Rationality and Morality

To what extent is morality based on reason? To answer this question, we need to clarify which aspect of morality is under investigation, and which notion of reason is in play. Recent work in moral psychology has attempted to debunk central aspects of moral judgment and metaethical judgment. However, rational processes might play a vital role in the acquisition of moral systems. This chapter sets out the basic idea of processes and suggests that one kind of process—statistical learning—is especially significant for moral learning. Statistical learning processes are both empiricist, in that they are domain-general processes, and they are rational, in that they conform to the rules of probability theory. Thus they are poised to provide alternatives to both nativist and sentimentalist accounts of our moral psychology.