Putting the Moral/Conventional Distinction in its Place
By
Introduction
Empirical studies of our abilities to differentiate and reason about moral and conventional
rules are increasing in prominence in moral psychology. Such studies are central to the social
domain theory developed by Judith Smetana (1981, 1993) and Elliot Turiel (1993, 1997). Once
relegated to the shadow of the spotlight directed on the debate about the work of Lawrence
Kohlberg (1981, 1984) and Carol Gilligan (1982), social domain theory’s influence is on the rise.
R. James Blair uses moral/conventional studies as the source of the primary data to be explained
in his account of moral psychology, the central posit of which is a violence inhibition mechanism
(1995, 1997). Moral/conventional studies are at the heart of Shaun Nichols’ “Sentimental Rules”
account of moral judgment (2004). The increasing weight being put on our abilities to make and
reason about the moral/conventional distinction deserves scrutiny. Should we be designing
accounts of moral psychology around this distinction? Just what psychological abilities should
moral psychology focus on? I will argue that the assumptions driving moral psychological
theories based on the moral/conventional distinction are reasonably contestable, and that we have
reason to think that such theories take an unduly narrow view of our central moral psychological
abilities.i
Moral/Conventional Distinction Studies
Generally, in moral/conventional testing, subjects are provided with hypothetical examples of
moral and conventional transgressions. For adults, these examples are provided in verbal
descriptions. For young children, other means are used. Smetana (1981, 1993) reports studies
done with preschool children using pictures of the transgressions. If necessary, explanations were
provided (1981, 1334). Blair reports studies done with school children using Playmobil
characters—plastic figures 3-4 inches tall. Standard scripts were used to enact the moral and
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
conventional transgressions (1997, 189-90). In this case, positive moral and conventional acts
were also enacted. Here are specific acts from the Smetana and Blair studies:
Smetana (1981, 1334):
Moral Transgressions
-a child hitting another child
-a child not sharing a toy
-a child shoving another child
-a child throwing water at another child
-a child taking another child’s apple
Social-Conventional Transgressions
-a child not participating in show and tell
-a child not sitting in the designated place (on a rug) during story time
-a child not saying grace before a snack
-a child putting a toy away in the incorrect place
-a child not placing her belongings in the designated place
Blair (1997, 189-90)
Moral Transgressions:
-a child hitting another in the face
-a child knocking another child over
-a child smashing up the school’s piano
-a child destroying another child’s bicycle
Conventional Transgressions
-two children talking to each other
-a child turning up at school in a skirt
-a child walking out of class in the middle of a lesson
-a child turning his/her back on the teacher while the teacher addresses him/er
Positive Moral Acts
-a child returning a skateboard that another child lost
-a child donating money to charity
-a child sharing lunch with a child who has forgotten it
-a child comforting a crying child
Positive Conventional Acts
-a child joining the back of the queue for lunch
-a child coming to school in the school’s uniform
-a child putting his/her chair on the desk at the end of the day
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
-a child putting his/her bag on the bagpile at the start of the day
In an overview of the empirical tradition centred around the moral/conventional distinction,
Turiel characterizes the moral issues as concerned with physical and psychological harm, and
with fairness and justice. Conventional issues are concerned with social coordination (Turiel
1997, 905).
The results of this tradition are striking and interesting. Consistent distinctions between moral
and conventional transgressions emerge during our third year (Turiel 1997, 905). Children judge
moral transgressions to be wrong even in the absence of rules prohibiting them. By contrast, they
treat conventional transgressions as contingent on authority. Autistic people distinguish between
moral and conventional transgressions (Blair 1996; Nichols 2002, 2004, p. 10), but psychopaths
do not (Blair 1995; Nichols 2002, 2004 Ch. 3). In prison populations, psychopaths treat
conventional transgressions like moral ones.
Theories Based on Moral/Conventional Distinction Studies
Here are brief descriptions of theories that use the moral/conventional distinction as their
central basis. Details will be added as the discussion progresses
1] Social Domain Theory
Smetana and Turiel are social cognitivists. They think that the core of our moral
psychological abilities consists in our abilities to reason explicitly about moral issues. This is
their cognitivism. As a result of their work on children’s abilities to discern and reason about
moral and conventional transgressions, they argue that there are moral and conventional domains
of knowledge which are characterized by different patterns of reasoning. Children’s
understanding of these domains is held to be constructed from qualitatively different experiences
with kinds of actions and with people with regard to these actions—this is the social aspect of the
theory (Smetana 1993, 122). This view is supported by observational studies performed with the
moral-conventional distinction studies as their background. These studies reveal differing kinds
of social interactions, both among children and between children and adults, with regard to moral
and conventional issues (Smetana 1993, 122-5). It is our early interactions with these different
domains that is supposed to account for our early abilities to draw the moral/conventional
distinction.
