On the Epistemic Status of Moral Feelings and Moral Emotions

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to explore if moral feelings and emotions are capable of providing agents with normative reasons in favor of certain moral beliefs and moral reactions. We distinguish four possible positions: skepticism denies the role of emotions as an appropriate type of normative reasons in moral cognition and moral practice; a trusting attitude towards moral emotions recognizes the ability of qualitative subjective experiences to give reasons in moral cognition and moral practice, but admits that these experiences can always be replaced by reasoning and analysis of relevant external facts; a sentimentalist attitude assumes that feelings and emotions can in some cases be indispensable reasons in moral cognition and moral practice; an essentialist attitude proceeds from the fact that the agent's possession of moral emotions and experiences is always a necessary condition for moral cognition and moral practice. We examine the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches.