Unsentimental ethics: towards a content-specific account of the moral-conventional distinction.
In this paper, we offer an overview and a critique of the existing theories of the moral-conventional distinction, with emphasis on Nichols's [Nichols, S. (2002). Norms with feeling: Towards a psychological account of moral judgment. Cognition, 84, 221-236] neo-sentimentalist approach. After discussing some distinctive features of Nichols's (2002) thesis and situating it within the context of his predecessors' work [Blair, R. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: Investigating the psychopath. Cognition, 57, 1-29; Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], we review a number of arguments and findings within the developmental literature that, collectively, pose a serious challenge to the proposition that emotion is indispensable for or plays a substantial contributory role in the construction of the moral domain. Furthermore, we report two studies whose results contravene those of Nichols's (2002) Experiments 1 and 2 (the empirical basis for his "norms with feelings" hypothesis), while favoring a version of Turiel's (1983) harm-based approach instead.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. royzman@psych.upenn.edu
Edward B
EB
Royzman
Robert F
RF
Leeman
Jonathan
J
Baron
D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D004989:Ethics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D009042:Motivation; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D055815:Young Adult