• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-160
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• 2018

The present article reviews recent arguments on the moral-conventional distinction in moral judgment and discusses the implications for moral psychology research. Traditional research on moral judgment has considered both the evaluation of transgressive actions of others and the categorization of the norms on the moral-conventional dimension. Kohlberg, Piaget, and Turiel (1983) regard moral principles to be clearly distinguished from social-conventional norms and suggested criteria for the moral-conventional distinction. They assume that the moral domain should be specifically related to the value of care and justice, and the judgment for the moral transgression should be universal and objective. The cognitive developmental approach or social domain theory, which has been generally accepted by moral psychology researchers, is recently being challenged. In this article, we introduce three different approaches that criticize the assumptions for the moral-conventional distinction, namely, moral sentimentalism, moral parochialism, and moral pluralism. Moral sentimentalism emphasizes the role of emotion in moral judgment and suggests that moral and conventional norms can be continuously distributed on an affective-nonaffective dimension. Moral parochialism, based on the evidence from anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, asserts that norm transgression can be the object of moral judgment only when the action is relevant to the survival and reproduction of a group and the individuals within the group; judgment for moral transgression can be as relative as that for conventional transgression. Moral pluralism suggests multiple moral intuitions that vary with culture and individual, and questions the assumption of the social domain theory that morality is confined to care and justice. These new perspectives imply that the moral-conventional distinction may not properly tap into the nature of moral judgment and that further research is needed.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.114
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• pp.305-335
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• 2016

In the eighteenth century, the scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith share the idea that morality comes from moral sense, which is a feeling of approval or disapproval of agent's motive and action. However, they have the different views in explaining the mechanism that generates the moral sentiments. Hutcheson takes a moral sense to be a unique mental faculty that is innate to all humans, and regards it as being guaranteed by supernatural apparatus like divine Providence. Hume and Smith reject Hutcheson's concept of internal moral sense and take a stage further Hutcheson's projects of internalisation by naturalizing morality in terms of the principle of sympathy. It is widely held that Hume's moral sentimentalism is essentially similar to Adam Smith's. Though there are important points of contact between Smith's account of sympathy and Hume's, the differences are considerable. The chief of them lies in the fact that Hume grounds our approval of virtue on our recognition of its utility and convention, and Smith does not. Smith grounds our approval of virtue on the impartial spectator's judgment, i.e., conscience. Hence for Smith, the impartial spectator is the one that bridges the gap between particularity and universality and works the vehicle of practical reason. Given this, in this paper, first, I will clarify the difference between Hume's and Adam Smith's understandings of sympathy. Second, I will elucidate how they explain the process to produce the moral sentiments based on their understandings of sympathy. I shall finally explicate in what way Hume's and Smith's theories on sympathy work as moral normativity.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.53
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• pp.219-249
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• 2018

This essay attempts a historical examination of educational function of the novel. It pays attention to the eighteenth century sentimentalism, and its historical vicissitudes up to early twenties century. The eighteenth century is the period in which debates on the nature of emotion and its moral and aesthetic role have passionately taken place and the modern paradigm of thought on affect has been formed. This is why "affect revival phenomenon" in the late twenties century goes back to this period. This essay finds in Adam Smith the most sophisticated arguments on sympathy in their relation to the development of the novel; it examines the relationship of Smith's argument with modern novel in the tradition of sentimentalism, and its revision in modernist novel. Through this examination, it discusses how cognitive and non-cognitive approaches, the two representative positions in contemporary thinking on emotion/affect, have revised and transformed the eighteenth century sentimentalism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.117-133
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• 2018

