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Moral Reasoning
Moral reasoning is the study of how people think about right and wrong and how they acquire and apply moral rules. It is a subdiscipline of moral psychology that overlaps with moral philosophy, and is the foundation of descriptive ethics. Description Starting from a young age, people can make moral decisions about what is right and wrong. Moral reasoning, however, is a part of morality that occurs both within and between individuals. Prominent contributors to this theory include Lawrence Kohlberg and Elliot Turiel. The term is sometimes used in a different sense: reasoning under conditions of uncertainty, such as those commonly obtained in a court of law. It is this sense that gave rise to the phrase, "To a moral certainty;" however, this idea is now seldom used outside of charges to juries. Moral reasoning is an important and often daily process that people use when trying to do the right thing. For instance, every day people are faced with the dilemma of whether to lie in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consequentialism
In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value.Teleological Ethics " ''''. via ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ziva Kunda
Ziva Kunda (June 13, 1955 – February 24, 2004) was an Israeli social psychologist and professor at the University of Waterloo known for her work in social cognition and motivated reasoning. Her seminal paper "The Case for Motivated Reasoning", published in ''Psychological Bulletin'' in 1990, posthumously received thScientific Impact Awardfrom the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Kunda authored the book Social Cognition: Making Sense of People'' Biography Ziva Kunda was born in Tel Aviv. Her parents were from Oudtshoorn, a small South African town. They immigrated from different parts of Europe to Oudtshoorn to find safety from the persecutions of Jews before and during World War II. In Kunda's autobiography, she shares her parents' background, their parents, and her early childhood. In 2004, Kunda died from cancer. She is survived by her husband Paul Thagard, a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, and two sons. Academic career Kunda obtained her Ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Foundations Theory
Moral foundations theory is a social psychological theory intended to explain the origins of and variation in human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, modular foundations. It was first proposed by the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, building on the work of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. It has been subsequently developed by a diverse group of collaborators and popularized in Haidt's book ''The Righteous Mind''. The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. Its authors remain open to the addition, subtraction, or modification of the set of foundations. Although the initial development of moral foundations theory focused on cultural differences, subsequent work with the theory has largely focused on political ideology. Various scholars have offered moral foundations theory as an explanation of differences among political progressives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dual Process Theory
In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics, and increasingly in sociology through cultural analysis. History The foundations of dual process theory likely comes from William James. He believed that there were two different kinds of thinking: associative and true reasoning. James theorized that empirical thought was used for things like art and design work. For James, im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dual Process Theory (moral Psychology)
Dual process theory within moral psychology is an influential theory of human moral judgment that posits that human beings possess two distinct cognitive subsystems that compete in moral reasoning processes: one fast, intuitive and emotionally-driven, the other slow, requiring conscious deliberation and a higher cognitive load. Initially proposed by Joshua Greene along with Brian Sommerville, Leigh Nystrom, John Darley, Jonathan David Cohen and others, the theory can be seen as a domain-specific example of more general dual process accounts in psychology, such as Daniel Kahneman's "system1"/"system 2" distinction popularised in his book, ''Thinking, Fast and Slow''. Greene has often emphasized the normative implications of the theory, which has started an extensive debate in ethics. The dual-process theory has had significant influence on research in moral psychology. The original fMRI investigation proposing the dual process account has been cited in excess of 2000 scholarly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trolley Problem
The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway tram or trolley is on course to collide with and kill a number of people (traditionally five) down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track. Then other variations of the runaway vehicle, and analogous life-and-death dilemmas (medical, judicial etc.) are posed, each containing the option to either do nothing, in which case several people will be killed, or intervene and sacrifice one initially "safe" person to save the others. Opinions on the ethics of each scenario turn out to be sensitive to details of the story that may seem immaterial to the abstract dilemma. The question of formulating a general principle that can account for the differing judgments arising in di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joshua Greene (psychologist)
Joshua David Greene is an American experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher. He is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Most of his research and writing has been concerned with moral judgment and decision-making. His recent research focuses on fundamental issues in cognitive science. Education and career Greene attended high school in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. He briefly attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before transferring to Harvard University. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Harvard in 1997, followed by a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University under the supervision of David Lewis and Gilbert Harman. Peter Singer also served on his dissertation committee. His 2002 dissertation, ''The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What to Do About It'', argues against moral-realist language and in defense of non-realist utilitarianism as a better framework for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kantian Ethics
Kantian ethics refers to a Deontology, deontological ethical theory developed by Germans, German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good Volition_(psychology), will." The theory was developed in the context of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if (i) it is motivated by a sense of duty and (ii) its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law. Central to Kant's theory of the moral law is the categorical imperative. Kant formulated the categorical imperative in various ways. His principle of universalizability requires that, for an action to be permissible, it must be possible to apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. Kant's formulation of humanity, the second section of the categorical imperative, states that as an ''end in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Descriptive Ethics
Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics, which is the study of what ethical terms and theories actually refer to. The following examples of questions that might be considered in each field illustrate the differences between the fields: *Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? *Meta-ethics: What does "right" even mean? *Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? *Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice? What is descriptive ethics? Descriptive ethics is a form of empirical research into the attitudes of individuals or groups of people. In other words, this is the division of philosophical or general ethics that involves the observation of the moral decision-making process with the goal of describing the phenomenon. Tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Character
Moral character or character (derived from charaktêr) is an analysis of an individual's steady moral qualities. The concept of ''character'' can express a variety of attributes, including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits; these attributes are also a part of one's soft skills. Moral character primarily refers to the collection of qualities that differentiate one individual from anotheralthough on a cultural level, the group of moral behaviors to which a social group adheres can be said to unite and define it culturally as distinct from others. Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as "a disposition to express behavior in consistent patterns of functions across a range of situations". Same as, the philosopher Marie I. George refers to moral character as the "sum of one’s moral habits and dispositions". Aristotle has said, "we must take as a sign of states of character the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Rest
James Rest was an American psychologist specializing in moral psychology and development. Together with his Minnesota Group of colleagues, including Darcia Narvaez, Muriel Bebeau, and Stephen Thoma, Rest extended Kohlberg's approach to researching moral reasoning. James Rest was a professor at the University of Minnesota from 1970 until his formal retirement in 1994 and was a 1993 recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University. Rest continued mentoring, researching, and writing until his death in 1999. Rest's and the Neo-Kohlbergians' work included the Defining Issues Test (DIT), which attempts to provide an objective measure of moral development, and the Four Component Model of moral development, which attempts to provide a theoretical perspective on the subject. Rest and the Minnesota Group were unusually open to other approaches, new research, criticisms, and integrating their Neo-Kohlbergian approach with others. Reception Rest's work in general and the DIT i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
