Moral emotions represent a key element of our human moral apparatus, influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. This chapter reviews current theory and research on moral emotions. We first focus on a triad of negatively valenced "self-conscious" emotions-shame, guilt, and embarrassment. As in previous decades, much research remains focused on shame and guilt. We review cur...

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contrib...

Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. Howeve...

Appeals to moral phenomenology—the phenomenology of moral experience—are common in moral philosophy, particularly in metaethical inquiry. But as far as we can tell, the topic of moral phenomenology has not typically been center stage—a focus of inquiry in ethics. And so, going back at least to the writings of G. E. Moore (and with some notable exceptions— see below), very little has been writte...

This article explores the forms of moral repair that the wrongdoer has to perform in an attempt to make amends for her past wrongdoing, with a focus on the issues of interpersonal moral repair; that is, what a wrongdoer can do to merit her victim‘s forgiveness and achieve reconciliation with her community. The article argues against the very general demands of atonement that amount to an obliga...

Humans express complex moral behaviour, from altruism to antisocial acts. The investigation of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying our moral minds is of profound importance for understanding these behaviours. By reviewing recent findings in cognitive and moral neuroscience, along with other relevant areas of research, the current study aims to: (1) Investigate the neural correlates o...

0191-8869/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.04.018 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 18438106828; fax E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G.L. Baril),wr Two measures of moral cognition were compared across three samples: Rest’s neo-Kohlbergian stages of moral developmental (DIT) and Graham and Haidt’s intuition-based Moral Foundations Theory (MFQ). I...

terence irwin argues that aquinas answered a question that aristotle had raised but had not answered. the question is if there is any relation between intellectual virtues and moral virtues. the answer is yes, moral virtues direct intellectual virtues to attain the final end. moral virtues show in what areas one should think, how much other things should be attended to, and how much one should ...