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Murdering and Murderable Minds Experiments and Remarks on the Psychology of Moral Status

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Moral status questions, (who and what counts morally) are of central concern to moral philosophers. There is also a rich history of psychological work exploring the topic. The received view in psychology of moral status accounts for it as a function of other mind perception. On this view, entities are…

Moral status questions, (who and what counts morally) are of central concern to moral philosophers. There is also a rich history of psychological work exploring the topic. The received view in psychology of moral status accounts for it as a function of other mind perception. On this view, entities are morally considerable because they are perceived to have the right sort of minds. This dissertation analyzes and tests this theory, pointing out both empirical and conceptual issues with the received view. The results presented show that important moral intuitions (for example about unjustifiable interpersonal killing) cannot be explained by appealing to other mind perception. Some alternative views of the psychology of moral status are presented, as well as avenues for further research.
ContributorsLaTourelle, Jonathan Jacob (Author) / Creath, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Becker, D. Vaughn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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"Mental Illnesses Are Illnesses Like Any Other": An Inquiry and Critique

Description
I examined the slogan, “Mental illnesses are illnesses like any other,” widespread in psychiatry and medicine, and in society more generally, to determine if it accurately and usefully characterizes mental illnesses, given current neurological and neurophysiological knowledge. Rather than focus on disease entities for comparison, I scrutinized the symptoms of…

I examined the slogan, “Mental illnesses are illnesses like any other,” widespread in psychiatry and medicine, and in society more generally, to determine if it accurately and usefully characterizes mental illnesses, given current neurological and neurophysiological knowledge. Rather than focus on disease entities for comparison, I scrutinized the symptoms of somatic illnesses and mental illnesses and compared them in three areas: their production, their relationship to social and cultural context, and their potential use as indicators of underlying disease or dysfunction. In all three areas, I found that, contrary to the claim of the slogan, the symptoms of mental illness are not like the symptoms of somatic illness and therefore, by extension, mental illness is not “illness like any other.” I briefly surveyed the implications of this difference between mental illnesses and somatic illnesses, and provided some broad suggestions regarding how this finding might help to inform the characterization of mental illnesses, as well as help direct research and treatment of these conditions.
ContributorsDennert, James (Author) / Robert, Jason (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Phillips, Ben (Committee member) / Neisewander, Janet (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024