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Moral psychology is the study of psychological aspects of ethical abilities.

Part I: What ethical abilities do humans have? What states and processes underpin them?

Do emotions influence moral intutions?

But what are these? Short answer: unreflective moral judgements. Long answer ... some comparisons may help ...

Sinnott-Armstrong et al (2010), ‘Moral Intuitions’ in Doris et al (ed)

What are moral intutions?

Unreflective ethical / linguistic / mathematical judgements

Nothing special to say here ...

[1] He is a waffling fatberg of lies.

[2]* A waffling fatberg lies of he is.

Which box contains more dots?

Two projects -- everyday life vs philosophy

We are interested in moral inuitions in everyday life. They are an important part of our moral abilities.
You might also be interested in moral intuitions as a basis for evaluating philosophical approaches to reaching conclusions in ethics. This would be psychology of philosophy. My primary concern will not be with this, but with everyday unreflective ethical judgements.
Moral psychology is the study of psychological aspects of ethical abilities.

Part I: What ethical abilities do humans have? What states and processes underpin them?

Do emotions influence moral intutions?

A related question ...

What do adult humans compute that enables their unreflective judgements to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

I am working with a contrast between tracking and computing. To say that a state tracks an attribute is to say ...
Simple example (1) [old]: toxicity/feeling of disgust
Simple example (2) [new]: motion sensor tracks presence of a human by computing infared energy (say). Important because shows that the distinction can be understood in a way that does not hinge on consciousness, nor on any particularly deep notion of representation.
So this is a way of setting up Sinnott-Armstrong et al’s 2010 ‘unconscious attribute substitution’ idea in a way that makes it easier to operationalise.

Hypothesis:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2010

The ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’ (Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2010).
consider an analogy

What do adult humans compute that enables their unreflective judgements to track toxicity?

 

deviceWhat is tracked?What is computed?
motion sensorhuman movementinfared energy
poison detectortoxicityhow encountering it makes me feel
moral intuitionright and wronghow it makes me feel

Q1. Do emotions influence moral intutions?

Q2. What do adult humans compute that enables their unreflective judgements to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

Hypothesis [re Q2 & Q1]:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

Sinnott-Armstrong et al, 2010

The ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’ (Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2010).

What evidence could bear on the issue?