2] Blair’s VIM Theory
Blair claims that a violence inhibition mechanism (VIM) is central to understanding our
abilities to make the moral/conventional distinction (1995, 1997). The initial functioning of the
VIM is to produce withdrawal responses. When combined with “meaning analysis” (1995, 7),
the VIM is theorized to produce feelings of aversion. The input to VIM is information about
distress. The interpreted feelings of aversion generate the pattern of response that turns up in
moral/conventional testing: the things that give rise to VIM activation are those things that count
as moral issues rather than conventional ones.ii
3] The Sentimental Rules Theory
Nichols presents his Sentimental Rules theory as an account of “core moral judgment” (2004,
Ch. 1). On this account, core moral judgment is realized by two mechanisms:
1] A normative theory prohibiting harm to others, and
2] An affective mechanism activated by suffering in others. (2004, 18)
The combination of these mechanisms yields “sentimental rules”: the normative theory has rules
prohibiting actions that activate, or that are likely to activate, the affective mechanism.
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
Moreover, the combination of these mechanisms is offered to account for our early abilities to
distinguish moral and conventional transgressions: the affective mechanism is activated by a
particular kind of badness—i.e., harm, rather than breaking of rules of social interaction—and
the normative theory encodes this distinctive reaction in rules with a status differing from those
about conventional issues.
The Centrality of Moral/Conventional Testing
Testing of our abilities to draw distinctions between moral and conventional transgressions is
the most fundamental source of empirical data for sentimental rules theory. Nichols is explicit
about this. He draws our attention to the tradition of performing such tests and claims that this
tradition provides information that sheds light on the nature of moral judgment (2004, 4-5).
Empirical studies on other issues—such as autism, psychopathy, and mindreading—are
discussed by Nichols, but always with the moral/conventional distinction as a more fundamental
foundation for his theory.
Blair’s work also uses moral/conventional testing as its foundation. Although he draws from
ethology for ideas about how to account for the results of studies of the moral/conventional
distinction, these studies are the central source of moral psychological data informing his VIM
account.
Since Turiel and Smetana, and researchers working with them, constitute the tradition on
which Nichols draws, and since studies about the moral/conventional distinction are fundamental
to Nichols’ work, it is reasonable to assume that the moral/conventional distinction is also
fundamental to social domain theory. Their observational studies are structured by the findings
about our early abilities to draw the moral/conventional distinction in response to hypothetical
examples. Given this, the researchers examine children’s behavior with others to see what our
early experiences about moral and conventional issues are like. Besides such operationalized
evidence, there is other reason to think that the moral/conventional distinction is at the centre of
how social domain theorists think of morality and moral psychology. Turiel structures his 1997
review of twentieth century moral psychology around variations in our conceptions of morality
and other sorts of issues, and he concludes this review by claiming that different sorts of social
interactions account for such variations (920-1).
My purpose is to show that such foundational reliance on studies of the moral/conventional
distinction makes three assumptions that it is plausible to contest, one about morality and two
about psychology.
Assumptions
Moral-Theoretical:
Morality is primarily, and perhaps solely, about actions and their evaluations.
Psychological:
1] Substantive: Our central moral psychological capacities are those that are used to give verbal
responses to questions about hypothetical scenarios.
2] Methodological: Our central moral psychological capacities can be accurately studied via
consciously accessible propositional knowledge that is deployed independently of the production
of actions in real contexts and of real interactions with other people.
The assumption about the nature of morality requires little discussion: moral/conventional
distinction tests ask questions about different sorts of action. If a theory about moral psychology
rests solely or primarily on these tests, then the theory in question implicitly puts the evaluation
of action at the heart of morality, perhaps to the total exclusion of other possibilities.iii
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
The three theories exhibit differing degrees of commitment to the psychological assumptions.
