Assignments

1. Psychology. The assignment was a 2000 word lab report about how individuals reach moral judgements and whether individual differences can manifest themselves to vary moral judgements across society. Would Person A reach the same moral conclusions as Person B, where A experiences more disgust and B prefers more cognitive activities than A?

The lecturer arranged a useful reference list along with all the relevant information about formatting and content. Doing the research was the best part and even though many articles did not directly relate to the lab report, their content was interesting enough to read nonetheless. It was great to do an assignment that piqued genuine interest. And the articles that were relevant differed greatly to the ponderous and dense scientific reports that usually populate university reference lists.

Maybe because moral judgement is a subject that is informed both by ethics and psychology, its body of writing reflects both the reflective precision of philosophical essays and the statistical aim at precision of psychology. The best article in the background reading and one most relevant to the lab report was also the most intriguing and readable. It was an article one would want to read unprompted. The article was a both a discussion of how morality was viewed through centuries and an explanation of the author’s own influential research. Here is a link. A few important conclusions the author Jonathan Haidt reached were that moral judgements are dictated by intuition, by emotions that have socio-evolutionary origin. Reason, as much as it’s assumed, plays a very minor role, a justificatory role, a slave to the passions (Hume). One example is this passage from the article:

Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other.

What do you think about that? Was it OK for them to make love? Most people who hear the above story immediately say that it was wrong for the siblings to make love, and they then begin searching for reasons (Haidt, Bjorklund, & Murphy, 2000). They point out the dangers of inbreeding, only to remember that Julie and Mark used two forms of birth control. They argue that Julie and Mark will be hurt, perhaps emotionally, even though the story makes it clear that no harm befell them. Eventually,many people say something like, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” But what model of moral judgment allows a person to know that something is wrong without knowing why?

Jonathan Haidt, “Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail”.

The research for this assignment was very rewarding and I was able to find some great books on the topic in general like:

1. Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle. 
2. Jonathan Baron, Judgement and Decision Making. 
3. Jonathan Baron, Judgement Misguided.

This whole assignment taught me to really pay attention to the supplementary readings and to read as much background references as I can. It enriches the whole experience and makes uni rewarding!