Intuition and Security in Moral Philosophy

Moral Intuition

Suppose we wish to understand a particular moral problem – for example, abortion. One way of proceeding is to reason on the basis of our existing substantive moral beliefs. We may, however, suspect that our moral beliefs about abortion, insofar as we have any prior to serious reflection, are unreliable. We may suspect, for example, that our beliefs about abortion reflect the influence of a reli...

Moral Intuition, Moral Theory, and Practical Ethics

Ideology and Intuition in Moral Education

We propose that social psychological findings on the intuitive bases of moral judgment have broad implications for moral education. The “five foundations theory of intuitive ethics” is applied to explain a longstanding rift in moral education as an ideological disagreement about which moral intuitions should be endorsed and cultivated. The Kohlbergian moral reasoning side has sought to limit th...

A functional imaging investigation of moral deliberation and moral intuition

Prior functional imaging studies of moral processing have utilized 'explicit' moral tasks that involve moral deliberation (e.g., reading statements such as 'he shot the victim' and rating the moral appropriateness of the behavior) or 'implicit' moral tasks that involve moral intuition (e.g., reading similar statements and memorizing them for a test but not rating their moral appropriateness). A...

Moral Intuition versus Moral Reasoning in the Brain

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...