CiteULike: Tag moral

Death, Dissection and the Destitute: The Politics of the Corpse in Pre-Victorian Britain (Studs. in Popular Culture)

Ruth Richardson — 2008-01-03T14:46:31-00:00

Race, Racism, And Science: Social Impact And Interaction

Jackson — 2008-01-03T11:13:03-00:00

(15 November 2005)

Since the eighteenth century when natural historians created the idea of distinct racial categories, scientific findings on race have been a double-edged sword. For some antiracists, science holds the promise of one day providing indisputable evidence to help eradicate racism. On the other hand, science has been enlisted to promote racist beliefs ranging from a justification of slavery in the eighteenth century to the infamous twentieth-century book, The Bell Curve, whose authors argued that racial differences in intelligence resulted in lower test scores for African Americans. <P>This well-organized, readable textbook takes the reader through a chronological account of how and why racial categories were created and how the study of "race" evolved in multiple academic disciplines, including genetics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. In a bibliographic essay at the conclusion of each of the book's seven sections, the authors recommend primary texts that will further the reader's understanding of each topic. Heavily illustrated and enlivened with sidebar biographies, this text is ideal for classroom use.

Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain

A Winter — 2008-01-04T10:25:47-00:00

(03 April 2000)

<div>Across Victorian Britain, apparently reasonable people twisted into bizarre postures, called out in unknown languages, and placidly bore assaults that should have caused unbearable pain all while they were mesmerized. Alison Winter's fascinating cultural history traces the history of mesmerism in Victorian society. <i>Mesmerized</i> is both a social history of the age and a lively exploration of the contested territory between science and pseudo-science. <br><br>"Dazzling. . . . This splendid book . . . gives us a new form of historical understanding and a model for open and imaginative reading."—James R. Kinkaid, <i>Boston Globe</i><br><br>"A landmark in the history of science scholarship."—John Sutherland, <i>The Independent</i><br><br>"It is difficult to imagine the documentary side of the story being better done than by Winter's well-researched and generously illustrated study. . . . She is a lively and keen observer; and her book is a pleasure to read purely for its range of material and wealth of detail. . . . Fruitful and suggestive."—Daniel Karlin, <i>Times Literary Supplement</i><br><br>"An ambitious, sweeping and fascinating historical study. . . . Beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and well-illustrated."—Bernard Lightman, <i>Washington Times</i></div>

Beyond the "Common Context": The Production and Reading of the Bridgewater Treatises

Jonathan Topham — 2005-09-04T06:57:08-00:00

Isis, Vol. 89, No. 2. (1998), pp. 233-262.

The Bridgewater Treatises were among the most widely circulated books of science in early nineteenth-century Britain, yet little is known of their contemporary readership. Drawing on the new history of the book, this essay examines the "communication circuit" in which the series was produced and read, exploring some of the processes that shaped the meanings the books possessed for their original readers. In so doing, it seeks to go beyond the standard interpretation of the Bridgewater Treatises as contributing to a "common context" for debate among the social and cultural elite. Instead, the essay demonstrates the wide circulation of the series among many classes of readers and shows that consideration of the distinctive meanings with which the books were invested by readers in divergent cultural groups serves to elucidate the contested meaning of science in the period. It is argued that by thus taking seriously the agency of all those involved in the communication circuit, including readers as well as authors and publishers, this approach supersedes the increasingly unworkable analytical category of "popular science."

The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain

R Cooter — 2008-01-04T10:18:04-00:00

(22 February 1984)

This study of the popularity of phrenology in the second quarter of the nineteenth century concentrates on the social and ideological functions of science during the consolidation of urban industrial society. It is influenced by Foucault, by recent work in the history and sociology of science, by critical theory, and by cultural anthropology. The author analyses the impact of science on Victorian society across a spectrum from the intellectual establishment to working-class freethinkers and Owenite socialists. In doing so he provides the first extended treatment of the place and role of science among working-class radicals. The book also challenges attempts to establish neat demarcations between scientific ideas and their philosophical, theological and social contexts.

'The nervous system and society in the Scottish Enlightenment', in Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture

C Lawrence — 2008-01-03T12:59:04-00:00

(01 March 1979), pp. 19-40.

The authors bring the perspectives of sociology and anthropology to bear on key historical developments in various fields of science, demonstrating that it is possible to study science in the same way as other forms of culture - art, music, and literature. They show that our understanding of science, and the development of scientific knowledge, can be enriched by these perspectives, and that the history of science can benefit from case studies, such as those presented here.

Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral Reform in England, 1787-1886 (Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories)

MJD Roberts — 2008-04-09T13:01:57-00:00

(09 August 2004)

Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery, temperance, charity, cruelty prevention and "social purity" advocates promoted their causes through mobilization of citizen volunteer support. M.J.D. Roberts explores the world of these volunteer networks--their concerns, patterns of recruitment, methods of operation, and responses aroused--to provide an accessible period survey of moral reform.

Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism

J van Wyhe — 2008-01-03T12:47:08-00:00

(28 March 2004)

Victorian Sensation : The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

James Secord — 2008-01-03T12:36:20-00:00

(01 February 2001)

<div>Fiction or philosophy, profound knowledge or shocking heresy? When V<i>estiges of the Natural History of Creation</i> was published anonymously in 1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era. More than a hundred thousand readers were spellbound by its startling vision—an account of the world that extended from the formation of the solar system to the spiritual destiny of humanity. As gripping as a popular novel, <i>Vestiges</i> combined all the current scientific theories in fields ranging from astronomy and geology to psychology and economics. The book was banned, it was damned, it was hailed as the gospel for a new age. This is where our own public controversies about evolution began.<br><br>In a pioneering cultural history, James A. Secord uses the story of <i>Vestiges</i> to create a panoramic portrait of life in the early industrial era from the perspective of its readers. We join apprentices in a factory town as they debate the consequences of an evolutionary ancestry. We listen as Prince Albert reads aloud to Queen Victoria from a book that preachers denounced as blasphemy vomited from the mouth of Satan. And we watch as Charles Darwin turns its pages in the flea-ridden British Museum library, fearful for the fate of his own unpublished theory of evolution. Using secret letters, Secord reveals how <i>Vestiges</i> was written and how the anonymity of its author was maintained for forty years. He also takes us behind the scenes to a bustling world of publishers, printers, and booksellers to show how the furor over the book reflected the emerging industrial economy of print.<br><br>Beautifully written and based on painstaking research, <i>Victorian Sensation</i> offers a new approach to literary history, the history of reading, and the history of science. Profusely illustrated and full of fascinating stories, it is the most comprehensive account of the making and reception of a book (other than the Bible) ever attempted. <br></div><div> </div><div><div>Winner of the 2002 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society</div></div>

Identification, situational constraint, and social cognition: Studies in the attribution of moral responsibility

Robert Woolfolk — 2005-08-22T15:25:40-00:00

Cognition, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

In three experiments we studied lay observers' attributions of responsibility for an antisocial act (homicide). We systematically varied both the degree to which the action was coerced by external circumstances and the degree to which the actor endorsed and accepted ownership of the act, a psychological state that philosophers have termed "identification." Our findings with respect to identification were highly consistent. The more an actor was identified with an action, the more likely observers were to assign responsibility to the actor, even when the action was performed under constraints so powerful that no other behavioral option was available. Our findings indicate that social cognition involving assignment of responsibility for an action is a more complex process than previous research has indicated. It would appear that laypersons' judgments of moral responsibility may, in some circumstances, accord with philosophical views in which freedom and determinism are regarded to be compatible.

Toward a More Pragmatic Approach to Morality: A Critical Evaluation of Kohlberg's Model

Dennis Krebs — 2005-08-22T15:18:24-00:00

Psychological Review, Vol. 112, No. 3. (July 2005), pp. 629-649.

In this article, the authors evaluate L. Kohlberg's (1984) cognitive-developmental approach to morality, find it wanting, and introduce a more pragmatic approach. They review research designed to evaluate Kohlberg's model, describe how they revised the model to accommodate discrepant findings, and explain why they concluded that it is poorly equipped to account for the ways in which people make moral decisions in their everyday lives. The authors outline in 11 propositions a framework for a new approach that is more attentive to the purposes that people use morality to achieve. People make moral judgments and engage in moral behaviors to induce themselves and others to uphold systems of cooperative exchange that help them achieve their goals and advance their interests.

Functional networks in emotional moral and nonmoral social judgments.

J Moll — 2006-03-10T14:54:32-00:00

Neuroimage, Vol. 16, No. 3 Pt 1. (July 2002), pp. 696-703.

Reading daily newspaper articles often evokes opinions and social judgments about the characters and stories. Social and moral judgments rely on the proper functioning of neural circuits concerned with complex cognitive and emotional processes. To examine whether dissociable neural systems mediate emotionally charged moral and nonmoral social judgments, we used a visual sentence verification task in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that a network comprising the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the temporal pole and the superior temporal sulcus of the left hemisphere was specifically activated by moral judgments. In contrast, judgment of emotionally evocative, but non-moral statements activated the left amygdala, lingual gyri, and the lateral orbital gyrus. These findings provide new evidence that the orbitofrontal cortex has dedicated subregions specialized in processing specific forms of social behavior.

The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions.

J Moll — 2006-03-10T14:54:13-00:00

J Neurosci, Vol. 22, No. 7. (1 April 2002), pp. 2730-2736.

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of "moral emotions" in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social behavior and perception, play a central role in moral appraisals. We suggest that the automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values may be an important mechanism for implicit social behaviors in humans.

An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment

Joshua Greene — 2006-03-10T14:37:45-00:00

Science, Vol. 293, No. 5537. (14 September 2001), pp. 2105-2108.

How (and where) does moral judgment work?

Joshua Greene — 2006-03-10T14:34:50-00:00

Trends Cogn Sci, Vol. 6, No. 12. (1 December 2002), pp. 517-523.

Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moral judgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberate reasoning. Here we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moral judgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moral judgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moral judgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moral judgment although none is devoted specifically to it.

The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment

Joshua Greene — 2005-04-11T14:38:14-00:00

Neuron, Vol. 44, No. 2. (14 October 2004), pp. 389-400.

Traditional theories of moral psychology emphasize reasoning and "higher cognition," while more recent work emphasizes the role of emotion. The present fMRI data support a theory of moral judgment according to which both "cognitive" and emotional processes play crucial and sometimes mutually competitive roles. The present results indicate that brain regions associated with abstract reasoning and cognitive control (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex) are recruited to resolve difficult personal moral dilemmas in which utilitarian values require "personal" moral violations, violations that have previously been associated with increased activity in emotion-related brain regions. Several regions of frontal and parietal cortex predict intertrial differences in moral judgment behavior, exhibiting greater activity for utilitarian judgments. We speculate that the controversy surrounding utilitarian moral philosophy reflects an underlying tension between competing subsystems in the brain.

Neural correlates of regulating negative emotions related to moral violations

Carla Harenski — 2005-10-25T11:31:41-00:00

NeuroImage, Vol. In Press, Corrected Proof

Previous neuroimaging studies have identified several brain regions associated with regulating emotional responses. Different kinds of emotional stimuli, however, may recruit different regulatory processes and, in turn, recruit different regions. We compared emotion regulation for two types of negative emotional stimuli: those involving moral violations (moral stimuli), and those not involving moral violations (non-moral stimuli). In addition, we investigated whether activation in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), a region implicated previously in specifically moral processing, may instead reflect greater social and emotional content. Ten female subjects were scanned using fMRI while they passively viewed or were instructed to decrease emotional reactions to moral and non-moral pictures closely matched on social and emotional content. Passive viewing of both picture types elicited similar activations in areas related to the processing of social and emotional content, including MPFC and amygdala. During regulation, different patterns of activation in these regions were observed for moral vs. non-moral pictures. These results suggest that the neural correlates of regulating emotional reactions are modulated by the emotional content of stimuli, such as moral violations. In addition, the current findings suggest that some brain regions previously implicated in moral processing reflect the processing of greater social and emotional content in moral stimuli.

The impossibility of moral responsibility

Galen Strawson — 2008-04-29T21:36:02-00:00

Philosophical Studies, Vol. 75, No. 1. (1994), pp. 5-24.

Policies Designed for Self-Interested Citizens May Undermine "The Moral Sentiments": Evidence from Economic Experiments

Samuel Bowles — 2008-06-20T08:07:59-00:00

Science, Vol. 320, No. 5883. (20 June 2008), pp. 1605-1609.

High-performance organizations and economies work on the basis not only of material interests but also of Adam Smith's "moral sentiments." Well-designed laws and public policies can harness self-interest for the common good. However, incentives that appeal to self-interest may fail when they undermine the moral values that lead people to act altruistically or in other public-spirited ways. Behavioral experiments reviewed here suggest that economic incentives may be counterproductive when they signal that selfishness is an appropriate response; constitute a learning environment through which over time people come to adopt more self-interested motivations; compromise the individual's sense of self-determination and thereby degrade intrinsic motivations; or convey a message of distrust, disrespect, and unfair intent. Many of these unintended effects of incentives occur because people act not only to acquire economic goods and services but also to constitute themselves as dignified, autonomous, and moral individuals. Good organizational and institutional design can channel the material interests for the achievement of social goals while also enhancing the contribution of the moral sentiments to the same ends. 10.1126/science.1152110

Nonmoral Explanations

Nicholas Sturgeon — 2007-10-21T09:28:35-00:00

The Naturalists Return

Philip Kitcher — 2006-11-09T15:11:56-00:00

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1. (1992), pp. 53-114.

