The Wrong and the Bad

The fundamental element of a cognitive account of moral judgment will be some form of representation. Two kinds of value representations need to be distinguished: value representations and rule representations. Value representations register valence for particular courses of action. For instance an organism might represent touching a certain wire as a bad thing. Such representations feed directly into behavior. Rule representations involve more than registering a bad value. They can involve complex representations composed of abstract concepts like impermissible, harm, and knowledge. This chapter argues that value representations cannot provide an adequate account of moral judgment, and that we must invoke rule representations to explain key features of moral judgment. In particular, it is difficult to capture the distinctive nature and specificity of wrongness judgments without adverting to structured rules.