Moral Learning: Conceptual foundations and normative relevance.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Moral Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Learning theory has advanced significantly, revealing powerful experience-based learning mechanisms.
• These advances enable the acquisition of abstract causal and evaluative representations.
• Developments in neuroscience complement learning theory, allowing a reevaluation of moral psychology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the distinctive contributions of a learning perspective to moral psychology.
• To reframe fundamental questions about moral understanding acquisition and behavioral guidance.
• To investigate how learning theory and neuroscience can explain moral judgment patterns.

Main Methods:

• Review of recent advances in learning theory and their implications for moral psychology.
• Integration of findings from neuroscience research on spatial learning and infant behavior.
• Application of learning principles to understand abstract representations and intuitive moral judgments.

Main Results:

• Experience-based learning facilitates the acquisition of abstract causal and evaluative representations.
• Spatial learning models and infant research demonstrate non-perspectival expected-value representations.
• General mental processes like causal and empathic simulation support spontaneous moral learning.

Conclusions:

• Moral learning is integral to acquiring and updating causal and evaluative models.
• This perspective offers a new understanding of intuitive moral judgments, including complex dilemmas.
• Moral understanding can develop autonomously without innate moral faculties, guided by experience.