People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis. To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural facts pertaining to the impartial (...) promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts so construed may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements. (shrink)

Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and prescriptions entail categorical reasons for action. Categorical reasons for action are normative reasons that exist and apply to agents independently of whatever desires they have. I argue that several defenses of moral naturalism against this charge are unsuccessful. To be a tenable meta-ethical theory, moral naturalism must accommodate the proposition that, necessarily, if anyone morally ought to do something, then s/he has a categorical reason to do (...) it. Versions of moral naturalism that deny this claim would, if widely believed, disable some crucial practical uses of moral concepts. In particular, if the existence of normative reasons for action is taken to be dependent on agents’ desires, it would breed profound skepticism about the legitimacy of evaluating others’ actions from a moral point of view. Also, it would raise doubts about whether people ought to correct their own behavior in light of moral considerations. Following Richard Joyce, I take these consequences to indicate that the concept of a categorical reason is a “non-negotiable” part of moral concepts. (shrink)

Abstract In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in (...) normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

This essay proposes and defends a descriptive definition of morality. Under this definition, a moral system is a system of rules, psychological states, and modes of character development that performs the function of enabling mutually beneficial social cooperation. I shall argue that the methodologies employed by two prominent moral psychologists to establish a descriptive definition of morality only serve to track patterns in people’s uses of moral terms. However, these methods at best reveal a nominal definition of morality, since moral (...) appraisers may be ignorant about the referents of their moral terms. I propose a real definition of morality that characterizes moral systems as a natural kind—more precisely, a copied kind. I explain what it takes for a moral system to satisfy this definition, and I identify the sorts of evidence needed to distinguish moral systems from value systems of other kinds. (shrink)

Moral motivation refers to the psychological causes that motivate or explain moral action. Moral action refers to action that complies with the requirements of morality. In this essay, I lay out alternative views on moral motivation, giving particular attention the way each view conceives of the explanatory link between practical reasoning and moral conduct. In trying to understand this link, philosophers look to moral judgment. The main rival accounts of the relationship between practical reasoning, moral judgment, and moral motivation can (...) be distinguished according to the way in which they respond to two questions: (1) Can a cognitive (i.e., belief-like) state produce in an agent a motivation at time t, without being accompanied by an affective (i.e., emotional or desire-like) state which exists prior to t? (2) Are moral judgments cognitive states or affective states? -/- I shall defend the Humean theory of motivation, or HTM, as the best account of moral motivation. HTM is often called the belief-desire model of action because it explains behavior by citing a combination of a desire for some end and a belief that a certain action is a means to satisfying that desire. The Humean answer to the first question above is that any process of practical reasoning which generates a motivation is necessarily linked to a non-cognitive state. Regarding the second question, Humeans are split between cognitivists and non-cognitivists. Anti-Humeans, on the other hand, hold that moral judgments express cognitive states, and that cognitive states can independently produce motivations via practical reasoning. -/- I offer two arguments in favor of HTM. First, I suggest that Humeanism meets one criterion of theory choice better than anti-Humeanism. This is the continuity constraint. Given that humans and non-humans evolved common ancestors, the continuity constraint advises us to prefer an account of human psychology which can explain how complex human traits evolved from simpler antecedents resembling the traits of non-human animals. Non-human primates, in particular, are capable of acting altruistically toward con-specifics. Altruistic behavior in primates can shed light on an evolutionary precursor to moral action in humans, since morally significant action often involves altruism. I maintain that a Humean theory of motivation offers the best explanation of altruistic behavior in non-human primates. Therefore, by the continuity constraint, HTM should be the preferred model of the psychological mechanisms underlying human moral motivation, unless empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise. -/- To ward off the objection that anti-Humeanism is warranted due to the vast differences between humans and non-human primates, I offer a second argument for HTM. This is an argument from a criterion of theory choice called Morgan’s Canon. Morgan’s Canon is a standard of theoretical parsimony according to which a psychological mechanism should be attributed to an organism only if it’s the sole mechanism which can cause some behavior. I argue that HTM meets this criterion much better than anti-Humeanism. This is because the special psychological mechanisms which anti-Humeans postulate to explain moral action are not the sole mechanisms which could produce such action. Rather, the Humean belief-desire model could easily be recruited to explain moral action, as well as a broad variety of non-moral actions. (shrink)

In Book I of Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus famously maintains that ideas of morality and justice are nothing more than an ideology indoctrinated in “the weaker” to benefit “the stronger.” This is Thrasymachus’s challenge to morality: the thesis that some social arrangements, including some moral norms, are products of ‘false consciousness.’ False consciousness occurs when a dominant social group shapes the beliefs and desires of a subordinate group in such a way that the subordinates act for the benefit of the dominants, (...) but against their own interests. In this paper, I grant that some moral norms emerge or persist because of false consciousness. However, I shall argue that these norms actually have the function of impartially promoting the interests of all persons in their range of application. Even if the actual effect of false consciousness norms is to benefit a powerful class while being harmful and discriminatory toward others, the true function of false consciousness norms is the intended effect that they were designed to have. And the crucial feature of false consciousness norms is that their designers—particularly subordinates—teach, preach, follow, and enforce them with the intention of promoting the mutual interests of everyone to whom the norms apply. (shrink)

This article defends a claim about the conditions under which agents possess normative reasons for action. According to this claim, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if it’s psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. The claim is called‘Williams’s explanatory constraint,’since it’s drawn from Bernard Williams’s work on the topic of practical reason. A two-premise‘master argument’ for Williams’s explanatory constraint is put forward. First, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if (...) that agent has the ability to φ for that reason. The second premise states that an agent has the ability to φ for a normative reason only if it’s psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. It is suggested that the ability to act for a normative reason involves the ability to act from a consequence-sensitive process of practical reasoning. Furthermore, normative reasons for action can motivate agents by being the objects of psychological states—particularly beliefs,desires, and intentions. In reply to the objection that normative reasons can never be objects of psychological states, I contend that all normative reasons are capable of being represented as the objects of psychological states. (shrink)

Normative reasons for action are facts or considerations that contribute to the justification of an action. Sometimes, normative reasons for action conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while another may favor not doing it. These conflicts can be so radical that it seems difficult, if not impossible, to judge which reason should ultimately guide one’s actions. According to a theory of practical rationality known as reasons pluralism, there are some radical cases of conflict among normative reasons for action in (...) which there can be no fact of the matter about what one ought to do. This is because normative reasons fall into a plurality of types, and normative reasons of different types are incommensurable with one another. However, reasons pluralism is compatible with a principle that would enable us to judge when a normative reason of one type overrides a normative reason of another type. I will argue that this “Override Principle” is a facet of practical wisdom—an intellectual virtue. Practical wisdom, as Aristotle construed it, involves the ability to order one’s ends into a coherent system that allows for the attainment of a good life. The Override Principle is sure to be one criterion by which those endowed with practical wisdom would order their ends. (shrink)

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes (...) such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: sympathy, our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)