Over the last several decades legal scholars have plumbed law's rhetorical life. Scholars have done so under various rubrics, with law and literature being among the most fruitful venues for the exploration of law's rhetoric and the way rhetoric shapes law. Today, new approaches are shaping this exploration. Among the most important of these approaches is the turn toward history and toward what might be called an 'embedded' analysis of rhetoric in law. Historical and embedded approaches locate that analysis in (...) particular contexts, seeking to draw our attention to how the rhetorical dimensions of legal life works in those contexts. Rhetorical Processes and Legal Judgments seeks to advance that mode of analysis and also to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical structure of judicial arguments and opinions. (shrink)

Shape and slant judgments of rotated or frontoparallel ellipses were elicited from three groups of 10 subjects. A masking stimulus was introduced to control processing time. Backward masking trials were presented with interstimulus intervals of 0, 25, and 50 msec, Reduction of processing time altered shape judgments in the direction of projective shape and slant judgments in the direction of frontoparallelness. This finding is consistent with the shape-slant invariance hypothesis. In order to study (...) the effects of processing load, one group of subjects was given prior knowledge of the kind of judgment to be made on each trial, one group had no prior knowledge, and a third group made both judgments on each trial. The effects of the processing load manipulation were interpreted in terms of the role of attention in perceptual encoding. Consistent with previous findings, allocation of attention did not affect perceptual encoding. (shrink)

When confronted with moral dilemmas related to health, governments frequently turn to “moral experts,” such as bioethicists and moral philosophers, for guidance and advice. They commonly assume that these experts’ moral judgments are primarily a product of deliberate reasoning. The article challenges this assumption, arguing that experts’ moral judgments may instead be primarily a product of moral intuitions which, often subconsciously, respond to the social setting.

We use psychological concepts (e.g., intention and desire) when we ascribe psychological states to others for purposes of describing, explaining, and predicting their actions. Does the evidence reported by Knobe show, as he thinks, that moral evaluation shapes our mastery of psychological concepts? We argue that the evidence so far shows instead that moral evaluation shapes the way we report, not the way we think about, others' psychological states.

Twelve subjects provided shape and orientation judgments for a set of projectively equivalent, variously rotated rectangles under three viewing conditions—monoptic, dichoptic, and binocular—with and without the presence of a pattern mask. In the absence of the mask, partial constancy was exhibited under the first two conditions and near perfect constancy under the binocular condition. Orientation was discriminated. Presence of the mask produced projective shape matching and diminished orientation discrimination. It is argued that the site of masking was (...) postchiasmal, and the results are related to previous work with pattern masking of projectively equivalent ellipses. (shrink)

We ordinarily think that, keeping all else equal, a life that improves is better than one that declines. However, it has proven challenging to account for such value judgments: some, such as Fred Feldman and Daniel Kahneman, have simply denied that these judgments are rational, while others, such as Douglas Portmore, Michael Slote, and David Velleman, have proposed justifications for the judgments that appear to be incomplete or otherwise problematic. This article identifies problems with existing accounts and (...) suggests a novel alternative theory: what best accounts for our preference for an uphill over a downhill life (and many other episodes) is that losses of momentary value are themselves bad and gains in momentary value are themselves good. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative (...) beliefs do appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethical analysis, public policy, and clinical practice in which a common, generally accepted morality does not exist. While religious thinkers are often approached within a hermeneutic of suspicion for assuming moral standards that cannot be justified in rational terms, secular bioethicists routinely find themselves in exactly the same intellectual predicament. That ethical theory, proposed values, or normative content is secular, that it does not invoke God or (...) any particular religious perspective, does not mean that it is rationally grounded, necessarily true, or universally binding. As the authors in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy make clear, this normative reality directly impacts debates regarding concepts of health, illness, and disease, accounts of socially acceptable health-risky behaviors, and the political frameworks that shape public policy. As a result, honest discussion of diverse moral, religious, and political perspectives remains essential in clarifying the intellectual challenges, ethical intuitions, and ideological judgments that shape clinical practice and healthcare policy. Depending on which moral, political, or scientific concepts are guiding bioethical analysis, careful scrutiny will tend to support rather different policies and practices, each of which is likely to be worth careful consideration. (shrink)

The Catholic Tradition requires the faithful to form and follow their conscience. This is the case even with the recognition that consciences can be malformed and one can make errors in practical judgments. Water Shaping Stone examines various aspects of this tradition regarding conscience by using, among other sources, twentieth-century magisterial documents, theologians' works, and Scripture. Kathryn Lilla Cox argues that while the Magisterium retains teaching authority, and a responsibility to help form consciences through its teaching, focusing only on (...) the Magisterium leads to incomplete formation. A more holistic vision of conscience formation means considering the formation of the moral agent to be a multifaceted process that draws on, for example, teaching, prayer, rituals, Scripture, practices, and virtues, along with relationships with the Triune God and communities of accountability. This vision of conscience formation retains the magisterial teaching authority while acknowledging discipleship as the theological basis for making and assessing practical judgments of conscience. (shrink)

