Online research in philosophy

The idea that moral imperatives are categorical is commonly used to support internalist claims about moral judgment. I argue that the categorical quality of moral requirements shows at most that moral motivation need not flow from a background desire to be moral. It does not show that moral judgments can motivate by themselves, or that amoralism is impossible.

Samuel Kerstein argues that an asymmetry between moral worth and maxims prevents Kant from accepting a category of acts that are impermissible, but have moral worth. Kerstein contends that an act performed from the motive of duty should be considered as a candidate for moral worth, even if the action’s maxim turns out to be impermissible, since moral worth depends on the correct moral motivation of an act, rather than on the moral rightness of an act. I argue that Kant cannot consistently maintain that there are morally forbidden, though good, acts since one of the conditions of acting from the moral law should be that one has a true belief about what the moral law requires. My project, then, rejects the possibility of morally impermissible, worthy acts for Kant, and qualifies the conditions for moral worth Kerstein gives with an epistemological constraint on moral worth.

Abstract: It is claimed that there is a highly contingent and often misleading relationship between (a) giving reasons on a questionnaire and (b) genuine moral understanding. Also, many of the causal factors in shaping moral attitudes are irrelevant to their rational?moral justification, thus creating a lack of harmony between the two. The solution is a balanced programme that gives equal stress to moral reasoning and to opportunities for relevant emotive and evaluative experience. Aspects of Kant and Schopenhauer are discussed in order to show how reason and feeling may be constructively interdependent in moral motivation.

Provides an overview of empirical research relevant to philosophical questions about moral thought, feeling, reasoning, and motivation. Topics include: free will and moral responsibility, egoism and altruism, moral judgment and motivation, weakness and strength of will, and moral intuitions.

This article briefly discusses the connection between moral philosophy and moral psychology, and then explores three intriguing areas of inquiry that fall within the intersection of the two fields. The areas of inquiry considered focus on (1) debates concerning the nature of moral judgments and moral motivation; (2) debates concerning good and bad character traits and character-based explanations of actions; and (3) debates concerning the role of moral rules in guiding the morally wise agent.

Integrity : a shared moral value -- Religion, nature and intuition as possible sources of moral truth -- Some distinctions and some mistakes -- Rights and procedures -- Principles that define morality -- Reasons for being moral -- Relativism -- Second order principles -- Moral vs. social, ecological and sexual values -- Moral vs. health and safety values -- Moral questions in education -- The question of moral education -- Forms of moral education.

Motivational externalists and internalists of various sorts disagree about the circumstances under which it is conceptually possible to have moral opinions but lack moral motivation. Typically, the evidence referred to are intuitions about whether people in certain scenarios who lack moral motivation count as having moral opinions. People’s intuitions about such scenarios diverge, however. I argue that the nature of this diversity is such that, for each of the internalist and externalist theses, there is a strong prima facie reason to reject it. That much might not be very controversial. But I argue further, that it also gives us a strong prima facie reason to reject all of these theses. This is possible since there is an overlooked alternative option to accepting any of them: moral motivation pluralism , the view that different internalist and externalist theses correctly accounts for different people’s concepts of moral opinions, respectively. I end the paper with a discussion of methodological issues relevant to the argument for moral motivation pluralism and of the consequences of this view for theories about the nature of moral opinions, such as cognitivism and non-cognitivism.

Abstract In this study of the relationship between moral behaviour, level of moral development, and motivation, moral behaviour was assessed in an experimental situation in which it was necessary to violate the experimenter's authority to help someone; level of moral development was assessed by Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Scale, and motivation by a post?experimental interview. Although 72 per cent of the subjects stated afterwards that they felt that they should help, only 43 per cent did, and only 6 per cent volunteered their own service. As the level of moral development rose, an increasing percentage of subjects helped. Subjects interpreted the same situation differently and were motivated to make the same response for different reasons, which varied with their level of moral development.

Moral hypocrisy is motivation to appear moral yet, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral. In business, moral hypocrisy allows one to engender trust, solve the commitment problem, and still relentlessly pursue personal gain. Indicating the power of this motive, research has provided clear and consistent evidence that, given the opportunity, many people act to appear fair (e.g., they flip a coin to distribute resources between themselves and another person) without actually being fair (they accept the flip only if it favors themselves). New evidence also indicates the power of moral hypocrisy in a situation more obviously relevant to business, resource allocation when one party has information about relative resource value that the other does not. Characteristics of modern business situations likely to encourage moral hypocrisy are outlined. We conclude that moral hypocrisy is not only a pragmatic virtue in modern business but is also fast becoming a prescriptive one.

Why do moral people so often fail to act morally? Standard scientific answers point to poor moral judgment (based on deficient character development, reason, or intuition) or to situational pressure. I consider a third possibility: a relative lack of truly moral motivation and emotion. What has been taken for moral motivation is often instead a subtle form of egoism. Recent research provides considerable evidence for moral hypocrisy—motivation to appear moral while, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral—but very little evidence for moral integrity—motivation to actually be moral. The lack of truly moral motivation may, in turn, be linked to a lack of truly moral emotion, at least in response to violation of certain moral standards.