What We Do When We Define Morality (And Why We Need to Do It)

Abstract

All psychological research on morality relies on definitions of morality. Yet the various definitions often go unstated. When unstated definitions diverge, theoretical disagreements become intractable, as theories that purport to explain "morality" actually talk about very different things. This article argues for the importance of defining morality and considers four common ways of doing so: The linguistic, the functionalist, the evaluating, and the normative. Each has encountered difficulties. To surmount those difficulties, I propose a technical, psychological, empirical, and distinctive definition of morality: obligatory concerns with others' welfare, rights, fairness, and justice, as well as the reasoning, judgment, emotions, and actions that spring from those concerns. By articulating workable definitions of morality, psychologists can communicate more clearly across paradigms, separate definitional from empirical disagreements, and jointly advance the field of moral psychology.

Keywords: definitions; meta-theory; moral philosophy; moral psychology.

Figure 1:. Representation of Relation between Non-Scientific Concepts and Technical Definitions for “Fish” and “Morality ”.

Note. The quoted phrases are examples of what would fit into each segment of the diagram. The particular visualization of a technical definition of morality illustrates the definition I propose in this paper. For other technical definitions, the everyday phrases included and excluded in the definition will be different.

Figure 2:. Classification of Concerns.

Note. The figure illustrates different kinds of concerns. The top-level division separates obligatory and non-obligatory concerns. (To reiterate: A person deems a concern obligatory if they deem it wrong to lack this concern.) Obligatory concerns are divided into moral, conventional, and other obligatory concerns. Moral concerns are subdivided into concerns with others’ welfare, rights, fairness, and justice. Vertical arrows indicate further concerns within a given category. For instance, concerns with rights may be divided into concerns with property rights, rights to free speech, and so on (Helwig, 2006; Hunt, 2008; Turiel et al., 2016). Horizontal arrows indicate additional categories at the same level. For instance, in addition to moral and conventional concerns, individuals may also deem prudential (personal wellbeing) or pragmatic (material order) concerns obligatory (Dahl & Kim, 2014; Smetana, 2013; Srinivasan et al., 2019). Non-obligatory concerns are as multifarious as—if not more multifarious than—obligatory ones. Beyond food preferences, there are preferences for sports teams, romantic partners, and so on, many of which we might call “values” (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001)