Description
Book SynopsisMoral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules proposes that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols argues that statistical learning can help answer a wide range of questions about moral thought: Why do people think that rules apply to actions rather than consequences? Why do people expect new rules to be focused on actions rather than consequences? How do people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted? How do people decide that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group? The resulting account has both empiricist and rationalist features: since the learning procedures are domain-general, the result is an empiricist theory of a key part of moral development, and since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference, the account entails that crucial par
Trade ReviewThe book should be read widely, not just by ethicists interested in the origins and rationality of commonsense morality but by philosophers and scientists concerned with moral development, moral education, and how moral knowledge might be implemented in AI. * Joshua May, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Ethics *
A valuable addition to the literature concerning the formation and origin of moral rules, Rational Rules retains a firm commitment to the role played by Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * R. T. Lee, Trinity College, CHOICE *
...very sophisticated discussions of statistical inference and learning theory with an equally sophisticated discussion of what this kind of learning might mean for a range of metaethical concerns... * James Bernard Murphy, Metascience *
Table of ContentsPreface PART I: RATIONALITY AND RULES 1: Rationality and morality: Setting the stage 2: The wrong and the bad: On the nature of moral representations PART II: STATISTICAL LEARNING OF NORM SYSTEMS 3: Scope 4: Priors 5: Closure 6: Status PART III: PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS 7: Moral empiricism 8: Rational rules and normative propriety 9: Rational rules, relativism, and universalism 10: Is it rational to be moral?
