Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment

by Shaun Nichols

Sentimental Rules is an ambitious and highly interdisciplinary work, which proposes and defends a new theory about the nature and evolution of moral judgment. In it, philosopher Shaun Nichols develops the theory that emotions play a critical role in both the psychological and the cultural underpinnings of basic moral judgment. Nichols argues that our norms prohibiting the harming of others are fundamentally associated with our emotional responses to those harms, and that such 'sentimental rules' enjoy an advantage in cultural evolution, which partly explains the success of certain moral norms. This has sweeping and exciting implications for philosophical ethics.

Nichols builds on an explosion of recent intriguing experimental work in psychology on our capacity for moral judgment and shows how this empirical work has broad import for enduring philosophical problems. The result is an account that illuminates fundamental questions about the character of moral emotions and the role of sentiment and reason in how we make our moral judgments. This work should appeal widely across philosophy and the other disciplines that comprise cognitive science.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Foppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy should have read Nicholas Capaldi's "Hume's Place in Moral Philosophy", as his approach seems to me to be broadly Humean (even if the author doesn't always recognize this). Anyway, somewhat less innovative/groundbreaking than I would have hoped, although it probably does introduce a few new thoughts into the field, and it might even encourage some philosophers to consider a slightly more empirically based approach to ethics. As such, the author (in my reading) provides Hume with a bit of data (something He would've appreciated). And while I'm inclined to agree with his observations, it felt as though there were quite a few steps and objections missing from the book that I would've tried to answer in there.
Nichols broadly argues that emotions provide the basis for a lot of value judgments, as well as our altruistic behavior, and that societal norms that are based on such emotions are, after being introduced, more likely to become part of a cultural tradition than norms that aren't based on them.
The biggest problem I had with his approach is that he ignores the question why stuff becomes a norm if it isn't related to 'basic emotions'. It probably is possible to look into a few of these changes over the centuries and try to relate these changes in salience to changes in background/widely held beliefs concerning the world or whatnot, but it would've been better if these issues had at least been mentioned in the book. In all, I'd expected a little bit more content.

[Jane]

the more I read of this, the better it is. not only very interesting, but also extremely applicable to life. which is what I started reading philosophy for in the first place. ironic? no! read this book and find out why.