morality and critical thinking

Leading in Context

Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership

How Is Critical Thinking Different From Ethical Thinking?

By Linda Fisher Thornton

Ethical thinking and critical thinking are both important and it helps to understand how we need to use them together to make decisions.

Critical thinking helps us narrow our choices. Ethical thinking includes values as a filter to guide us to a choice that is ethical.
Using critical thinking, we may discover an opportunity to exploit a situation for personal gain. It’s ethical thinking that helps us realize it would be unethical to take advantage of that exploit.

Develop An Ethical Mindset Not Just Critical Thinking

Critical thinking can be applied without considering how others will be impacted. This kind of critical thinking is self-interested and myopic.

“Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of one’s own, or one’s groups’, vested interest.” Defining Critical Thinking, The Foundation For Critical Thinking

Critical thinking informed by ethical values is a powerful leadership tool. Critical thinking that sidesteps ethical values is sometimes used as a weapon.

When we develop leaders, the burden is on us to be sure the mindsets we teach align with ethical thinking. Otherwise we may be helping people use critical thinking to stray beyond the boundaries of ethical business.

Unl eash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership

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Critical Thinking and Moral Reasoning: Can You Have One without the Other?

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Introduction: Since both components critical thinking and moral reasoning are considered to be major phenomena, the development of which is a priority of all world education policies, they are paid a lot of attention in foreign countries. However, foreign studies have only made a little mention of examining their relationship and integrity as well as until recently, each dimension has been examined separately in Slovakia and there is no piece of evidence showing the relationship between them. Based on this, we have formulated the following scientific problem: Is there a relationship between critical thinking and moral reasoning? Methods and respondents: The basic measurement tool of our research was the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal used to determine the level of critical thinking. The level of moral reasoning was investigated by Lind´s Moral Competence Test. The examined sample consisted of the available selection of the 2nd and 3rd year teacher study programme students...

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Moral education programmes which concentrate exclusively on the process of developing critical thinking skills are criticized for their one-sided and incomplete conception of the rational enterprise. Rational moral thinking calls for both criticism and conformity to standards, and critical thinking is vacuous and impotent until it is linked with the prima facie intuitions which constitute a moral way of life. The fostering of rational moral behaviour, therefore, requires – in addition to the development of critical skills – an element of instruction and attention to moral content. Moral instruction is a necessary component of moral education programmes, and can help educators to promote rational morality and encourage pupils to avoid the extremes of moral bigotry and nihilism.

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Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters

Defining critical thinking dispositions and why they’re crucial..

Posted September 23, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Another way to think about and measure critical thinking is to include aspects of motivational dispositions.
Dispositions include open-mindedness and a willingness to be reflective when evaluating information.
People scoring low in critical thinking dispositions tend to “keep it simple” when something is complex.
Critical thinking dispositions help individuals avoid oversimplification and can facilitate awareness of bias.

Critical thinking springs from the notion of reflective thought proposed by Dewey (1933), who borrowed from the work of philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce. Reflective thought was defined as the process of suspending judgment, remaining open-minded, maintaining a healthy skepticism, and taking responsibility for one’s own development (Gerber et al., 2005; Stoyanov & Kirshner, 2007).

Kurland (1995) suggested, “Critical thinking is concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed to emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. Thus, critical thinking involves… considering all possibilities… being precise; considering a variety of possible viewpoints and explanations; weighing the effects of motives and biases; being concerned more with finding the truth than with being right…being aware of one’s own prejudices and biases” (p. 3). Thus, being able to perspective-take and becoming conscious of one’s own biases are potential benefits of critical thinking capacities.

Reviews of the critical thinking literature (e.g., Bensley, 2023) suggest that the assessment of this construct ought to include aspects of motivational dispositions. Numerous frameworks of critical thinking dispositions have been proposed (e.g., Bensley, 2018; Butler & Halpern, 2019; Dwyer, 2017); some commonly identified dispositions are open-mindedness, intellectual engagement, and a proclivity to take a reflective stance or approach to evaluating information and the views and beliefs of both oneself and others. Demir (2022) posited that critical thinking dispositions reflect persons’ attitudes toward and routine ways of responding to new information and diverging ideas, willingness to engage in nuanced and complex rather than either/or reductionistic thinking, and perseverance in attempts to understand and resolve complex problems.

