More about myself
The following are some online tests I did and their results and analysis. Give them a try.
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm
Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM medal of distinction! This is our second highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity being hit only once and biting very few bullets suggests that your beliefs about God are well thought out and almost entirely internally consistent.
The direct hit you suffered occurred because one set of your answers implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullets occurred because you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analyses of your direct hit and bitten bullets.
Because you only suffered one direct hit and bit very few bullets, you qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/morality_play.htm
Your Moral Parsimony Score is 55%
What does this mean?
Moral frameworks can be more or less parsimonious. That is to say, they can employ a wide range of principles, which vary in their application according to circumstances (less parsimonious) or they can employ a small range of principles which apply across a wide range of circumstances without modification (more parsimonious). An example might make this clear. Let's assume that we are committed to the principle that it is a good to reduce suffering. The test of moral parsimony is to see whether this principle is applied simply and without modification or qualification in a number of different circumstances. Supposing, for example, we find that in otherwise identical circumstances, the principle is applied differently if the suffering person is from a different country to our own. This suggests a lack of moral parsimony because a factor which could be taken to be morally irrelevant in an alternative moral framework is here taken to be morally relevant.
How to interpret your score
The higher your percentage score the more parsimonious your moral framework. In other words, a high score is suggestive of a moral framework that comprises a minimal number of moral principles that apply across a range of circumstances and acts. What is a high score? As a rule of thumb, any score above 75% should be considered indicative of a parsimonious moral framework. However, perhaps a better way to think about this is to see how your score compares to other people's scores. In fact, your score of 55% is slightly lower than the average score of 64%. This suggests that you have utilised a somewhat wider range of moral principles than average in order to make judgements about the scenarios presented in this test, and that you have, at least on occasion, judged aspects of the acts and circumstances depicted here to be morally relevant that other people consider to be morally irrelevant.
Moral Parsimony - good or bad?
We make no judgement about whether moral parsimony is a good or bad thing. Some people will think that on balance it is a good thing and that we should strive to minimise the number of moral principles that form our moral frameworks. Others will suspect that moral parsimony is likely to render moral frameworks simplistic and that an overly parsimonious moral framework will leave us unable to deal with the complexity of real circumstances and acts. We'll leave it up to you to decide who is right.
How was your score calculated?
Your score was calculated by combining and averaging your scores in the four categories that appear below.
Geographical Distance
This category has to do with the impact of geographical distance on the application of moral principles. The idea here is to determine whether moral principles are applied equally when dealing with sets of circumstances and acts that differ only in their geographical location in relation to the person making the judgement.
Your score of 51% is significantly lower than the average score of 72% in this category.
This suggests that geographical distance is a relevant factor in your moral thinking. Usually, this will mean feeling a greater moral obligation towards people located nearby than towards those who are far away. To incorporate geographical distance within your moral framework as a morally relevant factor is to decrease its parsimoniousness.
Family Relatedness
In this category, we look at the impact of family loyalty and ties on the way in which moral principles are applied. The idea here is to determine whether moral principles are applied without modification or qualification when you're dealing with sets of circumstances and acts that differ only in whether the participants are related through family ties to the person making the judgement.
Your score of 18% is a lot lower than the average score of 52% in this category.
It seems then that family relatedness is an important factor in your moral thinking. Normally, this will mean feeling a greater moral obligation towards people who are related to you than towards those who are not. To the extent that issues of family relatedness form part of your moral thinking, the parsimoniousness of your moral framework is reduced.
Acts and Omissions
This category has to do with whether there is a difference between the moral status of acting and omitting to act where the consequences are the same in both instances. Consider the following example. Let's assume that on the whole it is a bad thing if a person is poisoned whilst drinking a cola drink. One might then ask whether there is a moral difference between poisoning the coke, on the one hand (an act), and failing to prevent a person from drinking a coke someone else has poisoned, when in a position to do so, on the other (an omission). In this category then, the idea is to determine if moral principles are applied equally when you're dealing with sets of circumstances that differ only in whether the participants have acted or omitted to act.
Your score of 51% is a little lower than the average score of 61% in this category.
This suggests that the distinction between acting and omitting to act is sometimes a relevant factor in your moral thinking. Probably, you tend to believe that those who act have a greater moral culpability than those who simply omit to act. If this is what you believe, it decreases the parsimoniousness of your moral framework.
Scale
This category has to do with whether scale is a factor in making moral judgements. A simple example will make this clear. Consider a situation where it is possible to save ten lives by sacrificing one life. Is there a moral difference between this choice and one where the numbers of lives involved are different but proportional - for example, saving 100 lives by sacrificing ten? In this category then, the idea is to determine whether moral principles are applied without modification or qualification when you're dealing with sets of circumstances that differ only in their scale, as in the sense described above.
Your score of 100% is significantly higher than the average score of 73% in this category.
