•  1237
    Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers in…Read more
  •  248
    Measuring metaaesthetics: Challenges and ways forward
    with David Moss
    New Ideas in Psychology 62. 2021.
    A growing body of psychological research seeks to understand how people's thinking comports with long-standing philosophical theories, such as whether they view ethical or aesthetic truths as subjective or objective. Yet such research can be critically undermined if it fails to accurately characterize the philosophical positions in question and fails to ensure that subjects understand them appropriately. We argue that a recent article by Rabb et al. (2020) fails to meet these demands and propose…Read more
  •  106
    The Containment Problem and the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality
    with Tyler Millhouse and David Moss
    Evolution of Morality. 2016.
    Machery & Mallon [The moral psychology handbook (pp. 3–47). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010] argue that existing evidence does not support the claim that moral cognition, understood as a specific form of normative cognition, is a product of evolution. Instead, they suggest that the evidence only supports the more modest claim that a general capacity for normative cognition evolved. They argue that if this is the case then the prospects for evolutionary debunking arguments are bleak. …Read more
  •  38
    An introduction to evolutionary psychology and its application to suicide terrorism
    with James R. Liddle and Todd K. Shackelford
    Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 3 176-197. 2011.
    This article introduces evolutionary psychology to a general readership, with the purpose of applying evolutionary psychology to suicide terrorism. Some of the key concepts related to evolutionary psychology are discussed, as well as several misconceptions associated with this approach to psychology. We argue that one of the primary, but insufficient, motivating factors for suicide terrorism is strong religious belief. Evolutionary psychological theories related to religious belief, and supporti…Read more