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Thesis advisor: Ellen Winner / In two studies I examine how contextual information about the moral mind of the artist affects both children's and adults' response to works of art. Study 1 examined liking ratings of artworks as well as utilitarian objects. Factors varied were whether the items were said to have been made vs. owned by people of negative vs. positive moral character. Forty adults, 20 7-8-year-olds, and 23 4-5-year-olds were shown 12 artworks and 12 utilitarian objects and were asked to indicate on a 7-point scale how much they liked each one. Each item was presented as either owned or made by a person of positive or negative moral character. Moral character was predicted to affect liking ratings, with artworks expected to be affected more by the moral character of the maker than the owner, and utilitarian objects expected to be affected more by the moral character of the owner than the maker. Moral character had a significant effect on liking ratings: both artworks and utilitarian objects were liked less when believed to have been owned or made by someone of negative rather than positive moral character, demonstrating a moral contagion effect. Contrary to prediction, believing that an artwork was made by a person of negative moral character did not depress liking ratings more than believing that the artwork was owned by an artist of negative character. But consistent with prediction, believing that a utilitarian object was owned by a person of negative moral character depressed liking ratings more than believing that the object was made by someone of negative character. These findings held for all three age groups. Study 2 examined both liking and evaluative judgment ratings for two kinds of artworks: those whose content is related to the artist's moral character and those whose content is unrelated to the artist's character. Sixty-seven adults, 24 7-8 year-olds, and 23 4-5-year-olds were shown 12 representational paintings and were asked to indicate on a 7-point scale how much they liked each one and how good they thought each one was. Moral character was expected to affect both liking and evaluative judgment ratings, and content-related works were expected to be liked less than content unrelated works for artists of negative moral character; no effect of content-relatedness was expected for the putatively more objective evaluative judgments. Results replicated the moral contagion effect found in Study 1 for liking as well as judgment ratings with negative moral character linked to lower ratings than positive moral character. As predicted, liking ratings were lower for related than unrelated content for works by artists of negative moral character. Contrary to prediction, the same result held for works by artists of positive moral character. Evaluative judgment ratings were not affected by whether the content was related or unrelated in the case of artists of negative character (as predicted), but for artists of positive character, unrelated images were judged better. Children ages 7-8 behaved like adults for both liking and judgment ratings. Children ages 4-5 liked and judged as better the images with unrelated content for both mean and nice artists. Thus, adults and children ages 7-8-years old liked images more when the artist's moral mind was not visibly displayed but judged the related/unrelated images as equally good--indicating that the artistic mind (displayed through the arrangement of the composition, colors etc.) was more important for evaluations than was the moral mind. For 4-5-year-olds, preferences did not diverge from evaluative judgments. Thus, what they liked was what they thought was good, and moral "right" was equivalent to aesthetic "right". Taken together, results lead to the conclusion that artworks are affected by moral contagion, but moral contagion affects liking more strongly than it affects evaluative judgment. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the ethical value of literature that I will call ‘transgressive’. That is, literature which depicts morally condemnable characters and their behavior while adopting a perspective that does not condemn them. When readers engage imaginatively with this kind of literature, responding emotionally as solicited by the text, they may end up caring for these morally condemnable characters, and thus be forced to go beyond their habitual moral attitudes. This can be experienced by many readers when reading Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov, In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote, and A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess, the works that are the focus of this thesis. The unexpected emotional responses of care, such as empathic feelings, sympathy, or compassion, that may appear as one engages with such transgressive novels can be ethically valuable as one transcends, in the fictive world, one’s often limiting norms of acceptability and expectations, and thus begins to understand and learn about so-called alien minds. Bridging the gap between fiction and reality, reading can become a transformative experience as the insight gained in a novel can impact one’s views and judgments in real life. Through imagination, one’s moral realm can be enhanced and refined to possibly train tolerance towards all aspects of humanity, even the most puzzling and disturbing ones. Importantly, by connecting us with people who at first seem not only separated but opposed to us in significant ways, fiction can be a place to question our own dangerous capacity to think, judge, and act in morally outrageous ways. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-185).

This thesis examines the life and history of author Henry James and discusses morality as a subject in three of his later novels.

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This thesis deals with relationship of law and morals from the perspective of a judge applying the law. It starts by defining morals as a normative system which determines what is good and what is bad. Bad morals are punished by social sanction. The relationship of content of morals and law can be described as an intersection. There are three possible relationships of the area of law and morals regarding their respective application: (i) area which should be regulated only by moral rules; (ii) area which should be regulated only by law; and (iii) common area for both normative systems. Morals can penetrate reasoning of a judge applying the law at least in three ways: Firstly, Legislator can order the judge to drag a moral norm into his consideration. Such an order is called boni mores (dobré mravy) in Czech legal system (used in Section 3 or Section 39 of Czech Civil Code). Secondly, the school of phenomenology hermeneutics claims that any interpretation, thus interpretation of law as well, is conditioned by existence of so called pre-structures. We cannot get rid of these structures, they create necessary interpretative frame of interpreting individual. Moral feelings or moral attitudes are parts of these pre-structures. Morals can project to the decision-making of judge knowingly or unknowingly through...

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