It seems that scale, as it is described above, is not an important consideration in your moral worldview. But if, contrary to our findings, it is important, then it decreases the parsimoniousness of your moral framework.
India and Australia
In Question 13 you were asked the following: You see an advertisement from a charity in a newspaper about a person in severe need in Australia. You can help this person at little cost to yourself. Are you morally obliged to do so?
However, fifty percent of people undertaking this activity are asked a slightly different question, where the country India is substituted for the country Australia. The idea is to determine what kind of impact "culural distance" has on the moral judgements that people make. The important point here is that the vast majority of people who visit this web site are from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Consequently, in a comparison of the lives and lifestyles of TPM Online visitors, residents of India and residents of Australia, there will be bigger cultural differences between TPM Online visitors and residents of India than between TPM Online visitors and residents of Australia. Of course, whether a perception of cultural differences will enter into moral judgements, and if so, what its impact will be is entirely a matter of conjecture at this point. Indeed, whatever results we find here, they will only ever be suggestive of further avenues of enquiry. This aspect of the activity is simply not rigorous enough that it will be possible to draw definitive conclusions. It will nevertheless be interesting!
The Results
26% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were stongly obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
43% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were weakly obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
31% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were not obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/taboo.htm
Results
Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.38.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.25.
Your Universalising Factor is: 0.33.
How did you do compared to other people?
Taboo has been played 39167 times.
Your Moralising Quotient of 0.38 compares to an average Moralising Quotient of 0.40. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are more permissive than average.
Your Interference Factor of 0.25 compares to an average Interference Factor of 0.27. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are less likely to recommend societal interference in matters of moral wrongdoing, in the form of prevention or punishment, than average.
Your Universalising Factor of 0.33 compares to an average Universalising Factor of 0.49. This means you are less likely than average to see moral wrongdoing in universal terms - that is, without regard to prevailing cultural norms and social conventions (at least as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned).
Are you thinking straight about morality?
Although you do not evaluate the actions depicted in these scenarios to be across the board wrong, it is not entirely clear why you think that anything in them is morally problematic. You don't think an action can be morally wrong if it is entirely private and no one, not even the person doing the act, is harmed by it. Yet the actions described in these scenarios are private like this and it was specified as clearly as possible that they didn't involve harm. Maybe, despite these stipulations, you just can't believe no harm would have resulted. The trouble is that you were asked to judge the scenarios as described, not as you think they would have turned out in the real world. And given how they were described, it isn't clear what form such harms could take...
Analysis: Morality, Taboos and the "Yuk Factor"
Probably most of us would like to believe we are able to give good reasons for the moral judgements that we make. For example, if we were asked why it was wrong for the older girl to push the younger boy off the swing, as described in the first question of this activity, we might talk about the fact that the boy's rights had been violated or about the fact that he experienced at least some physical harm. Whilst it is true that the philosophical waters would soon become muddied if we examined our reasoning more carefully, we are able to give at least prima facie good reasons for our judgement of moral wrongdoing.
However, there is a class of activities where it is much more difficult to offer arguments to support a judgement of moral wrong. This is the class of activities which are harmless (at least in a narrow sense), private and consensual, yet violate strong social norms. The examples we utilised in this activity were to do with the taboos and rituals associated with death, food and sexuality.
No doubt some people will suspect that we have constructed this activity with the intention of showing that people are just mistaken if they think that things like having sex with a frozen chicken are wrong. This is not the case, since it is possible to at least make arguments that such things are wrong. Here is an example of one such argument. Human beings are God's creations. Their sexuality is a gift from God to be enjoyed only in the context of a monogamous union between one man and one woman. Chickens, frozen or otherwise, are not part of the picture. Therefore, to have sex with one is to abuse the gift of sexuality, and will necessarily harm a person's relationship with God. It follows that having sex with poultry is a moral wrong.
So if the intention then is not to show that the moral prohibitions surrounding taboos cannot be justified, what are we trying to show with this activity?
(More on this article can be viewed after you take the test)
http://web.tickle.com/tests/brain/index_main.jsp
Kenneth, you are Balanced-brained
That means you are able to draw on the strengths of both the right and left hemispheres of your brain, depending upon a given situation. When you need to explain a complicated process to someone, or plan a detailed vacation, the left hemisphere of your brain, which is responsible for your ability to solve problems logically, might kick in. But if you were critiquing an art opening or coming up with an original way to file papers, the right side of your brain, which is responsible for noticing subtle details in things, might take over.
While many people have clearly dominant left- or right-brained tendencies, you are able to draw on skills from both hemispheres of your brain. This rare combination makes you a very creative and flexible thinker. The down side to being balanced-brained is that you may sometimes feel paralyzed by indecision when the two hemispheres of your brain are competing to solve a problem in their own unique ways.
