What role does reasoning about moral principles play in people’s judgments about what is right or wrong? According to one view, reasoning usually plays little role. People tend to do what suits their self-interests and concoct moral reasons afterward to justify their own behavior. Thus, in this view, people are far more forgiving of their own violations than of others’ violations. According to a contrasting view, principled reasoning generally guides judgments and decisions about our own and others’ actions. This view predicts that people usually can, and do, articulate the principles that guide their moral judgments and decisions. The present research examined a phenomenon at the center of these debates: students’ evaluations of academic cheating. Across three studies, we used structured interviews and online surveys to examine first- and third-party judgments and reasoning about cheating events. Third-party scenarios were derived from students’ own accounts of cheating events and manipulated based on the reasons students provided. Findings supported the view that reasoning is central to evaluations of cheating. Participants articulated reasons consistent with their judgments about their own and others’ actions. The findings advance classic debates about reasoning in morality and exemplify a paradigm that can bring further advances.

Our experience of reasoning is replete with conflict. People phenomenologically vacillate between options when confronted with challenging decisions. Existing experimental designs typically measure a summary of the experience of the conflict experienced throughout the choice process for any individual choice or even between multiple observers for a choice. We propose a new method for measuring vacillations in reasoning during the time-course of individual choices, utilizing them as a fine-grained indicator of cognitive conflict. Our experimental paradigm allows participants to report the alternative they were considering while deliberating. Through 3 experiments, we demonstrate that our measure correlates with existing summary judgments of conflict and confidence in moral and logical reasoning problems. The pattern of deliberation revealed by these vacillations produces new constraints for theoretical models of moral and syllogistic reasoning.

In this paper, I argue that echo chambers pose a problem for moral progress because of their threat to moral reasoning. I argue for two theses about the epistemology of moral progress: (1) the practical utility thesis: moral reasoning plays an important role in improving moral judgments, and (2) the conflictive social reasoning thesis: the kind of moral reasoning that is important for moral progress involves social reasoning with disputants. Without some conflict, human beings will naturally reason in a biased and otherwise poor manner. Thus, good reasoning must be social so that reasoners who disagree can keep each other in check. These two theses explain why echo chambers are a problem for moral progress. I argue that echo chambers isolate individuals from reasoning with those they disagree with. This is because echo chambers act as a mechanism for discrediting those outside the chamber. If this is true, then the members of an echo chamber will only reason with those who agree with them. The result is that echo chamber members won't reason according to the conflictive social reasoning thesis. Reasoning will only reinforce their existing echoed beliefs rather than improve them.

In this essay, I reply to an influential objection to evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism. According to this objection, our capacity for autonomous rational reflection allows us to grasp moral truths independently of distorting evolutionary influences, so those influences do not prevent us from having moral knowledge. I argue that rational moral reflection is not, in fact, autonomous from evolutionary influences, since it depends on our evolved, pre-reflective grasp of moral properties. I then consider and reject the suggestion that realists can supply an autonomous foundation for rational moral reflection or do without any such foundation. Next, I address the allegation that my arguments have skeptical implications for rational reflection in non-moral domains. Finally, I conclude with a gesture toward a more promising route for realists who oppose debunking arguments.

I argue that moral principles involve the same sort of generalization as ordinary yet elusive generic generalizations in natural language such as ‘Tigers are striped’ or ‘Peppers are spicy’. A notable advantage of the generic view is that it simultaneously allows for pessimism and optimism about the role and status of moral principles in our lives. It provides a new perspective on the nature of moral principles on which principles are not apt for determining the moral status of particular actions while they may be apt, and even fundamental, to our acquisition of moral knowledge. A natural consequence of the view is variation among moral principles, with some regularly warranting exceptions and some appearing arguably exceptionless. I will also argue that this generic conception of moral principles has significant advantages, as a normative model of moral reasoning, over the view of moral principles as defaults advanced in recent years.

The Defining Issues Test (DIT) has been widely used in psychological experiments to assess one’s developmental level of moral reasoning in terms of postconventional reasoning. However, there have been concerns regarding whether the tool is biased across people with different genders and political and religious views. To address the limitations, in the present study, I tested the validity of the brief version of the test, that is, the behavioral DIT, in terms of the measurement invariance and differential item functioning (DIF). I could not find any significant non-invariance at the test level or any item demonstrating practically significant DIF at the item level. The findings indicate that neither the test nor any of its items showed a significant bias toward any particular group. As a result, the collected validity evidence supports the use of test scores across different groups, enabling researchers who intend to examine participants’ moral reasoning development across heterogeneous groups to draw conclusions based on the scores.

Previous studies have found that the proportions of people who endorsed utilitarian decisions varied across different variants of the trolley dilemma. In this paper, we explored whether moral choices were associated with beliefs about outcome probabilities in different moral dilemmas. Results of two experiments showed that participants’ perceptions of outcome probabilities were different between two dilemmas that were similar to the classical switch case and footbridge case. Participants’ judgments of the outcome probabilities were associated with their moral choices. The results suggested that participants might not accept task instructions and thus did not perceive the outcomes in the dilemmas as certain. We argued that researchers who endorse descriptive tasks in moral reasoning research should be cautious about the findings and should take participants’ beliefs in the outcomes into account.

