There is no moral faculty
Philosophical Psychology 25 (3):409 - 432 (2011)
| Abstract | Dewey's ethical naturalism has provided an exemplary model for many contemporary naturalistic treatments of morality. However, in some recent work there is an unfortunate tendency to presuppose a moral faculty as the alleged source of what are claimed to be nearly universal moral judgments. Marc Hauser's Moral minds (2006) thus argues that our shared moral intuitions arise from a universal moral organ, which he analogizes to a Chomskyan language faculty. Following Dewey's challenge to the postulation of the idea of universal instincts, I argue that Hauser's moral faculty account is (1) contrary to results from recent cognitive science, (2) unnecessary for explaining our moral understanding and reasoning, and (3) counterproductive to the correct project of a non-transcendent, empirically-grounded theory of moral understanding and problem-solving. I provide a sketch of an alternative account of what such an ethical naturalism would involve | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMark Johnson (forthcoming). The Myth of the Moral Faculty: Response to Kirkby. Philosophical Psychology:1-5.
David Kirkby (forthcoming). Why There Might Be a Moral Faculty: A Reply to Johnson. Philosophical Psychology:1-8.
Paul Bloom (2006). The Chomsky of Morality? [REVIEW] Nature 443 (26):909-10.
Marc D. Hauser, Liane Young & Fiery Cushman (2008). Reviving Rawls's Linguistic Analogy: Operative Principles and the Causal Structure of Moral Actions. In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 2. MIT Press.
Andrew Sneddon (2007). A Social Model of Moral Dumbfounding: Implications for Studying Moral Reasoning and Moral Judgment. Philosophical Psychology 20 (6):731 – 748.
Amit Chaturvedi (2012). Mencius and Dewey on Moral Perception, Deliberation, and Imagination. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 11 (2):163-185.
Susan Dwyer, Bryce Huebner & Marc D. Hauser (2010). The Linguistic Analogy: Motivations, Results, and Speculations. Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (3):486-510.
Mark Hanin (2012). Naturalistic Moral Realism and Moral Disagreement: David Copp's Account. Res Publica 18 (4):283-301.
David Morrow (2009). Moral Psychology and the Mencian Creature. Philosophical Psychology 22 (3):281-304.
Bryce Huebner, Susan Dwyer & Marc D. Hauser (2009). The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology. Trends in Cognitive Science 13 (1):1-6.
Marc Hauser (2006). Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. Harper Collins.
Ben Eggleston (2003). Everything is What It is, and Not Another Thing: Comments on Austin. Southwest Philosophy Review 19 (2):101-105.
Polycarp Ikuenobe (2002). Moral Epistemology, Relativism, African Cultures, and the Distinction Between Custom and Morality. Journal of Philosophical Research 27:641-669.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-06-19Total downloads73 ( #11,360 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)7 ( #10,270 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