This paper first outlines a new taxonomy of different views concerning the relationship between normative judgments and motivation. In this taxonomy, according to the Type A views, a positive normative judgment concerning an action consists at least in part of motivation to do that action. According to the Type B views, motivation is never a constituent of a positive normative judgment even if such judgments have, due to the kind of states they are, a causal power to produce (...) motivation in an agent. Finally, according to the Type C views, a normative judgment can produce motivation only with the help of a third mental state or a distinct substantial local disposition. This paper then outlines a novel evolutionary argument for the Type B views. If we assume that normative judgments' ability to shape our motivations enabled efficient planning and cooperation , the psychological mechanism responsible for this adaptation should be understood as a proximal mechanism. This paper argues that it is then more likely that we evolved to make normative judgments that have direct causal powers to influence our motivations because such Type B mechanisms are more reliable than the Type C mechanisms. It also suggests that the Type A views are either empirically false or collapse into the Type B views. (shrink)

An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causation and intentional action. We therefore (...) suggest that the present finding favors the view that moral appraisal plays a pervasive role in shaping diverse cognitive representations across multiple domains. -/- . (shrink)

Despite the moral gravity and far-reaching consequences of ethical judgment, evidence shows that such judgment is surprisingly malleable, prone to bias, informed by intuition and implicit associations, and swayed by mere circumstance. In this vein, this research examines how mere colors featured in logos can bias consumers’ ethical judgments about a retailer. Exposure to a logo featuring an eco-friendly color makes an ethically ambiguous practice seem more ethical; however, exposure to a logo featuring a non-eco-friendly color makes the same (...) practice seem less ethical. This effect is due to the embodied meaning of color, not referential meanings associated with the names of colors, and it is mediated by perceptions of a retailer’s eco-friendliness. Furthermore, although the word “green” appears to influence ethical ratings of retail practices more than the word “blue,” visual exposure to either color evokes similar perceptions of eco-friendliness and influences ethical judgments. Study 2c assesses and rules out alternative explanations for this effect. Critically, an eco-friendly color can skew judgments even when the practices judged are not ethically ambiguous. Individual differences in ethical sensitivity moderate the observed effect, such that individuals who are less ethically sensitive are less influenced by color. The article concludes with a discussion on how logo colors shape consumers’ perceptions of retailer ethicality. (shrink)

A division between functional belief, on the one hand, and judgmental belief, on the other, is central to Sosa’s two-tier virtue epistemology. For Sosa, mere functional belief is constituted by a first-order affirmation. In contrast, a judgmental belief is an intentional affirmation; a performance which is partially constituted by the believer’s endeavor to affirm truthfully, and reliably enough. If, qua performance, judgmental belief is like the hunter’s shot or the baseball player’s swing, mere functional belief is much more like a (...) heartbeat. This paper explores whether we should accept Sosa’s distinction between mere functional belief and judgmental belief, and, if we should, how recognizing this distinction ought to shape our epistemological theorizing. Accordingly, the first aim of this paper is expository. It is to further clarify Sosa’s contrasting categories of functional belief and judgmental belief and to attempt to characterize explicitly the role that the division between functional belief and judgmental belief plays in Sosa’s two-tier virtue epistemology. The second aim of this paper is more critical. It is to articulate and begin to evaluate a series of concerns regarding whether Sosa’s division between functional belief and judgmental belief is well-founded, and so to explore whether a virtue-theoretic performance epistemology ought to embrace the sort of two-tiered account of cognitive performance that Sosa favors. (shrink)

Contractualist work in business ethics as well as in economic organization theory views opportunistic behaviors as problematic since they create economic harm and are often considered to violate ethical norms. Yet, much of the empirical literature on opportunism has adopted a rather simplistic definition of opportunistic behaviors as behaviors that violate formal and/or relational contracts and assumed that instances of opportunism can be unequivocally defined by simply referring to the content of contracts. The consequence of this assumption has been a (...) disregard for factors other than the content of contracts that may influence whether exchange partners judge an unexpected behavior they face during exchange relationships as opportunistic or not. The present investigation explores the factors that shape exchange partners’ subjective opportunism judgments through two vignette-based laboratory experiments. Results from the first experiment, where subjects were asked to take the perspective of a harmed party, show that opportunism judgments are influenced by the type of the behavior, type of the causal account provided for the behavior, perceived type of the exchange, and personality traits of the actor making the judgment. The second experiment, in which subjects were asked to take the perspective of the transgressor, demonstrates the influence of perspective. In particular, victims are more likely to assess a given unexpected behavior as opportunistic than transgressors, and their judgments do not relate to the underlying factors in the same way as the victims’ judgments. I discuss implications in terms of the governance of interfirm exchange relationships. (shrink)

