Conclusion

This chapter rearticulates many of the major ideas and arguments in the proceeding chapters. But it also connects one of the primary conclusions of the book up with a debate in ethics over what the structure and form of ethical theories should look like. The proceeding chapters show that one possible form that an ethical theory can take is a loose confederacies of different models and frameworks that apply to different levels of social and psychological organization.

Moral Dumbfounding

This chapter examines the experimental evidence which purports to demonstrate the ubiquity of a phenomena called “moral dumbfounding”. A careful study of the evidence demonstrates that the experiments are unable to support any meaningful conclusions about whether or not moral dumbfounding exists, and if so, how prevalent the phenomena happens to be

Biology and Evolutionary Moral Psychology

This chapter argues that it is not possible to make meaningful progress in moral psychology by attempting to derive conclusions about moral cognition from premises describing patterns of human behaviour that could have been adaptive in the late Pleistocene. The reason these inferences fail is that it is not possible to derive proximate explanations from ultimate explanations and vice-versa.

Descriptive Moral Psychology

This chapter defines descriptive moral psychology as any psychological research that investigates the cognitive and emotional foundations of the patterns of behaviour that are described by an example of hard-question social theory. Descriptive moral psychology therefore studies the psychological dimensions of the patterns of behaviour which have their social dimensions described by research in the social sciences and humanities.

Hard-Question Social Theory

An implication of the causal theory of ethics is that, sometimes, researchers in the social sciences and humanities will provide evidence that norms realized by the behaviour of certain groups of people will help to produce good outcomes for those people. This chapter provides several examples of this kind of research, which illustrates the diversity of the kinds of research that count as generating ethical insights according to the causal theory of ethics.

Methodological Lessons from Philosophical Ethics

On the basis of the arguments in the proceeding chapters, this chapter derives three principles that should govern research in experimental moral psychology, if this research is to be both scientifically reliable and maintain its compatibility with philosophical ethics.

Introduction

This chapter provides an outline of the main argument of the book, and it defines many of the most important analytical concepts that are used in subsequent chapters. Also introduced are the two fundamental philosophical assumptions upon which the book’s argument rests—first, that success in scientific inquiry generates not comprehensive and systematic theory, but instead multiple different theories that are each an approximation of some complex reality; and second, that rational progress in moral inquiry is possible.

The Causal Theory of Ethics

This chapter introduces a novel ethical theory that is designed to help bridge research in the social sciences with research in moral psychology. According to the causal theory of ethics, what makes certain norms ethical norms is that they are realized in the behaviour of different population, and their realization tends to produce outcomes that are good and valuable for the relevant population.

Inconsilience between ADJDM Moral Psychology and Philosophical Ethics

This chapter presents events that contemporary research in moral psychology sometimes violates the principles adduced in Chapter 4. This evidence, in turn, means that the relevant research projects in moral psychology are at risk of becoming incompatible with philosophical ethics.

Normative Moral Psychology

This chapter defines normative moral psychology, which addresses questions that cannot be included within the scope of either hard-question social theory or descriptive moral psychology. These are questions about personal moral development, character, and the habituation of the virtues.