ABSTRACT
There is a plethora of studies in the causal moral judgment literature, where moral psychologists rely on experimental evidence to determine what mental states influence moral decision-making, which show that cognitive states and emotions play such a causal role. While these studies are not explicitly intended to be used to draw moral concept constitution conclusions, the purpose of this chapter is to outline how they can be so used. Since concepts are functionally defined as playing a default causal role in most higher acts of cognition, concepts just are those psychological structures that appropriately realize the causal role. This is just like how hearts are functionally defined as pumping blood. Since my heart realizes the causal role of pumping blood, what I call “my heart” is a heart. Unbeknownst to those in the causal moral judgment literature, this method of functionally identifying concepts to their constituents may be used to prove the viability of concept structures. I then lay down several qualifications and constraints concerning the use of this functionalist identification of moral conceptual states, where I propound a positive theory on when certain mental state influences can be said to actually constitute the concept at hand and when they cannot.
