Abstract
There is a long-standing philosophical debate about the role of emotions in moral judgment. Some argue that emotions are inessential; we can make moral judgments without having an emotional response. Others, so-called sentimentalists, argue that emotions play an essential role. Philosophers have debated these positions for ages with no resolution. Intuitions vary as to whether emotions are essential to morality. The stalemate can be broken by moving beyond intuitions an empirically investigating the psychological processes that underlie moral judgment. Such methods are delivering results that strongly favor sentimentalism. Healthy moral judgments seem to depend on emotions. But sentimentalism faces a number of serious philosophical objections, which have not been directly addressed in the scientific literature. This is where self-directed emotions come in. Self-directed emotions have been comparatively neglected in the recent flurry of empirical research on moral judgment.
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Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to Anita Konzelmann Ziv and other members of the Basel workshop on self-evaluation. My deepest debt is to Axel Seemann, whose detailed comments served as my main guide while revising.
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Prinz, J. (2011). Sentimentalism and Self-Directed Emotions. In: Konzelmann Ziv, A., Lehrer, K., Schmid, H. (eds) Self-Evaluation. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 116. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1266-9_8
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