Moral Judgment

Judgments involve our intuitions and/or our capacity to reach decisions through reasoning.  Moral judgments refer to judgments that have moral content; they are used to evaluate situations, courses of action, persons, behavior, etc.

The basis of moral judgments is a topic of some philosophical dispute.

Some hold that moral judgments are based in intuition or feeling, often in connection with the emotions.  On this account of moral judgment, conscious reasoning plays no role in coming to a moral judgment.

Intuitionists hold that moral judgments are based in intuition or feeling, often in connection with the emotions.  Intuitionists support their theory by pointing to several sources of evidence.

For example, moral reasoning often comes ‘after the fact’ in moral judgments.  In other words, we often come to moral judgments quickly, on the basis of a first impression or intuition, and provide reasons or a rationalization for our judgments only after the judgment has occurred.

Moreover, it seems that there are cases in which people – psychopaths, for instance, who show a deficit in affective emotions like shame, grief, and sympathy – show no signs of deficiency in intellectual or rational capacities, yet seem to lack the ability to make (correct) moral judgments.  This seems to support the claim that emotions are necessary to morality.

The intuitionist position is classically referred to as a theory of moral sentiment.  Proponents of this theory point to the human tendency to sometimes favor, or privilege, family and friends in moral decisions to substantiate their claim.  Of the moral sentiment theorists, David Hume is perhaps the best-known.

Opponents of the intuitionist, or moral sentiment, theories hold that reason (see Rationality) is the basis of moral judgments.  On this account, moral judgments are understood as a result of conscious moral reasoning; we come to moral decisions by reasoning on the basis of moral rules.

Kantian deontological and utilitarian moral theories both emphasize the role or reason in morality.  In fact, Kant’s deontological theory(see Deontology) famously puts rationality at the center of morality, claiming that morality is derived from reason, and that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality (the categorical imperative).

Utilitarian accounts of morality(see Utilitarianism) also emphasize the importance of reason in moral judgments, claiming that ‘right’ moral judgments involve a rational calculation of an action’s consequences.