Search

An important question about moral progress is what causes it. One of the most popular proposed mechanisms is moral reasoning: moral progress often happens because lots of people reason their way to improved moral beliefs. Authors who defend moral reasoning as a cause of moral progress have relied on two broad lines of argument: the general and the specific line. The general line presents evidence that moral reasoning is in general a powerful mechanism of moral belief change, while the specific line tries to establish that moral reasoning can explain specific historical examples of moral progress. In this paper, we examine these lines in detail, using Kumar and Campbell's (2022, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human. Oxford University Press) model of rational moral progress to sharpen our focus. For each line, we explain the empirical assumptions it makes; we then argue that the available evidence supports none of these assumptions. We conclude that at this point, we have no idea if moral reasoning causes moral progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greene's influential dual-process model of moral cognition (mDPM) proposes that when people engage in Type 2 processing, they tend to make consequentialist moral judgments. One important source of empirical support for this claim comes from studies that ask participants to make moral judgments while experimentally manipulating Type 2 processing. This paper presents a meta-analysis of the published psychological literature on the effect of four standard cognitive-processing manipulations (cognitive load; ego depletion; induction; time restriction) onmoral judgments about sacrificialmoral dilemmas [n = 44; k = 68; total N = 14, 003; M(N) = 194.5]. The overall pooled effect was in the direction predicted by themDPM, but did not reach statistical significance. Restricting the dataset to effect sizes from (high-conflict) personal sacrificial dilemmas (a type of sacrificial dilemma that is often argued to be best suited for tests of the mDPM) also did not yield a significant pooled effect. The same was true for ameta-analysis of the subset of studies that allowed for analysis using the process dissociation approach [n = 8; k = 12; total N = 2, 577; M(N) = 214.8]. I argue that these results undermine one important line of evidence for themDPM and discuss a series of potential objections against this conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies change over time. Chattel slavery and foot‐binding have been abolished, democracy has become increasingly widespread, gay rights have become established in some countries, and the animal rights movement continues to gain momentum. Do these changes count as moral progress? Is there such a thing? If so, how should we understand it? These questions have been receiving increasing attention from philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists in recent decades. This survey provides a systematic account of recent developments in the understanding of moral progress. We outline the concept of moral progress and describe the different types of moral progress identified in the literature. We review the normative criteria that have been used in judging whether various developments count as morally progressive or not. We discuss the prospects of moral progress in the face of challenges that claim that moral progress is not psychologically possible for human beings, and we explore the metaethical implications of moral progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several philosophers and psychologists have argued that evidence of moral framing effects shows that many of our moral judgments are unreliable. However, all previous empirical work on moral framing effects has used between-subject experimental designs. We argue that between-subject designs alone do not allow us to accurately estimate the extent of moral framing effects or to properly evaluate the case from framing effects against the reliability of our moral judgments. To do better, we report results of our new within-subject study on four types of moral framing effects, and we discuss the implications of our findings for the reliability of moral judgments. Overall, our results strengthen the evidence from moral framing effects against the reliability of some of our moral judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychologists and philosophers often work hand in hand to investigate many aspects of moral cognition. In this paper, we want to highlight one aspect that to date has been relatively neglected: the stability of moral judgment over time. After explaining why philosophers and psychologists should consider stability and then surveying previous research, we will present the results of an original three-wave longitudinal study. We asked participants to make judgments about the same acts in a series of sacrificial dilemmas three times, 6-8 days apart. In addition to investigating the stability of our participants' ratings over time, we also explored some potential explanations for instability. To end, we will discuss these and other potential psychological sources of moral stability (or instability) and highlight possible philosophical implications of our findings., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestThe authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article., (© The Author(s) 2022.)