Moral Cognitivism

This paper argues that non-cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under-explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine-grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non-cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non-cognitivism in the first place. One significant (...) pay-off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non-cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates. (shrink)

Sunstein aims to provide a nonsectarian account of moral heuristics, yet the account rests on a controversial meta-ethical view. Further, moral theorists who reject act consequentialism may deny that Sunstein's examples involve moral mistakes. But so what? Within a theory that counts consequences as a morally weighty feature of actions, the moral judgments that Sunstein points to are indeed mistaken, and the fact that governmental action at odds with these judgments will be controversial doesn't bar such action.

Recent empirical studies have established that disgust plays a role in moral judgment. The normative significance of this discovery remains an object of philosophical contention, however; ‘disgust skeptics’ such as Martha Nussbaum have argued that disgust is a distorting influence on moral judgment and has no legitimate role to play in assessments of moral wrongness. I argue, pace Nussbaum, that disgust’s role in the moral domain parallels its role in the physical domain. Just as physical disgust tracks physical contamination and (...) pollution, so moral disgust tracks social contamination. I begin by examining the arguments for skepticism about disgust and show that these arguments threaten to overgeneralize and lead to a widespread skepticism about the justifiability of our moral judgments. I then look at the positive arguments for according disgust a role in moral judgment, and suggest that disgust tracks invisible social contagions in much the same way as it tracks invisible physical contagions, thereby serving as a defense against the threat of socio-moral contamination. (shrink)

There are three parts. Formulation of a form of non-cognitivism which gives a central role to moral emotions. Defense of the standard arguments for non-cognitivism. Response to standard objections to non-cognitivism. Throughout I give considerable attention to relevant important contributions by earlier writers. ; An emotion is grounded if it is held for a certain reason and the subject does not feel uncomfortable about having it for that reason. My central theses are: Thinking that one ought to do A is (...) being disposed to feel grounded guilt upon doing not-A in hypothetical situations of a certain specified kind. In such situations the speaker has the same information as in the actual situation and sympathizes with all relevant individuals to the maximum extent compatible with his having grounded emotions towards the object judged. ; Opponents contend that the Open Question Argument ignores the existence of synthetic property identities, e.g., that between water and H$\sb2$O. In response, I argue that the analogy between this identity and, say, that between goodness and pleasure is spurious. Unlike the former, there is no way of establishing the latter. I defend the Univocality Argument, in particular by giving numerous examples of fundamental moral disagreements where the apparent univocality of moral predicates cannot plausibly be explained in terms of shared reference, even by employing sophisticated semantic theories. In formulating the Internalism Argument I maintain that the judgement "I ought to do A" is essentially motivating and therefore cannot be cognitive. I advance an original argument against externalism, and then defend internalism against objections. ; I rebut the charge that non-cognitivism cannot account for occurrences of moral words in unasserted contexts, suggesting that non-cognitivists can explain validity in moral modus ponens inferences by appealing to sameness of moral standards applied in the different steps of the inference. I also show how non-cognitivists can handle univocality intuitions as regards moral explanations. Last, I account for some issues concerning moral objectivity. (shrink)