In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict (...) the value of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed. (shrink)

On top of working longer hours in paid employment and spending more time actively caring for children, parents, especially mothers, also feel pressured to safeguard the health of their children and the planet through their food consumption choices. Surprisingly, little evidence identifies whether the health value and environmental impact of food consumption choices impact judgments of parents’ abilities, morality, or general worth. We address this gap by drawing on an experiment administered to an online convenience sample of the United (...) States adult population. We find that the health value of a parent’s consumption choices only influences judgments of mothers, not fathers. Judgments of mothers and fathers are influenced by the environmental impact of their consumption choices. To add depth to these findings, we draw on supplementary interview data collected from 63 socioeconomically diverse residents of Washington State. The qualitative data demonstrate that people tend to ascribe the responsibility to make consumption choices to mothers, not fathers, and that participants value eco-friendly consumption because it represents a substantial commitment to a healthy lifestyle. These findings demonstrate that in the parenting context, consumption decisions influence social judgments and that food’s presumed health and environmental impact shape “feeding ideals” in gendered ways. Our evidence suggests the social costs for not meeting these ideals are more severe for mothers than for fathers. (shrink)

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence of an emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present review reveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidence that emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research (...) on disgust, anger, sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judging conduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recent studies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence in support of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus instead on how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interact with empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments. (shrink)

Exploring the dynamic interface of environmental psychology and psycholinguistics, this investigation delves into how simulated weather conditions – sunny versus rainy – affect emotional perceptions of linguistic stimuli within a Virtual Reality (VR) framework. Participants assessed words’ emotional valence being exposed to these distinct environmental simulations. Contrary to expectations, we found that while rainy conditions modestly prolonged response times, they did not significantly alter the emotional valence attributed to words. Our study shows that weather can affect emotional cognition, but intrinsic (...) emotional word properties are resilient to environmental influences. This highlights the complex interplay between environmental factors and linguistic processing and reaffirms the importance of environmental contexts in cognitive and emotional evaluations, especially in the face of climate change. By integrating VR technology with environmental psychology and linguistics, our research offers novel insights into the subtle yet significant ways in which virtual and real-world environments converge to shape human emotional and cognitive responses. (shrink)

Has moral relativism run its course? The threat of 9/11, terrorism, reproductive technology, and globalization has forced us to ask anew whether there are universal moral truths upon which to base ethical and political judgments. In this timely edited collection, distinguished scholars present and test the best answers to this question. These insightful responses temper the strong antithesis between universalism and relativism and retain sensitivity to how language and history shape the context of our moral decisions. This important (...) and relevant work of contemporary political and social thought is ideal for use in the classroom across many disciplines, including political science, philosophy, ethics, law, and theology. (shrink)

Has moral relativism run its course? The threat of 9/11, terrorism, reproductive technology, and globalization has forced us to ask anew whether there are universal moral truths upon which to base ethical and political judgments. In this timely edited collection, distinguished scholars present and test the best answers to this question. These insightful responses temper the strong antithesis between universalism and relativism and retain sensitivity to how language and history shape the context of our moral decisions. This important (...) and relevant work of contemporary political and social thought is ideal for use in the classroom across many disciplines, including political science, philosophy, ethics, law, and theology. (shrink)

The position of individuals' bodies (e.g., holding a pencil in the mouth in a way that either facilitates or inhibits smiling musculature) can influence their emotional reactions to the stimuli they encounter, and can even impact their explicit preferences for one item over another. In this article we begin by reviewing the literature demonstrating these effects, explore mechanisms to explain this body-preference link, and introduce new work from our lab that asks whether one's bodily or motor experiences might also (...) class='Hi'>shape preferences in situations where the body is not contorted in a particular position, or when there is no intention to act. Such work suggests that one consequence of perceiving an object is the automatic and covert motor simulation of acting on this object. This, in turn, provides individuals with information about how easy or hard this action would be. It transpires that we like to do what is easy, and we also prefer objects that are easier to act on. The notion that judgments of object likeability are driven by motoric information furthers embodied cognition theories by demonstrating that even our preferences are grounded in action. (shrink)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fraught with controversies over the role of values and politics in regulatory science, especially with drugs in the realm of reproductive health. Philosophers and science studies scholars have investigated the ways in which social context shapes medical knowledge through value judgments, and feminist scholars and activists have criticized sexism and injustice in reproductive medicine. Nonetheless, there has been no systematic study of values and gender norms in FDA drug regulation. I focus (...) on three questions about values in regulatory science. First, how have societal values and gender norms shaped the way that the FDA regulates drugs in the realm of reproductive health, specifically with drug labels? Second, what are the ethical, epistemic, and social consequences of these influences on regulation for women and other marginalized groups? Third, which societal values and gender norms ought to influence drug regulation about reproductive health, and how ought this happen? Integrating philosophical analysis with historical archival research and in-depth interviews, I conduct three case studies of drug labeling about reproductive health: (1) the “drug fact” about the mechanism of the morning-after pill; (2) the package inserts for patients about the health risks of oral contraceptives; and (3) the special physician labels made for prescribing drugs to pregnant women. I identify three challenges for the FDA and suggest ways to reduce the influence of sexist values and facilitate feminist alternatives. First, across these cases, I have found that there are many ways in which other concerns in reproductive medicine (such as zygotic life, fetal health, and population control) have devalued women’s health. Second, both knowledge and ignorance xvi about their reproductive health have contributed to women’s oppression, especially poor women and women of color. Finally, by avoiding the epistemic dimensions of ethics, powerful, mostly male parties in medicine (such as doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and religious institutions) have misused “informed consent,” “religious freedom,” and “paternalism” for unethical purposes. For improvement, I suggest extracting sexist values and gender norms from regulatory science that cause epistemic injustices, and I point to success stories for reforming sexism with feminism at the FDA. (shrink)