In general, the more exclusively a theory rests on moral/conventional testing, the more it is
committed to the psychological assumptions. Nichols’ work exhibits strong commitment to these
assumptions. His commitment to the substantive psychological assumption is evident in his
characterization of his theory as one about core moral judgment. “Core” means central,
foundational. If moral/conventional testing can illuminate our central, foundational moral
psychological capacities, then these capacities must consist in whatever is needed to respond
verbally to hypothetical scenarios, since this is what the moral/conventional experiments require
of their subjects. Nichols addresses action production (2004, Ch. 5), but he advances no
empirical data other than the results of moral/conventional testing. Accordingly, it is fair to say
that the sentimental rules theory also exhibits relatively strong commitment to the
methodological psychological assumption.
Blair exhibits weaker commitment than Nichols. On the one hard, he is one of the active
practitioners in moral/conventional testing, and the VIM account is developed in direct response
to his own tests. This supports seeing him as committed to both psychological assumptions.
However, statements of the VIM position tend to stick closely to accounting for just the results
of the moral/conventional testing. Nichols (2004, 11-16), interprets Blair’s position as an account
of moral judgment. If this is apt, then Blair’s position seems to have broader application than just
the moral/conventional study results. The wider its application, the more strongly it is committed
to the psychological assumptions.
Social domain theory is more weakly committed to the two psychological assumptions. The
inclusion of observational studies suggests a broader conception of moral psychology than
Nichols’. Nevertheless, the relative primacy of the moral/conventional distinction to social
domain theory entails correspondingly strong commitment to these assumptions. In particular,
there is very little attention given to action production by social domain theorists. The
observational studies examine interactions with others about moral and conventional
transgressions, not the ways in which subjects act in conformance with, or deviate from, moral
and conventional rules.
My purpose is to examine these assumptions from within moral psychology. First, I will
advance a suggestive objection to the moral theoretical assumption from philosophical moral
psychology, one which has not been directly evaluated empirically. Then I will advance more
substantially developed objections to the two psychological assumptions on the basis of a
different empirical tradition from that of the moral/conventional studies.
The Moral Theoretical Assumption: Strawson on Moral Responsibility
P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” (1974) is
influential within studies of moral responsibility.iv My suggestive objection to the moral
theoretical assumption is a development of Strawson’s position.
Strawson’s topic is whether responsibility is compatible with determinism. Determinism is
part of a thoroughly objective account of the world. To approach phenomena deterministically is
to adopt a thoroughly objective attitude towards them. Strawson encourages the reader to think
of as many kinds of interpersonal relationships as possible, then to think of the kinds of
importance we attach to the attitudes and intentions directed towards us by the others in these
relationships, and then to think of our own “reactive attitudes” (1974, 6). These reactive attitudes
include personal ones, such as resentment, and more general ones that Strawson thinks include
characteristically moral ones. Once we have listed the appropriate relationships and attitudes, the
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
question to ask is whether the acceptance of the thesis of determinism could lead us always to
look on everyone exclusively with the objective attitude (1974, 11). Doing so would mean giving
up the subjective engagement of which we have reflectively framed an account. An affirmative
answer delivers the incompatibility of moral responsibility with determinism. Strawson’s answer,
however, is that this is not logically inconceivable, but that it is practically so.
I take this to be a standard interpretation of Strawson’s position. On this standard
interpretation of Strawson, morality can still be construed as primarily concerned with the
evaluation of actions. But it cannot be construed as solely concerned with the evaluation of
actions. The reason is that Strawson’s discussion implies that the treatment of persons via the
reactive attitudes is a practically unavoidable part of our moral practices. Perhaps the evaluation
of actions is more important to morality than the issue of moral responsibility, but Strawson has
broadened the moral domain nonetheless.
Arguably, a more radical interpretation of Strawson’s position is available. Strawson’s
argument applies to all parts of our subjective engagement with each other and with the world.
As I see it, all aspects of morality are part of this subjective engagement, not just moral
responsibility. This implies that morality as a whole is compatible with determinism because the
objective domain which is the appropriate home of the discourse of determinism is, in a certain
sense, irrelevant to morality. On the radical interpretation of Strawson, the reactive attitudes turn
out to be more central to the moral domain than the evaluation of actions. The evaluation of
actions will turn out to be derivative from the more fundamental issue of the evaluation of
persons as responsible agents, i.e., as apt candidates for reception of the reactive attitudes.v
An objection might be raised here. Nichols objects to what he calls “perspective-taking”
explanations of our core moral psychological abilities. His reason is that they require that agents
have well developed “mind-reading” capacities. Mind-reading is the ability to recognize the
mental states of others. The problem for perspective-taking accounts of moral psychology is that
at the earliest ages at which children can distinguish between moral and conventional
transgressions, they have very rudimentary mind-reading abilities. It looks like the mind-reading
capacities deployed by perspective-taking explanations of core moral judgment develop after our
ability to draw the moral/conventional distinction, not before them as required by these
explanations (Nichols 2004, 8-11).
