Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-76).

I inquire into the ethical significance of emotions in Aristotle’s thinking. Commentators who have thus far argued for the importance of emotions in Aristotle’s philosophy claim that they can be useful for ethical judgment or support premises of ethical reasoning. I claim that (1) emotions are indispensable for good ethical discernment or, what we may call, moral perception and they usefully constrain the possibilities of action and deliberation. They are indispensable because they register ethically significant information in a unique way; they do so in virtue of their intensity, duration, and the felt quality of pain or pleasure associated with them. (2) Emotions are also necessary for good ethical judgment (gnōmē) in at least some cases in legal (and political contexts) especially where the law fails to provide sufficient guidance or when the relevant wrong is not yet conceptualised. In these cases, emotions, I argue, can be elicited in a non-coercive way that respects and even enlists the agency of the listener.

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Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 108-115).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-115). Also available in print.

Past research, guided by Piaget's and Kohlberg's theories of moral development, has shown that young children base their moral judgments on the consequence of the story protagonist's behavior while older children base their judgments on the protagonist's intent. Three age groups of children (144 subjects) heard four stories and were placed in three conditions to investigate whether their judgments could be influenced by asking them to pay attention either to why the protagonist did what she or he did or to what happened in the story, or given no instructions. As age increased, children's recall of stories and use of a protagonist's intention as a reason behind their judgments increased. Judgment scores followed the same pattern for all ages. Results were discussed in terms of social-emotional and cognitive development.

Factors which influence severity of moral judgement in men and women were investigated in this study with 94 male and 89 female undergraduate students as participants. Effects of "sex of judge," "sex of transgressor," and "value orientation" variables were examined across five diverse story conditions. A measure of identification was also obtained. As hypothesized, a significant main effect was found for "value orientation," but not for "sex of judge" or "sex of transgressor" variables. The hypothesized disappearance of a "sex of judge" by "sex of transgressor" interaction was found. Hypotheses concerning a permissive trend and the effects of degree of identification were not confirmed.

Deontic reasoning is a domain of reasoning concerning permissions, obligations, and prohibitions often utilizing conditional logic (Wason, 1968). Correct identification of rule violations is bolstered by the addition of a social valence to the rule for both adults (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and children (Harris & Nunez, 1996). This “deontic advantage” for violation-detection is taken as evidence for evolved social-cognitive mechanisms for reasoning about cheaters in the context of social contracts (Fiddick, 2004), and the early development of this advantage supports an evolutionary account of such abilities (Cummins, 2013). The current research hypothesized that differential attention to rule elements underlies the early emergence of the deontic advantage. Accuracy to a change-detection paradigm was used to assess implicit attention to various rule elements after children were told 4 different rules (2 social contracts, 2 epistemic statements). Thirteen 3-year-olds, twenty 4-year-olds, and sixteen 5-year-olds completed the experiment. Each participant completed 64 change-detection trials embedded within a scene depicting adherence to or violation of the rule. Results indicate that 4 and 5 year-olds consistently attend to the most relevant rule information for making decisions regarding violation (F(6, 124)=3.86, p<.01, ηp 2 = .144) and that they use observed compliance/non-compliance with the rule to further direct attention (F(6, 138)=3.27, p<.01, ηp 2 = .125). Furthermore, accuracy of change-detection to scenes of rule violation increases from ages 4 to 5, but not 3 to 4. However, a novel finding emerged suggesting that children use the absence of benefit to direct attention, suggesting possible “being-cheated” detection, rather than cheater-detection (F(9, 345) = 21.855, p<.001, ηp 2 = .322). This work is the first to investigate a deontic effect on attentional processes and opens a new avenue of inquiry to understanding the internal and external variables contributing to the development of deontic reasoning. Follow up studies are currently underway to clarify how children use these environmental cues and in/out group membership to direct attention to rule violations. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

by Hau Kit Tai. / Thesis (M.A.Ed.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong / Bibliography: leaves 84-102

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