Abstract
Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others. Formal legal systems for assigning blame and punishment typically make fine-grained distinctions about mental states, as illustrated by the concept of mens rea, and experimental studies in the USA and elsewhere suggest everyday moral judgements also make use of such distinctions. On the other hand, anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim. Here, we argue against the claim that some societies are simply less ‘mind-minded’ than others about morality. In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement. On this view, which mental states are or are not relevant for a judgement is context-specific, and what appear to be cultural main effects are better explained by culture-by-context interactions.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.
Highlights
Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others
Anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim
In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement
Summary
For many people steeped in ‘Western’ moral, legal and philosophical traditions, it may seem a foregone conclusion that moral judgements are fundamentally about individuals’ intentions, motivations, beliefs, desires and character. Are there places where people take into account only observable actions and outcomes, rather than reasons for those actions when assigning blame and punishment? Evolutionary models show that cooperation in social groups can be stabilized without taking others’ mental states into account at all, by conditioning cooperation and punishment decisions on others’ publicly observable actions and the outcomes of those actions, not the reasons for them [8,9]. Ethnographic and cross-cultural experimental studies around the world reveal variability in when and how people incorporate evidence of an individual’s beliefs and intentions into moral judgements. We will review this evidence, and how it has been theorized, below. By considering this contextual variation, we stand to gain a more accurate picture of human morality than by ranking cultural groups on mind-mindedness as a whole
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