This might provide the basis of a rejoinder to the present objection to the moral theoretical
assumption because the reactive attitudes, as described by Strawson, involve well developed
mind-reading capacities. Full deployment of the reactive attitudes requires recognition and
response to others’ attitudes and intentions towards oneself. Since the ability to draw the
moral/conventional distinction, which is a sensitivity to a virtually indisputably central feature of
morality, develops earlier than most mind-reading capacities, whatever moral phenomena are
tied to such complex mind-reading abilities cannot be central to morality. Perhaps they do not
even count as part of morality at all, but instead are a different social sub-domain.
Here are two responses.
1] One might deny that the developmental sequence is as stark as this sequence makes it seem.
Nichols attributes rudimentary mind-reading capacities, such as the ability to recognize that
others are suffering, to very young children well in advance of their development of a wider
array of mind-reading capacities (2004, 43-6). Perhaps this is enough to provide a psychological
foothold for a Strawsonian position. If the psychological prerequisites of the reactive attitudes,
but not these attitudes themselves, appear as early as our abilities to distinguish moral from
conventional transgressions, then perhaps there is reason to think that participation in the kinds
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
of social practices in which the reactive attitudes are deployed also begins at this time. Further
maturation might be required to have and to respond to the full complement of reactive attitudes,
but arguably the beginnings of these abilities are all that is required for responsibility to have a
central place in the structure of morality.
2] One might sever the inference from psychological development to the structure of morality
altogether. The assumption under scrutiny is a moral theoretic one, not one about psychology, so
why should we think facts about psychological development are relevant at all? Since the nature
of morality and the sequence of development of human psychological capacities appear to be
distinct topics, then, strictly speaking, the latter implies nothing about the former. Analogies
might be helpful here. Sporting activities are centrally about competing. But very young children
acquire the ability to make certain sorts of skilled movements—e.g., skating or throwing a ball—
before they learn about the kind of competition realized by, e.g., hockey or baseball. The
developmental sequence implies nothing about the centrality of competition to sports. Special
argumentation is needed to show that something different holds for morality. On this view, the
structure of morality is to be determined not by assessing the abilities of novices, such as very
young children, but by looking at the domain as realized in the activities of mature practitioners,
i.e., adults. Questions about responsibility are an indisputably important part of mature morality.
So: on the standard view of Strawson, the moral domain is primarily concerned with the
evaluation of acts, and secondarily with the attribution of responsibility for those acts. On the
radical interpretation of Strawson’s position, his argument subsumes the whole of morality,
making the fundamental question “Who counts as a responsible agent, and for what reasons?”,
and the next, derivative question, “For what?” Either way, morality turns out to have an
important component that is not directly part of the issue of the evaluation of actions. If
Strawson’s position on moral responsibility is plausible, then the moral theoretic assumption
made in VIM theory, social domain theory and sentimental rules theory is implausible.
The Psychological Assumptions: Situationist Psychology
The tradition of empirical research known as situationist psychology, which gave rise to the
person-situation debate from the late 1960s through the 1980s and, arguably, to the present,
constitutes the basis for a more substantial objection to the foundational role of
moral/conventional distinction testing in moral psychology via the two psychological
assumptions. This work has received philosophical attention recently, most notably in Doris
2002.vi The primary topic of this discussion, however, has been the implications of situationist
psychology for virtue theories. The present topic is a bit different: it is the lessons learned from
the person-situation debate about the psychological mechanisms of action production.
Following Walter Mischel’s 1968 review of the literature on personality and action
production in Personality and Assessment, social psychologists, sometimes called “situationists”,
and personality psychologists carried out a lengthy discussion of the relative contributions of
personality structures and the environment to the production of behavior. Situationist social
psychology argues that variation in behavior is due much more to differences in situations than
we are inclined to think.
