Morality has once again become an important focus of research in different scientific disciplines, from biology, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, to social psychology, economics, and political philosophy. One of the reasons for this renewed interest stems from the tragedies that human beings, individually or in groups, inflict upon the lives of one another and the world at large, tragedies such as war, the extinction of species and ecological destruction, climate change, and last but not least – the financial crisis. Moral destitution and collapse, a lack of respect for human dignity and worth, and deficits in proper moral functioning at all levels of the world community, often discounted or masked by transparent excuses and vacuous rationalizations, are all viewed as principal causes of the social, societal and ecological crises with which we are confronted today. The key to solving these crises must lie, at least partly, in a better understanding and active deployment of morality. Developmental psychology is charged with the specific task of illuminating the growth and evolution of moral functioning in human beings. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

The study of morality is an empirical as well as conceptual task, one that involves data collection, statistical analysis, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. This volume is about moral judgment, especially its exercise in selected social settings. The contributors are psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers of morality, most of whom have collaborated on long-ranged research projects in Europe involving socialization. These essays make it clear that moral judgment is a complex phenomena. The book fuses developmental psychology, sociology, and social psychology. It relates this directly to the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who wrote the introduction to the book. Whether moral reasoning has a content-specific domain, or whether its structures transcend specific issues of justice, obedience, and rights, these and similar questions suggest that moral philosophers and ethical theorists have much to say about the human condition. The contributors represent diverse disciplines; but they have as their common concern the topic of the interaction of individual or group-specific moral development and social milieu. Although deeply involved in empirical research, they maintain that research on moral development can be pursued properly only in conjunction with a well-formulated theory of the relationship between society, cognition, and behavior. Moral development is an institutional as well as individual concern for schools, universities, and the military. It is rooted in the ability to formulate genuine and coherent moral judgments that reflect social conditions at two levels: individual socialization and historical development of the social system. This classic volume, now available in paperback, not only exemplifies that framework, but also makes an important contribution to it.

Open Compositionality: Towards a New Methodology of Language argues that natural languages, like English and Spanish, are not only systems of representation useful for communication but also highly interactive cognitive capacities allowing humans to engage in complex forms of cognition. This view goes against the orthodox approach within philosophy of language, which considers natural languages to be specialized systems consisting of only linguistic elements and functioning in a closed compositional manner, allowing for fully formal, algebraic descriptions. Eduardo García-Ramírez rejects the longstanding principle of compositionality, according to which the meaning of any complex expression is fully determined by its parts and the way they are combined, and he substitutes it with an alternative, open, and interactive one. This novel view of the nature of language better accounts for the empirical evidence. García Ramírez develops an account of open compositionality, accompanied by the cognition-first methodology, in which natural languages are conceived as supermodular cognitive capacities that allow for interaction among multiple distinct areas of human cognition. The explanatory success of this original proposal and its accompanying methodology are tested by the author’s account of three enduring philosophical problems: substitution failure, empty names, and the nature of moral discourse.

The Handbook of Moral Development is the definitive source of theory and research on the development of morality. Since the publication of the first edition, ground-breaking approaches to studying the development of morality have re-invigorated debates about what it means to conceptualize and measure morality in early childhood, how children understand fairness and equality, what the evolutionary basis is for morality, and the role of culture. The contributors of this new edition grapple with these questions and provide answers for how morality originates, changes, evolves, and develops during childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Thoroughly updated and expanded, the second edition features new chapters that focus on: infancy neuroscience theory of mind moral personality and identity cooperation and culture gender, sexuality, prejudice and discrimination Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the study of moral development, this edition contains contributions from over 50 scholars in developmental science, cognitive psychology, social neuroscience, comparative psychology and evolution, and education.

This work was originally issued as a two-volume set, published in 1987 and 1988. It constitutes a definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kolberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in human development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system - indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the development of moral judgment - will find it a useful and accessible resource. Volume 2 includes the scoring systems for three alternate, functionally equivalent forms of Kohlberg's moral judgment interview.

The traditional production measure of moral judgment has been the Moral Judgment Interview (MJI), which uses hypothetical moral dilemmas to elicit moral judgment. However, the MJI dilemmas have been criticized as artificial and may not be entirely appropriate for children, certain cultures, and practical moral situations. This unique volume utilizes and evaluates a new production measure of moral judgment, the Sociomoral Reflection Measure -- Short Form (SRM-SF), which substitutes brief stimulus materials and evaluative questions for the moral dilemma technique. The authors report that the SRM-SF exhibits an impressive degree of reliability and validity and is quicker to administer and score than other available measures. To illustrate these findings, this book offers the resources needed for the assessment of the Kohlbergian stage of moral judgment using the SRM-SF. These resources include: an up-to-date review of research and theory, a group-administrable questionnaire, an efficient scoring manual, and self-training exercises in assessment. Psychometrically sound and practical, the SRM-SF has the potential to become the leading moral judgment measure of the 90s.