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.

Many findings in cognitive psychology suggest that many decisions and judgments rely on processes that are unconscious, that these processes can be disrupted by conscious input, leading to poor decision making. A commonly paradigm has shown that decision makers who are distracted while deciding make better to make quick decisions. The distraction is thought to facilitate spontaneous unconscious processing, called the “deliberation without attention effect”, that lead to better decisions when the question is later revisited. This effect was tested in three studies on diagnostic judgments in a multiple cue probability learning paradigm. In three studies, the effect of rushed decision making, forced deliberation, and distraction were tested on probability judgments, and on choices and confidence judgments. Evidence suggested that subjects in the immediate decision were less accurate than the other conditions, in decisions and judgments, despite higher levels of confidence, but equaled performance in other conditions when given make-work tasks in between decisions, which may have primed more careful or more deliberate thinking. The results did not make any strong theoretical implications for the deliberation without attention effect.

In this paper, I analyze the concept of a besire. I argue that distinguishing between different types and interpretations of besires is a critical tool for adequately assessing besire theories of moral judgment. I argue for this by applying the results of this conceptual analysis of a besire to David Brink’s version of the moral problem and to objections against besire theories made by Michael Smith, Simon Blackburn, and Nick Zangwill.

In this study I first examined whether the cognitive processes (hot versus cold cognition) underlying judgments to traditional moral situations are universal to situations that are morally neutral, and whether individual differences in cognitive ability moderate these judgments. Second, I tested whether it was possible to modify the impact of hot versus cold processing systems on judgment deliberation by shifting the focus of attention during the decision-making process. I conclude that moral judgment is not simply the product of cognitive ability and is not sufficiently motivated by hot cognitive experiences alone. The role of cognitive abilities on moral valuation requires further examination.

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.

Many findings in cognitive psychology suggest that many decisions and judgments rely on processes that are unconscious, that these processes can be disrupted by conscious input, leading to poor decision making. A commonly paradigm has shown that decision makers who are distracted while deciding make better to make quick decisions. The distraction is thought to facilitate spontaneous unconscious processing, called the “deliberation without attention effect”, that lead to better decisions when the question is later revisited. This effect was tested in three studies on diagnostic judgments in a multiple cue probability learning paradigm. In three studies, the effect of rushed decision making, forced deliberation, and distraction were tested on probability judgments, and on choices and confidence judgments. Evidence suggested that subjects in the immediate decision were less accurate than the other conditions, in decisions and judgments, despite higher levels of confidence, but equaled performance in other conditions when given make-work tasks in between decisions, which may have primed more careful or more deliberate thinking. The results did not make any strong theoretical implications for the deliberation without attention effect.

Judgments of spatial relationships are often made when the object or observer are moving. Behaviourally, there is evidence that these ‘dynamic’ judgments of spatial extent differ from static judgments. Here I used three separate techniques for exploring dynamic judgments: first, a line bisection paradigm was employed to study ocular and pointing judgments of spatial extent while manipulating line length, position, speed, acceleration, and direction of scanning (Experiments 1-4); second, functional MRI (fMRI) was used to examine whether distinct brain regions were involved in dynamic versus static judgments of spatial extent (Exp 5); and finally, a mathematical and computational model of dynamic judgments was developed to provide a framework for interpreting the experimental results. In the behavioural experiments, substantial differences were seen between static and dynamic bisection, suggesting the two invoke different neural processes for computing spatial extent. Surprisingly, ocular and pointing judgments produced distinct bisection patterns that were uncorrelated, with pointing somewhat more impervious to manipulations such as scan direction and position than ocular bisections. However, a new experimental task for probing dynamic judgments (the ‘no line’ Experiment 4) found that scan direction can influence both hand behaviour. Functional MRI demonstrated that dynamic relative to static judgments produced activations in the cuneus and precuneus bilaterally, left cerebellum, and medial frontal gyrus, with reduced activation relative to static judgments observed in the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally. Dynamic bisections relative to a control condition produced activations in the right precuneus and left cerebellum, as well as in left superior parietal lobule, left middle temporal gyrus, and right precentral gyrus. It may be the case that velocity processing and temporal estimates are integrated primarily in the cuneus and precuneus bilaterally to produce estimates of spatial extent under dynamic scanning conditions. These results highlight the fact that dynamic judgments of spatial extent engage brain regions distinct from those employed to make static judgments, supporting the behavioural results that these are separate and distinct. Finally, a mathematical model was proposed for dynamic judgments of spatial extent, based on the idea that, rather than using an ‘all-or-none’ approach, spatial working memory actually takes about 100 ms to reach full representational strength for any given point in space. The model successfully explains many of the effects seen in the behavioural experiments including the effects of scan direction, velocity, line length, and position. In conjunction with the neuroimaging data, it also suggests why neglect patients may fail to show rightward bisection biases when making dynamic judgments of spatial extent. Overall, this work provides novel insights into how the brain executes dynamic judgments of spatial extent.

When warriors fall asleep within Heorot’s decorated walls, they initiate a sequence of events that ultimately ends in slaughter and death. This pattern of sleep, attack, and death predictably appears in each of the monster episodes. Humans sleep and fall prey to an otherworld attacker, who eventually receives death as punishment. Interestingly, the roles of the characters are reversed in the dragon scene. Here, the dragon’s sleep exposes him to harm at the hands of a human, the thief, whose guilt is transferred to Beowulf. In this way, sleep designates the victims and the attackers, but it also helps the audience predict the judgment that will take place at the end of each episode. This judgment becomes specifically Christian when contextualized by other Anglo-Saxon accounts of sleep. As in these texts, sleep in Beowulf functions as a liminal zone connecting the world of the humans with an Otherworld. The intersection of these worlds in Beowulf follows the structural paradigm of the popular “Doomsday motif,” in which an angry Christ comes to earth to surprise a sleeping humanity. A study of the verbal and thematic similarities of Beowulf and Christ III best exemplifies this connection. Other mythographic traditions of Christian judgment within Anglo Saxon texts appear throughout Beowulf. Motifs of Christ’s second coming surround Grendel as he approaches Heorot, and his entrance echoes Christ’s harrowing of Hell. The fight in Grendel’s mother’s lair recalls redemption through water: Beowulf’s immersion represents baptism and the hilt of the sword which saves the Danish nation depicts the great Flood. Finally, the dragon’s fire and its resulting annihilation of a people, at least indirectly, resounds with apocalyptic undertones.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-155). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.