This is philosophy bytes with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
Philosophy Bytes is available at www.philosophybytes.com.
Philosophy Bytes is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Most people would judge a person more harshly for a bad action done intentionally than unintentionally.
Kicking somebody by mistake is not as bad we tend to think, as kicking someone on purpose.
Leanne Young is trained in philosophy, but is a rising star in psychology based at Boston College, and her particular interest is moral judgment.
Leanne Young, welcome to philosophy Bites.
Thank you.
Hi.
The topic we're going to focus on today is mind and morality.
Now, it seems quite an intuitive starting point that any kind of thinking about morality involves recognizing other people have minds.
Absolutely.
And I think this is something that we do quite easily and spontaneously.
We naturally think about what's going on inside other people's heads when we're interacting with them.
And importantly, or of interest to me, when we're making moral judgments about what they do.
You're principally a psychologist.
How did you go about investigating moral issues about the mind?
Well, one of the first things that we did was just think about our own intuitions about the sorts of things that matter.
And one of the first things that comes to mind is this factor of mind or intention.