At most, our moral judgments being determined by our emo- tions might show that in some sense we are not responsible for them (but cf. Korsgaard 1996a, pp. 188–212). In addition, our being driven by the wrong emotions might well put some kinds of moral virtue out of reach. May (pp. 230–37) never sounds more Kantian than when he closes Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind with a discussion of moral enhancement. Korsgaard (1996a, p. 324) claims “it is not an accident that the two major philosophers in our tradition who thought of ethics in terms of practical reason – Aristotle and Kant – were also the two most concerned with the methods of moral education.” Neither of them premised their moral thought on an assumption that we were guaranteed or likely to be rational, but they also did not think it followed that when making moral judgments, we need not try to choose rationally. In fact, Kant does not exactly think that we ought to try to be rational (cf. Korsgaard 2009b, pp. 153–58). He thinks we ought to try to act as a free will would, and that this comes to the same thing as trying to be rational. As I understand it, Kant’s(1996, pp. 4:440–55 or 5:28–33) basic idea here is straightforward. It begins with the claim that we only get to determine our actions if we have free will. It follows that there are no ways we can deter- mine ourselves to act which are inconsistent with our having free will. In that sense, when trying to determine how we act, we can take it for granted that we have free will. That claim naturally extends to others when we are trying to make judgments about what they should do (cf. Korsgaard 1996a, pp. 200–12). As I mentioned, Kant (e.g., 1996, pp. 4:451–52) draws a con- nection between free will and rationality. On his view, reason is fundamentally just our capacity to be genuinely active, and it has principles because there are conditions of the different ways we might be genuinely active (cf. Korsgaard 2018, pp. 132–34; 2009a, pp. 32–38). When Kant says we can take it for granted that we are able to act with free will, he is also saying we can take it for granted that we are able to be rational. It does not mat- ter how convinced we are that we are driven by forces like our emotions. What matters is that we still face the deliberative task of trying to choose our moral judgments for ourselves. Kantians like Korsgaard argue that there is a proper way of going about that task, and they are philosophical optimists because their argu- ments do not appeal to our desires or emotions (cf. e.g., Street 2010, pp. 369–70; Velleman 2009, pp. 147–49). If I am right about Korsgaard’s commitments, at least, then philosophical and empirical optimism are separate. Behind much of the debate in which May is engaging, however, is an assumption that the former requires the latter. The only way that reason can be central to morality seems to be if it is central to our moral psychology. That assumption comes quite naturally if we do not separate “speculative” or “theoretical” questions from “practical” ones in quite as radical a way as Kant did (cf. Allison 2004, pp. 47–49; Korsgaard 1996a, pp. 167–76, 201– 205). In other words, the assumption that the two kinds of opti- mism go together is itself anti-Kantian. It supposes there is no deep, perspectival divide between psychology and ethics, or the tasks of trying to explain a part of the world and trying to act in it. Of course, not everyone is a Kantian, and not every Kantian is like Korsgaard. As I mentioned earlier, the point I want to make here is one about where May’s book fits into the literature. Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind is a challenge to pessimists about moral reason, but a challenge made on the pessimist’s terms. If it succeeds, it shows their position is undermotivated even granting their philosophical assumptions. A Kantian like Korsgaard, however – an optimist in one sense – would not grant those assumptions to the pessimist. They would be unset- tled by arguments for the claims May’s granting, but not other- wise for the claims he is challenging. The space between rationalism and sentimentalism: A perspective from moral development Joshua Rottman Department of Psychology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604. jrottman@fandm.edu www.joshuarottman.com doi:10.1017/S0140525X18002698, e165 Abstract May interprets the prevalence of non-emotional moral intuitions as indicating support for rationalism. However, research in developmental psychology indicates that the mechanisms under- lying these intuitions are not always rational in nature. Specifically, automatic intuitions can emerge passively, through processes such as evolutionary preparedness and enculturation. Although these intuitions are not always emotional, they are not clearly indicative of reason. In Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind, May (2018) acknowl- edges that moral judgments and behaviors are frequently pro- duced by automatic intuitions. May argues that intuitive cognitive processing is best categorized as “reasoning” because it is not heavily dependent upon emotional responses. Thus, May aligns these intuitions with a rationalist (rather than sentimental- ist) framework and suggests that these intuitions are not substan- tively threatened by debunking arguments. However, to successfully vindicate moral cognition on the grounds that it is rooted in reason, it is crucial to determine that intuitive moral cognition truly arises from inferential processes – ideally, those that move from well-justified premises to logically warranted con- clusions. Otherwise, moral intuitions can more easily be dis- missed, because debunking arguments rely primarily on the irrationality or unreliability of everyday moral judgments rather than on their emotionality (e.g., Sinnott-Armstrong 2011). Therefore, regardless of whether emotions are the primary fuel for moral judgments and actions, it is crucial to determine the extent to which these judgments and actions are aligned with rea- son to prevent them from being discredited. Moral cognition, like all cognition, involves information pro- cessing. However, the complexity of this processing can vary widely. Some moral evaluations result from careful consideration of clearly represented concepts, whereas others involve no internal representations and are therefore considerably more inflexible and error-prone (e.g., Crockett 2013; Cushman 2013). Therefore, even if moral competence can be described as operating in accordance with certain principles (e.g., intentionally causing harmful out- comes is morally worse than inadvertently allowing harm to occur), this is consistent with a range of psychological 40 Commentary: May: Précis of Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18002108 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Franklin & Marshall College, on 11 Sep 2019 at 17:46:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at