Particularly important for present purposes are studies about the production of explicitly
morally relevant behavior. Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May (1928) performed a long term study
of deceit involving thousands of children in classroom settings. They used a variety of tests to
assess their subjects for deception and honesty in various forms, such as cheating on tests or
lying to teachers. What they found is that correlation between different sorts of honest behavior
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
or deceptive behavior was remarkably low, leading them to infer that the variation in behavior
was better explained by variation in properties of the immediate context than by some sort of
personality trait.
Subsequent studies provided evidence in support of this idea. Stanley Milgram’s studies on
obedience
are
the
best
known
(1963). Milgram solicited participation in learning studies, but this was a set-up. Subjects were
given the role of teacher, while confederates of the experimenters played the roles of learner and
of study administrator. The job of the teacher was to ask questions and administer electric shocks
in response to incorrect answers. The shocks ascended in severity in 15 volt increments, clearly
labeled with very serious warnings. When subjects hesitated in administering shocks, the
administrator-confederate politely recited a list of instructions to continue. Milgram found that
seemingly non-coercive features of experimental situations led ordinary people to administer
what they thought were lethal levels of electrical shocks to other ordinary people. More
precisely, about two thirds of subjects administered shocks all the way to the final level, and
many of the other subjects administered shocks up to very high levels.
Other studies assessed helping behaviors rather than harming ones. For instance, Alice Isen
and Paula Levin (1972) found a very high correlation between the performance of helping
behavior and seemingly insignificant good fortune, such as finding a dime in the change slot of a
pay phone. In their experiments, subjects (unsuspecting ones, not solicited ones) were people
who went into a payphone. Some found a coin in the change slot, others did not. When they left
the phonebooth, and experimental confederate posing as a passerby dropped a pile of papers,
apparently accidentally, outside the phonebooth. Of the 16 people who found coins in the phone,
14 helped and 2 did not. Of the 25 people who did not find coins, only one person helped with
the dropped papers. Doris reports that overall, more than 1000 studies have produced results like
these about helping behavior alone (2002, 34). Given these sorts of findings, an attractive
explanation is that the mechanisms that produce behavior are context-specific, such that features
of one’s environment can be very significant determinants of one’s behavior. Although this sort
of explanation is largely rejected by some psychologists (such as Five Factor theorists, e.g.,
Lewis Goldberg (1993), and Robert McCrae & Paul Costa (1996)), it is found in the work that
emerges from later stages of the person-situation debate. For instance, although Funder and Ozer
(1983) attack situationist psychology, they accord a correlation of approximately .3 between
environment and behavior, and acknowledge this as significant (1983, 110-111). Hybrid theories
are now prominent and well-developed, such as the Cognitive-Affective System Theory of
Personality developed by Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda (Mischel & Shoda 1995, Mischel
1999). Mischel and Shoda explicitly incorporate environmental factors into their account of the
mechanisms responsible for the production of behavior in terms of what they describe as if-then
situation-behavior relations (Mischel and Shoda 1995, 248). Likewise, Doris also accounts for
behavior in terms of situation-specific dispositions (2002, Ch. 4).vii
Let’s apply this to the two psychological assumptions. A notable feature of the empirical
tradition of situationist psychology is that it is overtly concerned with explicitly moral behavior
(such as helping and harming) and with situations presenting moral dilemmas (such as whether
or not to cheat on a test, or whether or not to be obedient to a research protocol to the extent of
harming or even killing another person). Another notable feature is how surprising the results
are. Nobody predicted in advance that Milgram’s subjects would behave as they did; even
subjects themselves are poor predictors at how they would behave in such circumstances.
Likewise, in general we do not tend to suspect high correlations between tiny good fortune, such
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
as finding a coin, and helping someone. These two features, plus the demonstrated environmental
sensitivity of the psychology of action-production, provide substantial reason to doubt the
psychological assumptions found in the reliance on moral/conventional distinction testing.
Let’s start with the substantive assumption. If the substantive assumption is correct, then
either:
A] Studies of the production of action either do not tell us anything about our central moral
psychological capacities, or
B] The psychological capacities tapped in moral/conventional distinction tests account for
action-production, and so they should predict the results of empirical studies of the production of
morally relevant behavior.
For [A] to be the case, our central moral psychological capacities would be just those used in
providing verbal answers to hypothetical scenarios; all distinct capacities would be peripheral
moral psychological capacities at best. But this is dubious, even by the standards of theories that
rely on studies of our abilities to draw the moral/conventional distinction. After all, the scenarios
used in such studies concern the evaluation of actions. By independent standards, the production
of actions shows up as a centrally important topic. Introductory courses in moral philosophy
routinely characterize moral philosophy as the study of theories of right and wrong conduct.