This chapter aims to situate Kant’s account of practical reason in metaethical debates. First, it explains the reasons why it is legitimate and instructive to discuss Kant’s relevance in contemporary metaethics, hence addressing some issues about the intended scope of metaethics and its relation to practical reason and psychology. Second, it defends an interpretation of Kant’s conception of autonomy, which avoids some paradoxes traditionally associated with self-legislation. Third, it shows that constructivism best captures Kant’s conception of practical reason and of (...) its authority. Kantian constructivism is defended as a self-standing metaethical theory, which is designed to account for the objectivity and unconditional authority of practical knowledge, on the basis of standards congruent with shared subjective experience. This version of constructivism, adopting a “dialogical” interpretation of the autonomy of rational will, explains how finite rational agents are obligated and bound by the moral law. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the concept of vulnerability as a complex constitutive feature of human agency and argue that it is both a constraint on and a resource for practical reasoning. When discussed as an ontological feature of human agency, vulnerability is primarily understood as an aspect of embodiment, which is problematic in different respects. First, in relation to the situatedness of human agency, vulnerability indicates that human agents are subjected to contextual contingencies. Second, in relation to temporality, vulnerability (...) indicates that agents act in time and under the pressure of time. They are finite and produce finite and perishable actions, even though the longlasting effects of an action may survive the action itself. Third, in relation to corporal feature of agency, vulnerability is associated to suffering and frailty, insofar as bodily needs and desires represent both springs of and hindrances to rational action. Finally, in relation to the social nature of human animals, vulnerability indicates the susceptibility to be harmed, obstructed, undercut or manipulated by other agents These varieties of vulnerability are constituive features of human agency, which cannot be removed without removing what is peculiar and specific to human agency. Theories of practical reason are primarily concerned with constitutive vulnerability as a defect, and presume to offer normative guidance by adopting an idealized account of rational agency, which corrects or merely cancels the defective features of human agency. By contrast, theories of bounded rationality understand practical reasoning instrumentally, and thus are concerned with cognitive limitations of practical rationality, in particular with partial and perspectival information. However, the notion of “partial information” is inadequate to capture the complexities and significance of vulnerability, even in its restricted cognitive sense, which has to do with the agent’s situatedness. On the view I propose, instead, vulnerability is declined as a constitutive constraint on practical reasoning. Susceptibility to time constraints makes sense of the agents’ engagement in action and of their distinctive deliberative perspective. Susceptibility to bodily needs and desires tracks the normative relation between motivations and reasons for action, as well as the corporal roots of the agents’ efficacy in a perceived context. Susceptibility to others makes possible to broaden the scope and the modes of individual agency, by way of inter-action and shared agency. Rather than the source of problems and issues for rational agency, I take vulnerability to name the cluster of constitutive constraints that shape practical reasoning. According to the distinctive variety of Kantian constructivism I defend, practical reason is incomplete, rather than imperfect or defective. The completion of practical reason does not aim to correct or dissolve vulnerability, but deploys vulnerability as a resource to build up autonomy. This view accounts for autonomy as a normative relation among vulnerable agents, which develops in time. (shrink)

The most distinctive feature of Murdoch's philosophical project is her attempt to reclaim the exploration of moral life as a legitimate topic of philosophical investigation. In contrast to the predominant focus on action and decision, she argues that “what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being” (AD 293).1 I shall argue that to (...) fully appreciate the novelty of this proposal we need to recognize some elements of continuity with analytic methods of philosophical inquiry and themes that belong to continental traditions. On Murdoch's view, the most important question facing moral philosophy is that of whether and how we can become better. In order to describe moral progress and failure, struggle and ascent, we need ethical concepts capable of capturing mental events such as change in mind, self-examination, and redescription. These concepts are presently unavailable, and this lack seriously undermines our attempts to understand the phenomena of morality. Because of this conceptual loss, we succumb to the mistaken idea that moral life coincides with its scattered outer manifestations, i.e. public acts. Instead, Murdoch urges us “the moral life […] is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices” (SG 37).2 Murdoch's point is that we need to conceive the locus of agency more broadly if we want to understand the complicated machinery of action. But perhaps more importantly, she points out that we may be morally active while entertaining a contemplative attitude, which does not issue in action. The grain of moral life, she argues, is constituted by the.. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical (...) or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

The articles of this volume address only some aspects of Nozick's philosophy: his conception of argument, knowledge, rationality, and identity. In examining Nozick's approach to these topics, one has to take issue, ultimately, with his peculiar conception of philosophy whose manifesto appears at the outset of Philosophical Explanations and is echoed in the introduction to philosophical method of Invariances . To transform philosophy into a science or build an impeccable deductive system was not Nozick's dream. He thought of philosophy as (...) aiming at explanation rather than proof. The goal in pursuing philosophy is not to establish one view, but to elaborate theories that can make us understand some phenomena better. (shrink)

Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall (...) argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivism. (shrink)

Moral reasoning theorists working in the constructivist tradition have tended to explain unethical behaviour by assuming that a breakdown occurs in the link between a person's moral judgement within a particular situation and his ultimate behaviour in that situation. This breakdown is usually seen as being the result of the individual ignoring his deontic judgement in favour of meeting a competing, non-moral social obligation or of fulfilling a selfish interest. This model of unethical behaviour has led to suggestions that moral (...) educators focus on fostering the incorporation of morality into people's self-concepts and on building moral character. An argument is presented that unethical behaviour, especially that involving relatively minor moral breaches, is often not the result of a moral judgement-behaviour hiatus but rather a corruption of the construal process. This corruption, driven by a desire for personal gain, results in the erroneous conclusion that an unethical action is actually morally acceptable. Immoral behaviour under this scenario is not a result of moral judgement failing to determine action but rather of moral judgement corrupted by self-serving interests succeeding in driving action. The educational implications of this alternative model of immoral behaviour are discussed. (shrink)

In more than one way, context matters in ethics. Uncontroversially, the ethical status of an action might depend on context: though it is typically wrong not to keep a promise, some contexts make it permissible. More controversially, some have suggested that the meaning or truth-conditions of a moral judgment or moral assertion depend not only on the properties of the act it concerns and the context in which it would be performed, but also on features of the context in which (...) the judgment or assertion is made, such as the standards endorsed by the moral judge. If this view—“metaethical contextualism”—is correct, it might be that when two people both judge that abortions must be banned, one judge might be correct whereas the other is mistaken, because they accept different fundamental norms. This would undermine the idea that there are unique correct answers to moral questions. Sections discuss (i) the context-dependence of ‘good’ and ‘ought’, (ii) how such context-dependence might support metaethical contextualism, and (iii) the prospects for a contextualist account of the categoricality of moral judgments, their connection to moral motivation, and disagreement between judges who accept different fundamental norms. (shrink)

We defend a contextualist account of deontic judgments as relativized both to (i) information and to (ii) standards or ends, against recent objections that turn on practices of moral disagreement. Kolodny & MacFarlane argue that information-relative contextualism cannot accommodate the connection between deliberation and advice; we suggest in response that they misidentify the basic concerns of deliberating agents. For pragmatic reasons, semantic assessments of normative claims sometimes are evaluations of propositions other than those asserted. Weatherson, Schroeder and others have raised (...) parallel objections to standard-relative contextualism; we argue for a parallel solution. (shrink)

Taking Morality Seriously is David Enoch’s book-length defense of meta-ethical and meta-normative non-naturalist realism. After describing Enoch’s position and outlining the argumentative strategy of the book, we engage in a critical discussion of what we take to be particularly problematic central passages. We focus on Enoch’s two original positive arguments for non-naturalist realism, one argument building on first order moral implications of different meta-ethical positions, the other attending to the rational commitment to normative facts inherent in practical deliberation. We also (...) pay special attention to Enoch’s handling of two types of objections to non-naturalist realism, objections having to do with the possibility of moral knowledge and with moral disagreement. (shrink)

There is a difference between an object's being good simpliciter and an object's being good of its kind, and the vast majority of philosophers have supposed that it is the former variety of goodness that is relevant to ethics. I argue that one may be a meta-ethical realist while employing the notion of good of a kind to the exclusion of good simpliciter; I call such a view kindism. I distinguish between two varieties of kindism, explicate the details of one (...) of those varieties, and defend kindism against possible objections. (shrink)

Published (in Swedish) in the journal Filosofisk tidskrift as "Hedonistisk naturalism", 2011/3.