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm
Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM medal of distinction! This is our second highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity being hit only once and biting very few bullets suggests that your beliefs about God are well thought out and almost entirely internally consistent.
The direct hit you suffered occurred because one set of your answers implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullets occurred because you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analyses of your direct hit and bitten bullets.
Because you only suffered one direct hit and bit very few bullets, you qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/morality_play.htm
Your Moral Parsimony Score is 55%
What does this mean?
Moral frameworks can be more or less parsimonious. That is to say, they can employ a wide range of principles, which vary in their application according to circumstances (less parsimonious) or they can employ a small range of principles which apply across a wide range of circumstances without modification (more parsimonious). An example might make this clear. Let's assume that we are committed to the principle that it is a good to reduce suffering. The test of moral parsimony is to see whether this principle is applied simply and without modification or qualification in a number of different circumstances. Supposing, for example, we find that in otherwise identical circumstances, the principle is applied differently if the suffering person is from a different country to our own. This suggests a lack of moral parsimony because a factor which could be taken to be morally irrelevant in an alternative moral framework is here taken to be morally relevant.
How to interpret your score
The higher your percentage score the more parsimonious your moral framework. In other words, a high score is suggestive of a moral framework that comprises a minimal number of moral principles that apply across a range of circumstances and acts. What is a high score? As a rule of thumb, any score above 75% should be considered indicative of a parsimonious moral framework. However, perhaps a better way to think about this is to see how your score compares to other people's scores. In fact, your score of 55% is slightly lower than the average score of 64%. This suggests that you have utilised a somewhat wider range of moral principles than average in order to make judgements about the scenarios presented in this test, and that you have, at least on occasion, judged aspects of the acts and circumstances depicted here to be morally relevant that other people consider to be morally irrelevant.
Moral Parsimony - good or bad?
We make no judgement about whether moral parsimony is a good or bad thing. Some people will think that on balance it is a good thing and that we should strive to minimise the number of moral principles that form our moral frameworks. Others will suspect that moral parsimony is likely to render moral frameworks simplistic and that an overly parsimonious moral framework will leave us unable to deal with the complexity of real circumstances and acts. We'll leave it up to you to decide who is right.
How was your score calculated?
Your score was calculated by combining and averaging your scores in the four categories that appear below.
Geographical Distance
This category has to do with the impact of geographical distance on the application of moral principles. The idea here is to determine whether moral principles are applied equally when dealing with sets of circumstances and acts that differ only in their geographical location in relation to the person making the judgement.
Your score of 51% is significantly lower than the average score of 72% in this category.
This suggests that geographical distance is a relevant factor in your moral thinking. Usually, this will mean feeling a greater moral obligation towards people located nearby than towards those who are far away. To incorporate geographical distance within your moral framework as a morally relevant factor is to decrease its parsimoniousness.
Family Relatedness
In this category, we look at the impact of family loyalty and ties on the way in which moral principles are applied. The idea here is to determine whether moral principles are applied without modification or qualification when you're dealing with sets of circumstances and acts that differ only in whether the participants are related through family ties to the person making the judgement.
Your score of 18% is a lot lower than the average score of 52% in this category.
It seems then that family relatedness is an important factor in your moral thinking. Normally, this will mean feeling a greater moral obligation towards people who are related to you than towards those who are not. To the extent that issues of family relatedness form part of your moral thinking, the parsimoniousness of your moral framework is reduced.
Acts and Omissions
This category has to do with whether there is a difference between the moral status of acting and omitting to act where the consequences are the same in both instances. Consider the following example. Let's assume that on the whole it is a bad thing if a person is poisoned whilst drinking a cola drink. One might then ask whether there is a moral difference between poisoning the coke, on the one hand (an act), and failing to prevent a person from drinking a coke someone else has poisoned, when in a position to do so, on the other (an omission). In this category then, the idea is to determine if moral principles are applied equally when you're dealing with sets of circumstances that differ only in whether the participants have acted or omitted to act.
Your score of 51% is a little lower than the average score of 61% in this category.
This suggests that the distinction between acting and omitting to act is sometimes a relevant factor in your moral thinking. Probably, you tend to believe that those who act have a greater moral culpability than those who simply omit to act. If this is what you believe, it decreases the parsimoniousness of your moral framework.
Scale
This category has to do with whether scale is a factor in making moral judgements. A simple example will make this clear. Consider a situation where it is possible to save ten lives by sacrificing one life. Is there a moral difference between this choice and one where the numbers of lives involved are different but proportional - for example, saving 100 lives by sacrificing ten? In this category then, the idea is to determine whether moral principles are applied without modification or qualification when you're dealing with sets of circumstances that differ only in their scale, as in the sense described above.
Your score of 100% is significantly higher than the average score of 73% in this category.
It seems that scale, as it is described above, is not an important consideration in your moral worldview. But if, contrary to our findings, it is important, then it decreases the parsimoniousness of your moral framework.
