CAUSAL MODELS: THE REPRESENTATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MORAL JUDGMENT

This chapter has three objectives. First, we formulate a coarse model of the process of moral judgment to locate the role of causal analysis. We propose that causal analysis occurs in the very earliest stages of interpreting an event and that early moral appraisals depend on it as do emotional responses and deliberative reasoning. Second, we argue that causal models offer the best representation for formulating psychological principles of moral appraisal. Causal models directly represent causes, consequences, and the structural relations among them. In other words, they represent mechanisms. Finally, we speculate that moral appraisals reflect the similarity between an idealized causal model of moral behavior and a causal model of the event being judged.