Such theories, and everyday moral questions, concern what people should do—i.e., what actions
they should produce. So the notion that action production mechanisms are not central to moral
psychology should be treated as deeply doubtful.
[B] seems to be false. I know of no work suggesting that variations found in abilities to draw
the moral/psychological distinction predict, for example, variations in performance in Milgramtype scenarios. On the contrary, the assumption of would-be extensions of moral/conventional
testing to behavior is that action is produced by capacities that rely on information to which
agents have conscious, 1st person access before-the-fact, in abstraction from contexts that call for
response. The studies performed in the course of the person-situation debate call this into
question: people behaved in ways which surprised the agents themselves, which were not
predictable beforehand, and via mechanisms which seemed not to draw exclusively on
information available to agents from a 1st person subjective perspective.
Let’s turn to the methodological assumption exhibited by reliance on studies of the
moral/conventional distinction. If action-production mechanisms are of central importance to
moral psychology, then the situationist tradition of empirical studies of action calls this
assumption into doubt. What is revealed by this tradition is the context-sensitivity of our actionproduction capacities. If this is correct, then it is false that our central moral psychological
capacities can be studied in abstraction from interaction with actual people in actual contexts.
Context-sensitivity is not susceptible to context-free examination.
Turiel has been the most explicit about defending the method of relying on
moral/conventional studies. Early in his landmark 1983 statement of social domain theory, he
claims that a methodological assumption of his sort of position is that agents define, interpret,
and judge social relations (8). The implication is an assumption that when agents consider
hypothetical scenarios in relaxed conditions, they are doing the same thing as when they deal
with actual agents and actual actions in real contexts that call for real-time responses: putting
everything through a process of defining, judging, interpreting, and responding. At least partly
on the basis of this assumption, Turiel explicitly rejects a division between natural and
experimental contexts for the purposes of doing research on the structure of moral thought (1983,
22). Such rejection translates into implementation of the methodological assumption under
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
examination: moral/conventional tests assess moral psychological abilities in abstraction from
interactions with other agents in real contexts. Turiel explains the results of the Milgram studies
in terms of the coordination of different domains of social knowledge, which contain
correlatively different goals (193-210). He also relies on a 1980 literature review by Augusto
Blasi, claiming that, “. . . it can be concluded . . . that an empirical relation exists between
measures of moral judgment and measures of moral behavior.” (1983, 193).
Let’s examine how these considerations work as responses to the objections pressed here. The
interpretation of the Milgram results is plausible. But since this interpretation consists in an
application of social domain theory, its credentials have to be earned on the basis of the
empirical demonstration of social domain theory. Such demonstration relies centrally on studies
of our abilities to draw the moral/conventional distinction. So the interpretation of Milgram does
not count as independent evidence supporting social domain theory and defending it against the
questions being presently raised about its foundations. The interpretation is instead a
consequence of this theory.
The same goes for the explicit methodological assumption of social domain theory. Such
assumptions have to be vindicated by the body of work performed with them as a basis. They do
not count as data in favour of such bodies of work. If there are findings that call into question
such methodological assumptions, then they lose credibility. This seems to be the case with
social domain theory and situationist psychology: social domain theory might assume that agents
perform such interpretive processes, but the findings of the situationist tradition very much call
into question the extent to which the information to which agents have access in explicit thought
enters processes of action production. This aspect of social domain theory is particularly dubious
given the surprising nature of the situationist results. The context-sensitivity of action-production
demonstrated in the person-situation debate calls into question the rejection of the distinction
between natural and experimental contexts in the social domain tradition.
This leaves Blasi’s 1980 literature review. This is the most important aspect of Turiel’s
remarks since Blasi surveys a body of empirical studies independent of those performed by
social domain theorists. Although Turiel notes that Blasi’s review finds consistency between
thought and behavior for some topics but not for others (Turiel 1983, 191-2), he is inclined to see
the lesson of the review as supportive of the assumptions driving social domain theory. The truth
is more complex. Although Blasi starts his discussion of his findings by saying that there is “. . .
