Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Moral Judgment, Human Motivation, and Neural Networks

  • Published:
Cognitive Computation Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The topic of moral judgment is of interest to many fields. Studying moral judgment based on currently available computational intelligence methods and techniques may shed new light on the matter. This article reviews computational models of moral judgment on the basis of the CLARION cognitive architecture, emphasizing a motivation-based approach. It attempts to integrate the understanding of moral judgment with other areas of cognition. In particular, it shows how a model of human motivation can play an important role in understanding human moral judgment, which opens the door for new possibilities in developing theories of moral judgment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bartels D. Principled moral sentiment and the flexibility of moral judgment and decision making. Cognition. 2008;108:381–417.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Bello P. Talk presented at the RPI symposium on moral reasoning. April, 2009.

  3. Bennis WM, Medin DL, Bartels DM. The costs and benefits of calculation and moral rules. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2010;5:187–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bickhard M. Representational content in humans and machines. J Exp Theor Artif In. 1993;285–333.

  5. Brooks R. Intelligence without representation. Artif Intell. 1991;47:139–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cleeremans A, Destrebecqz A, Boyer M. Implicit learning: news from the front. Trends Cogn Sci. 1998;2:406–16.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Cushman F, Young L, Hauser M. The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgment: testing three principles of harm. Psychol Sci. 2006;17(12):1082–9.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Flavell J. Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In: Resnick B, editor. The nature of intelligence. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1976.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Foot P. The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Oxford Rev. 1967;5:5–15.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Greene JD, Cushman FA, Stewart LE, Lowenberg K, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD. Pushing moral buttons: the interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment. Cognition. 2009;111(3):364–71.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Greene J, Morelli S, Lowenberg K, Nystrom L, Cohen J. Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment. Cognition. 2008;107(3):1144–54.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Haidt J. The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev. 2001;108:814–34.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Helie S, Sun R. Incubation, insight, and creative problem solving: a unified theory and a connectionist model. Psychol Rev. 2010;117(3):994–1024.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Hirschfeld LA, Gelman SA, editors. Mapping the mind. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hull C. Essentials of Behavior. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1951.

  16. Johnson-Laird PN, Yang Y. Mental logic, mental models, and computer simulations of human reasoning. In: Sun R, editors. Cambridge handbook of computational psychology. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press; 2008. p. 339–58.

  17. Maslow A. A theory of human motivation. Psychol Rev. 1943;50:370–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. McDougall W. An Introd Soc Psychol. London: Methuen & Co.; 1936.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Mikhail J. Universal moral grammar: theory, evidence and the future. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007;11(4):143–52.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Murray H. Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press; 1938.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Nisbett RE, Peng K, Choi I, Norenzayan A. Culture and systems of thought: holistic vs. analytic cognition. Psychol Rev. 2001;108:291–310.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Reber A. Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. J Exp Psychol Gen. 1989;118(3):219–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Reder L, editor. Implicit memory and metacognition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Reiss S. Multifaceted nature of intrinsic motivation: the theory of 16 basic desires. Rev Gen Psychol. 2004;8(3):179–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Rumelhart D, McClelland J, The PDP Research Group. Parallel Distributed processing: explorations in the microstructures of cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1986.

  26. Schwartz S. Are there universal aspects of human values? J Soc Issues. 1994;50:19–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Seger C. Implicit learning. Psychol Bull. 1994;115:163–96.

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Shore B. Egocentric and Allocentric Perspective in Cultural Models. In: Sun R, editor. Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2012.

  29. Sun R. Duality of the mind: a bottom-up approach toward cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Sun R. A Tutorial on CLARION 5.0. Technical Report, Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 2003. http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/rsun/sun.tutorial.pdf.

  31. Sun R, editor. Cognition and multi-agent interaction: from cognitive modeling to social simulation. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Sun R, editor. The Cambridge handbook of computational psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Sun R. Motivational representations within a computational cognitive architecture. Cogn Comput. 2009;1(1):91–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Sun R, Merrill E, Peterson T. From implicit skills to explicit knowledge: a bottom-up model of skill learning. Cogn Sci. 2001;25:203–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Sun R, Slusarz P, Terry C. The interaction of the explicit and the implicit in skill learning: a dual-process approach. Psychol Rev. 2005;112:159–92.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Sun R, Wilson N. Motivational processes within the perception-action cycle. In: Cutsuridis V, Hussain A, Taylor JG, Polani D, Tishby N, editors. Perception-reason-action cycle: models, algorithms and systems. Berlin: Springer; 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Thomson JJ. The trolley problem. Yale Law J. 1985;94:1395–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Tulving E. How many memory systems are there? Am Psychol. 1985;40:385–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Tyrell T. Computational mechanisms for action selection. Ph.D Thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK; 1993.

  40. Waldmann MR, Dieterich JH. Throwing a bomb on a person versus throwing a person on a bomb: intervention myopia in moral intuitions. Psychol Sci. 2007;18(3):247–53.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  41. Wilson M. Six views of embodied cognition. Psychon Bull Rev. 2002;9(4):625–36.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Watkins C. Learning with delayed rewards. Ph.D Thesis, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; 1989.

  43. Weber EU. From Shakespeare to Spielberg: predicting modes of decision making. Presidential address, annual meeting, society of judgment and decision making, Dallas, TX; 1998.

  44. Weiner B. Human motivation: metaphors, theories, and research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage; 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Wilson N, Sun R, Mathews R. Performance degradation under pressure. Neural Netw. 2009;22:502–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  46. White J. Conscience: the mechanism of morality. Ph.D Thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO; 2006.

  47. White J. Understanding and Augmenting human morality: an introduction to the ACTWith model of conscience. In: Magnani L et al., editors. Model-based reasoning in science and technology, SCI 314; Berlin: Springer; 2010. p. 607–21.

Download references

Acknowledgments

The work overviewed here has been supported in part by the ONR grant N00014-08-1-0068. Thanks are due to Paul Bello for his ideas and his support and to various students and collaborators, past or present. The CLARION software, along with simulation examples, may be found at: www.clarioncognitivearchitecture.com (courtesy of Nick Wilson and Mike Lynch).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Ron Sun

Authors
  1. Ron Sun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ron Sun.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Sun, R. Moral Judgment, Human Motivation, and Neural Networks. Cogn Comput 5, 566–579 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-012-9181-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-012-9181-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation