This essay explores the phenomenological features of the passional response to evil that Aquinas calls 'hatred of sin' in Summa Thelogiae II-II Q34 A3 and I-II Q23 A1, among other places. Social justice concerns and philosophical objections, however, challenge the notion that one can feel hatred toward an agent's vice or sin without it being the agent who is hated. I argue that a careful, contextual reading of these texts shows that Aquinas cannot be read as commending 'hate' in any form. The texts under consideration offer no comfort to those who appeal to hatred of sin or vice to legitimate sentiments or actions that can be reasonably taken to express hatred of persons.

This essay explores the phenomenological features of the passional response to evil that Aquinas calls 'hatred of sin' in Summa Thelogiae II-II Q34 A3 and I-II Q23 A1, among other places. Social justice concerns and philosophical objections, however, challenge the notion that one can feel hatred toward an agent's vice or sin without it being the agent who is hated. I argue that a careful, contextual reading of these texts shows that Aquinas cannot be read as commending 'hate' in any form. The texts under consideration offer no comfort to those who appeal to hatred of sin or vice to legitimate sentiments or actions that can be reasonably taken to express hatred of persons.

Individual deservingness and group-based equality as rules of distribution have routinely been conflated in past research. These two studies are an attempt to further establish the differences between these two as moral values named fairness and social justice, respectively. In both studies, participants rated “moral acceptability” of eight real-world scenarios that either upheld fairness and violated social justice or vice versa. Each of these scenarios was presented at two time points: at time 1, the upheld principle was presented and the violation of the other was implied, but at time 2, the violation was made apparent with a second sentence. Individual preferences for fairness and social justice were also measured. Study 1 primed basic principles of each value with a sentence scramble task before participants responded to the scenarios. Priming social justice principles significantly decreased moral acceptability ratings of fair scenarios before the social injustice was made apparent compared to the control condition, but ultimately individual differences in preferences for each principle were most predictive of moral acceptability ratings of both types of scenarios. Study 2 primed individual and collective perspectives with a writing prompt before participants responded to scenarios. Both priming tasks increased moral acceptability ratings of socially just scenarios before the unfairness was made apparent. This may have been due to the nature of the writing prompts, both of which required the participant to think of others, suggesting that social justice involves the consideration of social categories rather than simply a collection of people. In both studies, priming tasks and individual differences were generally unable to encourage recognition of the violation one or the other value, prompting the discussion of what else might promote such effortful thinking.

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Yes / In this chapter we will review experimental evidence related to pharmacological moral enhancement. Firstly, we will present our recent study in which we found that a drug called propranolol could change moral judgements. Further research, which also investigated this, found similar results. Secondly, we will discuss the limitations of such approaches, when it comes to the idea of general “human enhancement”. Whilst promising effects on certain moral concepts might be beneficial to the development of theoretical moral psychology, enhancement of human moral behaviour in general – to our current understanding – has more side-effects than intended effects, making it potentially harmful. We give an overview of misconceptions when taking experimental findings beyond the laboratory and discuss the problems and solutions associated with the psychological assessment of moral behaviour. Indeed, how is morality “measured” in psychology, and are those measures reliable?

Theories of global justice are often criticised for being ineffective or unrealisable. The aim of this interdisciplinary thesis is to examine whether this motivational criticism holds regarding Singer’s Principle and Pogge’s theory of global egalitarian justice. First, I will show that the effectiveness argument is unconvincing: the underlying effectiveness criterion is either incoherent or not defined, and existing effectiveness predictions are empirically unsatisfactory. Second, I will analyse whether Singer’s interactional Principle satisfies the ‘ought implies can’ (OIC) criterion, which holds that obligations must be within the capacities of individuals. Having discussed the rationale and standard of the OIC criterion, I will show that the philosophical literature does not offer a convincing empirical justification of possibility evaluations. Drawing on psychological explanations of moral heroism, I will conclude that compliance with Singer’s Principle is possible for ordinary persons, i.e. that ‘every person is a hero in waiting’. Third, turning to the feasibility of Pogge’s theory of global egalitarian justice, I will discuss how the standard, time-frame, weight and rationale of the feasibility criterion should be defined. Based on psychological and sociological explanations about moral behaviour, social norms and identity, I will evaluate the empirical arguments advanced in the philosophical literature. In addition, I will consider how the long-term trends of globalisation are likely to influence the role of nationality, identity and global institutions. I will conclude that Pogge’s theory of egalitarian global justice is conditionally feasible, i.e. if we assume that domestic egalitarian justice is feasible. This implies that nationalism will not necessarily play a dominant role during the centuries to come. Overall, possibility and feasibility evaluations remain uncertain and partly subjective. I will thus argue that a burden of proof should be established to limit the negative effects of false evaluations.

