Moral Psychology | Moral Motivation | Dr. Josh Redstone

Hi everyone! Today's lecture covers chapter 3 from Doris (2010). I discuss four theories of moral motivation, as well as the neurophysiology of motivation.

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A way to empirically test instrumentalism versus cognitivism: Three experimental conditions. The first is experimental wherein something works to disrupt belief recall/formation while asking them to make a moral decision, the second wherein something works to disrupt their awareness/recall, or to cause a conflict between, standing desires, and the third a control. If occurrent beliefs are more primary in the causal chain then standing desires then there should be a significant disruption in the ability of the first group to carry out the task compared to the other two. Inversely, if intrinsic desires have more to do with moral motivation and decision making then there should be a significant disruption in the ability of the first group to carry out the task compared to the other two. And, if both are more or less equally disrupted compared to the control this may indicate that they are concurrent causal factors, which may be more in line with sentimentalist or personalist thinking. And, lastly, if there is no significant disruption compared to the control this shows most likely that the experiment was invalid, because the data indicates that belief and intrinsic desires do play a role in moral motivation.