What We Do When We Define Morality (and Why We Need to Do It)

Abstract

All psychological research on morality relies on definitions of morality. Yet the various definitions often go unstated. When unstated definitions diverge, theoretical disagreements become intractable, as theories that purport to explain "morality" actually talk about very different things. This article argues for the importance of defining morality and considers four common ways of doing so: The linguistic, the functionalist, the evaluating, and the normative.Each has encountered difficulties. To surmount those difficulties, I propose a technical, psychological, empirical, and distinctive definition of morality: obligatory concerns with others' welfare, rights, fairness, and justice, as well as the reasoning, judgment, emotions, and actions that spring from those concerns. By articulating workable definitions of morality, psychologists can communicate more clearly across paradigms, separate definitional from empirical disagreements, and jointly advance the field of moral psychology.

What is the moral person like? An examination of the shared and unique perspectives on moral character

“…The specific traits that are "virtuous" or "ethically admirable"-or are judged as such-can differ across formal ethical frameworks, cultures, and people (Graham et al, 2016). This precludes the possibility of measuring the "One True Morality" (Dahl, 2023;Sun & Schwitzgebel, in prep), and we do not claim to do so here. Instead, in line with a common approach in the emerging psychological study of moral character (Barranti et al, 2016;Furr et al, 2022;Helzer et al, 2014;Sun et al, under review), we operationalize moral character in terms of a composite of widely accepted virtues.…”

A Canary Alive: What Cheating Reveals about Morality and Its Development

“…Our second, descriptive axiom is that empirical research cannot determine whether an act of cheating is morally wrong. Empirical research has no means of separating morally right actions from morally wrong ones; its scientific purview is descriptive and predictive (Dahl, 2023;. Empirically, we can study whether people judge that a given act of cheating is morally wrong.…”

“…We choose our descriptive definitions for a scientific project and do not seek complete overlap with ordinary use of words like "cheating" and "morality." For this reason, our definitions are also technical definitions (for discussion, see Dahl, 2023). 1 How can we define and study cheating and morality without making assumptions about which actions are morally wrong?…”

“…We define academic cheating as a violation of institutional rules that is intended by the 1 Though our definition is devised for an empirical and psychological project, our work is informed by philosophical writings on morality and related constructs. Philosophical analyses of key concepts have sharpened our thinking and helped us make distinctions we would not have otherwise made or would have made with less clarity (for discussions of relations between philosophical and psychological work on morality, see, e.g., Dahl, 2023;Lapsley, 2019;Turiel, 2015). We thank a reviewer for prompting us to acknowledge this.…”

“…We have already considered one source of situational and developmental variability in evaluations: perceptions of what constitutes cheating. If a student perceives their academic work as violating academic integrity norms, they have a reason to judge that action as wrong; if the student thinks their submission is in accordance with academic integrity norms, they lack such a reason to judge the action as wrong (Pecorari, 2003;Schmelkin et al, 2010;Waltzer & Dahl, 2021a, 2023. Perceptions of cheating are not the only factual beliefs that inform evaluations about cheating and integrity.…”