UW Researcher Explores Development of "Moral Excellence"

May 9, 2005 -- Understanding how people approach the world, and develop sensitivities and moral perceptions, is the topic of a University of Wyoming researcher's paper recently presented at the American Philosophical Association (APA) central division conference.

Jennifer Cole Wright, a UW doctoral candidate in psychology and a graduate student in philosophy, says her research does not focus on the specific value sets or religious views of individuals. Instead, she wants to know "how people develop into moral beings, and how individuals determine if an issue is moral or not."

"I am challenging people on whether or not they are ethically aware or asleep," she says. "There is so much disconnect in the world because the skill or capacity of seeing, understanding, and doing what is right is not there."

She says, moral beliefs are "handed down to us, or based on ignorance or prejudice." She believes everything people do "has some ethical significance."

"As we develop our moral perception, our ability to see things as morally relevant, then it changes the way we act," she says. "I'm interested in understanding how we cultivate this kind of sensitivity."

Wright presented her paper, "Should Ethics Be Considered a Skill?: Towards an Alternative Conception of Moral Excellence," to the psychological and philosophical communities at many conferences this academic year, including the APA conference in Chicago.

She explains that if people develop "the right kinds of skills and capacities," then "appropriate" actions naturally follow.
"Moral excellence results in an intimate connection between perception and action," she says. "You don't think about it. You know the appropriate thing to say or do. Somehow we develop this capacity and it allows us to flow without disconnect or deliberation."

She offers the comparison of learning to play the piano or chess, and becoming "very good at the skill." If people treated "their ethical lives like that, it would be this synergy of intent and action."

Wright earned two bachelor degrees in psychology and philosophy from UW in 2002.

Posted on Monday, May 09, 2005