Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics. The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and teachers, counselors, dentists, doctors, journalists, nurses, school teachers, (...) athletes, and veterinarians. Each chapter begins with the research base of the cognitive-developmental approach--especially linked to Kohlberg and Rest's Defining Issues Test. Finally, the book summarizes recent research on the following issues: * moral judgment scores within and between professions, * pre- and post-test evaluations of ethics education programs, * moral judgment and moral behavior, * models of professional ethicseducation, and * models for developing new assessment tools. Researchers in different professional fields investigate different questions, develop different research strategies, and report different findings. Typically researchers of one professional field are not aware of research in other fields. An important aim of the present book is to bring this diverse research together so that cross-fertilization can occur and ideas from one field can transfer to another. (shrink)

Kohlberg's work in moral judgement has been criticised by many philosophers and psychologists. Building on Kohlberg's core assumptions, we propose a model of moral judgement (hereafter the neo-Kohlbergian approach) that addresses these concerns. Using 25 years of data gathered with the Defining Issues Test (DIT), we present an overview of Minnesota's neo-Kohlbergian approach, using Kohlberg's basic starting points, ideas from Cognitive Science (especially schema theory), and developments in moral philosophy.

Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing’s contributors describe ways of being that reflect a worldview that has guided humanity for 99% of human history; they describe the practical traditional wisdom stemming from Nature-based relational cultures that were or are guided by this worldview. Such cultures did not cause the kinds of anti-Nature and de-humanizing or inequitable policies and practices that now pervade our world. Far from romanticizing Indigenous histories, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom offers facts about how human beings, (...) with our potential for good and evil behaviors, can live in relative harmony again. Contributions cover views from anthropology, psychology, sociology, leadership, native science, native history, native art. (shrink)

Ideas from cognitive science are increasingly influential and provide insight into the nature of moral judgement. Three core ideas are discussed: modern schema theory, the frequency of automatic decision-making and implicit processes as the default mode of human information processing. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) measures the beginnings of moral understanding, which are largely non-verbal and intuitive, in contrast to the Moral Judgement Interview (MJI), which measures the highest level of verbal understanding. The positive attributes of the DIT and its (...) conceptualisation of moral judgement schemas are more apparent in a time of increasing respect for implicit knowledge and processing. The DIT offers a means of measuring moral judgement that fits with current views in cognitive science. Although the MJI and interview techniques generally are worthwhile for measuring production competence, the DIT is better able to measure understanding at the level that drives most decisions for most people. (shrink)

This book features new essays by philosophers, psychologists, and a theologian on the important topic of virtue development. The essays engage with work from multiple disciplines and thereby seek to bridge disciplinary divides. The volume is a significant contribution to the emerging interdisciplinary field of virtue development studies.

With the aid of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroscience is providing a new perspective on human behaviour. Many areas of psychology have recognised and embraced the new technologies, methodologies and relevant findings. But how do the tools of neuroscience affect the fields of moral development and moral education? This paper reviews neuroscience research germane to moral development using as an organisational framework Rest's Four Component Model of moral functioning, which proposes that moral behaviour requires moral sensitivity, moral (...) judgement, moral motivation/focus and moral action skills. Issues such as the importance of early brain development and attachment are addressed. The authors conclude with a brief description of an integrative theory, Triune Ethics Theory, which provides an example of how moral development and neuroscience can be integrated. (shrink)

From a planetary perspective, industrialized humans have become unvirtuous and holistically destructive in comparison to 99% of human genus existence. Why? This paper draws a transdisciplinary explanation. Humans are social mammals who are born particularly immature with a lengthy, decades-long maturational schedule and thus evolved an intensive nest for the young. Neurosciences show that evolved nest components support normal development at all levels, laying the foundations for virtue. Nest components are degraded in industrialized societies. Studies and accounts of societies that (...) provide the nest, particularly nomadic foragers, the type of society in which humanity spent 99% of its genus history, indicate a more virtuous human nature than that industrialized societies think is normal or possible. Nest-supported human nature displays Darwin’s moral sense whereas unnested individuals show dysregulation and a degraded moral sense—a species-atypical human nature. Original virtue is about flourishing—of self, human community and the more than human community—within all circles of life, based in a deep awareness of humanity’s dependence on the rest of nature to survive. The pillars of original virtue include relational attunement, communal imagination, and respectful partnership with the natural world. All are apparent in human societies that provide the nest to their young, fostering connectedness throughout life. They maintain communal imagination through cultural practices that enhance ecological attachment and receptive intelligence to the natural world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Stories of civilization and progress tell us that humans cannot help being destructive, selfish, and aggressive, which are side effects of progress requiring sanctions and engineering. It can be argued that this approach has brought about the ecological collapse we face today. The older, more widespread view—that human personality and behavior are shaped by social support—respects the dignity of the individual and of other than humans, disallows coercion and expects high autonomy and communalism. The latter we can call the (...) indigenous worldview and is apparent among sustainable societies. To ensure the development of human beings who live cooperatively with one another and in concert with ecological systems, moral education approaches should restore the non-civilized, ancient practices of raising good children. This paper examines what moral education should look like in light of children’s basic needs and the degraded developmental systems children often experience today. (shrink)

Personality and social development begins before birth in the communication among mother, child and environment, during sensitive periods when the child’s brain and body are plastic and epigenetically co-constructed. Triune ethics theory postulates three evolved, neurobiologically-based ethics fostered by early life experience. The security ethic is self-protective. The engagement ethic is relationally attuned. The imagination ethic can abstract from the present moment and imagine alternatives. Climates and cultures can foster one or another ethic. Ancestral environments were more conducive to moral (...) development. Individuals can adopt self-authorship of their moral character through the development of ethical expertise. Recommendations are made for research and policies that study and support optimal moral development. (shrink)