People's treatment of others (humans, nonhuman animals, or other entities) often depends on whether they think the entity is worthy of moral concern. Recent work has begun to investigate which entities are included in a person's moral circle, examining how certain target characteristics (e.g., species category, perceived intelligence) and judge characteristics (e.g., empathy, political orientation) shape moral inclusion. However, the relative importance of target and judge characteristics in predicting moral inclusion remains unclear. When predicting whether a person will deem (...) an entity worthy of moral consideration, how important is it to know who is making the judgment (i.e., characteristics of the judge), who is being judged (i.e., characteristics of the target), and potential interactions between the two factors? Here, we address this foundational question by conducting a variance component analysis of the moral circle. In two studies with participants from the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (N = 836), we test how much variance in judgments of moral concern is explained by between‐target differences, between‐judge differences, and by the interaction between the two factors. We consistently find that all three components explain substantial amounts of variance in judgments of moral concern. Our findings provide two important insights. First, an increased focus on interactions between target and judge characteristics is needed, as these interactions explain as much variance as target and judge characteristics separately. Second, any theoretical account that aims to provide an accurate description of moral inclusion needs to consider target characteristics, judge characteristics, and their interaction. (shrink)

Emotions shape judgments and decisions, including actions in response to climate change. Despite growing interest in the cognitive, social, and political determinants of climate (in)action, the role of emotions has received limited attention. This review discusses the role of hope in climate action. While many emotional states are oriented to the past or present, hope offers a positive vision of the future. In exploratory analyses of a nationally representative survey of US residents, we identify the most important predictors (...) of hope, climate action, and policy support from a large set of potential variables. We find suggestive evidence that hope, a construct comprised of cognitive, emotional, and contextual factors, is an important motivator of future-oriented action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension by Rudolf A. MakkreelRiccardo PozzoRudolf A. Makkreel. Kant’s Worldview: How Judgment Shapes Human Comprehension. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021. Pp. 284. Hardback, $99.95. Paperback, $34.95.This is the last book Rudolf Makkreel published before passing away in October 2021. No wonder, then, that it makes some strong points, one of which is truly fundamental: the time has come to recognize the (...) expediency of reading Kant along with Dilthey for a better understanding of the workings of human comprehension. Makkreel maintains that Kant endorsed “a more inclusive idea of philosophizing according to a world-concept (Weltbegriff ),” for Kant had realized that, because reason cannot simply extrapolate from the ways in which the understanding proceeds to a determinate lawful order, it is necessary to tame the speculative projections of reason by our own powers of orientation and judgment. Hence, Makreel concludes that “the overall worldview we can actually arrive at will need [End Page 511] to include supplementary modes of organizational order that are not determinant but reflective” (3).Throughout the book, Makkreel is pleading for Kant scholars to acknowledge the heuristic value of a set of concepts whose philosophical effectiveness has been to date underestimated. Readers will find many convincing analyses of the lexical cloud around judgment: determining judgment (bestimmende Urteilskraft) against reflecting judgment (reflektierende Urteilskraft) in its connection with the Weberian distinction between explaining (Erklären), understanding (Verstehen), and comprehending (Begreifen). What is at stake in contrasting the last two, understanding and comprehension, insists Makkreel, is the scope of what humans can claim to know, for while it is important to base knowledge claims on the empirical understanding, we must remain open to what could lie beyond the horizon of sense. Hence, critical philosophy is there to supplement “the limits of actual geographical” surveys of the earth with the “boundaries of all possible descriptions of the earth” (KrV A 759/B 787), whereby limits (Schranken) are negative empirical markers that do not take into account what could be beyond them, while boundaries (Grenzen) are positive markers that “presuppose a space existing outside a certain definite space and enclosing it” (Prolegomena, AA 4:352). Makkreel suggests we can infer that whereas earthly limits are imposed from without, worldly boundaries are in some sense self-imposed. Earthly limits would act as external negative restraints on the understanding, while worldly bounds work as internal positive constraints on reason as it attempts to comprehend both what we can and cannot know. Comprehension, argues Makkreel, can be “shown to be a mode of reason whose bounds must be judgmentally self-binding” (14).Let me take a step back. Makkreel intends to show that the task of understanding in its relation with comprehension is what we need to provide an overall characterization of Kant’s philosophical project. This is a bold stance, given Kant’s argument that the faculty of understanding (Verstand) proceeds discursively, namely one step at a time, which makes the project of a more holistic comprehension (Begreifen) highly problematic. However, Makkreel notes that if it is true that “concepts of reason serve for comprehension” (KrV A 311/B 367), it is also true they are purely inferential and at times sophistical (13). To help define what Kant ends up meaning by ‘comprehension,’ Makkreel provides exhaustive references to important discussions about this notion in Kant’s Lectures on Logic and the Critique of Judgment (40–46).Here comes to the foreground the notion of worldview (Weltanschauung) that stands alone in the title of his book. It is in the context of his discussion of the mathematical sublime that Kant broached the idea of an overall “worldview [Weltanschauung]” (KU AA 5:255), which nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers (e.g. Hegel, Dilthey, and Jaspers) took to denote a common or generic outlook on life. For Makkreel, though, ‘worldview’ designates a comprehensive way of characterizing Kant’s distinctive philosophical project (13).As I said above, this is a bold stance. While the first part of the book focuses on philosophizing according to a world-concept, the second part turns to our practical concerns as we act in the world. In... (shrink)

