Monthly Archives
Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong
THE CENTRAL IDEA of this book is simple: we evolved a moral instinct, a capacity that naturally grows within each child, designed to generate rapid judgments about what is morally right or wrong based on an unconscious grammar of action. Part of this machinery was designed by the blind hand of Darwinian selection millions of years before our species evolved; other parts were added or upgraded over the evolutionary history of our species, and are unique both to humans and to our moral psychology. These ideas draw on insights
from another instinct: language. | Direct Link to PDF (e-book)
In Defence of Moral Error Theory
Moral error theorists typically accept two claims – one conceptual and one ontological – about moral facts. The conceptual claim is that moral facts are or entail facts about categorical reasons (and correspondingly that moral claims are or entail claims about categorical reason); the ontological claim is that there are no categorical reasons-and consequently no moral facts-in reality. I accept this version of moral error theory and I try to unpack what it amounts to in section 2. In the course of doing so I consider two preliminary objections that moral error theory is (probably) false because its implications are intuitively unacceptable (what I call the Moorean objection) and that the general motivation for moral error theory is self-undermining in that it rests on a hidden appeal to norms. | Direct Link to PDF
Witnessing Domestic Abuse and Depression
Witnessing domestic abuse in childhood as an independent risk factor for depressive symptoms in young adulthood
David Russell, Kristen W. Springer, and Emily A. Greenfield
This study addresses the relationship between retrospective reports of witnessing domestic abuse in childhood and levels of depressive symptoms in young adulthood. We examine whether the association between having witnessed violence in childhood and depression is independent of having been the direct target of sexual and/or physical abuse, as well as other characteristics and experiences linked with family violence. | Link
Battered Woman Syndrome: What is ‘Reasonable?’
Is an objective standard meaningless if the jury is not equipped to understand what is indeed reasonable behaviour for a woman who has experienced long-term battering?| Link
Distinction between Justification and Excuse
Battered Woman Syndrome, Expert Testimony, and the Distinction between Justification and Excuse; Schopp, Robert F.; Sturgis, Barbara J.; Sullivan, Megan 1994 U. Ill. L. Rev. 45 (1994) | Link
