The Social Turn in Moral Psychology

The Moral Permissibility of Killing in War: An Experimental Approach to the Moral Judgment of Side-Effect and Defensive Killing

“…Likewise, the scope of such an ethical framework for war may be limited by the psychological conditions that allow people to understand and act following its moral norms (Benbaji et al, 2015;Fedyk, 2017;Traven, 2015Traven, , 2021Watkins, 2020). These limitations raise the need for a complementary level of analysis that would provide insight into the conditions enabling the realization of the ethical framework of war.…”

“…Although descriptive and normative approaches focus on different aspects of the 8 By moral psychology, I refer here to the research program in the cognitive sciences that empirically investigates the factors and mechanisms underlying moral thinking and behavior (Fedyk, 2017;Johnson, 1996). This research program incorporates different perspectives including evolutionary biology, neuroscience, linguistics, and moral philosophy.…”

“…However, whatever the social activity, they all require a guide facilitating the coordination among its participants, that is, a cluster of rules or norms making it possible to anticipate and respond to others' behavior (Elster, 1989;Fedyk, 2017).…”

“…A norm is a special kind of rule differentiated from other rules by its public and agent-neutral character 9 (Elster, 1989;Fedyk, 2017). Although norms may refer to a specific social role that someone can play in a social activity, they are not intended for specific individuals and do not need to be continually modified to suit individual conditions.…”

“…Given the link between our moral nature and our natural inclination to engage in social activities and follow social norms, the realization of any social activity also requires ethical frameworks that regulate social interactions by setting limits on the behavior of the people involved (Elster, 1989;Fedyk, 2017;Rochat, 2021). An ethical framework is nothing more than a type of normative framework comprising a set of moral norms, namely those norms defining the right or wrong ways of treating a person (Holmes, 1989;Rachels & Stuart, 2012).…”