Empirical insights into language processing have a philosophical relevance that extends well beyond philosophical questions about language. This chapter will discuss this wider relevance: We will consider how experimental philosophers can examine language processing in order to address questions in several different areas of philosophy. To do so, we will present the emerging research program of experimental argument analysis (EAA) that examines how automatic language processing shapes verbal reasoning – including philosophical arguments. The evidential strand of experimental philosophy uses mainly (...) questionnaire-based methods to assess the evidentiary value of intuitive judgments that are adduced as evidence for philosophical theories and as premises for philosophical arguments. Extending this prominent strand of experimental philosophy, EAA underpins such assessments, extends the scope of the assessments, and expands the range of the empirical methods employed: EAA examines how automatic inferences that are continually made in language comprehension and production shape verbal reasoning, and draws on findings about comprehension biases that affect the contextualisation of such default inferences, in order to explain and expose fallacies. It deploys findings to assess premises and inferences from premises to conclusions, in philosophical arguments. To do so, it adapts methods from psycholinguistics and recruits methods from computational linguistics. (shrink)

Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes”) leads children to assume that the referenced category (e.g., tigers) is inductively informative and provides a causal explanation for the behavior of individual members. In two preregistered studies with 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 497), we considered the mechanisms underlying these effects by testing how correcting generics might affect the development of these beliefs about novel social and animal kinds (Study 1) and about gender (Study 2). Correcting generics by narrowing their scope to (...) a single individual limited beliefs that the referenced categories could explain what their members would be like while broadening the scope to a superordinate category (Study 2) uniquely limited endorsement of gender norms. Across both studies, correcting generics did not alter beliefs about feature heritability and had mixed effects on inductive inferences, suggesting that additional mechanisms (e.g., causal reasoning about shared features) contribute to the development of full-blown essentialist beliefs. These results help illuminate the mechanisms by which generics lead children to view categories as having rich inductive and causal potential; in particular, they suggest that children interpret generics as signals that speakers in their community view the referenced categories as meaningful kinds that support generalization. The findings also point the way to concrete suggestions for how adults can effectively correct problematic generics (e.g., gender stereotypes) that children may hear in daily life. (shrink)

Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is often construed in terms of the question of whether or not the predicate is contained in or can be derived from the concept of the subject. Few have observed that Kant has another formulation of the distinction, a formulation that is based on the determinate-indeterminate distinction. In fact, it is this formulation that will shape the development of one of the main tasks of post-Kantian German idealism. It is my aim to explain how Kant, Maimon, (...) and Fichte each define and address the problem of the synthetic a priori in terms of the determinate-indeterminate distinction. (shrink)

