The mark of the moral: Beyond the sentimentalist turn

Frank Hindriks, Hanno Sauer*

*Corresponding author voor dit werk

OnderzoeksoutputAcademicpeer review

6 Citaten (Scopus)
175 Downloads (Pure)

Samenvatting

In light of recent empirical data, many psychologists and philosophers have turned away from rationalism about moral judgment and embraced sentimentalism. In the process, they have rejected the classical "moral signature" as a way of distinguishing moral from conventional norms in favor of a sentimentalist approach to carving out the moral domain. In this paper, we argue that this sentimentalist turn has been made prematurely. Although we agree that the experiments reveal that the classical approach is flawed, we propose to replace it with an alternative, according to which a norm is moral precisely if it is justifiable to all. This does not hold for most norms based on disgust or loyalty to a particular community. We accommodate the fact that such norms are not merely conventional by introducing a third domain, the domain of ethics. Our proposal reveals that (psychological) rationalism is still a viable option, as a lot of the experimental evidence that features emotions concerns the domain of ethics rather than morality.

Originele taal-2English
Pagina's (van-tot)569-591
Aantal pagina's23
TijdschriftPhilosophical Psychology
Volume33
Nummer van het tijdschrift4
DOI's
StatusPublished - 18-mei-2020

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