This article presents a theory of reasoning about moral propositions that is based on four fundamental principles. First, no simple criterion picks out propositions about morality from within the larger set of deontic propositions concerning what is permissible and impermissible in social relations, the law, games, and manners. Second, the mechanisms underlying emotions and deontic evaluations are independent and operate in parallel, and so some scenarios elicit emotions prior to moral evaluations, some elicit moral evaluations prior to emotions, and some elicit them at the same time. Third, deontic evaluations depend on inferences, either unconscious intuitions or conscious reasoning. Fourth, human beliefs about what is, and isn’t, moral are neither complete nor consistent. The article marshals the evidence, which includes new studies, corroborating these principles, and discusses the relations between them and other current theories of moral reasoning.

Most research on cognition behind religious belief assumes that understanding of other minds is culturally uniform and follows the Western model of mind, which posits that (a) others’ thoughts can be known and (b) action is best explained by mental state inference. This is potentially problematic if, as a growing body of evidence suggests, other populations view minds differently. We recruit Indigenous iTaukei Fijians who hold (a) a model of mind that discourages mental state inference and (b) co-existing Christian (Western) and traditional supernatural agent beliefs. Study 1 (N = 108), uses free-listing to examine how Western and local models of mind relate to beliefs. The Christian God cares about internal states and traits (aligning with the Western model of mind). Study 2 tests whether evoking God triggers intent focus in moral reasoning. Instead, God appears to enforce cultural models of mind in iTaukei (N = 151) and North Americans (N = 561). Expected divine judgement mirrors human judgement; iTaukei (N = 90) expect God to emphasise outcome, while Indo-Fijians (N = 219) and North Americans (N = 412) expect God to emphasise intent. When reminded to think about thoughts, iTaukei (N = 72) expect God to judge outcomes less harshly. Results suggest cultural/cognitive co-evolution: introduced cultural forms can spread new cognitive approaches, while Indigenous beliefs can persist as a reflection of local institutions.

Neuroscientific evidence indicates that human social functioning is supported by a distributed network of frontal and temporal brain regions that undergoes significant development during childhood and adolescence. Clinical studies of individuals with early brain insults (EBI) to frontotemporal regions suggest that such lesions may interfere with the maturation of sociocognitive skills and lead to increased sociobehavioural problems. However, little attention has focussed on the direct assessment of sociocognitive skills, such as moral reasoning, following focal EBI. In the present study, the performance of 15 patients with focal EBI (8–16 years) was compared to that of 15 demographically matched controls on basic neuropsychological measures (IQ and executive functions), sociocognitive tasks (moral reasoning, moral decision-making and empathy) and parent reports of sociobehavioural problems and social adaptive skills. Patients with focal EBI had significantly lower levels of moral reasoning maturity, moral decision-making, and empathy than their matched controls, but did not differ on more general measures of cognition. Their parents also reported increased sociobehavioural problems. These findings suggest that focal EBI to frontotemporal regions can result in reduced sociocognitive capacities, more specifically moral reasoning, and increased vulnerability to sociobehavioural problems.

In the contemporary debate on the use of the neurosciences in ethics and law, numerous arguments have been bandied about among scientists and philosophers looking to uphold or reject the reliability and validity of scientific findings obtained by brain imaging technologies. Among the most vexing questions is, Can we trust that technology? One point of disagreement is whether brain scans offer a window through which to observe the functioning of the mind, in such a way as to enable lawyers, judges, physicians, and lawmakers to detect anomalies in brain function that may account for criminal unconscious behavior. Those who stand behind brain imaging believe that this can indeed be achieved, whereas those in opposition stress that brain scans are highly open to interpretation and that the data they provide is insufficient to establish causal connections. The question essentially comes down to whether technology can reliably be used to determine the intentions of the individual, thus establishing mens rea, for example, and hence responsibility. This article focuses on the latter notion and explores whether we can rely on the neurosciences to shed light on a complex form of moral and legal reasoning, as well as the role of the neurosciences in reawakening a philosophical and legal interest in trying to set responsibility on an empirical basis.

This article challenges recent calls for moral bioenhancement—the use of biomedical means, including pharmacological and genetic methods, to increase the moral value of our actions or characters. It responds to those who take a practical interest in moral bioenhancement. I argue that moral bioenhancement is unlikely to be a good response to the extinction threats of climate change and weapons of mass destruction. Rather than alleviating those problems, it is likely to aggravate them. We should expect biomedical means to generate piecemeal enhancements of human morality. These predictably strengthen some contributors to moral judgment while leaving others comparatively unaffected. This unbalanced enhancement differs from the manner of improvement that typically results from sustained reflection. It is likely to make its subjects worse rather than better at moral reasoning.