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Moral Dumbfounding and the Linguistic Analogy: Methodological Implications for the Study of Moral Judgment
Author(s) -
DWYER SUSAN
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2009.01363.x
Subject(s) - analogy , moral psychology , moral disengagement , phenomenon , social cognitive theory of morality , psychology , epistemology , moral reasoning , moral development , moral authority , focus (optics) , social psychology , philosophy , physics , optics
The manifest dissociation between our capacity to make moral judgments and our ability to provide justifications for them, a phenomenon labeled Moral Dumbfounding, has important implications for the theory and practice of moral psychology. I articulate and develop the Linguistic Analogy as a robust alternative to existing sentimentalist models of moral judgment inspired by this phenomenon. The Linguistic Analogy motivates a crucial distinction between moral acceptability and moral permissibility judgments, and thereby calls into question prevailing methods used in the study of moral judgment. Indeed, the judgments that are the focus of most current empirical work in moral psychology are not proper targets of scientific study.