By Peter Lawler, The Big Think An excerpt: So we've basically completed our two-year series of conferences, publications, and such at Berry College funded by a grant from the Science of Virtues project at the University of Chicago. My concluding presentation—following directions—is about saying what...

By Luci Scott, AZ Central News Imagine you're riding in a car with a friend who is speeding and the car hits a pedestrian. You're the only witness, and the friend's lawyer asks you to testify that your friend was not at fault. Do you help your friend or tell the truth? This is one of many...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

By Jenny Mardner, The Rundown- PBS/Science Nation Summary: What can one baby, three puppets and a tricky Tupperware lid tell us about the roots of morality? Can infants distinguish between good and bad at such a young age? NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on research being conducted...

By Ronald Dworkin, The New York Review of Books Plato and Aristotle treated morality as a genre of interpretation. They tried to show the true character of each of the main moral and political virtues (such as honor, civic responsibility, and justice), first by relating each to the others, and then to...

By David Brooks, The New Yorker 1/17/11 Harold and Erica got their first glimpse of each other in front of a Barnes & Noble. They smiled broadly as they approached, and a deep, primeval process kicked in. Harold liked what he saw, from the waist-to-hip ratio to the clear skin, all indicative of health...

By Gilbert Meilaender In essays written throughout his career, Stanley Hauerwas has unfolded a Christian vision of the marriage bond and the presence of children that seeks insistently to place these seemingly natural bonds within the new family of God that is the church. I examine his understanding...

By Nancy Snow An excerpt: In five chapters, an introduction, and a short epilogue, Stan van Hooft conveys in highly readable and non-technical prose most of what is important about hope. He distinguishes hope from hopefulness, and uses the Aristotelian template of virtue as a mean between extremes to...

To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...