Background Nurses’ demonstration of compassion is an ethical and often regulatory expectation. While research has been conducted to examine the barriers and facilitators of compassion in nurses, little is known about how nurses develop and express compassion for patients who may be blamed for their health condition. Unvaccinated COVID-19 patients are an example of such patients. Research questions How do nurses provide compassionate care for unvaccinated adults infected with COVID-19? How did the context of COVID-19 vaccination in Canada shape (...) nurses’ relationships with unvaccinated patients? Research design A generic qualitative approach using interviews to gather data was used. Martha Nussbaum’s conceptualization of compassion and its cognitive requirements was employed to add depth to the analysis. Participants and research context Seventeen Registered Nurses, from a range of practice settings, who had cared for unvaccinated patients with COVID-19 participated. Ethical considerations Ethics approval was received, and signed informed consent was obtained. Participants who were the current students of the researchers were excluded. Findings Three themes were identified: 1) Encountering Extreme Workplace Impediments to Compassion. 2) Managing Emotions to Provide “Nonjudgmental Care.” 3) Practicing Narrative Imagination. Discussion The difficult working conditions during the pandemic impeded nurses’ capacity to be compassionate. Yet, none judged their patients’ suffering as trivial, and all provided necessary nursing care. Some initially blamed these patients for the severity of their illness and suppressed their emotions to provide what they called “nonjudgmental care.” Upon reflection, participants recognized that these patients’ life circumstances may have been barriers to vaccination which, in the end, facilitated the development of compassion. Conclusion This research has implications that go beyond that of caring for patients with COVID-19. The ideal of “nonjudgmental care” requires critical re-examination because judgments and emotions are required for compassion. (shrink)

Two components of lay observers’ calculus of moral judgment are proximal intent (the actor’s mind is focused on performing the action) and distal intent (the actor’s mind is focused on the broader goal). What causes observers to prioritize one form of intent over the other? The authors observed whether construal level (Studies 1-2) and beliefs about free will (Studies 3-4) would influence participants’ sensitivity to the actor’s proximal versus distal intent. In four studies, participants read scenarios in which the actor’s (...) proximal and distal intent were independently manipulated. In Study 1, when only distal intent was present in the actor’s mind, participants rated the psychologically distant actor more responsible than the psychologically near actor. In Study 2, when only distal intent was in the actor’s mind, participants with a chronic high level of action identification rated the actor more responsible than did those with a low level of action identification. In both studies, when only proximal intent was in the actor’s mind, construal level did not predict judgments of responsibility. In Study 3, when only proximal intent was present in the actor’s mind, the more participants believed in free will, the more they rated the actor responsible. When only distal intent was in the actor’s mind, free will belief did not influence ratings of responsibility. In Study 4, the same pattern emerged when free will / determinism beliefs were manipulated and the actor performed a positive (life-saving) act. The authors discuss how these results shed new light on the literatures on moral reasoning and psycho-legal theory. (shrink)

Do moral appraisals shape judgments of intentionality? A traditional view is that individuals first evaluate whether an action has been carried out intentionally. Then they use this evaluation as input for their moral judgments. Recent studies, however, have shown that individuals’ moral appraisals can also influence their intentionality attributions. They attribute intentionality to the negative side effect of a given action, but not to the positive side effect of the same action. In three experiments, we show that (...) this asymmetry is a robust effect that critically depends on the agent’s beliefs. The asymmetry is reduced when agents are described as not knowing that their action can bring about side effects, and is eliminated when they are deemed to hold a false belief about the consequences of their actions. These results suggest that both evaluative and epistemic considerations are used in intentionality attribution. (shrink)

Moral judgments about an agent's behavior are enmeshed with inferences about the agent's mind. Folk psychology—the system that enables such inferences—therefore lies at the heart of moral judgment. We examine three related folk-psychological concepts that together shape people's judgments of blame: intentionality, choice, and free will. We discuss people's understanding and use of these concepts, address recent findings that challenge the autonomous role of these concepts in moral judgment, and conclude that choice is the fundamental concept of (...) the three, defining the core of folk psychology in moral judgment. (shrink)

Social anxiety occurs in everyday social interactions, yet the real-world factors that shape the moment-to-moment experience of social anxiety have not been fully explored. Using ecological momentary assessments (smartphone-based, five signals a day for 21 days), the present study examined the associations between state social anxiety (SSA) and characteristics of interaction partners in varied contexts, and how these momentary associations differed with trait social anxiety (TSA). Ninety-two participants (54% female, age from 18 to 34) completed 4185 momentary reports. Results (...) from multilevel models showed that perceived judgmentalness and unfamiliarity of interaction partners were positively associated with SSA, and the associations were stronger for the high TSA group (n = 30) compared to a control group (n = 62). Exploratory analyses with various types of interaction partners and social settings revealed noticeable group differences in how the types were associated with SSA (e.g. acquaintance, close friend/romantic partner) and how they influenced the effect of judgmentalness and unfamiliarity on SSA (e.g. authority, work/school). Overall, the findings highlight the role of contextual associations in social anxiety, and the benefits and the need for more comprehensive approaches with EMA in studying social anxiety, particularly its contextual aspects. (shrink)