Most of human history and prehistory was lived in economic poverty but with social and ecological wealth, both of which are diminishing as commodification takes over most everything. Human moral wealth has also deteriorated. Because humans are biosocially, dynamically, and epigenetically shaped, early experience is key for developing one’s moral capital. When early experience is species-atypical, meaning that it falls outside the evolved developmental niche, which is often the case in modern societies, biopsychosocial moral development is undermined, shifting one’s nature (...) and worldview to self-protectionism. Individuals develop into self-regarding shadows of their potential selves, exhibiting threat-reactive moral mindsets that promote unjust treatment of other humans and nonhumans. Humanity’s moral wealth can be re-cultivated by taking up what indigenous people all over the world know: that a good life, a virtuous life, is a one that is led by a well-cultivated heart, embodied in action that includes partnership with nonhumans. Moral educators can help students to revamp their capacities with self-calming skills, the development of social pleasure and communal ecological imagination. (shrink)

Several studies are reviewed that examine differences in moral schema development using techniques intermediate between measuring implicit knowledge (such as with the Defining Issues Test) and explicit knowledge (such as with the Moral Judgment Interview). Findings include significant differences in the comprehension of moral narratives based on age/education and on level of expertise. Also, intended moral themes in stories are not understood by younger children.

Introductory chapter to the book, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom.

Moral progress may be a matter of time scale. If intuitive measures of moral progress like the degree of physical violence within a society are taken as empirical markers, then most human societies have experienced moral progress in the last few centuries. However, if the development of the human species is taken as relevant time scale, there is evidence that humanity has experienced a global moral decline compared to a small-band hunter-gatherer baseline that represents a lifestyle presumed to largely account (...) for 99% of human history. A counter-argument to such a diagnosis of moral decline is the fact that the living conditions of the modern world that emerged since sedentariness and the beginning of agriculture are completely different compared to those of SBHG due to cultural and technological developments. We therefore suggest that two notions of moral progress should be distinguished: a “biological notion” referring to the inherited capacities typical of the evolutionary niche of mammals and that unfold in a specific way in the human species; and a “cultural notion” that relates moral progress to dealing with an increasing diversity of temptations and possible wrongdoings in a human social world whose complexity accumulates in time. In our contribution, we describe these two different notions of moral progress, we discuss how they interact, how this interaction impacts the standards by which we measure moral progress, and we provide suggestions and justifications for re-aligning biological and cultural moral progress. (shrink)

(2013). The future of research in moral development and education. Journal of Moral Education: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-11. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2012.757102.

If the target article represents the summary findings of the field, reasoning research is deeply flawed. The vision is too narrow and seems to fall into biological determinism. Humans use reasoning in effective ways apparently not studied by researchers, such as reasoning for action. Moreover, as the brain develops through adulthood and from experience so do reasoning capabilities.

Most of the views ascribed to us we do not recognise and suggest that several misunderstandings flavour Welch?s commentary. We clarify some of our position here and recommend further collaboration among philosophers and psychologists.

ABSTRACTWe introduce a special issue of articles that emerged from teams of interdisciplinary researchers, social scientists and philosophers, who were funded under the auspices of the Self, Motivation and Virtue Project. The articles in the special issue demonstrate nuance and complexity in the structure of virtuous motivations. Several articles examine the nature of virtue, specific virtues such as humility, perceptions of moral virtues and how they are shaped. Two articles address well-being or flourishing whereas two articles address aspects of life (...) that limit or undermine virtue expression. (shrink)

This volume features new findings by nine interdisciplinary teams of researchers on the topics of self, motivation, and virtue. Nine chapters bringing together scholars from the fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and sociology advance our substantive understanding of these important topics, and showcase a variety of research methods of interdisciplinary interest. Essays on Buddhism and the self in the context of romantic relationships, the development of personal projects and virtue, the notion of self-distancing and its moral impact, virtues as self-integrated (...) traits, humility and the self in loving encounter, the importance of nation and faith in motivating virtue in western and non-western countries, roles for the self and virtue in eudaimonic growth, overcoming spiritual violence and sacramental shame in Christian communities, and an investigation into the moral self highlight the range and diversity of topics explored in this volume. The concept of deep integration also characterizes this work: each member of the interdisciplinary teams was fully and equally invested in their project from inception to completion. This approach invites teams to examine their disciplinary assumptions, rethink familiar concepts, and adjust methodologies in order to view their topics with fresh eyes. The result is not only new findings of substantive and methodological interest, but also an interesting glimpse into the thinking of the researchers as they sought interdisciplinary common ground in their research. Self, Motivation, and Virtue will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, moral psychology, neuroscience, and sociology who are working on these topics. (shrink)

The main arguments of my lecture were how humans are failing themselves and devastating earth’s biosphere, at least in part, because they became uncooperative with two key ecological inheritances: raising the young within the human evolved developmental niche and, as part of this, facilitating the development of a deep attachment to, knowledge of and respect for their local landscape of other-than-human entities. Without humanity’s return to these cooperative evolutionary roots, the species will be doomed, along with many other-than-human beings. The (...) now-widespread mental illness of ‘human supremacism’ that results from these missing pieces has spread around the planet and is destroying ecological integrity. The ‘Sacred Money and Markets’ story that David Korten criticizes and I briefly discuss is a symptom of these missing pieces of human inheritance. We must return to a Sacred Life and Living Earth story with lifestyles to match. (shrink)

In this review we will examine four books that instruct parents in directing the moral development of their children. We also make suggestions on how to think about fostering moral children.