considerable support for the hypothesis that moral reasoning and moral action are statistically
related,” (1980, 37), he immediately qualifies this. There is high support for specific kinds of
moral reasoning: it has been found for the idea that delinquents and non-delinquents have
differences in moral reasoning, and also for the idea that individuals at higher stages of moral
reasoning, in a Kohlbergian sense, exhibit relatively greater resistance to conform their
judgments with others’ under social pressure. But little support was found for other ideas, such
as that, “. . . individuals of the postconventional level resist more than others the social pressure
to conform in their moral action.” (1980, 37). In other words, the findings are mixed. Mixed
results do not provide a firm basis for simple ideas about the relation between thought and action
such as that exhibited in the explicit statements of assumptions offered by Turiel. Blasi explicitly
states that, “What was not learned in reviewing these studies, the successful as well as the
unsuccessful, is the psychological meaning of significant statistical correlations between moral
reasoning and action.” (1980, 40). That is, his review does not deliver clear empirical support for
the idea that individuals produce actions by going through processes of interpretation first.
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The Moral/Conventional Distinction
The more recent review of studies about the production of action performed by Daniel
Wegner in The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) is illuminating here. On the basis of
examinations of studies of normal action, of the performance of action without experience of
agency, and of the experience of agency without action, Wegner argues that our first person
experience of “conscious will” is produced by mechanisms psychologically distinct from those
that produce action. He explicitly claims that, “The actual causal paths [from causes to action]
are not present in the person’s consciousness.” (2002, 68). Nevertheless, he allows that there
might be some sort of connection between the actual causes of action and what our experience of
agency tells us. On the simplest interpretation of this idea, thought and action might well turn out
to be well correlated because they are independent effects of a common cause, not because firstperson thought is part of the causal process that produces actions. This sort of view provides an
explanation of why the situationist results, such as the Milgram and Isen & Levin studies, are so
surprising: it’s because our first person experience of action is at least one step removed from the
actual processes that produce actions. Given this, we should treat our experiences of agency, and
the predictions made on the basis of such experiences, as fallible. Empirical studies should be
able to reveal this fallibility with surprising results. And they do.
The present remarks do not require that Wegner have delivered the truth about how actions
are produced. All that is required is an empirical basis for reasonable doubt about the
methodological claims offered by Turiel as structuring social domain theory. The combination of
the closer look at Blasi’s conclusions and at Wegner’s more recent work constitutes exactly this
basis. No convincing reply to the present objections to the two psychological assumptions can be
constructed from this part of Turiel’s work.
Conclusion
On the basis of 1] Strawson’s discussion of the reactive attitudes and moral responsibility, and
2] the lessons of the person-situation debate, I have argued that the assumptions exhibited by
foundational usage of studies of our abilities to make the moral/conventional distinction are
dubious. This is not the same thing as arguing against the use of such studies. On the contrary, I
hope to have shown that what is called for is a broadening of ideas about the content of morality
and about central moral psychological capacities, which includes the aspects of morality and
psychology addressed by such tests. The overall problem is one of unduly narrow reliance on
these tests, not the use of them per se.
With regard to morality, besides the evaluation of actions, I hope to have shown that it is
reasonable to conceive of this domain as centrally about both moral responsibility and the
production of actions. Accordingly, our central moral psychological capacities include at least
the following:
1] Those capacities used to evaluate actions, and which are directly tested by moral/conventional
distinction tests.
2] The reactive attitudes, as well as whatever mechanisms realize our abilities to recognize the
reactive attitudes when deployed by others.
3] Whatever capacities we have that produce action, especially in explicitly morally relevant
contexts, as studied and theorized about in the person-situation debate.
Maybe this leaves out something important, but it includes more than the work of Blair, Nichols,
Smetana, and Turiel.
One might quibble with this assessment. One might argue that the work of Blair, Nichols,
Smetana, Turiel and others has always been about a portion of our moral psychological
11
The Moral/Conventional Distinction
capacities, without comment on other portions For instance, Nichols’ work is explicitly an
account of “core” moral judgment, leaving open the possibility for other topics to come under the
rubric of less central portions. This might well be a fair assessment of Blair’s work, but I’m not
convinced for the others. Nichols clearly sees the sentimental rules theory as an account of a
basic capacity at the heart of the abilities both novice and expert moral practitioners. Some of his
arguments focus on the continuity of infant and adult abilities with regard to the
moral/conventional distinction (2004, 93-4). Moreover, Chapter 5 of Sentimental Rules is
explicitly about motivation—i.e., the connection between the sentimental rules theory and
questions about the production of actions. This idea is even less plausible for social domain
theory. We have already looked at Turiel’s explicit remarks about assumptions about relations
between thought and action, as well as his reliance on Blasi’s literature review on this very topic.
