Empirical research apparently suggests that emotions play an integral role in moral judgment. The evidence for sentimentalism is diverse, but it is rather weak and has generally been overblown. There is no evidence that our moral concepts themselves are partly composed of or necessarily dependent on emotions. While the moral/conventional distinction may partly characterize the essence of moral judgment, moral norms needn’t be backed by affect in order to transcend convention. Priming people with incidental emotions like disgust doesn’t make them moralize actions. Finally, moral judgment can only be somewhat impaired by damage to areas of the brain that are generally associated with emotional processing (as in acquired sociopathy and frontotemporal dementia). While psychopaths exhibit both emotional and rational deficits, the latter alone can explain any minor defects in moral cognition.