This article examines Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey in the context of eighteenth-century British travel literature. While literary critics generally read Sterne's work as a sentimental novel, contemporary readers initially interpreted the text as a travel narrative. It is my argument that travel writing, particularly the motion entailed in travelling, plays a significant role in Sterne's critical examination of sympathy and its cultural function during this period. By narrating in great detail his narrator Yorick's mobility and the effects it has on his sentimental encounters, Sterne illustrates how sympathy is not only difficult to activate and therefore requires added stimulation in the form of motion, but also does not necessarily result in charitable actions, a moral failure that is dramatized by the literal distance Yorick maintains from the objects of his sympathy. Calling to mind the figurative distance that constitutes an integral part of Adam Smith's formulation of sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the distance Yorick establishes through his travels indicates sympathy's failure to bridge the emotional and socioeconomic distance between individuals, thereby highlighting sympathy's limitations as a moral instrument. I argue that by using Yorick's repeated acts of sympathy to explore the problems of sentimentalism, Sterne both draws from and innovates the tradition of employing imaginary voyages to engage in philosophical inquiries.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.144
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• pp.339-369
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• 2017

Mengzi's biological analogies of man's moral tendency need to be analyzed in order to understand his ethical perspective because he uses lots of analogies to advocate his own moral naturalism. The biological analogies he uses are composed of human body, plant's seeds and sprouts. First, Mengzi thinks that human beings have inborn moral nature as if our bodies are given and plants can be grown from their seeds. His ethical approach to define morality in terms of natural properties such as the Four Sprouts(四端) causes a philosophical debate with Gaozi who thinks that morality cannot be described by natural property. Second, we have a moral preference as if we have a physical desire. This kind of moral sentimentalism emphasizing the preference is continued to Jeong Yakyong's ethical theory that nature is a preference(性嗜好說). Third, if we examine our preference and desire, then we can find that the moral preference is more valuable than the physical desire. Fourth, the biological analogies accepts monism that mind and body are composed of material force(氣). For this reason, the innate moral tendency is manifested on body such as a facial expression, a visceral reaction, and affect. Finally, Mengzi's theory of Four Sprouts causes two different interpretation. One is Zhuxi's interpretation that Duan端 is the visible end(緖) of a thread out of pack, the other is Jeong Yakyong's interpretation that Duan端 is a starting point(始) to cultivate virtues. While Zhuxi considers the Four Sprouts as a clue to find virtues in one's mind, Jeong Yakyong believes that we can cultivate our virtues by preserving the Four Sprouts.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.123
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• pp.1-26
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• 2012

Ist der Emotivismus eine $mi{\ss}lungene$ Theorie? Nach der Meinung von Jesse Prinz ist es nicht so. Auf der Humeschen Tradition stehend behauptet er, $da{\ss}$ ein moralisches Urteil ohne das Sentiment von Billigung oder $Mi{\ss}billigung$ nicht zustandekommen kann. Ihm zufolge ist Emotion nicht allein mit moralischen Urteilen verbunden, sondern auch eine notwendige und hinreichende Bedingung $daf{\ddot{u}}r$. Der Grund dessen, warum der Emotivisums nicht ${\ddot{u}}berzeugend$ erschien, liegt darin, $da{\ss}$ $f{\ddot{u}}r$ diesen die Verbindung von Emotion und Moral nur auf den $Gef{\ddot{u}}hlsausdruck$ $beschr{\ddot{a}}nkt$ bleibt. Zwar stellt das moralische Urteil Sentiment dar, aber das bleibt eben nicht als ein $blo{\ss}$ $Gef{\ddot{u}}hlsausdruckendes$. Denn die $Moralit{\ddot{a}}t$ ist nicht die einfache Projektion eines subjektiven Zustandes, vielmehr konstruiert die emotionale Reaktion von Billigung oder $Mi{\ss}billigung$ das moralische Urteil. Daher muss der projektistische Gesichtspunkt des expressionistischen Emotivismus modifiziert werden, so $da{\ss}$ der oft dem Emotivismus kritisch zugeschriebene moralische Nihilismus zu ${\ddot{u}}berwinden$ ist. In diesem Zusammenhang $schl{\ddot{a}}g$ Prinz den konstruktiven Sentimentalismus vor, der als eine hybride Theorie des Moralbegriffs von 'biologiscehn Tatsachen' und 'sozialer Konstruktion' darauf zielt, im moralischen Leben eine Stelle auszumanchen, wo Evolution und Kutur zueinander zusammentreffen $k{\ddot{o}}nnen$.