Moral judgement

1. Cognitivism versus noncognitivism

The psychological state of moral judgement has features that make it seem like a belief, but it also has features that make this questionable. Judgements about the moral attributes of things aspire to objective truth – to being true to the way things actually are, independently of the attitudes we happen to have taken towards them. When I think that human trafficking is wrong, I think that those who disagree with me are mistaken, and that it would have been wrong even if I had been brought up to approve of it. As a state that aims to be true to independently obtaining facts, my judgement seems to be a belief (see Belief, Moral epistemology). On the other hand, moral judgement does not seem to be merely a matter of disinterestedly registering the way things are. To think that human trafficking is wrong is to orient myself against it. In this respect, my state seems less like a belief about its object than a noncognitive antipathy towards it. More particularly, it is often maintained that there is a certain sort of ‘internal connection’ between the state of moral judgement and the judge’s motivation: it is part of the concept of judging an action to be wrong that if I judge that it is wrong to perform this action in these circumstances, then (provided I am not weak-willed, and other things equal) I am motivated to avoid it in these circumstances (see Moral motivation §§1–2).

Thus cognitivism about the state of moral judgement–the view that it consists essentially in a belief–seems to be supported by its objectivity-presupposing character, while noncognitivism (the denial of cognitivism) seems to be supported by the internal connection to motivation (see Expressivism). It is tempting to try to reconcile these views by characterizing moral judgement as a compound state, comprising both a belief and a noncognitive companion state. However, that does not solve the problem. It requires as one component a pure belief that human trafficking is wrong, and the possibility of such a belief is precisely what is at issue.

Beyond this, there are four obvious options. First, a cognitivist might deny the internal connection, insisting that although (unsurprisingly) people with moral beliefs tend to care about morality, this is only contingently true: caring about morality is not part of moral judgement itself. A second, less plausible view is a noncognitivism that simply denies that moral judgements aspire to objective truth. Perhaps, as emotivism suggests, objectivity-presupposing moral judgements ought to be rejected and replaced with something else (see Emotivism); but it seems hard to deny that our actual practice of making moral judgements does aim at getting things right, morally speaking. This leaves two further possibilities, each of which attempts to allow for both the objectivity-presupposing nature of moral judgement and its internal connection to motivation. According to the cognitivist internalism of John McDowell (1979), moral judgements are indeed beliefs, but beliefs of a special kind, in being internally connected to the believer’s motivational states. And according to the noncognitivist objectivism of Simon Blackburn (1998) and Allan Gibbard (1990), the objectivity-presupposing character of moral judgements can be explained without construing them as beliefs. Their central thought is that the attitude expressed by ‘Human trafficking is wrong, and would have been wrong even if I had approved of it’ can be explained as a noncognitive attitude that ranges across counterfactual as well as actual possibilities – as an attitude of disapproval of that practice not only in the world as it is, but in the world as it would have been if I had happened to approve of the practice but things were otherwise unchanged.

Another perspective on the debate between cognitivists and noncognitivists is worth considering. The debate is structured around two rival models for understanding moral judgements. Cognitivists see them as states which register the way things are, noncognitivists as expressing our orientational responses to the way things are. A favourite objection to cognitivism is that a mere state of fact-recognition will always leave open what I think my response ought to be to those facts, but a moral judgement does not leave that open. However, noncognitivism invites a parallel objection: my merely having an orientational response towards something leaves open whether I think this response is one I ought to have, but a moral judgement does not leave that open either. In the light of this, it is sometimes suggested that both objections are plausible, and both models should be rejected. Moral judgements are judgements about normative relationships between facts and responses – judgements that certain responses ought to be made to certain facts. Cognitivists have tried to assimilate such judgements to one side of the relationship (fact-recognition); noncognitivists to the other (response-expression). What both have missed is the relationship itself. To explain this, we need to abandon both of these models. One alternative proposed by recent Kantian philosophers is a ‘constructivism’ which argues, broadly, that if there are to be normative relationships between facts and responses at all, then they must have a certain content – a content that includes morality. However, this line of argument is widely challenged. Moreover, even if a view that models moral judgement-states neither on fact-recognition nor on response-expression can be convincingly worked out, the issue of its classification as either cognitivism or noncognitivism cannot be avoided. Such states either are beliefs or they are not.