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By Carl Zimmer, New York Times Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve. Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you...
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By Bill Schmitt, ND Newswire Reading for Life, an innovative literature-based mentoring program that provides an alternative to prosecution for low-risk juvenile offenders, was recently awarded county funding to sustain its operation in St. Joseph County, Ind. With the unanimous approval of the county...
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From Science Daily Imagine a runaway boxcar heading toward five people who can't escape its path. Now imagine you had the power to reroute the boxcar onto different tracks with only one person along that route. Would you do it? That's the moral dilemma posed by a team of Michigan State University...
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The Vexing Mental Tug-of-War Called Morality By Kristin Ohlson, Discover magazine Would you kill a crying baby to save yourself and others from hostile soldiers outside? Neuroscience offers new ways to approach such moral questions, allowing logic to triumph over deep-rooted instinct. You arrive at the...
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Moral Disgust Carries Foul Flavour, Researchers Say By Misty Harris in The Montreal Gazette Moral revulsion literally leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that some people of Christian faith were more likely to describe a lemon-water drink as disgusting...
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By Cordelia Fine, the Wall Street Journal 'If there were an Olympics of desiring," the philosopher William B. Irvine once observed, "we would all make the team." Desire animates us: What, quite literally, would we do without it? Yet all too often—for about four hours a day, according...
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From TPM (The Philosopher's Magazine) In this activity you will be presented with 19 different scenarios. In each case, you will be asked to make a judgment about what is the morally right thing to do. When you have answered all the questions, you will be presented with an analysis of your responses...
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By Linda Grant, Wall Street Journal An excerpt: Life and Fate , by Vassily Grossman (1959) An old Russian woman, seeing a captured German soldier, raises a brick to throw at him, but at the last moment she instead hands him a piece of bread. The woman has no idea why she does this and in the years to...
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By David Brooks, The New York Times The story of evolution, we have been told, is the story of the survival of the fittest. The strong eat the weak. The creatures that adapt to the environment pass on their selfish genes. Those that do not become extinct. In this telling, we humans are like all other...
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By Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, The New York Times It’s easy to look at big names like Warren E. Buffett, and big companies like Ernst and Young, and be judgmental. Of course they overlooked ethical lapses. Why wouldn’t they? That’s business. Regulators, prosecutors and journalists tend to...
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By Dov Cohen and Angela K.-y. Leung Abstract: In many honor cultures, honor as martial honor and honor as character/integrity are often both subsumed under the banner of honor. In nonhonor cultures, these qualities are often separable. The present study examines political elites, revealing that Presidents...
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By Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côtébo, Rodolfo Mendoza-Dentona, and Dacher Keltnera Abstract: Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals...
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By Ron Tamborini, Allison Eden, Nicholas David Bowman, Matthew Grizzard, and Kenneth A. Lachlan Abstract: Two studies examined how disposition theory-based morality subcultures predict the acceptance and appeal of violence. Study 1 used groups formed by median splits of individual difference variables...
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Appreciation of Entertainment: The Importance of Meaningfulness via Virtue and Wisdom By Mary Beth Oliver and Anne Bartsch Abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the experience of appreciation to media entertainment as a unique audience response that can be differentiated from enjoyment...
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By P. Lawler and M. Guerra We are pleased to introduce this symposium on the moral, political, scientific, philosophical, and even theological dimensions of the thought of two contemporary American novelists and essayists: Walker Percy and Tom Wolfe. Astute and penetrating observers of modern America...
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Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments By Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, Marc Hauser, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Rebecca Saxe Abstract: When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our...
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The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. By Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht, Teresa Torralva, Maria Roca, Mariángeles Pose, and Facundo Manes. Abstract: The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. Abstract: Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal...
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The Mismeasure of Morals: Antisocial Personality Traits Predict Utilitarian Responses to Moral Dilemmas By Daniel M. Bartels and David A. Pizzaro Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non...
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By Gabriel Abend Drawing on Williams’ distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects’ judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility...
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By Gianluca Gini, Tiziana Pozzoli, and Marc Hauser Bullying behavior is an immoral action because it humiliates and oppresses innocent victims. Presently unclear is whether bullies bully because of deficiencies in moral competence (knowledge of right and wrong), moral compassion (emotional awareness...