My dissertation explores the role of narrative in the cultivation of empathy for ethical attitudes and behaviors. I begin by exploring an uncommon view of human nature, concluding that we are not autonomously individualistic rational deciders but ultrasocial moral intuitionists. Our intuitions are developed through our social engagements and the moral imagination. Intersubjective relations run deep in our psychology and provide the basis by which we shape the meaning of our lives as individuals in communities. It is because of this that we need to reconsider and redesign our moral cultivation programs both for the child-rearing years and throughout adult life. I look at empathy, the means of our mutual understanding, care, and help, as a key site for moral cultivation. I explicate the neurophysiological bases of empathy, both conscious and unconscious. Empathy is on the continuum with very primitive, automatic mirroring systems, which through varying levels of mimicry facilitate social cognition and moral insight and action. It is thus the ideal means of cultivating a skillful morality. Empathy enables us to enter the worlds and feelings of others in rich and full-bodied ways and so can reveal others in their full subjectivity. Such experiences can incite empathic regard and compassionate action, but empathy, like all of our psycho-social capacities, requires cultivation to develop its skillfulness in practice. Narrative is an obvious means of cultivating empathy because it is humanity’s primary meaning-making structure, utilizing the empathic imagination to seduce us into the inner worlds of others. Through narrative dramatizations of experience, we learn to see and feel from another’s point of view, sensitizing us to their inner states and outward behavior. Such sensitivity can facilitate improving our moral attitudes and action by dislodging preoccupation with self-concern and instigating higher regard for others. In narratives we can imaginatively practice various moral actions, witnessing possible results. Reflective engagement can then bring the moral insights of these imaginative experiences to life in our practical worlds by attuning us to what is morally salient. Narrative engagement is thus a natural and vital part of shaping empathic moral perception for compassionate action. By reading and feeling with others reflectively, we can expand empathy for the pluralistic communities in which we live, make meaning, and grow.

How do we recognize that someone is thinking that the train is running late, desiring another cookie, or intending to make coffee? What is the cognitive process by which we come to attribute to another individual the belief, for instance, that Barack Obama is President? For the past few decades, philosophers working on Folk Psychology--i.e., those involved in the study of how people typically form judgments about others’ mental states--have focused largely on questions involving everyday attributions of mentality in terms of intentional states, like beliefs and desires. What I dub ‘the New Folk Psychology’ expands on this tradition to include everyday attributions of phenomenal consciousness (i.e., feelings and experiences). How, that is, do we come to recognize something as being capable of and having phenomenal states, like feeling happy or experience pleasure? The project is organized around three core topics. The first component attempts to identify the process underlying everyday attributions of consciousness. This task is carried out with an eye towards addressing issues in the current folk psychology of consciousness debate, such as whether ordinary psychology incorporates something like the philosopher’s distinction between intentionality and phenomenology. My work (Arico 2010, Arico, et al. 2011) advocates a model of mind-attribution called the Agency Model. According to this model, whenever we represent an entity as having certain properties (for example, facial features), we automatically categorize that thing as an AGENT. This AGENT-categorization then activates a cascade of behavioral dispositions, including the disposition to attribute both intentionality and phenomenology. The second component concerns ways that the process underlying everyday attributions of consciousness might be related to psychological process involved in moral perception. My work to date has focused largely on the question of how it is that we come to see an entity as a moral being, as something that deserves moral consideration and/or is subject to moral evaluation. I argue that existing accounts of such moral perception are based on problematic experimental data (Arico, forthcoming). I then propose an amended Agency Model (Arico, under review), according to which seeing an entity as a moral being--like attributing it consciousness--is a consequence of categorizing that thing as an AGENT. I then utilize this cognitive picture in an attempt to explain the enduring normative ethical debate over which kind of mental capacity most fundamentally grounds moral standing.