Values That Matter, Barriers That Interfere: The Struggle of Canadian Nurses to Enact Their Values

Beagan — 2008-01-10T09:58:41-00:00

CJNR (Canadian Journal of Nursing Research), Vol. 39, No. 4. (December 2007), pp. 36-57.

Moral hazard in physician prescription behavior

Douglas Lundin — 2008-05-31T19:40:17-00:00

Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 19, No. 5. (September 2000), pp. 639-662.

I examine whether the choice made by physicians concerning what drug version -- trade-name or generic -- to prescribe is subject to moral hazard. I use a data set containing information on exactly what drug and what version was prescribed at a particular patient visit to the physician. The results indicate that physicians' habits and the tastes acquired by patients are important. However, costs also matter. Patients having to pay large sums out-of-pocket are less likely to have trade-name versions prescribed than patients getting most of their costs reimbursed. This indicates moral hazard.

Hospital response to prospective payment: moral hazard, selection, and practice-style effects.

RP Ellis — 2008-03-03T09:12:04-00:00

J Health Econ, Vol. 15, No. 3. (June 1996), pp. 257-277.

In response to a change in reimbursement incentives, hospitals may change the intensity of services provided to a given set of patients, change the type (or severity) of patients they see, or change their market share. Each of these three responses, which we define as a moral hazard effect, a selection effect, and a practice-style effect, can influence average resource use in a population. We develop and implement a methodology for disentangling these effects using a panel data set of Medicaid psychiatric discharges in New Hampshire. We also find evidence for the form of quality competition hypothesized by Dranove (1987).

Perceptions of moral character modulate the neural systems of reward during the trust game

MR Delgado — 2005-10-27T05:37:49-00:00

Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 8, No. 11. (16 October 2005), pp. 1611-1618.

Neurobiology: Feeling right about doing right

Deborah Talmi — 2007-04-18T22:42:07-00:00

Nature, Vol. 446, No. 7138. (18 April 2007), pp. 865-866.

Blood Money, New Money, and the Moral Economy of Tort Law in Action

Tom Baker — 2006-04-06T13:55:14-00:00

This article reports the results of a qualitative study of personal injury lawyers in Connecticut. Building on the results of an earlier study of lawyers in Florida, "Transforming Punishment Into Compensation: In the Shadow of Punitive Damages" (Baker 1998), the Connecticut study describes and explores the implications of professional norms and practices that govern tort settlement behavior. In particular, it examines the moral and practical barriers to collecting "blood money" (money from individual defendants, as opposed to liability insurance companies), as well as explanations for victims' apparent ability to partially trump the claims of subrogating workers' compensation and health insurance carriers. The results pose a challenge to the conventional understanding that tort law in action is a simpler, more streamlined version of tort law on the books. In addition, the results suggest that compensation and retribution figure far more prominently in tort law in action than does the deterrence emphasized in much of the theoretical and doctrinal literature.

The role of teams in resolving moral distress in intensive care unit decision-making.

M van Soeren — 2006-01-11T21:40:01-00:00

Crit Care, Vol. 7, No. 3. (June 2003), pp. 217-218.

Are Levels of Democracy Affected by Mass Attitudes? Testing Attainment and Sustainment Effects on Democracy

Christian Welzel — 2007-11-01T17:20:42-00:00

International Political Science Review, Vol. 28, No. 4. (1 September 2007), pp. 397-424.

Recent findings by Inglehart and Welzel indicate that emancipative mass attitudes show a significantly positive effect on subsequent democracy, controlling for previous democracy and a number of socio-structural and socioeconomic factors. However, on an important theoretical point these prior findings remain inconclusive: the causal mechanism of why and how emancipative mass attitudes favor democracy. This article specifies such a mechanism, arguing that emancipative attitudes motivate mass actions that demonstrate people's willingness to struggle for democratic achievements, be it to establish democracy when it is denied or to defend it when it is challenged. Based on World Values Surveys rounds two to four, the empirical analyses strongly confirm these hypotheses, supporting what has recently been introduced as an "emancipative theory of democracy." 10.1177/0192512107079640

Cultural Value Orientations and Christian Religiosity: On Moral Traditionalism, Authoritarianism, and their Implications for Voting Behavior

Willem De Koster — 2007-11-01T17:17:22-00:00

International Political Science Review, Vol. 28, No. 4. (1 September 2007), pp. 451-467.

