Moral Cognition

Abstract

We associate moral cognition with categories like conscience, guilt, condemnation, repentance, etc. We feel intuitively that moral cognition is in some degree opposed to ‘pragmatic cognition’. Let us consider the latter first. We assume that pragmatic cognition of an individual may consist of three elements: one registers a goal, another some means directed at reaching that goal; yet another is a ‘calculating’ device for finding the ‘profit’ of reaching the goal and evaluating possible losses associated with particular means. In the simplest cases these calculations can be made in monetary units; in general, however, more refined individual evaluations may be used, called ‘utilities’. A schema of an individual with pragmatic cognition is as shown in Figure 1.1.