Category: Ethics and Morals

Talk: “In Praise of Praise” (Pascale Willemsen)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, June 10, from 18:00–20:00 (UTC+2), Pascale Willemsen will be talking about “In Praise of Praise” at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. Pascale writes:

Philosophers claim that an agent’s moral responsibility can come in two variations: A blameworthy agent deserves blame, and a praiseworthy agent deserves praise. It is also widely accepted that a central question in moral philosophy concerns the conditions under which an agent is or is appropriately held morally responsible for their behaviour. In contrast, a central topic in moral psychology concerns the conditions under which an agent is judged to be morally responsible for their behaviour and blamed for its negative consequences. While blame and praise are seen as two sides of the same coin, considerably more attention has been paid to blame. In general, moral responsibility researchers have mainly focused on understanding negatively-valenced moral phenomena. In contrast, the positive side of moral responsibility has only played a minor role in the research programmes of moral philosophers, psychologists, and experimental philosophers. As a result, we understand relatively little about what praise is, when it is ascribed, and how it is verbally expressed. This is surprising, as researchers strive to tell a story about human morality and moral responsibility as a whole, not merely half of it.

In this talk, I will do three things: First, I summarize the relatively scarce psychological literature which strongly suggests various asymmetries between blame and praise. Second, presenting a series of my own experiments, I demonstrate that blame and praise may differ in another important respect, namely in the way it is verbally expressed by negative and positive evaluative concepts. As a result of all this evidence, I conclude that praise is a unique moral judgment that deserves closer attention. Finally, taking a first stab at the linguistic dimension of praise, I show some pilot corpus studies which explore praise vocabulary.

Conference: “Experimental Philosophy – Beyond Armchair Philosophy”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The 32nd “Philosophy Conference” of the University of Valladolid’s Department of Philosophy, organized by José V. Hernández-Conde, will take place from May 16 to 17 in Valladolid, Spain. This year’s instalment is all about experimental philosophy.

May 16, 9:00–18:30 (UTC+2)

  • Edouard Machery (University of Pittsburgh): “No Luck for Moral Luck”
  • María Jiménez-Buedo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia): “What do we Measure in the Dictator Game? Constructs, Validity and the Threat of Methodological Artifacts”
  • Mikel Asteinza (University of the Basque Country): “Epistemic Determinants of Scientific Disclosure and Their Impact on the Legal Audience – The Case of De-Extinction”
  • Andrei Moldovan and Obdulia Torres (University of Salamanca): “Expertisia as a Contextual Property”
  • Fernando Aguiar (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas): “Would You Hire a Person With an Intellectual Disability? An Experimental Study on Action and Compassion”
  • Francisco Calvo (University of Murcia): “Of Seahorses and Plants – An Experimental Journey out of Ignorance”
  • Fernando Sanantonio (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): “External Sanctions, Compliance and Avoidance in Vegetarianism as a Normative System”
  • Daniel Martín (University of Granada): “Attitudes Toward Moral Improvement Based on Virtual Assistance”

May 17, 9:15–14:00 (UTC+2)

  • Edouard Machery (University of Pittsburgh): “The Geography of Wisdom”
  • Ivar Hannikainen (University of Granada): “What is ‘Consenting’?”
  • Javier Anta (University of Salamanca): “An Experimental Approach to the Ordinary Meaning of ‘Information’”
  • Rodrigo Díaz (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas): “Describing (Erroneously) Recalcitrant Emotions”
  • David Rodríguez-Arias (University of Granada): “Contemporary End-of-Life Bioethics – Empirical and Experimental Contributions”

For more information about the conference, visit https://keama.uva.es/xxxii-philosophy-conference/.

Workshop: “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Today, the “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series,” organized by James Andow and Eugen Fischer, starts. They write:

We are delighted to announce the next series of our monthly online workshop devoted to discussion of work in progress in experimental philosophy. The worshop is held via Teams, the second Wednesday of each month, 16:00–18:00 UK time. The link to the Teams meetings is below.