Drawing upon problems of interpretation in political sociological research, this article questions the common practice of lumping together moral traditionalism and authoritarianism. First, it is demonstrated that of the two only moral traditionalism relates to religious orthodoxy. Second, the well-established strong correlation between both value orientations proves to be caused, in the case at hand solely by the circumstance that nontraditionalism and nonauthoritarianism go hand in hand; moral traditionalism and authoritarianism are almost unrelated. Third, moral traditionalists are shown to vote for Christian right-wing parties, whereas authoritarianism more commonly leads to a vote for a secular right-wing party. Fourth, whereas moral traditionalism proves decisive for the voting behavior of Christians, it is authoritarianism that underlies the non-Christian vote. These findings from The Netherlands (consistent with theories on cultural modernization) lead to the conclusion that attention should be paid to the distinction between these orientations because this aids the interpretation of research findings, and because authoritarianism will probably gain a more central role in politics at the cost of moral traditionalism. 10.1177/0192512107079636

Accountability and the Evil of Administrative Ethics

Melvin Dubnick — 2008-06-01T17:29:15-00:00

Administration Society, Vol. 38, No. 2. (1 May 2006), pp. 236-267.

Scholars of administrative ethics have recently been attentive to the problem of so-called administrative evil. The authors argue that evil can be understood as a socially constructed category of agents and acts specific to particular circumstances and moral communities, and the authors apply a framework of accountability to reflect the dynamics of that constructed reality. Selected examples of efforts to hold evil actors accountable or otherwise to account for evil acts illustrate a paradox: Responses to so-called evil may themselves be labeled evil in hindsight or by members of other contemporaneous communities. In light of this paradox and attendant ethical dilemmas, the authors argue that conventional ethical and behavioral prescriptions are necessary but insufficient protections against catastrophic mis-, mal-, or nonfeasance in and by organizations. 10.1177/0095399705285999

Theoretical Foundations of Ethics in Public Administration: Approaches to Understanding Moral Action

Debra Stewart — 2006-09-01T06:23:22-00:00

Administration Society, Vol. 23, No. 3. (1 November 1991), pp. 357-373.

Ethical action in public administration needs to be informed by more than human intuitions. To make correct intuitive judgments about right and wrong, decision makers can be guided by moral philosophy. The works of three philosophers, R. M. Hare, John Rawls, and A lasdair Macintyre, are considered in this regard; the strengths and weaknesses of each, as applied to public administration, are assessed. Implications for scholarship and teaching in administrative ethics are considered. 10.1177/009539979102300305

Redefining the Moral Responsibilities for Food Safety: The Case of Red Meat in New Zealand

Tanaka — 2005-12-04T11:18:16-00:00

Rural Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 4. (December 2005), pp. 470-490.

Ethics and Artificial life: From Modeling to Moral Agents

John Sullins — 2006-05-28T07:39:23-00:00

Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 7, No. 3. (September 2005), pp. 139-148.

