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Moral reasoning in AS

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MrXxx
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30 Nov 2011, 3:03 am

dianthus wrote:
I looked up the Sally Anne test, I never heard of it before. Well my answer was the "wrong" one. But here's my reasoning, Sally would look around for her ball once she realized it wasn't where she left it, and the next obvious place to look would be the other container next to the one where she left it. What is she going to do, keep looking in the place where she left the ball even after she realizes it is not there?


Would it surprise you to learn that's the same answer one of my autistic sons gave?

Another said she'd look in the box, because he envisioned a basket she could see through, and saw that the ball was not there without even lifting it.

Given the reasons for their answers, they are NOT wrong answers at all.


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MrXxx
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30 Nov 2011, 3:13 am

kevinjh wrote:
...is it not true that the true wrong is in the intention to commit the crime?
[I can only hope my two cents are not as explosive as they usually are. I will purge the post if that is required to keep the discussion centered on the psychology of moral behavior.]


I would disagree with this based solely on the fact that we ALL at one time or another, intend to commit wrong acts. That's called being human. We all do it, but we don't all follow through with the intent. Intent does not cause harm unless we follow through with the act.

If you want to split hairs, and ask if even thinking about committing wrong acts is in itself wrong, that's a philosophical/moral question. Answering that question can't be done without delving deep into either philosophical or religious issues. The fact is, no matter what your philosophical or religious belief is, intent can never be proven without the act. It is that fact that, to me, makes intent irrelevant without the act. Since we can't read people's minds, if there is no act, what does or does not go on in anyone's mind, doesn't really matter.


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kevinjh
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30 Nov 2011, 3:36 am

MrXxx wrote:
kevinjh wrote:
...is it not true that the true wrong is in the intention to commit the crime?
[I can only hope my two cents are not as explosive as they usually are. I will purge the post if that is required to keep the discussion centered on the psychology of moral behavior.]


I would disagree with this based solely on the fact that we ALL at one time or another, intend to commit wrong acts. That's called being human. We all do it, but we don't all follow through with the intent. Intent does not cause harm unless we follow through with the act.

If you want to split hairs, and ask if even thinking about committing wrong acts is in itself wrong, that's a philosophical/moral question. Answering that question can't be done without delving deep into either philosophical or religious issues. The fact is, no matter what your philosophical or religious belief is, intent can never be proven without the act. It is that fact that, to me, makes intent irrelevant without the act. Since we can't read people's minds, if there is no act, what does or does not go on in anyone's mind, doesn't really matter.


The philosophy tangent is why I added the disclaimer. However, I still think that ASD's do not completely prevent moral judgment [sic] and what matters to the government and most people is legal wrong. Since only the action can be proven (used in the loose definition), the type of wrong one should note is the one performed with intent. Regardless of the accident in the Murder Case, the intent was to murder and the outcome was murder, which satisfies the criteria for legal wrong in that the question of action leads to the conclusion that the murder took place. The only problem is that the intent to murder cannot be completely proven because there are (almost) always plausible excuses for lack of intent to inflict harm. Probability would seem to point to intentional murder because of the factor of the inheritance, unusual choice of weapon, and unusual location to hold such a weapon.



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30 Nov 2011, 4:09 am

Here is something interesting. I have heard that if you were planning on something and you got caught, you get in trouble for it with the law. A year ago, there was this 18 year old who was going to set off a bomb on the night of the Christmas tree lighting here in downtown. These men were working with him to set it off but instead they turned out to be the FBI and arrested him. Sure he didn't set it off but he was attempting too and these officers faked it just to catch him so they can arrest him. FBI agents do this all the time to catch criminals and so do police officers. Like if someone decided to kill their husband, they will hire someone to do it. So they find someone to assassinate their husband for them but they may not realize the person they are talking to is an officer so they go along with it pretending to do it. Sometimes the person they hire goes to the police instead and they have the person play along with the wife while the person has the police behind his back telling him what to do to catch the woman. So even though there was no death, the intent is all they care about. So yes planning on committing a crime is illegal or else people wouldn't be getting arrested and charged for it. They call it attempted murder or attempted bombing or whatever the person was intending on doing.

What if all these people were never stopped, then hundreds of people would have died in the square from the bombing and what if a person wasn't stopped for trying to have someone killed such as her husband, then that person would have been dead too because the person succeeded in it.



Verdandi
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30 Nov 2011, 7:11 am

That goes beyond thought and into the realm of action, though.

I know of the guy you mean - the one who wanted to bomb Pioneer Courthouse Square? What I do wonder is if he ever would have gone anywhere without someone to string him along, too. It may be without the FBI he would have never tried to get anywhere with his ideas.



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30 Nov 2011, 9:33 am

Quote:
First, if I understand this correctly, the subjects were told that the packet was either sugar or poison, right? Any fool knows all of it's sugar because actual poison wouldn't go over with the review board.


They were reading stories, not acting it out. There were no actual packets of sugar or poison, they just read about them.

Quote:
Now that I found the study the OP was referring to, it didn't take too long to dismiss the idea of looking very deeply into it. How come the stories and/or questions the subjects were asked are not there?


They're in the supplemental section.

Quote:
Experiment 2: Example Moral Judgment Stories. Accidental harm.
Grace and her friend are taking a tour of a chemical plant.
When Grace goes over to the coffee machine to pour some coffee,
Grace’s friend asks for some sugar in hers. There is white powder
in a container by the coffee.
The white powder is a very toxic substance left behind by
a scientist, and therefore deadly when ingested in any form.
The container is labeled “sugar,” so Grace believes that the
white powder by the coffee is sugar left out by the kitchen staff.
Grace puts the substance in her friend’s coffee. Her friend
drinks the coffee and dies.
Putting the substance in was:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Forbidden Permissible
Attempted harm. Dan is giving a visitor a tour of a laboratory.
Before visitors enter the testing room, all test tubes containing
disease antigens must be contained in a chamber by flipping
a switch. A repairman has just come to fix the switch, which had
been broken.
The switch has been successfully repaired, so the test tubes are
quite safely contained. Thus, anybody who enters the room will be
safe and unexposed.
Dan believes that the switch is still broken after a conversation
with the repairman, so he believes it is not safe for the visitor to
enter.
Dan tells the visitor to enter the testing room. The visitor does
not contract any disease and is fine.
Telling the visitor to enter was:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Forbidden Permissible


Not all possible combinations are presented there, those are just two examples.



Asp-Z
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30 Nov 2011, 9:39 am

Ettina wrote:
What do you think would explain those results?


The study is BS, that's what explains it.