Judgments of character traits tend to be overcorrelated, a bias known as the halo effect. We conducted two studies to test an explanation of the effect based on shared lexical context and connotation. Study 1 tested whether the context similarity of trait names could explain 39 participants’ ratings of the probability that two traits would co-occur. Over 126 trait pairs, cosine similarity between the word2vec vectors of the two words was a reliable predictor of the human judgments of (...) trait co-occurrence probability (cross-validated r2 =.19, p <.001). Two measures related to word similarity increased the variation accounted for in the human judgments to 45%, cross-validated (p <.001). In Experiment 2, 40 different participants judged similarity of word meaning within the pairs, confirming that the word pairs were not simply synonymous (Average [SD] = 40.8/100 [13.1/100]). Shared lexical context and word connotation play a role in shaping the halo effect. (shrink)

Evolution and geometry generate complexity in similar ways. Evolution drives natural selection while geometry may capture the logic of this selection and express it visually, in terms of specific generic properties representing some kind of advantage. Geometry is ideally suited for expressing the logic of evolutionary selection for symmetry, which is found in the shape curves of vein systems and other natural objects such as leaves, cell membranes, or tunnel systems built by ants. The topology and geometry of symmetry (...) is controlled by numerical parameters, which act in analogy with a biological organism’s DNA. The introductory part of this paper reviews findings from experiments illustrating the critical role of two-dimensional (2D) design parameters, affine geometry and shape symmetry for visual or tactile shape sensation and perception-based decision making in populations of experts and non-experts. It will be shown that 2D fractal symmetry, referred to herein as the “symmetry of things in a thing”, results from principles very similar to those of affine projection. Results from experiments on aesthetic and visual preference judgments in response to 2D fractal trees with varying degrees of asymmetry are presented. In a first experiment (psychophysical scaling procedure), non-expert observers had to rate (on a scale from 0 to 10) the perceived beauty of a random series of 2D fractal trees with varying degrees of fractal symmetry. In a second experiment (two-alternative forced choice procedure), they had to express their preference for one of two shapes from the series. The shape pairs were presented successively in random order. Results show that the smallest possible fractal deviation from “symmetry of things in a thing” significantly reduces the perceived attractiveness of such shapes. The potential of future studies where different levels of complexity of fractal patterns are weighed against different degrees of symmetry is pointed out in the conclusion. (shrink)

Moral judgments about a situation are profoundly shaped by the perception of individuals in that situation as either moral agents or moral patients (Gray & Wegner, 2009; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), Specifically, the more we see someone as a moral agent, the less we see them as a moral patient, and vice versa. As a result, casting the perpetrator of a transgression as a victim tends to have the effect of making them seem less blameworthy (Gray & Wegner, (...) 2011). Based on this theoretical framework, we predicted that criminal offenders with a mental disorder that predisposes them to antisocial behavior would be judged more negatively when the disorder is described as having a genetic origin than when it is described as environmentally caused, as in the case of childhood abuse or accident. Further, we predicted that some environmental explanations would mitigate attributions of blame more than others, namely, that offenders whose disorder was caused by childhood abuse (intentional harm) would be seen as less blameworthy than offenders whose disorder is caused by an unfortunate accident (unintentional harm). Results from two vignette-based studies designed to test these predictions, conducted with participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 244 and N = 387, respectively), confirmed the first prediction but not the second. Implications of this research for three areas — the psychology of moral judgment, philosophical debates about moral responsibility and determinism, and the practice of the law — are discussed in the sequel. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, a large number of studies have investigated judgments of the identity of various objects (e.g., persons, material objects, institutions) over time. One influential strand of research has found that identity judgments are shaped by normative considerations. People tend to believe that moral improvement is more compatible with the continuity of identity of a person than moral deterioration, suggesting that persons are taken to be essentially morally good. This asymmetry is often referred to as (...) the “Phineas Gage effect”. However, normativity extends beyond morality. In particular, it is unknown whether changes in aesthetic value have a similar impact on identity judgments. We investigate whether works of art would be analogously seen as essentially aesthetically valuable. We ran four studies (N=1264) to explore whether aesthetic considerations have a similar influence on judgments of the identity of artworks. We presented the participants with stories describing either a painting or a musical work which undergoes changes and becomes either more or less aesthetically valuable. Overall, we found only mixed evidence for the Phineas Gage effect in relation to the aesthetic value of artworks. Other factors, such as moral value, seem to have a bigger impact on judgments of persistence. (shrink)

Although debates about the shape and future of the built environment are usually cast in economic and political terms, they also have an irreducible ethical component that stands in need of careful examination. This paper is the report of an exploratory study in descriptive ethics carried out in Atlanta, Georgia. Archival sources and semi-structured interviews provide the basis for identifying and sorting the diverse value judgments and value conflicts that come into play in a rapidly growing metropolitan area. (...) The goal of the project is to expand and refine a draft framework for grappling with the ethical complexity of the situations from which individuals and communities make important decisions about their surroundings. The success of the framework is to be measured by its usefulness in informing the judgment of professionals and citizens, and in facilitating a robust normative debate about the built environment. (shrink)

