Law & Society Blog

In this great new paper, Joshua Knobe and Brian Leiter subject three philosophical approaches to moral psychology to empirical testing, in the sense that they evaluate the fit of each of the three philosophical models with what we currently know about how moral behavior really works. Confronted with empirical findings, the Aristotelian and the Kantian models of moral psychology don’t fare particularly well. There is little empirical support for the central role of upbringing in forming someone’s moral character, which is a cornerstone of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Similarly, there is little support for moral behavior being caused by conscious moral choices, which is a central tenet of Kantian moral psychology. Rather, what we perceive as conscious, principled moral choices is really more of a post hoc attempt to make sense of our past actions. (Not just the owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in.) That, of course, has been one of Nietzsche’s recurring criticisms of traditional morals, and so it comes as no surprise that Nietzsche’s account fits more comfortably with the empirical evidence of how moral behavior really works. Of course, Knobe and Leiter do not present their analysis as a normative account. Rather, their paper is an attempt to explore the empirical boundaries within which meaningful normative theories will have to evolve. Highly recommended.

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