9-26 - Morality Claims

Finish Stone Chapter 1 discussion

Bailey "Nazi" Article
How do we establish what we believe?

Stone says we are not individuals, our attitudes are shaped by the Polis

Milgram Shock Experiments



Moral reasoning Article

Radio Lab audio

What does it mean that we use our emotions rather than our reason to make moral judgments?

Why does the brain react differently given different hypothetical train scenarios? What does this mean for policy...like support for war?

Moral psychology also has to grapple with the problem of how and why societal norms of moral conduct change over time. Take attitudes towards homosexuals in developed western countries, which have changed enormously over the past 50 years. Arguments put forward by gay-rights advocates have undoubtedly played a part in shifting views about homosexuals. Yet the research on moral intuitions suggests that changes in the network of affective responses elicited by the thought of gays—driven by increased exposure to positive portrayals of gays in the media, for example—are likely to have been crucial to increasing acceptance.

Morality is a social phenomenon, and so it is little surprise that the way our social lives are structured—whether we live in small, tight-knit communities or large, anonymous cities—also sculpts our moral outlook.

Psychologist and cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago has long argued that the moral concepts found throughout the world cluster into at least three overlapping ethical domains: the ethics of autonomy (individual rights and fairness), community (respects for tradition, authority and group loyalty) and divinity (sanctity and purity of the soul).