The focus of environmental philosophy has thus far heavily depended on the extension of rights to nonhuman nature. Due to inherent difficulties with this approach to environmental problems, I propose a shift from the contemporary language of rights and duties to the concept of character development. I claim that a theory of environmental virtue ethics can circumvent many of the difficulties arising from the language of rights, duties, and moral claims by emphasizing the cultivation of certain dispositions in the individual moral agent. In this thesis, I examine the advantages of virtue ethics over deontological and utilitarian theories to show the potential of developing an ecological virtue ethic. I provide a preliminary list of ecological virtues by drawing on Aristotle's account of traditional virtues as well as on contemporary formulations of environmental virtues. Then, I propose that certain types of rules (rules of thumb) are valuable for the cultivation of environmental virtues, since they affect the way the moral agent perceives a particular situation. Lastly, I offer preliminary formulations of these rules of thumb.

Portrayals of artificially intelligent robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in children’s culture. This affects how children perceive robots, which have been found to affect the way children in school understand subjects like technology and programming. Since teachers need to know what influences their pupils' understanding of these subjects, we need to know how children’s preconceptions about robots affect the way they attribute mental states to them. We still know relatively little about how children do this. Based on the above, a qualitative approach was deemed fit. This study aimed to (1) investigate the reasoning and preconceptions underlying children’s mental state attribution to robots, and (2) explore the effectiveness of moral questions as a way to do this. 16 children aged 5- and 6 years old were asked to rate the mental states of four different robots while subsequently being asked to explain their answers. Half of the children were interviewed alone and half in small groups. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the qualitative data. Children’s mental state attribution was found to be influenced by preconceptions about robots as a group of entities lacking mental states. Children were found to perceive two robots, Atlas, and Nao, differently in various respects. This was argued to be because the children perceived these robots through archetypal frameworks. Moral questions were found successful as a way to spark reflective reasoning about the mental state attribution in the children.

Dans cette thèse en psychologie morale, je m’intéresse au rôle de l’imagination dans la perception morale. Je soutiens que l’imagination y a une fonction épistémique dans la mesure où – en s’accompagnant ou non d’émotions – elle nous révèle des normes, des valeurs ou des vertus morales qui seraient autrement passées inaperçues. En simulant des croyances et des perceptions, l’imagination nous permet d’accéder à ces caractéristiques d’une situation moralement pertinentes, mais perceptuellement non saillantes. J’identifie trois modes de « perception morale imaginative » : 1) la prise de perspective qui consiste à endosser le point de vue d’autrui, 2) le cadrage imaginatif qui désigne le fait de voir un élément d’une situation comme autre qu’il n’est et, 3) la comparaison imaginative qui, grâce à la pensée contrefactuelle, éclaire le monde actuel à partir d’un monde possible imaginé. Chacun de ces modes contribue à enrichir notre connaissance morale, et partant, à améliorer notre délibération morale. J’appuie ma démonstration sur des travaux récents en philosophie de la psychologie, en psychologie cognitive et sociale, en neuropsychologie et, bien évidemment, en psychologie morale. / My thesis focuses on the role of imagination for moral perception. I argue that imagination – whether accompanied by emotion or not - has an epistemic role inasmuch as it can reveal moral norms, values, and virtues that might otherwise go un-noticed. On the simulationist account, belief-like imaginings and perception-like imaginings give us access to the morally relevant but perceptually non-salient features of a situation. I identify three types of “imaginative moral perception”: 1) the perspective taking that consists of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes; 2) the imaginative framing, which refers to seeing an element of a situation as something else; 3) the imaginative comparison, which sheds light on the actual world by using counterfactuals thinking that give us access to a possible world. Each of these types of moral perception contributes to enhancing our moral knowledge hence to improving our moral deliberation. My argument appeals to recent contributions from the fields of philosophy of psychology, cognitive and social psychology, neuropsychology and, of course, moral psychology.