Our puzzle about moral motivation can be seen as a tension that we encounter when we try to reconcile intellectual and practical aspects of morality. Cognitivists interpret moral judgments as expressing cognitive attitudes, such as belief. Moral judgments ascribe properties – axiological, deontic, and aretaic – to persons, actions, institutions, and policies. Internalists believe that moral judgments necessarily engage the will and motivate. We expect people to be motivated to act in accord with their moral judgments and would find it (...) odd for people to be systematically indifferent to what they judge morally significant. It is also a common view that motivation involves pro-attitudes, such as desires. We explain intentional action as the product of informational states, such as beliefs, and practical states, such as desires. But beliefs and desires are logically independent states; no belief entails any particular desire. These assumptions are in tension. (shrink)

A cognitivist interpretation of moral inquiry treats it, like other kinds of inquiry, as aiming at true belief. A dialectical conception of moral inquiry represents the justification for a given moral belief as consisting in its intellectual fit with other beliefs, both moral and nonmoral. The essay appeals to semantic considerations to defend cognitivism as a default metaethical view; it defends a dialectical conception of moral inquiry by examining Sidgwick's ambivalence about the probative value of appeal to common moral beliefs (...) or intuitions. The essay then addresses two main concerns about the compatibility of cognitivist and dialectical conceptions of moral inquiry. The probative value of moral intuitions requires that they be sufficiently approximately true. The individual and collective benefits of regulating our interactions by norms like those of commonsense morality help explain how we can view ourselves as sufficiently reliable detectors of moral properties. But the probative value of moral intuitions may also seem threatened by the existence of pervasive moral disagreement both within and between cultures. However, a dialectical conception of moral inquiry has resources for resolving moral disagreement; in fact, the dialectical examination of diverse moral perspectives contributes to the justification of moral beliefs. (shrink)

This book is a systematic and constructive treatment of a number of traditional issues at the foundation of ethics, the possibility and nature of moral knowledge, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalistic world view, the nature of moral value and obligation, and the role of morality in a person's rational life plan. In striking contrast to many traditional authors and to other recent writers in the field, David Brink offers an integrated defense of (...) the objectivity of ethics. (shrink)

Cognitivist motivational internalism is the thesis that, if one believes that 'It is right to ϕ', then one will be motivated to ϕ. This thesis—which captures the practical nature of morality—is in tension with a Humean constraint on belief: belief cannot motivate action without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. When defending cognitivist motivational internalism it is tempting to either argue that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus . But (...) succumbing to the first temptation places one under a burden to justify what is motivationally exceptional about moral beliefs and succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practicality intuition that cognitivist motivational internalism is suppose to capture. In this paper, I offer a way of defending cognitivist motivational internalism, which does not require accepting that there is anything motivationally unusual about moral beliefs. I argue that no belief satisfies the Humean constraint: all beliefs are capable of motivating without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. (shrink)

Neuromoral theorists are those who claim that a scientific understanding of moral judgment through the methods of psychology, neuroscience and related disciplines can have normative implications and can be used to improve the human ability to make moral judgments. We consider three neuromoral theories: one suggested by Gazzaniga, one put forward by Gigerenzer, and one developed by Greene. By contrasting these theories we reveal some of the fundamental issues that neuromoral theories in general have to address. One important issue concerns (...) whether the normative claims that neuromoral theorists would like to make are to be understood in moral terms or in non-moral terms. We argue that, on either a moral or a non-moral interpretation of these claims, neuromoral theories face serious problems. Therefore, neither the moral nor the non-moral reading of the normative claims makes them philosophically viable. (shrink)

