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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Moral Judgment as a Natural Kind

By Victor Kumar
Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies

Moral judgments seem to be different from other normative judgments, even apart from their characteristic subject matter. Two people might both disapprove of an action, for example, although one judges it a moral violation and the other a breach of etiquette. Philosophers have traditionally attempted to define moral judgment through reflection alone. However, psychological research on the “moral/conventional distinction” offers a promising source of empirical evidence about the distinctive nature of moral judgment.

Several authors treat the ability to draw a distinction between morality and convention as a test for the presence of moral judgments (Blair 1995; Nichols 2004a; Prinz 2007; Levy 2007). None, however, develops the implied theory of moral judgment.

The entire article is here.