Dans cette thèse en psychologie morale, je m’intéresse au rôle de l’imagination dans la perception morale. Je soutiens que l’imagination y a une fonction épistémique dans la mesure où – en s’accompagnant ou non d’émotions – elle nous révèle des normes, des valeurs ou des vertus morales qui seraient autrement passées inaperçues. En simulant des croyances et des perceptions, l’imagination nous permet d’accéder à ces caractéristiques d’une situation moralement pertinentes, mais perceptuellement non saillantes. J’identifie trois modes de « perception morale imaginative » : 1) la prise de perspective qui consiste à endosser le point de vue d’autrui, 2) le cadrage imaginatif qui désigne le fait de voir un élément d’une situation comme autre qu’il n’est et, 3) la comparaison imaginative qui, grâce à la pensée contrefactuelle, éclaire le monde actuel à partir d’un monde possible imaginé. Chacun de ces modes contribue à enrichir notre connaissance morale, et partant, à améliorer notre délibération morale. J’appuie ma démonstration sur des travaux récents en philosophie de la psychologie, en psychologie cognitive et sociale, en neuropsychologie et, bien évidemment, en psychologie morale. / My thesis focuses on the role of imagination for moral perception. I argue that imagination – whether accompanied by emotion or not - has an epistemic role inasmuch as it can reveal moral norms, values, and virtues that might otherwise go un-noticed. On the simulationist account, belief-like imaginings and perception-like imaginings give us access to the morally relevant but perceptually non-salient features of a situation. I identify three types of “imaginative moral perception”: 1) the perspective taking that consists of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes; 2) the imaginative framing, which refers to seeing an element of a situation as something else; 3) the imaginative comparison, which sheds light on the actual world by using counterfactuals thinking that give us access to a possible world. Each of these types of moral perception contributes to enhancing our moral knowledge hence to improving our moral deliberation. My argument appeals to recent contributions from the fields of philosophy of psychology, cognitive and social psychology, neuropsychology and, of course, moral psychology.

Islam, its texts and lived practice, finds growing importance within the global discourse on bioethics, as there is an increasing Muslim population and burgeoning interest in biomedical research and biotechnologies in the Muslim world. The aim of this thesis is to assess if and how Islam influences the ethical decision making of researchers, REC (researcher ethics committee) members, guideline developers and Islamic scholars in the biomedical research context. I began addressing this question by first reviewing the literature that has been published to explore the role that Islam plays in the literature on biomedical research ethics. There is evidence that some Muslim countries have developed "Islamic" guidelines. That is, guidelines with the explicit aim of setting out Islamic values and stating their relevance to the ethics of research. A review of research guidelines employed within countries with a significant Muslim population, was carried out, to investigate the role of Islam in such guidelines. The literature and guideline review revealed that although international guidelines have been adapted to incorporate Islamic views, studies have shown that the latter are of limited practical application within a "Muslim country" setting. An empirical study was carried out in two case study sites to assess the extent to which Islam influences ethical decision making within the context of biomedical research. 56 semi-structured interviews were carried out in Malaysia (38) and Iran (18) with researchers, REC members, guideline developers and Islamic scholars to understand whether Islam influences what they consider to be an ethico-legal problem, and if the latter emerges, then how such issues are addressed. The empirical study indicates five main conclusions. The first is that Islam and its institutional forms do impact ethical decision making in the day-to-day practice of biomedical research in countries with a Muslim population and/or in the research careers of Muslim researchers. Secondly, it shows that there are many distinctive mechanisms, such as the involvement of Islamic scholars, the process of ijtihad (independent reasoning) and the production of fatawah (legal edicts), by which Islam does identify and develop ethical views about biomedical matters. Thirdly, HIV/AIDS poses major challenges to the world of Islam as it does the rest of world. The epidemic raises issues that touch on cultural sensitivities that are important to Islamic societies and this study has shown that no simple or single response was observed to the ethical issues arising from HIV/AIDS. Fourthly, researchers face practical challenges when deliberating women's autonomy in contexts where Islam is appropriated within 'male dominated' contexts. The role and status of women is disputed in such contexts with views ranging from women needing their husband's permission to leave the home to men and women having equal freedoms. Finally, this study describes and analyses how the personal faith of researchers and their deep commitment to Islamic ethics and law influences their understanding of their legal and moral accountability and ethico-legal decision making. It shows that researchers adopt multiple roles and are required to balance numerous value systems and priorities and face moral anxiety and frustration when these different moral sources are in conflict. Overall, this study indicates that, in the countries studied, Islam does influence biomedical research ethics, and that this can be appreciated through the growing reference to Islam and its scriptural sources in biomedical research ethics literature, research ethics guidelines and the role of Islam in the day-to-day practice of biomedical researchers in the case study sites, that has been captured in the empirical study.