India and Australia
In Question 13 you were asked the following: You see an advertisement from a charity in a newspaper about a person in severe need in Australia. You can help this person at little cost to yourself. Are you morally obliged to do so?
However, fifty percent of people undertaking this activity are asked a slightly different question, where the country India is substituted for the country Australia. The idea is to determine what kind of impact "culural distance" has on the moral judgements that people make. The important point here is that the vast majority of people who visit this web site are from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Consequently, in a comparison of the lives and lifestyles of TPM Online visitors, residents of India and residents of Australia, there will be bigger cultural differences between TPM Online visitors and residents of India than between TPM Online visitors and residents of Australia. Of course, whether a perception of cultural differences will enter into moral judgements, and if so, what its impact will be is entirely a matter of conjecture at this point. Indeed, whatever results we find here, they will only ever be suggestive of further avenues of enquiry. This aspect of the activity is simply not rigorous enough that it will be possible to draw definitive conclusions. It will nevertheless be interesting!
The Results
26% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were stongly obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
43% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were weakly obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
31% of respondents who were asked about a person in severe need in Australia responded that they were not obliged to help. This is exactly the same as the percentage who responded this way when asked about a person living in India.
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/taboo.htm
Results
Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.38.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.25.
Your Universalising Factor is: 0.33.
How did you do compared to other people?
Taboo has been played 39167 times.
Your Moralising Quotient of 0.38 compares to an average Moralising Quotient of 0.40. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are more permissive than average.
Your Interference Factor of 0.25 compares to an average Interference Factor of 0.27. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are less likely to recommend societal interference in matters of moral wrongdoing, in the form of prevention or punishment, than average.
Your Universalising Factor of 0.33 compares to an average Universalising Factor of 0.49. This means you are less likely than average to see moral wrongdoing in universal terms - that is, without regard to prevailing cultural norms and social conventions (at least as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned).
Are you thinking straight about morality?
Although you do not evaluate the actions depicted in these scenarios to be across the board wrong, it is not entirely clear why you think that anything in them is morally problematic. You don't think an action can be morally wrong if it is entirely private and no one, not even the person doing the act, is harmed by it. Yet the actions described in these scenarios are private like this and it was specified as clearly as possible that they didn't involve harm. Maybe, despite these stipulations, you just can't believe no harm would have resulted. The trouble is that you were asked to judge the scenarios as described, not as you think they would have turned out in the real world. And given how they were described, it isn't clear what form such harms could take...
Analysis: Morality, Taboos and the "Yuk Factor"
Probably most of us would like to believe we are able to give good reasons for the moral judgements that we make. For example, if we were asked why it was wrong for the older girl to push the younger boy off the swing, as described in the first question of this activity, we might talk about the fact that the boy's rights had been violated or about the fact that he experienced at least some physical harm. Whilst it is true that the philosophical waters would soon become muddied if we examined our reasoning more carefully, we are able to give at least prima facie good reasons for our judgement of moral wrongdoing.
However, there is a class of activities where it is much more difficult to offer arguments to support a judgement of moral wrong. This is the class of activities which are harmless (at least in a narrow sense), private and consensual, yet violate strong social norms. The examples we utilised in this activity were to do with the taboos and rituals associated with death, food and sexuality.
No doubt some people will suspect that we have constructed this activity with the intention of showing that people are just mistaken if they think that things like having sex with a frozen chicken are wrong. This is not the case, since it is possible to at least make arguments that such things are wrong. Here is an example of one such argument. Human beings are God's creations. Their sexuality is a gift from God to be enjoyed only in the context of a monogamous union between one man and one woman. Chickens, frozen or otherwise, are not part of the picture. Therefore, to have sex with one is to abuse the gift of sexuality, and will necessarily harm a person's relationship with God. It follows that having sex with poultry is a moral wrong.
So if the intention then is not to show that the moral prohibitions surrounding taboos cannot be justified, what are we trying to show with this activity?
(More on this article can be viewed after you take the test)
http://web.tickle.com/tests/brain/index_main.jsp
Kenneth, you are Balanced-brained
That means you are able to draw on the strengths of both the right and left hemispheres of your brain, depending upon a given situation. When you need to explain a complicated process to someone, or plan a detailed vacation, the left hemisphere of your brain, which is responsible for your ability to solve problems logically, might kick in. But if you were critiquing an art opening or coming up with an original way to file papers, the right side of your brain, which is responsible for noticing subtle details in things, might take over.
While many people have clearly dominant left- or right-brained tendencies, you are able to draw on skills from both hemispheres of your brain. This rare combination makes you a very creative and flexible thinker. The down side to being balanced-brained is that you may sometimes feel paralyzed by indecision when the two hemispheres of your brain are competing to solve a problem in their own unique ways.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home