Abstract

We extend “4E” cognition to moral psychology. Since acting on affordances typically requires expertise, moral expertise, or virtue, is needed to act on moral affordances and to shape moral agency. Ethical rules and codes, often selected through a process of constraint satisfaction, are also involved in the detection and selection of moral affordances. We argue that individuals who act prudently possess moral expertise that allows them to remain in the “metastable zone” between mind and world, giving them an optimal grip on moral affordances and permitting wise judgement and action. We show how this can be explained via a noncognitivist, affordance-based account of the virtue phronesis (prudence). Our overall approach creates space for reciprocally causal accounts and prospection in explanations of human moral activity.

Highlights

  • We extend “4E” cognition to moral psychology

  • We suggest that moral expertise arises via moral salience attuned to the affordances contained within moral contexts

  • Like other forms of expertise, moral expertise brings well-developed skills into new situations (Dreyfus, 2002; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014), allowing agents to remain in what Bruineberg and Rietveld (2014) dub the “metastable zone”: “This optimum position is a kind of relative equilibrium in the individual–environment relationship that allows [the agent] to be ready to respond to multiple affordances simultaneously and rapidly switch from making one kind of [action] to making another” (Rietveld et al, 2018, p. 54)

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Summary

Introduction

We extend “4E” cognition to moral psychology. Since acting on affordances typically requires expertise, moral expertise, or virtue, is needed to act on moral affordances and to shape moral agency. Through maturation and learning, developing persons acquire various and variously different skills needed to access affordances in their physical, social, cultural, and corresponding moral worlds.

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Conclusion

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