Non-naturalism is the view that there are sui generis, non-natural moral properties. This paper poses a dilemma for theists who accept this view. Either God explains why non-moral properties make obtain, or does not explain this. If former, then unacceptably involved in explanation of his own goodness. latter, God’s sovereignty, stature, and importance undermined, an unacceptable queerness intr...

We examined whether neural responses associated with judgments of socially relevant aspects of the human face extend to stimuli that acquire their significance through learning in a meaningful interactive context, specifically reciprocal cooperation. During fMRI, subjects made gender judgments on faces of people who had been introduced as fair (cooperators) or unfair (defector) players through ...

When faced with a moral dilemma, following your head versus your heart can result in very different decisions. Earlier work has argued that people who “self-locate” in the head tend to make more rational and less emotional decisions to moral dilemmas than those who “self-locate” in the heart. We replicate this finding, suggest an alternative interpretation of the result, and then extend it with...

Positive emotions are often treated as relatively similar in their cognitive-behavioral effects, and as having unambiguously beneficial consequences. For example, Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) reported that a humorous video made people more prone to choose a utilitarian solution to a moral dilemma. They attributed this finding to increased positive affect. To determine whether such results actua...

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm. Participants performed actions such as discharg...

Contemporary debate on health care resource management is tied to a central moral issue: how to achieve an optimum level of reasonable or appropriate treatment based on the medical condition of each patient. Failure to tackle and resolve this issue in a confident and forthright manner ensures that the present approach to health care decision-making will continue in a state of indecisiveness if ...

The aim of this article is to examine how women with children define dmoralT behaviour in relation to the issue of divorce. The data consist of life stories written by married Finnish mothers who say that they have contemplated divorce or separation. The analytical focus is on how the decision process is narratively constructed. The theories around a feminist ethic of care provide the theoretic...

There are two moral ethical dichotomies in healthcare: consequentialism versus deontology and individualism versus collectivism. When the physician is faced with the dilemma of deciding between one versus many, he often has to resort to the principle of promoting the greatest good for the greatest number, or the principle of maximizing utility. Utilitarianianism is the creed which accepts as th...

The moral neurosciences are an emerging area of research that has the potential to improve our understanding of the biological basis of morality. Thus far, however, research on moral neuroscience and moral judgment development has proceeded independently and with little interconnection. The current article discusses how morality has been defined and assessed in several new and prominent lines o...

A distinctive feature of human behaviour is the widespread occurrence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Explaining the maintenance of costly within-group cooperation is a challenge because the incentive to free ride on the efforts of other group members is expected to lead to decay of cooperation. However, the costs of cooperation can be diminished or overcome when there is competitio...