Seminar 5

Questions

What is moral pluralism?
What discoveries about moral pluralism are associated with Moral Foundations Theory?
What, if anything, do these discoveries contribute to philosophical arguments about whether persistent ethical disagreement undermines moral knowledge?

Lecture Notes

Moral Pluralism: Beyond Harm

Reading

The reading for this seminar is a bit different.

Select any one:

McGrath (2008)
Doris & Plakias (2008)
Enoch (2009)

Between them, the people in your seminar group will ideally have read all of these sources and so be familiar with a variety of different philosophical arguments about whether persistent ethical disagreement undermines moral knowledge. They will then share knowledge of these arguments in the seminar.

Your job is to bring knowledge of any one such argument, and thoughts about how discoveries about moral pluralism matter for it, to the seminar.

Where to Find the Reading?

In some cases the reference section of the lecture notes already includes a link to help you find the reading.

If there is no link in the lecture notes, start by searching for the title (and, if that fails, by title and authors) on google scholar. If this fails, the library has resources. If those fail, please check first with others on the course. If you still have problems, you may email your seminar tutor.

Ask a Question

Your question will normally be answered in the question session of the next lecture.

More information about asking questions.

Glossary

Moral Foundations Theory : The theory that moral pluralism is true; moral foundations are innate but also subject to cultural learning, and the Social Intuitionist Model of Moral Judgement is correct (Graham et al., 2019). Proponents often claim, further, that cultural variation in how these innate foundations are woven into ethical abilities can be measured using the Moral Foundations Questionnare (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Graham et al., 2011). Some empirical objections have been offered (Davis et al., 2016; Davis, Dooley, Hook, Choe, & McElroy, 2017; Doğruyol, Alper, & Yilmaz, 2019). See Moral Foundations Theory: An Approach to Cultural Variation.

moral pluralism : Descriptive moral pluralism is the view that humans’ ethical abilities involve distinct moral concerns (such as harm, equality and purity) which are not reducible to just one moral concern.

Social Intuitionist Model of Moral Judgement : A model on which intuitive processes are directly responsible for moral judgements (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008). One’s own reasoning does not typically affect one’s own moral judgements, but (outside philosophy, perhaps) is typically used only to provide post-hoc justification after moral judgements are made. Reasoning does affect others’ moral intuitions, and so provides a mechanism for cultural learning.

References

Davis, D., Dooley, M., Hook, J., Choe, E., & McElroy, S. (2017). The Purity/Sanctity Subscale of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire Does Not Work Similarly for Religious Versus Non-Religious Individuals. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 9(1), 124–130. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000057

Davis, D., Rice, K., Tongeren, D. V., Hook, J., DeBlaere, C., Worthington, E., & Choe, E. (2016). The Moral Foundations Hypothesis Does Not Replicate Well in Black Samples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110(4). https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000056

Doğruyol, B., Alper, S., & Yilmaz, O. (2019). The five-factor model of the moral foundations theory is stable across WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures. Personality and Individual Differences, 151, 109547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109547

Doris, J. M., & Plakias, A. (2008). How to argue about disagreement: Evaluative diversity and moral realism. In Moral psychology, Vol 2: The cognitive science of morality: Intuition and diversity (pp. 303–331). Cambridge, MA, US: MIT Press.

Enoch, D. (2009). How is Moral Disagreement a Problem for Realism? The Journal of Ethics, 13(1), 15–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9041-z

Graham, J., Haidt, J., Motyl, M., Meindl, P., Iskiwitch, C., & Mooijman, M. (2019). Moral Foundations Theory: On the advantages of moral pluralism over moral monism. In K. Gray & J. Graham (Eds.), Atlas of Moral Psychology. New York: Guilford Publications.

Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141

Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366–385. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847

Haidt, J., & Bjorklund, F. (2008). Social intuitionists answer six questions about moral psychology. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral psychology, Vol 2: The cognitive science of morality: Intuition and diversity (pp. 181–217). Cambridge, Mass: MIT press.

McGrath, S. (2008). Moral disagreement and moral expertise. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 3, 87–107.