February 14, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Renato Turco (University of Genoa): “An Experimental Approach to Empty Definite Descriptions”
  • Lucien Baumgartner (University of Zurich), Paul Rehren (Utrecht University), and Krzysztof Sękowski (University of Warsaw): “Measuring (Un)Intentional Conceptual Change in Philosophy – A Corpus Study”

March 13, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Isabelle Keßels (University of Düsseldorf), Paul Hasselkuß (University of Düsseldorf), and Daian Bica (University of Düsseldorf): “The Safety Dilemma Put to the Test”
  • José V. Hernández-Conde (University of Valladolid) and Agustín Vicente (University of the Basque Country; Ikerbasque): “A Comparative Analysis of the Knobe Effect – Assessing Moral, Aesthetic, and Alethic Reasoning in Autistic and Neurotypical Populations”

April 10, 16:00–18:00 (UTC+1)

  • Tingting Sui (Peking University), Sebastian Sunday (Peking University): “A Confucian Algorithm for Autonomous Vehicles”
  • Ryan Doran (University of Barcelona; University of Cambridge): “True Beauty”

May 8, 16:00–18:00 (UTC+1)

  • William Gopal (University of Glasgow): “Identifying & Rectifying the Instrumentalist Bias in Analytic Social Epistemology”
  • Giuseppe Ricciardi (Harvard University) and Kevin Reuter (University of Zurich): “Exploring the Agent-Relativity of Truth”

June 12, 16:00–18:00 (UTC+1)

  • Federico Burdman (Alberto Hurtado University), Gino Marttelo Carmona Díaz (University of the Andes), and María Fernanda Rangel Carrillo (University of the Andes): “Lay Perceptions of Control and Moral Responsibility in Addiction”
  • Phuc Nguyen (German Cancer Research Center), Andrea Quint (German Cancer Research Center), María Alejandra Petino Zappala (German Cancer Research Center), and Nora Heinzelmann (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg): “A Cross-Cultural Study on the Ethics and Moral Psychology of HPV Vaccination”

Sessions can be joined using Microsoft Teams via https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NDdiNDRjNmQtMzI4Yi00MWM2LWFiYjMtYzE4YzE1ZTY2ODcz%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22c152cb07-614e-4abb-818a-f035cfa91a77%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22680c6cfa-4e43-4962-9569-4828023e7f78%22%7d.

Hot Off The Press: “Empirische Studien zu Fragen der Bedarfsgerechtigkeit”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Needs are something that fundamentally defines us as human beings. In “Empirische Studien zu Fragen der Bedarfsgerechtigkeit” (Empirical Studies on Questions of Need-Based Distributive Justice), I recap a series of vignette studies that examine the role that needs play in dealing with problems of distributive justice. While needs are often underrepresented in discussions of distributive justice, they are shown to have a fundamental importance in people’s thinking.

Among other things, the following becomes clear:

  1. Impartial observers make gradual assessments of the fairness of distributions.
  2. These assessments depend on how well an individual is supplied with a relevant good.
  3. If information on a need threshold is given, these assessments are made relative to this reference point. (Bauer et al. 2023a)
  4. Impartial decision-makers consider need, productivity, and accountability when making hypothetical distribution decisions.
  5. If an individual’s productivity is not sufficient to cover their needs, these higher needs are partially compensated for (at the expense of other individuals who are not so badly off)
  6. Willingness to compensate decreases if an individual is accountable for having produced less or for needing more. (Bauer et al. 2022)
  7. Both impartial observers and impartial decision-makers attribute different levels of importance to different kinds of needs.
  8. This reveals a hierarchy of needs in the following order: Survival, Decency, Belonging, Autonomy. (Bauer et al. 2023b)

Literature

Bauer, Alexander Max, Frauke Meyer, Jan Romann, Mark Siebel, and Stefan Traub (2022): “Need, Equity, and Accountability. Evidence on Third-Party Distribution Decisions from a Vignette Study,” Social Choice and Welfare 59, 769–814. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max, Adele Diederich, Stefan Traub, and Arne Robert Weiss (2023a): “When the Poorest Are Neglected. A Vignette Experiment on Need-Based Distributive Justice,” SSRN Working Paper 4503209. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max, Jan Romann, Mark Siebel, and Stefan Traub (2023b): “Winter is Coming. How Laypeople Think About Different Kinds of Needs,” PLoS ONE 18 (11), e0294572. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max (2024): Empirische Studien zu Fragen der Bedarfsgerechtigkeit, Oldenburg: University of Oldenburg Press. (Link)

Who Complies With Pandemic Health Recommendations?

