ABSTRACT
Moral diversity has important implications for our understanding of moral reasoning. Especially at advanced levels, moral reasoning is in large part the reflective coordination of multiple social and moral perspectives (Carpendale, 2000). To construe moral reasoning as a process of coordination is to suggest that it typically does not involve a choice between two or more perspectives but rather an effort to find a resolution that is satisfactory from multiple points of view. To suggest that this coordination is reflective, moreover, is to propose that it does not occur automatically but rather involves a deliberate effort to construct a justifiable resolution. This is not to deny that we regularly make intuitive moral inferences, beginning at very early ages (Haidt, 2001; Walker, 2000). Consistent with the metacognitive conception of rationality proposed in chapter 2, however, the term moral reasoning should be reserved for those cases of moral inference that involve deliberate efforts to reach justifiable conclusions.
