ABSTRACT
Recent work in empirical moral psychology has highlighted the central role of emotions in moral judgment and criticized overly rationalistic models of moral judgment. Although I am sympathetic to the view that emotions are crucial to moral agency, in this chapter I take issue with several prevailing trends in the recent literature. First, I question the prevalent reductive conception of emotions as automatic affective processes and argue that an evaluative appraisal approach yields a better understanding of emotions and their role in moral thinking. Second, moral reflection tends to be characterized in the literature as conscious, effortful, introspective reasoning about moral principles. Although such reasoning does (and should) play some role in moral deliberation and reflection, this conception of moral reasoning is too narrow and pays insufficient attention to the complex emotional and imaginative skills involved in moral reflection and agency. Third, some of the recent empirical research draws conclusions from the analysis of participants’ one-off judgments or “intuitions” elicited in response to abstract hypothetical moral dilemmas. However, since moral reflection is both temporally extended and focused on guiding action, it is questionable how much weight should be given to such intuitions for understanding the exercise of moral agency in real-world, everyday situations.