Some things look more complex than others. For example, a crenulate and richly organized leaf may seem more complex than a plain stone. What is the nature of this experience—and why do we have it in the first place? Here, we explore how object complexity serves as an efficiently extracted visual signal that the object merits further exploration. We algorithmically generated a library of geometric shapes and determined their complexity by computing the cumulative surprisal of their internal skeletons—essentially quantifying the (...) “amount of information” within each shape—and then used this approach to ask new questions about the perception of complexity. Experiments 1–3 asked what kind of mental process extracts visual complexity: a slow, deliberate, reflective process (as when we decide that an object is expensive or popular) or a fast, effortless, and automatic process (as when we see that an object is big or blue)? We placed simple and complex objects in visual search arrays and discovered that complex objects were easier to find among simple distractors than simple objects are among complex distractors—a classic search asymmetry indicating that complexity is prioritized in visual processing. Next, we explored the function of complexity: Why do we represent object complexity in the first place? Experiments 4–5 asked subjects to study serially presented objects in a self‐paced manner (for a later memory test); subjects dwelled longer on complex objects than simple objects—even when object shape was completely task‐irrelevant—suggesting a connection between visual complexity and exploratory engagement. Finally, Experiment 6 connected these implicit measures of complexity to explicit judgments. Collectively, these findings suggest that visual complexity is extracted efficiently and automatically, and even arouses a kind of “perceptual curiosity” about objects that encourages subsequent attentional engagement. (shrink)

Typically people make ethical judgments with reference to unchanging principles, standards, rights, and values. This essay argues that such an ahistorical approach to ethics should be supplemented by a due regard for history. Invoking precedents by authors such as Jonsen and Toulmin, McIntyre, Niebuhr, Weber, De Tocqueville, Machiavelli and others, this essay explores several important ways in which a due regard for history can and should shape the practice of business ethics. Thus a due regard for history helps (...) us both to cultivate fitting appreciation of cultural mores and to understand how current problems and issues have developed as they have; it helps us to gauge current responsibilities with respect legacies of problems inherited from the past; it helps us to develop a lively sense of what is possible in the present, given current contingencies and past experiences; and it moves us to rethink the practice of ethical auditing: not just as a backward-looking effort to gauge compliance but as a forward-looking way of learning from actual experiences and developing fitting responses. (shrink)

Our aesthetic judgments are embedded in and shaped by unjust social orders. But can our aesthetic judgments themselves—“this is beautiful; that is not”—be unjust? This article argues that they can. Admitting that this is so does not require us to be unduly revisionary with respect to our concept of justice. Rather, the thought that aesthetic judgments are unjust flows naturally from familiar egalitarian constraints.

This theoretical paper proposes a new perspective to understand the moral distress of nurses more fully, using virtue ethics. Moral distress is a widely studied subject, especially with respect to the determination of its causes and manifestations. Increasing the theoretical depth of previous work using ethical theory, however, can create new possibilities for moral distress to be explored and analyzed. Drawing on more recent work in this field, we explicate the conceptual framework of the process of moral distress in nurses, (...) proposed by Ramos et al., using MacIntyrean virtue ethics. Our analysis considers the experience of moral distress in the context of a practice, enabling the adaptation of this framework using virtue ethics. The adoption of virtue ethics as an ethical perspective broadens the understanding of the complexity of nurses’ experiences of moral distress, since it is impossible to create a ready model that can cover all possibilities. Specifically, we describe how identity, social context, beliefs, and tradition shape moral discomfort, uncertainty, and sensitivity and how virtues inform moral judgments. Individuals, such as nurses, who are involved in a practice have a narrative history and a purpose ( telos) that guide them in every step of the process, especially in moral judgment. It is worth emphasizing that the process described is supported by the formation of moral competence that, if blocked, can lead to moral distress and deprofessionalization. It is expected that nurses seek to achieve the internal good of their practice, which legitimizes their professional practice and supports them in moral decision-making, preventing moral distress. (shrink)

The idea of moral responsibility is central to a wide range of our moral, social, and legal practices, and it underpins our basic notion of culpability. Yet the idea of moral responsibility is increasingly viewed with skepticism by researchers and scholars in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the law. Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility responds to these challenges, offering a new account of the justification of our practices and judgments of moral responsibility. Three distinctive ideas shape (...) the account. The first is the agency cultivation model, which holds that a system of responsibility practices can derive its justification from the way it supports our agency. The second idea, circumstantialism, is a new way of thinking about agential capacities. This is the view that the capacities required for moral responsibility are functions of agents in circumstances, rather than basic features of agents considered in themselves. The third idea is revisionism, or the idea that a satisfactory theory of moral responsibility will conflict with some aspects of ordinary commitments about freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)