Moral Beliefs and Moral Motivation

Abstract

Moral beliefs have an action-guiding force that factual beliefs do not. One way to explain the action-guiding force is to link it to the normative force of rationality. The normative force of conceptual rationality guides certain of our mental actions in the form of the inferences that we make. The fact that Bob is a bachelor pushes us to infer that Bob is an unmarried man, and we may be said to be conceptually irrational if we do not. Carefully extending this idea from making inferences to having desires, Michael Smith argues that we are irrational, or psychologically incoherent, if we believe that it is desirable for us to perform some action, yet fail to desire to do it. However, the normative force of empirical rationality also guides some of the inferences that we make. Wet streets, gray skies, and water droplets on a window pane, push us to infer that it is raining outside, and we may be said to be irrational, though in a different sense, if we do not draw such an inference. We will consider whether treating a moral theory as analogous to an empirical theory will illuminate the connection between our moral beliefs and our moral motivations. Are we irrational in an empirical sense when, for example, we fail to feel guilty about doing something that we believe to be wrong? If we consider a moral theory that uses our emotional responses as empirical data, then we can see an explanation of how moral motivation arises that is based on understanding our emotional responses as theoryladen. A change in our moral beliefs will usually occasion a change in our emotional