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4 - The Creativity of Everyday Moral Reasoning: Empathy, Disgust, and Moral Persuasion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2010

David A. Pizarro
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Brian Detweiler-Bedell
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
Paul Bloom
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University, San Bernardino
John Baer
Affiliation:
Rider University, New Jersey
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Summary

At first glance, morality has nothing in common with creativity. It has long been clear to many philosophers that moral judgment (at least the right kind of moral judgment) is achieved through the careful and consistent application of moral principles. This approach is grounded in a school of thought that has long dominated the study of ethics – one that sees reason as the only proper foundation for moral judgment. In the 20th century, this tradition deeply influenced the study of moral judgment within psychology. The most influential theories of moral development in children, for instance, saw the development of moral judgment as being largely contingent upon the development of cognitive skills – as the quality of reasoning improves, so does the quality of moral judgment.

If one holds an exclusively reason-based view of moral judgment, then creativity applies to moral judgment as much as it does to simple arithmetic – not at all. This is because creativity is not rule based, but rule breaking. Creativity is about flexibility and innovation. Creative thinking demonstrates fluency, flexibility, and originality (Torrance, 1959). It is a type of problem solving characterized by its use of novel solutions (Newell, Simon, & Shaw, 1958). If moral reasoning entails the strict application of rules, creativity has nothing to do with it.

So why then would a volume devoted to creativity and reasoning include a contribution on moral reasoning?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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