenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard.     

Job-seeking and job-acquisition in high school students

We surveyed 225 Year 9 and 10 students at T1 regarding their attitude, social norms, control, experience, plans and intentions to find a part-time job while at school. Of these, 149 did not have a job and were surveyed again four months later about their job-seeking and job outcomes (104 responded at T2). Job-seeking intentions at T1 were associated with past experience, plans and beliefs that getting a job was the right thing to do. Job-seeking at T2 was associated with beliefs about the value of job-seeking. Job interviews attended were related to job-seeking, and job offers were related to interviews attended. Students with higher job-seeking intentions and behaviours differed on most variables from students with lower intentions and behaviours. Students need to be aware of the relationship between job-seeking, interviews and offers, and be provided with strategies that increase their interviews and assist to manage unsuccessful job attempts.     

Externalism and the Content of Moral Motivation

In his fetishist argument, Michael Smith raises an important question: What is the content of the motivational states that constitute moral motivation? Although the argument has been widely discussed, this question has not received the attention it deserves. In the present paper, I use Smith’s argument as a point of departure for a discussion of how advocates of externalism as regards moral judgements can account for moral motivation. More precisely, I explore various explanations of moral motivation that externalists can employ to answer the question Smith poses.     

A path to the Oasis: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sharī‘ah</Emphasis> and reason in Islamic moral epistemology

I propose a framework for comparative Islamic—Western ethics in which the Islamic categories Islam, Iman, and Ihsan are juxtaposed with the concepts of obligation, value, and virtue, respectively. I argue that shari’a refers to both the obligation component and the entire structure of the Islamic ethic; suggesting a suspension of the understanding of shari’a as simply Islamic “law,” and an alternative understanding of usul al-fiqh as a moral epistemology of obligation. I will test this approach by addressing the question of reason in Islamic moral epistemology via an examination of an argument advanced by a founding usul scholar Muhammad bin Idrīs al-Shāfi‘ī (150 A.H./767 C.E.).     

Enrolling the Citizen in Sustainability: Membership Categorization,Morality and Civic Participation

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (citizens) where both are ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”