Introduction Artificial Life (ALife) has two goals. One attempts to describe fundamental qualities of living systems through agent based computer models. And the second studies whether or not we can artificially create living things in computational mediums that can be realized either, virtually in software, or through biotechnology. Strangely, except for the initial burst of articles and books on the subject when it was first introduced in the early 90s, (1) the exciting nature of this research has gone largely unnoticed by the general public and media. Philosophers have also paid insufficient attention to this subject and in particular have not helped work through the various ethical issues raised by the notion of creating living, or at least life-like, software agents or living biocomputational entities. Reasonable arguments can be raised that ALife is not going to succeed in its most ambitious goals, but even if ALife is merely a computer modeling technique that sheds light on living systems, it still has a number of significant ethical implications that need to be addressed. The study of ALife has recently branched into two further subdivisions, one is "dry" ALife, which is the study of living systems "in silico" through the use of computer simulations and the other is "wet" ALife that uses biological material to realize what has only been simulated on computers, effectively wet ALife uses biological material as a kind of computer. This is challenging to the field of computer ethics as it points towards a future in which computer and bioethics might have shared concerns. The emerging studies into wet ALife are likely to provide strong empirical evidence for ALife's most challenging hypothesis: that life is a certain set of computable functions that can be duplicated in any medium. I believe this will propel ALife into the midst of the mother of all cultural battles that has been gathering around the emergence of biotechnology. Philosophers need to pay close attention to this debate and can serve a vital role in clarifying and resolving the dispute. The unwelcome truths of ALife Some early researchers in ALife made the claim that ALife can, or had already, synthesized real artificial life inside their computers. (2) Since that time, however, the vast majority of the researchers in this field have not taken a hard stand on this issue. While individual researchers may believe in their heart of hearts that their software agents are technically alive, they do not often posit that belief in their research. Instead, most researchers tend to use ALife as a fruitful modeling method with applications in a great variety of topics leaving the messy business of defining "life" to the philosophers and theoretical biologists. Perhaps this retreat from Hard ALife in favor of the more cautious Soft ALife stance is responsible for the loss of the public interest in the subject. The claim that ALife can provide a credible method for studying evolution in a software context is not at all as sexy as saying, "my computer is alive." Others, have had some nagging doubts about Hard ALife, (3) Soft ALife has not raised much objection from philosophers. However, I would like to argue here that both strong and weak ALife has the potential to be seen as a threat to some traditional thinkers because ALife, strong or weak, provides compelling evidence for the power of evolution and its role in all life, including that of humans, and this has been a hot topic to traditional thinkers, especially in America. Let me explain why I feel this is an important topic for discussion in the field of computer ethics. Computing technology has consistently challenged many of our traditional ethical values. Navigating the rapidly shifting landscape of computing technology as well as analyzing the computer's role in our ethical and belief systems have long been the purview of the field of computer ethics. For example, the ease in which one can access and process data with a computer has lead to new challenges in maintaining personal privacy that did not pose much of a threat to earlier generations. So the technology itself exacerbates existing ethical problems and in some situations creates entirely new ones. In these instances the computer is a new tool through which human agents impact one another and these altered relationships can be evaluated from an ethical standpoint. This general class of cases and conundrums makes up the core of computer ethics study but there are two additional ways in which the computer can effect ethical deliberations. One is that the computer can serve as a metaphor or model that alters the way we look at a subject and in that way alter or challenge traditional values and mores. For instance, evolution is a difficult concept for the nonspecialist to grasp, but with a computer and a few ALife models it can be quickly and effectively taught. For instance, Richard Dawkins in his book; The Blind Watchmaker, (4) uses a simple ALife model to prove his point that one can get complex phenotypic structures from the simple random mutation of a set of "genes" that are encoded in the software and subjected to the fitness function of pleasing the aesthetics of the user. This program results in interesting patterns that develop without any preset design for that structure in the mind of the user. (5) Dawkins' program is relatively simple but other, more complex, programs exist and through these ALife programs one can learn the dynamics of the theory of evolution, including its beauty and its ugliness, and the simplicity of its components that nonetheless have..

Moral heuristics

Cass Sunstein — 2008-04-07T20:37:16-00:00

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 28, No. 04. (2005), pp. 531-542.

Protected Values,

Jonathan Baron — 2008-07-15T09:50:20-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 70, No. 1. (April 1997), pp. 1-16.

Protected values are those that resist trade-offs with other values, particularly economic values. We propose that such values arise from deontological rules concerning action. People are concerned about their participation in transactions rather than just with the consequences that result. This proposal implies that protected values, defined as those that display trade-off resistance, will also tend to display quantity insensitivity, agent relativity, and moral obligation. People will also tend to experience anger at the thought of making trade-offs, and to engage in denial of the need for trade-offs through wishful thinking. These five properties were correlated with tradeoff resistance (across different values, within subjects) in five studies in which subjects answered several questions about each of several values, or in which they indicated their willingness to pay to prevent some harmful action. These correlations were found even when the subjects could not tell the experimenters which values they were responding to, so they cannot be ascribed entirely to subjects' desire to express commitment. We discuss implications for value measurement and public policy.

Moral distress in perinatal nursing.

LB Tiedje — 2007-05-01T18:21:52-00:00

J Perinat Neonatal Nurs, Vol. 14, No. 2. (September 2000), pp. 36-43.

This work focuses on an emerging concept in nursing ethics--moral distress. Unlike an ethical dilemma where one does not know the right thing to do, in contrast, moral distress occurs when one knows the right thing to do but is constrained by the institution or one's coworkers in doing it. Moral distress is a process that involves recognition that a decision is difficult to act upon; the experience of emotional distress inherent in that situation; choosing strategies; and then acting. Whistle blowing and collaborative practice models both provide strategies for moral action in moral distress situations. Less dramatic and quieter forms of moral action will also be examined. Finally, developing the strength to move from moral distress to moral action will be discussed, as well as research implications for this emerging ethical issue.

Motive and Obligation in Hume's Ethics

Stephen Darwall — 2006-11-22T00:29:59-00:00

Noûs, Vol. 27, No. 4. (1993), pp. 415-448.

The Explanatory Power of Evolutionary Approaches to Human Behavior: The Case of Morality

Dennis Krebs — 2008-07-21T13:17:24-00:00

Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 19, No. 1. (2008), pp. 35-38.

The Intelligence of the Moral Intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001)

David Pizarro — 2006-12-11T08:44:53-00:00

Psychological Review, Vol. 110, No. 1. (January 2003), pp. 193-196.

