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Behavioral data of: 1) the fMRI study, including decision data and blame judgment data; 2) folk intuition study

Study 2 investigating whether, after recalling an instance in which they personally violated a moral principle, participants would agree less strongly with that very principle relative to participants assigned to control conditions where they recalled violations committed by others.

Social psychology survey study examining how Christian-identifying religious individuals perceive the purpose of evil as a function of their views about God's relationship to suffering.

Online supplement for: Rehren, Paul, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Forthcoming. “How Stable Are Moral Judgments?” Review of Philosophy and Psychology.

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.

Additional file 1. Additional survey texts, questions, and results

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976221122765 for Neural and Cognitive Signatures of Guilt Predict Hypocritical Blame by Hongbo Yu, Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta, Annayah M. B. Prosser, Matthew A. J. Apps, Wilhelm Hofmann, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Molly J. Crockett in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976221122765 for Neural and Cognitive Signatures of Guilt Predict Hypocritical Blame by Hongbo Yu, Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta, Annayah M. B. Prosser, Matthew A. J. Apps, Wilhelm Hofmann, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Molly J. Crockett in Psychological Science

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others (i.e., instrumental harm) reduces trust, while impartially maximizing the welfare of everyone equally (i.e., impartial beneficence) may increase trust. Here, we investigate moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 22 countries on 6 continents, participants will complete behavioral and self-reported measures of trust in leaders who endorse either utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in COVID-19 dilemmas. We predict that endorsement of instrumental harm will decrease trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence will increase trust. These results can advance our understanding of trust in leaders and inform effective public communication during times of crisis.ITEMS:Stage 1 Registered Report Protocol & Stage 1 Registered Report Supplementary Information.

The Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFVs) – a recently developed set of brief scenarios depicting violations of various moral foundations – enables investigators to directly examine differences in moral judgments about different topics. In the present study, we adapt the MFV instrument for use in the Portuguese language. To this end, the following steps were performed: 1) Translation of the MFV instrument from English to Portuguese language in Brazil; 2) Synthesis of translated versions; 3) Evaluation of the synthesis by expert judges; 4) Evaluation of the MFV instrument by university students from Sao Paulo City; 5) Back translation; and lastly, 6) Validation study, which used a sample of 494 (385f) university students from Sao Paulo city and a set of 68 vignettes, subdivided into seven factors. Exploratory analyses show that the relationships between the moral foundations and political ideology are similar to those found in previous studies, but the severity of moral judgment on individualizing foundations tended to be significantly higher in the Sao Paulo sample, compared to a sample from the USA. Overall, the present study provides a Portuguese version of the MFV that performs similarly to the original English version, enabling a broader examination of how the moral foundations operate.

Dissertation, In The Neverending Story (1984), “the nothing” was spreading throughout Fantasia. This is terrifying not just because of the nature of the west-German fantasy film but also because nothing—non-being—was represented as something that existed. Nothing can’t be—or so it seems. In this dissertation, I ask: what do ordinary statements about omissions and absences mean if they are not about things that exist? And then I ask: how can an answer to this question help us understand omissive causation? I present various normative accounts of omissive language and omissive causal models. I end by considering some reasons to doubt such models.

Dissertation, This dissertation provides an answer to what I call the central question of moral philosophy: what, if anything, is moral value? The answer, I argue, is that moral value is the relational property of eliciting a suitable response from a properly informed, rational, benevolent and otherwise minimal spectator. I call this theory the response-dependent benevolent ideal observer theory or BIORD.Although the way in which I express and argue for BIORD is original and unique, the core of the theory is old. In chapter 1, I explore these historical roots. The notion that moral value depends, in some sense, upon the reactions of an idealised spectator stretches back at least to Adam Smith and, I argue, to his tutor Francis Hutcheson. I explore how a natural connection between ideal observers, benevolence and utilitarianism has often been assumed without being explicitly argued for. In chapter 2, I lay out certain crucial meta-theoretical assumptions that help to motivate BIORD. I argue against the methodology of conceptual analysis and in favour of a revisionary approach sometimes called ‘conceptual ethics’. I explore the theoretical aims that ought to guide the conceptual ethicists’ project before arguing in favour of a response-dependent metaethics, in contrast to other sentimentalist theories such as fitting-attitude accounts. The response-dependent schema states that an object is morally valuable if and only if a particular agent would have a particular reaction to it (in certain circumstances). In chapter 3, I argue that the agent that ought to fill the response-dependent schema is a properly informed, rational, benevolent and otherwise minimal spectator. I define benevolence as a final care directed towards the welfare of conscious creatures and thus argue in favour of welfarism: the view that welfare is the only essential moral value. In chapter 4, I discuss which of the benevolent observer’s reactions are best thought of as relevant, and which objects are best thought of as the bearers of both essential and non-essential moral value. I suggest that any attitude which lacks the property of being ‘truth-oriented’ is relevant. Arguments concerning the objects of value leads to a discussion of Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, which BIORD entails. I argue that we ought to embrace it. Lastly, I discuss the objects of non-essential value, showing how BIORD can capture some intuitions that value pluralists might otherwise use against it. Finally, in chapter 5, I discuss how accepting BIORD would impact our moral discourse, arguing in favour of a radical eliminativist proposal in which deontic language is abandoned in favour of comparative value-talk. I then discuss how BIORD can provide us with a theory of reasons.

Why is political disagreement such a persistent and pervasive feature of contemporary societies? Many political philosophers answer by pointing to moral pluralism and the complexity of relevant non-moral facts. In Chapter 1, I argue that this answer is seriously inadequate. Drawing on work from psychology, political science, and evolutionary anthropology, I argue that an adequate explanation of political disagreement must emphasize two features of human psychology: tribalism and motivated reasoning.It is often assumed that disagreements rooted in bias and irrationality can be ignored or idealized away by philosophers developing ideal theories, that is, theories that aim to sketch the normative outlines of an ideal society. In Chapters 2 and 3, I argue that this assumption is mistaken because even ideal theories are subject to constraints, and idealizing away disagreements rooted in certain kinds of bias and irrationality violates these constraints.In Chapter 4, I turn to the ethics of political compromise, focusing specifically on compromises that involve making serious concessions to injustice. I consider and attempt to reconcile two seemingly inconsistent approaches to evaluating such compromises: one that emphasizes fundamental moral principles versus one that emphasizes pragmatic considerations.

In this thesis, I will assess the question of what it means to be responsible for an action, and attempt to unify the various concepts around the conception of answerability. Focusing on that notion, I argue, will gives a better understanding of the other proposed conceptions of responsibility: that of attributability and that of accountability. I will come up with three connected definitions corresponding to these notions, and show that once we refine our concept of responsibility, it is possible for an agent to be responsible in one way, and not another. I demonstrate this contention on the test case of the psychopath.Keywords: moral responsibility, answerability, psychopathy