Moral Motivation

Abstract

Abstract This final chapter develops the value-representing theory of valence (pleasure and displeasure) into an account of moral motivation, looking especially at the question of how much of moral motivation (if any) is “built in” (innate), as opposed to being culturally constructed via processes of conditioning and affective learning. With hedonism and egoism having been refuted over the course of the previous chapters, the task in this one is to consider whether or not there are human-specific innate foundations for prosociality and altruism, and for motivation by moral norms. The chapter also discusses evidence of an innate sense of fairness, as well as for innate expectations about social groups. Evidence for these claims is reviewed and discussed, focusing especially on evidence of the very early emergence of altruism and norm-based thinking and evaluation in early infancy. Finally, before summarizing the main argument of the book, the sense in which the account of motivation provided here is a kind of Humeanism is discussed.