The social intuitionist model (J. Haidt, 2001) posits that fast and automatic intuitions are the primary source of moral judgments. Conscious deliberations play little causal role; they are used mostly to construct post hoc justifications for judgments that have already occurred. In this article, the authors present evidence that fast and automatic moral intuitions are actually shaped and informed by prior reasoning. More generally, there is considerable evidence from outside the laboratory that people actively engage in reasoning when faced with real-world moral dilemmas. Together, these facts limit the strong claims of the social intuitionist model concerning the irrelevance of conscious deliberation.

The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology

Jonathan Haidt — 2007-11-29T17:45:45-00:00

Science, Vol. 316, No. 5827. (18 May 2007), pp. 998-1002.

People are selfish, yet morally motivated. Morality is universal, yet culturally variable. Such apparent contradictions are dissolving as research from many disciplines converges on a few shared principles, including the importance of moral intuitions, the socially functional (rather than truth-seeking) nature of moral thinking, and the coevolution of moral minds with cultural practices and institutions that create diverse moral communities. I propose a fourth principle to guide future research: Morality is about more than harm and fairness. More research is needed on the collective and religious parts of the moral domain, such as loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity. 10.1126/science.1137651

Moral Cognition and its Neural Constituents

William Casebeer — 2005-04-11T14:21:12-00:00

Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 4, No. 10. (October 2003), pp. 840-846.

Identifying the neural mechanisms of moral cognition is especially difficult. In part, this is because moral cognition taps multiple cognitive sub-processes, being a highly distributed, whole-brain affair. The assumptions required to make progress in identifying the neural constituents of moral cognition might simplify morally salient stimuli to the point that they no longer activate the requisite neural architectures, but the right experiments can overcome this difficulty. The current evidence allows us to draw a tentative conclusion: the moral psychology required by virtue theory is the most neurobiologically plausible. [Peer Reviewed Journal; In English; Print]

How (and where) does moral judgment work?

Joshua Greene — 2005-04-11T14:38:45-00:00

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 12. (01 December 2002), pp. 517-523.

Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moral judgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberate reasoning. Here we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moral judgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moral judgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moral judgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moral judgment although none is devoted specifically to it.

A different kind of ethics

Jason Ferdinand — 2007-11-27T11:10:56-00:00

Ethnography, Vol. 8, No. 4. (1 December 2007), pp. 519-543.

Drawing on four `tales from the field', provided one each by the authors, this article examines the ethical and moral dilemmas ethnographers can face during their research. In particular, we address two key questions. First, what does being ethical actually involve? Second, is there a moral duty owed by researchers and, if so, to whom is this duty owed? The article reviews current debates over ethics in ethnographic research, specifically the responsibilities of the researcher to his/her research subjects, before turning to the four `tales from the field'. These tales form the basis for a discussion of a researcher's ethical responsibilities when confronted with wrongdoing, in different forms, in the course of their fieldwork. 10.1177/1466138107083566

Other-Consciousness and the Use of Animals as Illustrated in Medical Experiments

Abraham Rudnick — 2007-04-29T16:28:36-00:00

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 2. (2007), pp. 202-208.

abstract Ethicists such as Peter Singer argue that consciousness and self-consciousness are the principal considerations in discussing the use of animals by humans, such as in medical experiments. This paper raises an additional consideration to factor into this ethical discussion. Ethics deal with the intentional impact of subjects on each other. This assumes a meta-representational ability of subjects to represent states of mind of others, which may be termed other-consciousness. The moral weight of other-consciousness is manifest in the notion of responsibility, where humans lacking in other-consciousness (such as individuals with autism) may not be held responsible for their harmful actions towards others. As responsibility implies not only duties but also rights and more generally high moral status, it follows that other-consciousness grants high moral status, other things being equal - recognizing that other factors grant moral status too. Other-consciousness also increases the capacity for suffering, both due to increased freedom (and consequently increased possibility of restriction of freedom) and to increased empathy (with suffering of others). Hence, the more an animal is other-conscious, the more it deserves high moral status and the more it can suffer, other things being equal, and consequently, the less it should be used for human purposes. Further study is required to elucidate to what extent animals used by humans, such as in medical experiments, particularly primates and other highly evolved mammals, are other-conscious.

Contractarianism, Other-regarding Attitudes, and the Moral Standing of Nonhuman Animals

Andrew Cohen — 2007-04-29T16:27:55-00:00

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 2. (2007), pp. 188-201.

abstract Contractarianism roots moral standing in an agreement among rational agents in the circumstances of justice. Critics have argued that the theory must exclude nonhuman animals from the protection of justice. I argue that contractarianism can consistently accommodate the notion that nonhuman animals are owed direct moral consideration. They can acquire their moral status indirectly, but their claims to justice can be as stringent as those among able-bodied rational adult humans. Any remaining criticisms of contractarianism likely rest on a disputable moral realism; contractarianism can underwrite the direct moral considerability of nonhuman animals by appealing to a projectivist quasi-realism.