This paper proceeds from an analysis (Callaway 1992, pp. 239-240) of a role of conflict in the origin of value commitments, a pervasive sociological pattern in the development of unifying group values which transforms personal conflicts, or differences, into large-scale collective conflicts. I have urged that these forces are capable of distorting even the cognitive processes of science and that they are a chief reason why value claims are regarded as incapable of objective evaluation. The thesis of the present paper (...) is that romantic collectivism (uncritical attachment to an identification group) renders members passive with respect to the ideals or content embodied in collective identity and that this is often exploited to convert groups into instruments of personal power. The issue is examined by reference to Reinhold Niebuhr's 1932 thesis of the inevitability of group egoism and inter-group conflicts and an opposing pragmatist conception of moral development, self-identity, and the individual's relationship to reference communities. (shrink)

How many attitudes must be posited at the level of reductive bedrock in order to reductively explain all the rest? Motivational Humeans hold that at least two attitudes are indispensable, belief and desire. Desire-As-Belief theorists beg to differ. They hold that the belief attitude can do the all the work the desire attitude is supposed to do, because desires are in fact nothing but beliefs of a certain kind. If this is correct it has major implications both for the philosophy (...) of mind, with regards the problem of naturalizing the propositional attitudes, and for metaethics, with regards Michael Smith’s ‘moral problem’. This paper defends a version of Desire-As-Belief, and shows that it is immune to several major objections commonly levelled against such theories. (shrink)

David Lewis describes, then attempts to refute, a simple anti-Humean theory of desire he calls ‘Desire as Belief’. Lewis’ critics generally accept that his argument is sound and focus instead on trying to show that its implications are less severe than appearances suggest. In this paper I argue that Lewis’ argument is unsound. I show that it rests on an essential assumption that can be straightforwardly proven false using ideas and principles to which Lewis is himself committed.

Moral knowledge appears to require moral judgments to be states of belief, yet they must at the same time be states of desire and feeling if they embody the motivation that we feel when we make moral judgments. How can the same judgment be a state of belief and a state of desire or feeling, simultaneously? [...] This problem may be resolved, I shall contend, by understanding moral judgments to be complex, multifunctional states that normally comprise both states of belief (...) that represent possible moral truths and states of emotion and motivation. (shrink)

B eginning with the problem of integrating diverse disciplinary perspectives on moral cognition, we argue that the various disciplines have an interest in developing a common conceptual framework for moral cognition research. We discuss issues arising in the other chapters in this volume that might serve as focal points for future investigation and as the basis for the eventual development of such a framework. These include the role of theory in binding together diverse phenomena and the role of philosophy in (...) the construction of moral theory. We discuss the problem of distinguishing descriptive and normative issues and the importance of systematic normative analysis for empirical research. We argue that theories of cognitive architecture should play an important role as a backdrop for investigation into specific aspects of moral cognition, and we consider some of the taxonomic issues that will arise for moral cognition research, including types of moral agents, forms of moral cognition, and the nature of morality itself. Finally, we discuss some key issues in moral development, including the importance of.. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science highlights the importance of exem- plar-based know-how in supporting human expertise. Influenced by this model, certain accounts of moral knowledge now stress exemplar- based, non-sentential know-how at the expense of rule-and-principle based accounts. I shall argue, however, that moral thought and reason cannot be understood by reference to either of these roles alone. Moral cognition – like other forms of ‘advanced’ cognition – depends crucially on the subtle interplay and interaction of multiple factors and forces (...) and especially (or so I argue) between the use of linguistic tools and formulations and more biologically basic forms of thought and reason. (shrink)

Jonathan Haidt ( 2001 ) advances the 'Social Intuitionist' account of moral judgment , which he presents as an alternative to rationalist accounts of moral judgment , hitherto dominant in psychology. Here I consider Haidt's anti-rationalism and the debate that it has provoked in moral psychology , as well as some anti-rationalist philosophical claims that Haidt and others have grounded in the empirical work of Haidt and his collaborators. I will argue that although the case for anti-rationalism in moral psychology (...) based on the work of Haidt and his collaborators is plausible , a decisive case has yet to be made. It will require further experimental evidence before a decisive case could be made. My assessment of anti-rationalist philosophical arguments that are grounded in the empirical work of Haidt and his collaborators is much more negative than this. I will argue that this body of empirical work is a very unpromising basis for such arguments. (shrink)

