Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Pluralism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pluralism. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

A new framework for the psychology of norms

Westra, E., & Andrews, K. (2021, July 9).

Abstract

Social Norms – rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community – permeate all aspects of human life. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to evolved psychological adaptations. However, most of these accounts share what we call the psychological unity assumption, which holds that there is something psychologically distinctive about social norms, and that social norm adherence is driven by a single system or process. We argue that this assumption is mistaken. In this paper, we propose a methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. According to this framework, we should treat norms first and foremost as a community-level pattern of social behavior that might be realized by a variety of different cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms. Norm psychologists should not presuppose that social norms are underpinned by a unified set of processes, nor that there is anything particularly distinctive about normative cognition as such. We argue that this pluralistic approach offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of norms.

Conclusion

The central thesis of this paper –what we’ve called normative pluralism–is that we should not take the psychological unity of social norms for granted.Social norms might be underpinned by a domain-specific norm system or by a single type of cognitive process, but they might also be the product of many different processes. In our methodological proposal, we outlined a novel, non-psychological conception of social norms –what we’ve called normative regularities –and defined the core components of a psychology of norms in light of this construct. In our empirical proposal, we argued that thus defined, social norms emerge from a heterogeneous set of cognitive, affective, and ecological mechanisms.

Thinking about social norms in this way will undoubtedly make the cognitive science of norms more complex and messy. If we are correct, however, then this will simply be a reflection of the complexity and messiness of social norms themselves. Taking a pluralistic approach to social norms allows us to explore the potential variability inherent to norm-governed behavior, which can help us to better understand how social norms shape our lives, and how they manifest themselves throughout the natural world.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Moral Enhancement Using Non-invasive Brain Stimulation

R. Ryan Darby and Alvaro Pascual-Leone
Front. Hum. Neurosci., 22 February 2017
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00077

Biomedical enhancement refers to the use of biomedical interventions to improve capacities beyond normal, rather than to treat deficiencies due to diseases. Enhancement can target physical or cognitive capacities, but also complex human behaviors such as morality. However, the complexity of normal moral behavior makes it unlikely that morality is a single capacity that can be deficient or enhanced. Instead, our central hypothesis will be that moral behavior results from multiple, interacting cognitive-affective networks in the brain. First, we will test this hypothesis by reviewing evidence for modulation of moral behavior using non-invasive brain stimulation. Next, we will discuss how this evidence affects ethical issues related to the use of moral enhancement. We end with the conclusion that while brain stimulation has the potential to alter moral behavior, such alteration is unlikely to improve moral behavior in all situations, and may even lead to less morally desirable behavior in some instances.

The article is here.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism

By Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, S. Koleva, M. Motyl,  R. Iyera, S. P. Wojcikd, & P. H. Ditto
in press, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

Abstract: 

Where does morality come from? Why are moral judgments often so similar across cultures, yet sometimes so variable? Is morality one thing, or many? Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) was created to answer these questions. In this chapter we describe the origins, assumptions, and current conceptualization of the theory, and detail the empirical findings that MFT has made possible, both within social psychology and beyond. Looking toward the future, we embrace several critiques of the theory, and specify five criteria for determining what should be considered a foundation of human morality. Finally, we suggest a variety of future directions for MFT and for moral psychology. 

Here is an excerpt:

But what if, in some cultures, even the most advanced moral thinkers value groups, institutions, traditions, and gods? What should we say about local rules for how to be a good group member, or how to worship? If these rules are not closely linked to concerns about justice or care, then should we distinguish them from true moral rules, as Turiel did when he labeled such rules as “social conventions?” Shweder (1990) argued that the cognitive-developmental tradition was studying only a subset of moral concerns, the ones that are most highly elaborated in secular Western societies. Shweder argued for a much more extensive form of pluralism based on his research in Bhubaneswar, India (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997). He proposed that around the world, people talk in one or more of three moral languages: the ethic of autonomy (relying on concepts such as harm, rights, and justice, which protect autonomous individuals), the ethic of community (relying on concepts such as duty, respect, and loyalty, which preserve institutions and social order), and the ethic of divinity (relying on concepts such as purity, sanctity, and sin, which protect the divinity inherent in each person against the degradation of hedonistic selfishness.)