Moral judgment

In philosophy

Philosopher David Hume claims that morality is based more on perceptions than on logical reasoning. This means that people's morality is based more on their emotions and feelings than on a logical analysis of any given situation. Hume regards morals as linked to passion, love, happiness, and other emotions and therefore not based on reason. Jonathan Haidt agrees, arguing in his social intuitionist model that reasoning concerning a moral situation or idea follows an initial intuition. Haidt's fundamental stance on moral reasoning is that "moral intuitions (including moral emotions) come first and directly cause moral judgments"; he characterizes moral intuition as "the sudden appearance in consciousness of a moral judgment, including an affective valence (good-bad, like-dislike), without any conscious awareness of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion".