Why there might be a moral faculty: A reply to Johnson

Is there a cognitive faculty dedicated to the moral domain? Mark Johnson has developed a number of arguments against the existence of such a faculty. I claim that these arguments are not persuasive and that there may be a moral faculty.     

The myth of the moral faculty: Response to Kirkby

David Kirkby argues that I have misrepresented Marc Hauser's conception of a moral faculty, in a way that invalidates my chief arguments against the existence and necessity of such a faculty. The core of Kirkby's challenge is that what Hauser lists as necessary conditions for the moral faculty to do its work are not themselves components of that faculty. I argue that there is no useful way to distinguish necessary conditions of moral judgments from the alleged moral faculty itself, and that even if we could do this, we would be left with an empty non-explanation of the supposed moral faculty that amounts to nothing more than the claim that we have a faculty that generates judgments of right versus wrong.     

The moral behavior of ethics professors: Relationships among self-reported behavior,expressed normative attitude,and directly observed behavior

Do philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave, on average, any morally better than do other professors? If not, do they at least behave more consistently with their expressed values? These questions have never been systematically studied. We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues, we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with the self-reports. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation. We discuss implications for several models of the relationship between philosophical reflection and real-world moral behavior.     

Psychopaths and blame: The argument from content

The recent debate over the moral responsibility of psychopaths has centered on whether, or in what sense, they understand moral requirements. In this paper, I argue that even if they do understand what morality requires, the content of their actions is not of the right kind to justify full-blown blame. I advance two independent justifications of this claim. First, I argue that if the psychopath comes to know what morality requires via a route that does not involve a proper appreciation of what it means to cause another harm or distress, the content of violations of rules against harm will be of a lower grade than the content of similar actions by normal individuals. Second, I argue that in order to intend a harm to a person—that is, to intend the distinctive kind of harm that can only befall a person—it is necessary to understand what personhood is and what makes it valuable. The psychopath's deficits with regard to mental time travel ensure that s/he cannot intend this kind of harm.     

Psychometric Properties of a Chinese Version of the Moral Attentiveness Scale

This study focuses on the reliability and validation of the Chinese version of the Moral Attentiveness Scale. Factor analysis confirmed that the scale includes two factors: perceptual moral attentiveness and reflective moral attentiveness. Moral attentiveness is negatively correlated with normlessness and positively associated with internalization and symbolization, moral identity, and other academic dishonesty behaviors. Reflective moral attentiveness moderated the relationship between formalism and unethical decision making. All results showed that the Chinese version of the Moral Attentiveness Scale has satisfactory psychometric properties and is a valid and reliable measurement of moral attentiveness in the Chinese population.     

Did They Earn It? Observing Unearned Luxury Consumption Decreases Brand Attitude When Observers Value Fairness

People frequently observe others’ consumption, making inferences about both the consumer and the consumed brands. Although these observations are often beneficial for brands, this research demonstrates that observing luxury brand consumers whose consumption arose from unearned (vs. earned) financial resources reduces observers’ brand attitudes when observers place a high value on fairness. When fairness values are high, observers do not perceive luxury brand consumers who use unearned (vs. earned) consumption resources as prestigious, and in turn, lower prestige perceptions adversely affect observers’ brand evaluations for luxury brands. Consistent with our theorizing regarding the signaling of prestige, the joint effect of consumers’ consumption resources and observers’ fairness values on observers’ brand attitudes does not hold for nonluxury brands, which are not associated with prestige and thereby are not denigrated when the consumer is not perceived as prestigious. This research sheds light on the role of moral values in marketplace judgments of luxury consumption and brand attitude by considering the influence of consumption resources on observers’ judgments.     

On Ground as a Guide to Realism

According to Fine (among others), a nonbasic factual proposition must be grounded in facts involving those of its constituents that are both real and fundamental. But the principle is vulnerable to several dialectically significant counterexamples. It entails, for example, that a logical Platonist cannot accept that true disjunctions are grounded in the truth of their disjuncts; that a Platonist about mathematical objects cannot accept that sets are grounded in their members; and that a colour primitivist cannot accept that an object's being scarlet grounds its not being chartreuse. The Finean might try to defend these implications, but it generates further problems. Instead, the principle should be rejected. An important upshot is that the principle cannot be relied on to distinguish robust realism from anti‐realism about a propositional domain, for the principle obscures ways of taking features to be both real and fundamental.     

“This is My Community”: Reproducing and Resisting Boundaries of Exclusion in Contested Public Spaces

The way that public space is structured has significant implications for identity, social interaction, and participation in society. For those experiencing homelessness, with no or limited private space, survival hinges on the accessibility and livability of public space. However, the increasing privatization of public space in the United States has contributed to the implementation of anti‐homeless ordinances in cities, restricting sitting, standing, panhandling, and sleeping in public. This study analyzes data from interviews with housed and unhoused community members, text from a local policy document, and ethnographic observations to explore how boundaries between “insiders” and “outsiders” are drawn in public space and mediated through individual discourse. Our findings suggest that boundaries of exclusion are constructed through dominant narratives that portray the unhoused as a threat to safety and economic vitality, thus justifying the need for regulation and punishment through the criminalization of homelessness. Yet, informants also demonstrate resistance to this narrative by discussing how criminalization of homelessness perpetuates dehumanization, violence, and economic inequality. Policy implications for the regulation of public space are discussed.     

Judging the Goring Ox: Retribution Directed Toward Animals

Prior research on the psychology of retribution is complicated by the difficulty of separating retributive and general deterrence motives when studying human offenders (Study 1). We isolate retribution by investigating judgments about punishing animals, which allows us to remove general deterrence from consideration. Studies 2 and 3 document a “victim identity” effect, such that the greater the perceived loss from a violent animal attack, the greater the belief that the culprit deserves to be killed. Study 3 documents a “targeted punishment” effect, such that the responsive killing of the actual “guilty” culprit is seen as more deserved than the killing of an almost identical yet “innocent” animal from the same species. Studies 4 and 5 extend both effects to participants' acceptance of inflicting pain and suffering on the offending animal at the time of its death, and show that both effects are mediated by measures of retributive sentiment, and not by consequentialist concerns.     

A Single Counterexample Leads to Moral Belief Revision

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision.