Moral judgment as a natural kind

Kumar, Victor

doi:10.1007/s11098-015-0448-7

Cited by 35 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Stich and colleagues view the Turiel account of the moral/conventional distinction as an example of this latter approach (see also Kumar, 2015 As we will see, what I want to call the conceptual approach to animal morality is rather more complex than the picture that Stich and colleagues paint of traditional conceptual analysis in philosophy-in particular, the methodology isn't just one of testing proposed analyses against intuitions about the application of the relevant concept. Nonetheless, Stich and colleagues' distinction does help us to isolate two quite different approaches to the question of whether morality exists in animals.…”

Section: Conceptual Analysis Vs Natural Kind Approaches To Defining mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2009; Kumar, 2015), there remains the possibility of other ways of thinking of morality as a psychological natural kind. In the case of the debate over animal morality, Andrews expresses a certain amount of optimism about using the calibration approach to eventually determine "the sort of capacity required to make the moral-looking behaviour into truly moral behaviour" (2015, p184).…”

Section: The Core Debate: Merely Terminological?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Animal morality: What is the debate about?

Fitzpatrick

2017

Biol Philos

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Empirical studies of the social lives of non-human primates, cetaceans, and other social animals have prompted scientists and philosophers to debate the question of whether morality and moral cognition exists in non-human animals. Some researchers have argued that morality does exist in several animal species, others that these species may possess various evolutionary building blocks or precursors to morality, but not quite the genuine article, while some have argued that nothing remotely resembling morality can be found in any non-human species. However, these different positions on animal morality generally appear to be motivated more by different conceptions of how the term "morality" is to be defined than on empirical disagreements about animal social behaviour and psychology. After delving deeper into the goals and methodologies of various of the protagonists, I argue that, despite appearances, there are actually two importantly distinct debates over animal morality going on, corresponding to two quite different ways of thinking about what it is to define "morality", "moral cognition", and associated notions. Several apparent skirmishes in the literature are thus cases of researchers simply talking past each other. I then focus on what I take to be the core debate over animal morality, which is concerned with understanding the nature and phylogenetic distribution of morality conceived as a psychological natural kind. I argue that this debate is in fact largely terminological and non-substantive. Finally, I reflect on how this core debate might best be re-framed. 1.Introduction In recent years, there has been much interest in whether morality exists in some non-human animals (henceforth, "animals"), or, put differently, whether some animals possess a moral psychology: whether they possess the requisite psychological capacities to engage in some form of moral cognition and action-for instance, make judgments of moral approval or disapproval about others' behaviour, internalize and enforce moral rules or norms, and act for moral reasons (e.g., act punitively towards another individual because of a moral evaluation of that individual's behaviour).Such questions have been prompted by a burgeoning empirical literature on the remarkably complex and intricate social lives, particularly of our closest primate 2 relatives, but also of other social mammals like elephants, domestic dogs, wolves, whales, dolphins, and rats, and even some non-mammalian species, such as ravens.For example, chimpanzees appear to engage in third-party policing of behaviour, which seems to indicate the existence and enforcement of norms of conduct within their communities (de Waal, 1996(de Waal, , 2014Rudolf von Rohr, et al., 2012). Special place is typically accorded to infants, for instance, such that aggression towards them is met with loud protests and active intervention on the part of uninvolved bystanders (Rudolf von Rohr, et al., 2011. Many other social mammals also appear to enforce various behavioural norms. For instance, m...

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Section: Conceptual Analysis Vs Natural Kind Approaches To Defining mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Core Debate: Merely Terminological?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal morality: What is the debate about?

Fitzpatrick

2017

Biol Philos

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“…But in more controversial cases, one's opponent cannot so easily be dismissed. instead, it seems more productive to draw on empirically-informed accounts about mechanisms underlying normative thought to help shed light on the question of whether normative judgments are constituted by noncognitive states (see Bromwich 2013;Kumar 2015;Prinz 2015).…”

Section: Internalism As a Conceptual Claimmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitivism, Motivation, and Dual-Process Approaches to Normative Judgment

Cline¹

2017

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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A central source of support for expressivist accounts of normative discourse is the intimate relationship between normative judgment and motivation. expressivists argue that normative judgments must be noncognitive, desire-like states in order to be so tightly linked with motivation. Normative statements are then construed as expressions of these noncognitive states. in this paper, i draw on dual-process models in cognitive psychology to respond to this argument. According to my proposal, normative judgments are ordinary beliefs that are typically produced by two kinds of process: intuitive-affective processes and domain-general reasoning. When produced by the first kind of process, motivation and judgment tend to align. When produced by the second kind, motivation and judgment might not align. Since the first kind of process is the most common pathway of normative belief formation, normative judgments are typically accompanied by aligning motivation. This proposal enables cognitivists to explain the intimate link between normative judgment and motivation, thereby removing the major obstacle to interpreting normative statements truth-conditionally.

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“…United Kingdom) -calling physicians who invoke CO before a special commission would not be a good idea, because "the number of false positives would be very small, and not enough to justify the cost of running the tribunals." 38 However, it seems that this is an issue that depends on a social context, and other countries, like…”

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confidence: 99%

“…38 Israel, has waged war with the use of conscripts in the last 40 years, the last such conflict being the American war in Vietnam.…”

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confidence: 99%