Privacy and Power: Computer Databases and Metaphors for Information Privacy

Daniel Solove — 2007-09-18T20:44:53-00:00

Stanford Law Review, Vol. 53, No. 6. (2001), pp. 1393-1462.

Journalists, politicians, jurists, and legal academics often describe the privacy problem created by the collection and use of personal information through computer databases and the Internet with the metaphor of Big Brother-the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Professor Solove argues that this is the wrong metaphor. The Big Brother metaphor as well as much of the law that protects privacy emerges from a longstanding paradigm for conceptualizing privacy problems. Under this paradigm, privacy is invaded by uncovering one's hidden world, by surveillance, and by the disclosure of concealed information. The harm caused by such invasions consists of inhibition, self-censorship, embarrassment, and damage to one's reputation. Privacy law has developed with this paradigm in mind, and consequently, it has failed to grapple effectively with the database problem. Professor Solove argues that the Big Brother metaphor merely reinforces this paradigm and that the problem is better captured by Franz Kafka's The Trial. Understood with the Kafka metaphor, the problem is the powerlessness, vulnerability, and dehumanization created by the assembly of dossiers of personal information where individuals lack any meaningful form of participation in the collection and use of their information. Professor Solove illustrates that conceptualizing the problem with the Kafka metaphor has profound implications both for the law of information privacy and for choosing legal approaches to solve the problem.

Dominance, Subordination, and Concepts of Personal Entitlements in Cultural Contexts

Cecilia Wainryb — 2007-09-17T19:00:59-00:00

Child Development, Vol. 65, No. 6. (1994), pp. 1701-1722.

In 2 studies, we assessed concepts of personal entitlements in more and less hierarchically organized cultures. Study 1 assessed the judgments of 88 adolescent and adult males (mean ages 17-6 and 34-7) from Druze and Jewish communities in Israel. Subjects were presented with conflict situations in which a person in a dominant position (husband, father) objects to the activities of a family member in a subordinate position (wife, daughter, son), and vice versa. Druze subjects attributed more power than Jewish subjects to husbands and fathers over wives and daughters, but concepts of personal entitlements were prominent in both groups. Study 2 assessed the judgments of Druze females (mean ages 12-10, 17-5, and 38-6). Results show that females accept the legitimacy of males' power and personal autonomy, recognize the consequences for those in subordinate positions, and regard the existing social arrangements as unfair. Overall, the findings indicate that social reasoning is heterogeneous in different types of cultures.

The Virtues and Vices of Moral Development Theorists

Charles Helwig — 2007-09-17T18:58:44-00:00

Developmental Review, Vol. 16, No. 1. (March 1996), pp. 69-107.

In arguing that "Kantian presuppositions" underlie contemporary research on moral judgment, Campbell and Christopher resort to a number of errors, misconceptions, and exaggerations. They construe the cognitive-developmental and domain approaches too narrowly, overinterpret the influence of Kant on moral judgment theorizing to the exclusion of other equally important non-Kantian philosophical influences, and ignore much of the research evidence. Contemporary and historical philosophical perspectives and research findings from studies of social and moral development are used to illustrate the need for drawing a number of distinctions in research on social judgments, including that between domains of social reasoning, informational assumptions, moral judgment, and variations in judgments and behavior between social contexts. The limitations of a strictly eudaemonist perspective on morality are discussed.

Betrayal aversion: When agents of protection become agents of harm

Jonathan Koehler — 2007-09-11T17:59:33-00:00

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 90, No. 2. (March 2003), pp. 244-261.

A form of betrayal occurs when agents of protection cause the very harm that they are entrusted to guard against. Examples include the military leader who commits treason and the exploding automobile air bag. We conducted five studies that examined how people respond to criminal betrayals, safety product betrayals, and the risk of future betrayal by safety products. We found that people reacted more strongly (in terms of punishment assigned and negative emotions felt) to acts of betrayal than to identical bad acts that do not violate a duty or promise to protect. We also found that, when faced with a choice among pairs of safety devices (air bags, smoke alarms, and vaccines), most people preferred inferior options (in terms of risk exposure) to options that included a slim (0.01%) risk of betrayal. However, when the betrayal risk was replaced by an equivalent non-betrayal risk, the choice pattern was reversed. Apparently, people are willing to incur greater risks of the very harm they seek protection from to avoid the mere possibility of betrayal.