This article approaches moral thinking as a kind of practical thinking – that is, as a type of reasoning aimed at deciding what to do and, if successful, expressing an intention (see the entry on practical reason). Of course, we also discuss theoretically what morality requires of us; But the nature of purely theoretical reasoning on ethics is sufficiently covered in the various articles on ethics. It is also true that, according to some understandings, the moral reasoning for deciding what to do is to form a judgment about what to do morally. According to this understanding, the question of what to do (morally) can be a practical question, a certain way of asking what to do. (See section 1.5 for a particular practical issue.) To do justice to the full range of philosophical views on moral thought, we must have a comprehensive understanding of what counts as a moral issue. For example, since a dominant position on moral thought is that the relevant considerations are not codifiable, we would ask a central question if we were to define “morality” here as codifiable principles or rules. For the purposes of this study, we can interpret questions about what is right or wrong, virtuous or bad as raising moral questions. Finally, such empirical work on our moral thinking can lead to revisions of our standards of moral thought. That has not happened yet. This article deals primarily with the philosophical questions raised by our current norms of moral thought.

For example, given these norms and assuming they are more or less followed, how do moral considerations fit into moral considerations, are they so sorted out when they collide and lead to actions? And what do these standards say about what we should do? “A reason for exclusion,” in Raz`s terminology, “is a second-rate reason for not acting for any reason” (39). A simple example is that of Ann, who is tired after a long and stressful day and therefore has reasons not to act according to her best assessment of the reasons for a particularly important investment decision she is directly facing (37). This notion of reason for exclusion allowed Raz to grasp many of the complexities of our moral reasoning, especially since they are obligations of principle, while recognizing that all practical reasons can be comparable in the first place. Raz`s first strategy of reconciling comparability and complexity of structure was to limit the assertion that reasons are comparable in terms of strength to reasons for a given order. Reasons of the first order compete on the basis of force; But conflicts between first- and second-order reasons “are not resolved by the force of competing reasons, but by a general principle of practical thought which determines that the grounds of exclusion always prevail” (40). Five-year-old target children provided more relevant justifications than three-year-old target children when explaining why the offender should be punished. In both age groups, however, children targeted in the social rule condition tended to give justifications that explained the rule in normative language (for example, “It should not put the yellow car in the green box”). In contrast, under the condition of moral standard, the targeted children generally provided justifications that simply stated the facts (“She stole”) but not the rule (e.g., “She should not steal”). In their study, Stanley and colleagues (2018, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General) asked participants to make an initial decision in a moral dilemma.

Participants were then presented with the reasons confirming or rejecting their original choice, or the reasons for both options, and asked to assess the persuasiveness of each reason. Finally, they were again asked to make a decision on the same moral dilemma. What about the possibility that the moral community as a whole—basically, the community of all people—can think? This possibility does not pose the kind of threat to the impartiality created by the team-thinking of a smaller group of people; But it`s hard to imagine that this works in a way that doesn`t conflict with the concern for whether a person can submit to the moral judgments of another agent in a strong sense. Nevertheless, a residual possibility remains, namely that the moral community can argue in only one way, namely by accepting or ratifying a moral conclusion that has already been shared in a sufficiently complete and broad manner (Richardson 2018, chap. 7). By justifying their moral judgments to their peers (e.g. This person should be punished), 3- and 5-year-olds assume that they must explain the rule violated if the offender violates a rule specific to the context, when they do not have to explain the moral rules because they are already known to their peers. The traditional question we have just examined arises when moral considerations are at stake. Assuming we have a moral conclusion, she asks how agents can be motivated to get involved. Another question about the intersection of moral thought and moral psychology, which is more intrinsic to the former, concerns the question of how motivating elements shape the argumentation process itself.

Jonathan Dancy has highlighted a kind of contextual variability in moral reasons that has become known as “reasonholism”: “A characteristic that is a reason in one case may not be a reason at all, or in another an opposite reason” (Dancy 2004). To adapt one of his examples: Although there are often moral reasons not to lie, one should usually lie when playing lying poker; otherwise the game will be spoiled (cf. Dancy 1993, 61). Dancy argues that holism supports a moral particularism of the type discussed in section 2.2, according to which there are no defensible moral principles. Taking this conclusion seriously would radically influence the way we conduct our moral reasoning. The premise of holism of the argument has been challenged (e.g., Audi 2004, McKeever & Ridge 2006). Philosophers have also questioned the conclusion of holism reasons to particularism in various ways. Mark Lance and Margaret Olivia Little (2007) did this by showing how impractical generalizations in ethics and elsewhere systematically depend on context.

We can work with them, they suggest, using an ability similar to the ability to discern morally salient considerations, namely the ability to recognize relevant similarities between possible worlds. More generally, John F. Horty has developed a logical and semantic representation that causes are failures and therefore behave holistically, but there are nevertheless general principles that explain how they behave (Horty 2012). And Mark Schröder argued that our holistic views on why are actually better explained by assuming there are general principles (Schroeder 2011). As for morally relevant characteristics, one of the most developed narratives is that of Bernard Gert. It develops a list of relevant characteristics to determine whether the violation of a moral rule should generally be permitted. Given the designed function of Gert`s List, it is natural that most of its morally relevant characteristics refer to the moral framework it defends.