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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- PART ONE THEORY
- PART TWO EMPIRICAL ADEQUACY
- 4 The Problem of Descriptive Adequacy
- 5 The Moral Grammar Hypothesis
- 6 Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: A Formal Model
- PART THREE OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES
- PART FOUR CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Six Trolley Problem Experiments
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Moral Grammar Hypothesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- PART ONE THEORY
- PART TWO EMPIRICAL ADEQUACY
- 4 The Problem of Descriptive Adequacy
- 5 The Moral Grammar Hypothesis
- 6 Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: A Formal Model
- PART THREE OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES
- PART FOUR CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Six Trolley Problem Experiments
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is the merit of the Common Law that it decides the case first and determines the principle afterwards. Looking at the forms of logic, it might be inferred that when you have a minor premise and a conclusion, there must be a major, which you are also prepared then and there to assert. But in fact lawyers, like other men, frequently see well enough how they ought to decide on a given state of facts without being very clear as to the ratio decidendi. … It is only after a series of determinations on the same subject matter, that it becomes necessary to “reconcile the cases,” as it is called, that is, by a true induction to state the principle which has until then been obscurely felt.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Codes, and the Arrangement of Law”In Chapter 4, I introduced a family of trolley problems and began to discuss some of their implications for the cognitive science of moral judgment. In the next two chapters, I outline a provisional solution to the problem of descriptive adequacy with respect to these cases, which I refer to as the moral grammar hypothesis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Elements of Moral CognitionRawls' Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment, pp. 101 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011