Jesse Prinz

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF MORAL JUDGMENTS

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.

THE RETURN OF CONCEPT EMPIRICISM

Abstract This chapter outlines and defends a version of concept empiricism. The theory has four central tenets: concepts represent categories by reliable causal relations to category instances; conceptual representations of categories vary from occasion to occasion; these representations are perceptually based; and these representations are all learned, not innate. The last two tenets on this list have been central to empiricism historically, while the first two have been developed in more recent years. Each tenet is looked at in turn, and then the most obvious objection to empiricism is discussed: that some concepts cannot be perceptually based because they represent things that are abstract, and hence unperceivable. Two standard examples are discussed: democracy and moral badness. It is argued that both examples can be explained using resources available to the empiricist.

Sentimentalism and Self-Directed Emotions

There is a long-standing philosophical debate about the role of emotions in moral judgment. Some argue that emotions are inessential; we can make moral judgments without having an emotional response. Others, so-called sentimentalists, argue that emotions play an essential role. Philosophers have debated these positions for ages with no resolution. Intuitions vary as to whether emotions are essential to morality. The stalemate can be broken by moving beyond intuitions an empirically investigating the psychological processes that underlie moral judgment. Such methods are delivering results that strongly favor sentimentalism. Healthy moral judgments seem to depend on emotions. But sentimentalism faces a number of serious philosophical objections, which have not been directly addressed in the scientific literature. This is where self-directed emotions come in. Self-directed emotions have been comparatively neglected in the recent flurry of empirical research on moral judgment.