Moral realism and antirealist-expressivism are of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, a cognitive state of mind; she has or expresses a belief that represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might (...) be accurate or inaccurate. The view of antirealist-expressivism is that such a person is in, or expresses, a conative state of mind, one that consists in a certain kind of attitude or motivational stance toward something, such as an action or a person. Realism holds that moral thoughts have truth conditions and that in some cases these truth conditions are satisfied so that our moral thoughts are true. Antirealist-expressivism holds, to a first approximation, that the distinctive moral content of a moral thought does not have truth conditions. (shrink)

Nondescriptivist Cognitivism vindicates the cognitive value of moral judgements despite their lack of descriptive content. In this paper,I raise a few worries about the proclaimed virtues of this new metaethical framework Firstly, I argue that Nondescriptivist Cognitivism tends to beg the question against descriptivism and, secondly, discuss Horgan and Timmons' case against Michael Smith's metaethical rationalism. Although I sympathise with their main critical claims against the latter, I am less enthusiastic about the arguments that they provide to support them.

Non-cognitivists claim that thick concepts can be disentangled into distinct descriptive and evaluative components and that since thick concepts have descriptive shape they can be mastered independently of evaluation. In Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following, John McDowell uses Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to show that such a non-cognitivist view is untenable. In this paper I do several things. I describe the non-cognitivist position in its various forms and explain its driving motivations. I then explain McDowell’s argument against non-cognitivism and the Wittgensteinian considerations upon (...) which it relies, because this has been sufficiently misunderstood by critics and rarely articulated by commentators. After clarifying McDowell’s argument against non-cognitivism, I extend the analysis to show that commentators of McDowell have failed to appreciate his argument and that critical responses have been weak. I argue against three challenges posed to McDowell, and show that the case of thick concepts should lead us to reject non-cognitivism. (shrink)

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of action were found to rely principally on the mental states of an agent, while judgments of blame and punishment are found to rely jointly on mental states and the causal connection (...) of an agent to a harmful consequence. Also, selectively for judgments of punishment and blame, people who attempt but fail to cause harm more are judged more leniently if the harm occurs by independent means than if the harm does not occur at all. An account of these phenomena is proposed that distinguishes two processes of moral judgment: one which begins with harmful consequences and seeks a causally responsible agent, and the other which begins with an action and analyzes the mental states responsible for that action. Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

��Is moral judgment accomplished by intuition or conscious reasoning? An answer demands a detailed account of the moral principles in question. We investigated three principles that guide moral judgments: (a) Harm caused by action is worse than harm caused by omission, (b) harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal, and (c) harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm involving no physical contact. Asking whether (...) these principles are invoked to explain moral judgments, we found that subjects generally appealed to the first and third principles in their justifications, but not to the second. This finding has significance for methods and theories of moral psychology: The moral principles used in judgment must be directly compared with those articulated in justification, and doing so shows that some moral principles are available to conscious reasoning whereas others are not. (shrink)

Normative realists tend to consider evolutionary debunking arguments as posing epistemological challenges to their view. By understanding Sharon Street’s ‘Darwinian dilemma’ argument in this way, they have overlooked and left unanswered her unique scientific challenge to normative realism. This paper counters Street’s scientific challenge and shows that normative realism is compatible with an evolutionary view of human evaluative judgment. After presenting several problems that her adaptive link account of evaluative judgments faces, I outline and defend an evolutionary byproduct perspective on (...) evaluative judgment. I then argue that a consideration of levels of analysis in biological–behavioral explanation suggests that the realist who adopts the byproduct perspective I outline is not at a prima facie disadvantage to the normative anti-realist on grounds of parsimony. This perspective, I suggest, can enable normative realists to answer evolutionary challenges to their view. (shrink)