Protreptic is a form of rhetoric, textual and oral in form, which exhorts its recipients to reorient their lives both morally and intellectually. Plato frequently portrays Socrates' use of this rhetoric with interlocutors who are enticed by the moral and political views of figures from Athens' intellectual culture. During these conversations Socrates attempts to persuade his interlocutors to reorient their lives in a way that conforms more closely to his own moral and intellectual practice of philosophy. Plato's depiction of protreptic, however, also exerts a protreptic effect on readers of his dialogues. Plato's writing thus performs a dual function, simultaneously depicting instances of protreptic at work and attempting to exert a protreptic effect on readers. In this dissertation I argue that understanding this dual function of Plato's writing is inseparable from understanding his conception of philosophy. I analyze the structure of protreptic in Plato's writing by identifying four aspects essential to an interpretive method that takes full stock of the protreptic function of Plato's dialogues. These aspects are (1) the proper recipient of protreptic; (2) the persuasive means available to protreptic; (3) the immediate target of persuasion; (4) the ultimate philosophical aim toward which protreptic advances the recipient. While some of these aspects must be determined with respect to particular dialogues, those that concern the form of Plato's writing—such as the means of persuasion and ultimate philosophical goals—can inform a general approach to Plato's dialogues. The means that Socrates uses to persuade his interlocutors are sometimes affective, influencing their emotions, and other times intellectual, appealing to them exclusively with logical argument. I argue that a combination of these means into a form I call “provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato uses to exert a protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously intellectual and affective experience, and the way that readers choose to respond to aporia has a greater protreptic effect than either affective or intellectual means alone. The Republic is a crucial dialogue for studying protreptic because it addresses the ultimate moral and intellectual ends toward which Plato hopes to reorient readers, and puts the various protreptic means at Socrates' and Plato's disposal on full display. The dialogue offers both an argument for a life committed to virtue, and an outline of the theoretical insights—mathematical and dialectical—that philosophers may hope to gain from more serious study. It also portrays Socrates in conversation with characters of a variety sufficient to show his rhetorical and argumentative repertoire. In this dissertation I carry out a reading of the Republic according to the four aspects of the structure of protreptic discussed above. More specifically, I identify moments at which Glaucon and Adeimantus answer Socrates' questions in such a way that they concede to Socrates the truth of premises that contradict their defense of the unjust life. These moments reveal that the central point of dispute in the Republic concerns the nature of moral agency— particularly the functions of reason, desire, and habituation for moral agents. Accordingly, I identify two models of agency—a Technē Model and a Virtue Model— that ground their respective defenses of justice and injustice, and hold their own assumptions about reason, desire, and habituation within their respective moral psychologies. Glaucon and Adeimantus' moments of capitulation, function as moments of aporia for readers, who are then provoked to overcome the aporia by explaining why the capitulation is reasonable. In doing so, we gain an account how Glaucon and Adeimantus are coaxed to abandon their original views about justice, injustice, and moral agency and to accept those of Socrates. This account in turn yields insight into protreptic by depicting how Socrates brings about a reorientation toward philosophy from within a non-philosophical perspective.

In his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment," Peter Strawson attempts to reconcile incompatibilism and compatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism. First, I present the error committed by the proponents of both these traditional views, which Strawson diagnoses as the source of their standoff, and the remedy Strawson offers to avoid the conflict. Second, I reconstruct the two arguments Strawson offers for a theory of moral responsibility that is based on his proposed remedy. Third, I present and respond to two proposed problems for the Strawsonian theory: moral luck and revisionism. I conclude with a summary of my defense of Strawsonian “expressivism” about moral responsibility, and offer suggestions for further research.

Research in moral psychology has focused on understanding what factors assist in the development of moral action and decision making. The purpose of this study was to address whether variability in attention relates to moral judgment development. The reason for exploring moral judgment development was to further explore the research of Thoma and Bebeau (2008) who documented that the moral development scores of college and graduate students has been declining over time, with more college-aged students scoring in the lower levels of moral reasoning. Attention was chosen as a viable topic of research, based on the writings of Carr (2008a) who suggests that technology has had an impact on the way that individuals read and process information. College students from Western Kentucky University were recruited via the Psychology Department Study Board. Participants first took the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT2) online and then scheduled a subsequent session in the laboratory to take the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA). The DIT2 assesses three levels of moral reasoning advancing by level: Personal Interests, Maintaining Norms, and Postconventional schemas. The TEA assesses four different types of attention: divided attention, attentional switching, selective attention, and sustained attention. In a sample of 79 college students, results revealed that stronger attention abilities were related to higher postconventional reasoning. However, decreases in attention were not related to lower personal interests reasoning. Attentional switching, selective attention, and sustained attention were particularly influential where postconventional reasoning was concerned. The trends observed in this study were somewhat expected as moral judgment development is regarded and verified as a cognitive intellectual process. In light of the information provided by the results of this study, future studies are recommended to determine how efforts to facilitate improved attention might ultimately translate to improved moral judgment development. Research has shown that interventions aimed at improving attention are successful (Kerns, Eso, & Thomson, 1999). In conclusion, this study supports the notion that attention does pertain to moral judgment scores as inferred by the DIT2. The effect of the TEA scores on the DIT2 postconventional scores was strong (R2 = .237).