WHAT is your reaction to this scenario? Is this act right or wrong? Perhaps you are revolted or disgusted, and therefore think it is wrong. Or maybe, like most moral philosophers, you make a more reasoned judgement and argue that, regardless of our emotional response, this act is not immoral, principally because no harm has occurred to any sentient being. If you thought it was wrong, does this ...

BACKGROUND Most research investigating the neural basis of social emotions has examined emotions that give rise to negative evaluations of others (e.g. anger, disgust). Emotions triggered by the virtues and excellences of others have been largely ignored. Using fMRI, we investigated the neural basis of two "other-praising" emotions--Moral Elevation (a response to witnessing acts of moral beauty...

A prominent theme in twentieth and early twenty-first century moral philosophy is that a full and accurate picture of the ethical life must include an important role for the emotions. The neglect of the emotions has been a major point of criticism raised against the dominant consequentialist, Kantian, and contractualist theories by virtue ethicists such as G.E.M. Anscombe, Alisdair MacIntyre, M...

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the bes...