PRINZ’S CONSTITUTION MODEL OF MORAL JUDGMENT: A CRITICAL READING

El propósito del presente ensayo es presentar una lectura crítica del modelo de constitución concebido por Jesse Prinz. De acuerdo con los modelos más significativos que se han producido hasta el momento, el juicio moral es el resultado de procesos cognitivos específicos, ya sean estos de tipo intuitivo, emocional o racional. Según afirma Prinz, la perspectiva sentimentalista sostiene que tales juicios son causados por emociones. En contraste, él defiende una tesis según la cual el juicio moral está constituido, no es causado, por aquéllas. En este artículo se presentará el argumento con el que Prinz sustenta su propuesta y se expondrán algunas inconsistencias.The purpose of this paper is to critically review Prinz’s constitution model. According to commonly suggested models, moral judgment is the result of specific cognitive processes that are intuitive, emotional or rational. According to Prinz, sentimentalist views argue that such judgments are caused by emotions. In contrast, he argues that moral judgment is constituted, not caused, by them. I will expose Prinz’s argument to support his proposal and outline some inconsistencies of it

Global Justice and Charity: A Brief for a New Approach to Empirical Philosophyi

What does global justice or charity requires us to give to other people? There is a large theoretical literature on this question. There is much less experimental work in political philosophy relevant to answering it. Perhaps for this reason, this literature has yet to have any major impact on theoretical discussions of global justice or charity. There is, however, some experimental research in behavioral economics that has helped to shape the field and a few relevant studies by political philosophers. This paper reviews this research. Moreover, it argues that the little work that has been done can offer some methodological lessons to empirically engaged philosophers of many kinds. Finally, it suggests that there is reason for those interested in global ethics and charitable giving to consider doing new kinds of experimental and other empirical work in addition to traditional experimental philosophy

The Means/Side-Effect Distinction in Moral Cognition: A Meta-Analysis

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other factors, such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k = 101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference = 0.87, 95% CI 0.67 – 1.06; standardized mean change = 0.57, 95% CI 0.44 – 0.69; log odds ratio = 1.59, 95% CI 1.15 – 2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force

Reason and Emotion, Not Reason or Emotion in Moral Judgment

One of the central questions in both metaethics and empirical moral psychology is whether moral judgments are the products of reason or emotions. This way of putting the question relies on an overly simplified view of reason and emotion as two fully independent cognitive faculties whose causal contributions to moral judgment can be cleanly separated. However, there is a significant body of evidence in the cognitive sciences that seriously undercuts this conception of reason and emotion, and supports the view that moral judgments are caused by a complex interplay of psychological mechanisms that are both cognitive and affective, but in a way that is not simply a function of the independent causal contributions of reason and emotion. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this view for metaethics

Postoje li "moralni" sudovi"

Recent contributions in moral philosophy have raised questions concerning the prevalent assumption that moral judgments are typologically discrete, and thereby distinct from ordinary and/or other types of judgments. This paper adds to this discourse, surveying how attempts at defining what makes moral judgments distinct have serious shortcomings, and it is argued that any typological definition is likely to fail due to certain questionable assumptions about the nature of judgment itself. The paper concludes by raising questions for future investigations into the nature of moral judgment.Nedavne rasprave u moralnoj filozofiji dovode postavljaju pitanja oko prevladavajuće pretpostavke da su moralni sudovi tipološki diskretni i da se stoga razlikuju od običnih i/ili drugih vrsta sudova. Ovaj rad se nadovezuje na ovu raspravu, razmatrajući nedostatke različitihi pokušaja definiranja onoga što čini neke sudove moralnima, te se tvrdi da svaka tipološka definicija vjerojatno neće uspjeti zbog upitnih pretpostavki o prirodi sudova. Rad zaključuje postavljanjem pitanja koja se odnose na buduća istraživanja prirode moralnih sudova

To Excuse or Not to Excuse: Effect of Explanation Type and Provision on Reactions to a Workplace Behavioral Transgression

People often offer an excuse or an apology after they do something wrong. In this paper, we examine how giving an excuse, an apology, or no explanation after arriving late to a meeting influences the attitudes and behavioral intentions others form toward the late arrival. Additionally, we examined how a group-related factor (complaining) and the late arrival’s history with coming late affected participant judgments. Across two studies using complementary experimental and survey methods, we found that an excuse is better than no explanation, but that the difference between apology and no explanation and apology and excuse is not always clear. Furthermore, we found that common distinctions between explanation types used in the literature may not fully exist in non-laboratory social interactions. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed

The disunity of moral judgment: Evidence and implications

We argue that there is significant evidence for reconsidering the possibility that moral judgment constitutes a distinctive category of judgment. We begin by reviewing evidence and arguments from neuroscience and philosophy that seem to indicate that a diversity of brain processes result in verdicts that we ordinarily consider “moral judgments”. We argue that if these findings are correct, this is plausible reason for doubting that all moral judgments necessarily share common features: if diverse brain processes give rise to what we refer to as “moral judgments”, then we have reason to suspect that these judgments may have different features. After advancing this argument, we show that giving up the unity of moral judgment seems to effectively dissolve the internalism/externalism debate concerning motivation within the field of metaethics

Moral discourse boosts confidence in moral judgments

The so-called “conciliatory” norm in epistemology and meta-ethics requires that an agent, upon encountering peer disagreement with her judgment, lower her confidence about that judgment. But whether agents actually abide by this norm is unclear. Although confidence is excessively researched in the empirical sciences, possible effects of disagreement on confidence have been understudied. Here, we target this lacuna, reporting a study that measured confidence about moral beliefs before and after exposure to moral discourse about a controversial issue. Our findings indicate that participants do not abide by the conciliatory norm. Neither do they conform to a rival “steadfast” norm that demands their confidence to remain the same. Instead, moral discourse seems to boost confidence. Interestingly, we also find a confidence boost for factual beliefs, and a correlation between the extremity of moral views and confidence. One possible explanation of our findings is that when engaging in moral discourse participants become more extreme in their opinions, which leads them to become more confident about them, or vice versa: they become more confident and in turn more extreme. Although our work provides initial evidence for the former mechanism, further research is needed for a better understanding of confidence and moral discourse