Moral Empiricism

Is morality prewired into our minds? The idea that morality is built into us is an old one in philosophy, and it has seen a resurgence of late. Indeed, the prevailing systematic account of how we acquire complex moral representations is a nativist view inspired by arguments in Chomskyan linguistics. If the statistical learning accounts I’ve defended in Part II of this book are right, we have the beginnings of an empiricist account of important aspects of human morality. This chapter offers a sustained defense of a moral empiricist view in the face of the Chomskyan challenge.