Posted on by Rodrigo Díaz

This text was first published at xphiblog.com on August 8, 2021. It has been slightly updated.

Compliance with health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is a divisive topic. Some readily accept measures such as social distancing and mask-wearing, while others frontally reject them. What separates those who comply from those who don’t? Is it trust in science and official organizations? Concern about others vs. liberty? Fear? Aversion to germs?

In March 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. That month, I was supposed to go on a ski trip with some friends. As the dates were approaching, the ski trip’s group chat was a succession of moral arguments for cancelling the trip, and pragmatic arguments for carrying on with the plan. In the end, we didn’t go. But as a geek that likes to scrutinize human behavior, I started wondering: Were we convinced by the arguments? Or just confused and scared?

Soon after that, I saw on Twitter that Florian Cova had run a study investigating the relationship between conspiracist mentality and compliance with health recommendations. Brilliant! Instead of just speculating, I should get some data too. I ran a small study and found an effect of moral beliefs regarding care on participant’s efforts to comply with health recommendations, but no effect of anxiety. I showed the results to Florian, and we decided to join forces to get a wider picture of the individual differences associated with adopting health behaviors during the pandemic.

In a first study, we included a total of 17 individual differences measures, which can be classified into three categories: Epistemic (beliefs in pseudoscience / conspiracy theories / political truth, faith in intuition, narcissism), Moral (moral foundations, perspective-taking), and Affective (fear, disgust, empathy, reactance). All these seemed plausible candidates. Those who tend to mistrust science and official organizations are likely to disregard health recommendations. But so is the case for those who think that preserving liberty is morally imperative, or react negatively to attempts to restrict of freedom. Conversely, those who think that caring about others is a very important moral value, tend to take other’s perspective, or share others’ pain, are likely to follow health recommendations to avoid harming others. And those who are prone to fear or disgust will probably adopt health behaviors to avoid getting the virus. What did the results show?

None of the epistemic / conspiracist items significantly correlated with efforts to comply with health recommendations, nor did fear. Regression analyses showed that the best predictors of compliance were care values and disgust sensitivity. Participants who think caring about others is specially important or are easily disgusted reported more efforts to comply with health recommendations. These results replicated in a representative sample of the US population.

In a second set of studies (conducted in late 2020), we used French participants and an indirect measure of compliance with health recommendations: decisions to go voting in the municipal elections that were taking place at that time in France. Arguably, those who follow health recommendations would avoid to go voting (but, as the results suggest, the issue might be more complicated).

This time, regression analyses showed that pathogen disgust and reactance were the best predictors of efforts to follow health recommendations. Both variables also showed a significant effect on voting behavior, with reactance predicting decisions to go voting, and pathogen disgust predicting decisions to not vote. However, and in contrast to previous studies, care values showed no significant effects.

Because the results were somewhat heterogeneous across studies, we conducted (actually, Florian did) a mini-metanalysis to ensure the robustness of our (partial) correlation effects on reported compliance with health recommendations. Results showed a significant effect of reactance, disgust, and care values, hence the title of the paper.1

I still don’t know what made me and my friends not go skiing in March 2020, but it seems that individual differences in moral beliefs, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance are more important than conspiracist mentality or fear in driving (lack of) compliance with health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This might be surprising to some, unsurprising to others. Maybe we should run a study on this divide next!

Endnotes

  1. Díaz, Rodrigo, and Florian Cova (2022): “Reactance, Morality, and Disgust. The Relationship Between Affective Dispositions and Compliance With Official Health Recommendations During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Cognition and Emotion 36 (1), 120–136. (Link) ↩︎