Psychopaths pose a challenge to those who make claims about the strength of moral assessments. These individuals are entirely unmoved by the moral rules that they articulate and purportedly espouse. Psychopaths appear rationally intact but are emotionally broken. In some cases, they commit horrendous crimes yet show no guilt, no remorse. Sentimentalists claim that the empirical evidence about psychopaths’ affective deficits supports that moral judgment is rooted in emotion and that psychopaths do not make genuine moral judgments—they can’t. Here, I challenge an explanation of psychopathy that indicts psychopaths’ emotional impairments alone. I conclude that there are rational requirements for moral motivation and that psychological and neuroscientific research support that psychopaths do not make the grade.

Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in these debates. In the wake of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology, however, some empirically-minded philosophers are beginning to use neural findings in support of their theories of moral judgment. The intent of this thesis is to explore how this empirical evidence can be integrated effectively into philosophical discussions about moral judgment. In the first chapter of my thesis, I review the moral judgment debate in both philosophy and moral psychology, focusing specifically on contemporary sentimentalist solutions to this problem. This review sets the stage for my critique of Prinz’s sentimentalist account of moral judgment in the second chapter. I argue that Prinz uses neural evidence to support his sentimentalist thesis inappropriately, altering the evidence to fit his theory, rather than using the evidence to inform his theory. In the third chapter, I examine Prinz’s somatic theory of emotion and how this is related to his theory of moral judgment. I argue that neural evidence indicates that a theory of emotion that incorporates aspects of both cognitive appraisal and somatic theories is more empirically accurate than either view in isolation. Finally, I discuss the implications that a neural account of emotion could have on future debates about the nature of moral judgment.

Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in these debates. In the wake of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology, however, some empirically-minded philosophers are beginning to use neural findings in support of their theories of moral judgment. The intent of this thesis is to explore how this empirical evidence can be integrated effectively into philosophical discussions about moral judgment. In the first chapter of my thesis, I review the moral judgment debate in both philosophy and moral psychology, focusing specifically on contemporary sentimentalist solutions to this problem. This review sets the stage for my critique of Prinz’s sentimentalist account of moral judgment in the second chapter. I argue that Prinz uses neural evidence to support his sentimentalist thesis inappropriately, altering the evidence to fit his theory, rather than using the evidence to inform his theory. In the third chapter, I examine Prinz’s somatic theory of emotion and how this is related to his theory of moral judgment. I argue that neural evidence indicates that a theory of emotion that incorporates aspects of both cognitive appraisal and somatic theories is more empirically accurate than either view in isolation. Finally, I discuss the implications that a neural account of emotion could have on future debates about the nature of moral judgment.

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : Sprache, Literatur, Kultur : Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen : 2006. / Bibliogr. p. [317]-336. Notes bibliogr.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 378-412). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Inaug.-diss.--Freiburg I. Hr. / Lebenslauf. "Literatur": p. vii-viii.

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This dissertation considers how American women writers responded to the changing perceptions about feminine nature, to an increasingly modern society, and to the shifting religious landscape in nineteenth-century America. The complex relationship between nineteenth-century women and religion is firmly illustrated in the works of three writers who were widely read during their time and yet have a very limited readership today: Mary Hallock Foote, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Gertrude Bonnin, also known as Zitkala-Ša. Each figure held a prominent position in the high-literary establishment of the late nineteenth century, and I show how each experimented with regional and sentimental literary conventions in order to entertain and appeal to a readership largely dominated by urban, upper-middle-class women. I argue that each of these writers constructed shared regional spaces and articulated spiritual values of place in order to dramatize differences between rural and urban cultures, to reflect concerns about America’s increasingly industrial, materialistic, and cosmopolitan mainstream society, and to create an anti-modern argument for a society grounded in Christian beliefs and practices. Despite the variety of their religious backgrounds and experiences, these writers all depict nuanced versions of Protestant tradition that both reflect the malleability of cultural religious constructions and re-assert Christian values of love, equality, family, and community. Moreover, through their descriptions of place—of the beauty, grandeur, isolation, and inherent risk of the natural world—these writers reveal phenomenological experiences and illuminate intricate connections between religion, place, and culture that contemporary scholars of religion and geography have only recently begun to explore.

In this thesis, I argue that David Hume’s political philosophy is centrally focused on the prospect of social reform. The conception of justice and politics he develops out of his theories of virtue and moral psychology stresses the pervasive effects of institutions on individuals’ abilities to live decent lives and provides criteria for determining the relative success of such institutions. While Hume’s political philosophy has been interpreted as justifying a society’s status quo, I demonstrate that the principles of merit, need, and equality—commonly considered core principles of social justice—each play a vital role in his view of what constitutes a healthy, stable society. In particular, I contend that Hume’s emphasis on institutions guaranteeing equal protection of basic rights, the role of the common good in the moral justification of political institutions, and the material and social circumstances of equality that make the institution of justice possible, suggest that social reform is a central concern of his theory of justice and politics.

Thesis (M.F.A)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 28, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.