The present paper poses a new problem for moral luck. Defenders of moral luck uncritically rely on a broader theory of luck known as the control theory or the lack of control theory. However, there are are two other analyses of luck in the literature that dominate discussion in epistemology, namely the probability and modal theories. However, moral luck is nonexistent under the probability and ...

While contractualism seems to solve some of the more pressing concerns of other moral theories, it does not conclusively address the moral status of non-human animals. Peter Carruthers claims that contractualism excludes animals from having full moral status. I argue that Carruthers’ arguments are fatally flawed due to his reliance on contradictory claims, unlikely assumptions, and flagrant vio...

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behavior? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such questions about the mental lives of moral agents, including moral thought, feeling, reasoning, and motivation. While these questions can be studied solely from the armchair or using only empirical tools, researche...

Prominent theories of morality have integrated philosophy with psychology and biology. Although this approach has been highly generative, we argue that it does not fully capture the rich and dynamic nature of moral cognition. We review research from the dual-process tradition, in which moral intuitions are automatically elicited and reasoning is subsequently deployed to correct these initial in...

A recent theory proposes that moral judgment is an evolved strategy for choosing sides in conflicts. Evidence from moral psychology undermines previous evolutionary theories of morality focused on cooperation. I show how the side-taking hypothesis explains these otherwise puzzling patterns of moral judgment — especially its focus on actions rather than intended consequences. Moral judgment offe...

Recent research on young children's morality has stressed the autonomous and internal nature of children's moral motivation. However, this research has mostly focused on implicit moral motives, whereas children's explicit motives have not been investigated directly. This study examined children's explicit motives for why they want to engage in prosocial actions and avoid antisocial behavior. A ...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. We introduce a scale designed to assess the belief in moral vitalism. High scorers on the scale endorse items such as “There are underlying forces of good and evil in this world.” After establishing the reliability and criterion validity of the scale (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), we exami...

By giving sympathy a central role, Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) can be regarded as one of the ‘enlightened’ moral theories of the Enlightenment, insofar as it widened the scope of moral consideration beyond the traditionally restricted boundary of human beings. This, although the author himself does not seem to have been aware of this fact. In this paper, I want to focus on tw...

Traditional theories of moral psychology emphasize reasoning and "higher cognition," while more recent work emphasizes the role of emotion. The present fMRI data support a theory of moral judgment according to which both "cognitive" and emotional processes play crucial and sometimes mutually competitive roles. The present results indicate that brain regions associated with abstract reasoning an...

Psychiatry has not reached a consensus hitherto concerning an optimal theoretical framework for ethical decision-making and corresponding action. Various theories have been considered, but found wanting. Moreover, classic theories may contradict one another, contribute to confusion and immobilise the clinician. We have examined major theories commonly applied in bioethics, conferred with moral ...