The Representational Format of Moral Concepts for Situated-Action

Abstract

Moral concepts serve central roles in facilitating our everyday moral though and behavior. Despite their importance, few attempts have been made to provide or characterize a satisfactory psychological theory of moral concepts that can accommodate their representational features and explain their function within our everyday moral experiences. In this thesis, I argue traditional psychological theories of concepts that posit invariant representational formats cannot provide a satisfactory theory of moral concepts while accommodating their motivational roles in the selection of situationally appropriate and time-sensitive action. The evaluative content and motivational force of a tokened moral concept varies across each instance and is highly situated to the agent’s present environment, cognitive tasks, constraints of the situation, etc. Invariant representational formats of concepts are unable to accommodate for the variable conceptual content and are unfit to ground a theory of moral concepts while maintaining their central roles within facilitating our moral cognitive capacities. Instead, I argue, any viable psychological theory of moral concepts must posit a flexible and context-sensitive representational format to meet the variation present during instances of moral experience.