The Importance of Reason in Moral Judgment

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I think that we so as psychologists or maybe is whatever like when we talk about no no reason does play an important role in our moral judgment. The thing that we're tacitly assuming and communicating is that reason will give you a firm base to uncover moral truth because or else why would you care right? But yeah, so the I think that at some fundamental level reason there needs to be that that motivating force of caring for other human beings that won't get off the ground without some sort of sentiment like like empathylike psychopaths can be purely rational agents but they can never become empathetic if it's not driven by emotion. All right, you want to take a quick break and then

Dave and Tamler try their best to do a show without guests--we talk about moral persuasion, motivated reasoning, and whether it's legitimate to use emotionally charged rhetoric in a philosophical argument. Plus, we describe how students proceed through the "Stages-of-Singer," and Tamler finally defends himself against Dave's slanderous accusation of hypocrisy about animal welfare.

Links

Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs,1, 47-66.

Marquis, D. (1989). Why abortion is immoral. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(4), 183-202.

Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (4), 568.

Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum, D. (2009). Motivated Moral Reasoning. In B. H. Ross (Series Ed.) & D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Dawson, E., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D. T. (2002). Motivated Reasoning and Performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379-1387.

Sam's House, an orphanage in Nepal [sams-house.org]

The identifiable victim effect [wikipedia.org]

Tamler's mediocre TEDx talk on Moral Persuasion [youtube.com]

10 Classic South Park Impressions (including Sally Struthers) [youtube.com]

*musical breaks in this episode stolen from DJ Premier and Jay Electronica. Please don't sue.

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