Another Brooks Column on Empirical Moral Psychology

This time it's on "character" mostly, although he doesn't mention the philosopher, John Doris, who wrote Lack of Character. Here's an excerpt from Brooks:

...a century’s worth of experiments suggests that people’s actual behavior is not driven by permanent traits that apply from one context to another. Students who are routinely dishonest at home are not routinely dishonest at school. People who are courageous at work can be cowardly at church. People who behave kindly on a sunny day may behave callously the next day when it is cloudy and they are feeling glum. Behavior does not exhibit what the psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”

David Brooks Again

You may have heard about David Brooks' column for today. Here it is.

He attended a recent conference on neuroscience and human psychology:

Since I’m not an academic, I’m free to speculate that this work will someday give us new categories, which will replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’ I suspect that the work will take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity and other unconscious capacities.

The hard sciences are interpenetrating the social sciences. This isn’t dehumanizing. It shines attention on the things poets have traditionally cared about: the power of human attachments. It may even help policy wonks someday see people as they really are.

Have your say by leaving a comment.

Morality and the Economic Meltdown, Cont.

The Chairman of HSBC Bank said yesterday that the banking industry should apologize to the whole world for causing the economic meltdown, according to the BBC. "The industry collectively owes the real world an apology," Stephen Green said.

Mr Green, in Istanbul for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, admitted the banking industry collectively owed the world an apology for the financial crisis.

"It also owes the real world a commitment to learn the lessons. Some of them are about governance and ethics and culture within the industry," he said.

Here at Ethics in the News, the Parr Center's blog, we have tried to follow "morality and the economic meltdown" as a theme. Although our research cannot claim to have been comprehensive, early on it seemed the only things to post about were outraged accusations of immoral behavior. Except for here, here and here, there was not much, so to speak, meta-discussion about the interrelation of morality and finance or morality and capitalism. If you've been reading any, post links to what you've read in the comments.

Anyway, a moment on google indicates that last year HSBC Bank asked philosopher A.C. Grayling to talk about morality and business.

Ethical Dilemmas at McSweeney's

Over at McSweeney's there's some joking going on involving the form of ethical dilemmas.

You operate an orphanage and your funding has just been slashed. Kids are now going without dessert. Your friend owns a grocery store and is willing to donate 500 Klondike bars to the orphans if you lie and tell the government that he donated 1,000. What would you do-o-o?

A Klondike bar in your freezer begins talking to you, claiming to be the voice of God. It instructs you to slay your firstborn son. WHAT WOULD YOU DO-O-O?