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Philosophical Explorations

An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action
Volume 9, 2006 - Issue 1: Empirical Research and the Nature of Moral Judgment
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Original Articles

The emotional basis of moral judgments

Pages 29-43
Published online: 21 Aug 2006
 

Recent work in cognitive science provides overwhelming evidence for a link between emotion and moral judgment. I review findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and research on psychopathology and conclude that emotions are not merely correlated with moral judgments but they are also, in some sense, both necessary and sufficient. I then use these findings along with some anthropological observations to support several philosophical theories: first, I argue that sentimentalism is true: to judge that something is wrong is to have a sentiment of disapprobation towards it. Second, I argue that moral facts are response-dependent: the bad just is that which cases disapprobation in a community of moralizers. Third, I argue that a form of motivational internalism is true: ordinary moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, and all non-motivating moral judgments are parasitic on these.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Jeanette Kennett and Philip Gerrans for organizing the marvelous conference that led to this special issue. I also learned a great deal (not reflected here) from commentaries by Karen Jones and by Ruth Chang at another venue. Various portions of this material were presented to audiences at Birkbeck, Brown, Cincinnati, the CUNY Graduate Center, the Ecole Normale Superieure, Georgia Tech, Leeds, Monash, Minnesota, Northwestern, Stockholm, Texas Tech, and Toronto. I am grateful to audiences in all those places. I also owe Melissa van Amerongen for catching a number of errors in the manuscript.

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