Placing our abilities to distinguish moral from conventional transgressions in the context of a
wider array of moral psychological abilities is one half of the task of putting this distinction in its
place. The other half is determining what such studies tell us, once we have them in perspective.
It is reasonable to think that moral/conventional distinction studies tell us something about the
ways in which actions are produced. Blasi revealed correlations between thought and action for
some topics; this is consistent with Wegner’s more recent model of action production even
though it removes conscious thought from the processes of action production. Moreover, there
are Blair’s results about psychopaths, who fail the moral/conventional tests. This is very
interesting, since many, if not all, psychopaths also display insensitivities to moral values in their
behavior. They do the wrong thing at times when the rest of us would not. This conjunction of
findings is tantalizing, but no more than that. The moral/conventional tests offer interesting hints
about action production that call for other kinds of assessment.
Something similar goes for attributions of moral responsibility via the reactive attitudes.
Again, psychopaths are the relevant group on which to focus. Psychopaths pass theory of mind
tests, but they fail moral/conventional distinction tests. They are also marked by problematic
shallowness of emotion (Hare 1993, Prinz 2004, Spiecker 1988) and apparently by a general
insensitivity to the moral claims placed on their behavior by others. Piers Benn has argued that a
deficit in reactive attitude abilities is what constitutes someone as a psychopath (1999). This is
perhaps too strong, but the combination of these findings about psychopathy suggests that the
moral/conventional distinction tests tap something important about this condition. There are
interesting hints here, but more research explicitly about the reactive attitudes and psychopathy is
needed.
What about the moral/conventional tests themselves—do they make any unique contributions
to the study of moral psychology? It is reasonable to take the tests at face value: they are
explicitly designed to assess the structure of moral thought. More specifically, they are about the
structure of verbal responses and rationalizations that articulate 1st person thoughts about
hypothetical examples. It is important to distinguish between the structure and content of moral
thought. Ordinary people are in touch with the content of their thought about explicitly moral
actions. They know whether they consider actions of certain kinds to be wrong, and whether they
consider actions of one kind to be more serious than actions of another kind. However, they are
largely blind to the structural features of their thought and utterances—i.e., the patterns of
dependence on authority or transferability that show up in their responses. These patterns are
what the moral/conventional distinction tests reveal, and since this goes beyond the content of
ordinary moral thought, this is a genuine contribution. The unique contribution of
moral/conventional distinction testing is the scientific mapping of the contours of our manifest
12
The Moral/Conventional Distinction
image of ourselves and others. The problem that arises for social domain theory, Blair’s VIM
theory and Nichols’ sentimental rules theory is that they place these revelations about our
manifest image at the foundation of moral psychology. But moral psychology is reasonably taken
to be about more than our manifest image of ourselves and others: it’s also about real world
interactions among people, and very important features of such interactions fall beyond the
contours of the manifest image.
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Notes
i
Some other notable discussions of moral/conventional tests: Susan Dwyer (2003) suggests that these
studies can be used to fill in the details of a Strawsonian account of moral responsibility. A recent sampling
and discussion of contemporary work in empirical moral psychology uses the work of Turiel and Blair on
the moral/conventional distinction as one of three central contemporary traditions (Saxe 2005), which
attests to the increasing prominence of these studies.
ii
See Nichols 2004, 11-16 for discussion of Blair’s position.
iii
Since Nichols and Blair rest very strongly on the moral/conventional distinction, whereas the social
domain tradition includes other data, it is arguably fair to say that they are committed to a view of morality
as only about the evaluation of actions, while social domain theory is committed to a view of morality as
primarily about the evaluation of actions. Nothing turns on this issue for present purposes.
iv
The work of John Martin Fischer (1994) and Mark Ravizza (Fischer & Ravizza 1998) is perhaps most
closely tied to Strawson among contemporary theories of responsibility.
v
Self references removed
vi
Other discussions: Athanassoulis 2001, Harman 1999, 2000, Kupperman 2001, Merritt 2000, Miller
2003, Montmarquet 2003, Railton 2004, and Sreenivisan 2002. Accounts of the debate can be found in
Ross & Nisbett 1991 and Funder 1999.
vii
See Doris 1998, 2002 for extended discussion of these and other experiments in this tradition.