The Psychological Mechanism Of Moral Judgments

The research of moral judgment can be approached from both philosophical and psychological aspects.At the philosophical level,there are two opposing approaches,rationalism and emotionalism.In this paper,I will discuss a model of moral judgment,social intuitionist model,which is proposed by Jonathan Haidt,in his article"Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail:A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment".I will focus on the causal importance of intuition during the process of moral judgment,and Haidt's thesis that moral reasoning only makes post hoc and biased justifications for intuitive judgments.In order to explain the role of moral reasoning more clearly,Haidt put forward the phenomenon called "moral dumfounding",which led to many scholars questioned this phenomenon,mainly focusing on the phenomenon itself and the role of moral reasoning in moral judgment.On the one hand,it is necessary to distinguish between moral intuition and moral reasoning as to how the psychological mechanism of moral judgment is different from that of traditional rationalism model.On the other hand,given that the criterion of intuition itself depends on the people who are in a particular cultural community,sharing a common intuition.It is bound to lead to a cultural relativism about moral and intuitive judgments..