How can we explain kindness and cruelty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do people so often disagree about moral issues? This course explores the psychological foundations of our moral lives.
How can we explain kindness and cruelty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do people so often disagree about moral issues? This course explores the psychological foundations of our moral lives.
Philosophy, Psychology, Social Psychology, Moral Universe
4.8 (3,245 ratings)
KD
Jul 29, 2020
This is an amazing course, it is filled with arguments that will make you to think about yourself and will give you moral insights. This course can change your perspective towards morality and life.
JE
Dec 18, 2017
Coming from undergraduate course Psychology, and with my paper about Generosity, this course has shared with me lessons that both strengthened and challenged my learnings on this topic of interest.
From the lesson
The Big Answers
We’ll discuss some clever studies that show how our moral behavior is powerfully influenced—often at the unconscious level—by the situations that we find ourselves in. Such findings raise some hard problems about determinism, free will, and moral responsibility. Most of all, if our actions are determined by our brains, our genes, and our situations, in what sense can we be said to be moral agents? The course will end by trying to address this question.
Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University