Other examples of dispositions are inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, tolerance for ambiguity, thinking about thinking, honesty in assessing or evaluating biases, and willingness to reconsider one’s own views and ways of doing things (Facione et al., 2001). Individual personality attributes associated with these proclivities include a need for cognition (a desire for intellectual stimulation), which is positively associated with critical thinking, and the need for closure (a motivated cognitive style in which individuals prefer predictability, firm answers, and rapid decision making ) and anti-intellectualism (a resentment of “the life of the mind” and those who represent it), both negatively associated with critical thinking.

Further, an ideological component that can impede critical thinking is dogmatism . In addition, rigid, dichotomous thinking impedes critical thinking in that it oversimplifies the complexity of social life in a pluralistic society (Bensley, 2023; Cheung et al., 2002; Halpern & Dunn, 2021) and tries to reduce complicated phenomena and resolve complex problems via “either/or” formulations and simplistic solutions.

In other words, folks with low critical thinking dispositions would tend to “keep it simple” when something is really quite complicated, and think it absolute terms and categories rather than seeing “the gray” in between the black and white extremes.

In sum, critical thinking dispositions are vitally important because they may help individuals avoid oversimplifying reality; they also permit perspective-taking and can facilitate their awareness of diversity and systematic biases, such as racial or gender bias . Some research has indicated that critical thinking dispositions uniquely contribute to academic performance beyond general cognition (Ren et al., 2020), and may help to reduce unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy beliefs (Bensley, 2023; Lantian et al., 2021).

But before we can study the potential impact of critical thinking dispositions, it is necessary to have a reliable, valid, and hopefully brief measure for this construct. I will discuss the development and validation of a measure of critical thinking dispositions in another post.

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Bensley, D.A. (2018). Critical thinking in psychology and everyday life: A guide to effective thinking . New York: Worth Publishers.

Butler, H.A., & Halpern, D.F. (2019). Is critical thinking a better model of intelligence? In Robert J. Sternberg (Ed.) The Nature of Intelligence (pp. 183–96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cheung, C.-K, Rudowicz. E., Kwan, A., & Yue, X.. (2002). Assessing university students’ general and specific criticalthinking. College Student Journal, 36 , 504 – 25.

Demir, E. (2022). An examination of high school students’ critical thinking dispositions and analytical thinking skills. Journal of Pedagogical Research, 6 , 190–200. https://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.202217357

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process . Lexington: Heath and Company.

Dwyer, C. P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines . Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Facione, P., Facione, N,C,, & Giancarlo, C.A.F. (2001(. California Critical Disposition Inventory . Millbrae: California Academic Press.

Gerber, S., Scott, L., Clements, D.H., & Sarama, J. (2005). Instructor influence on reasoned argument in discussion boards. Educational Technology, Research & Development, 53 , 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504864

Halpern, D. F., & Dunn, D.S. (2021). Critical thinking: A model of intelligence for solving real-world problems. Journal of Intelligence, 9 , 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9020022

Kurland, D. (1995). I know what it says… What does it mean? Critical skills for critical reading . Belmont: Wadsworth.

Lantian, A., Bagneux, V., Delouvee, S., & Gauvrit, N. (2021). Maybe a free thinker but not a critical one: High conspiracybelief is associated with low critical thinking ability. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35 , 674 – 84. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3790

Ren, X., Tong, Y., Peng, P. & Wang, T. (2020). Critical thinking predicts academic performance beyond general cognitiveability: Evidence from adults and children. Intelligence, 82 , 101487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101487

Stoyanov, S., & Kirschner, P. ( 2007). Effect of problem solving support and cognitive styles on idea generation:Implications for technology-enhanced learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 , 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2007.10782496

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Critical Thinking, Creativity, Ethical Reasoning: A Unity of Opposites

First Online: 01 January 2009

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Richard Paul 3 &
Linda Elder 4

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In this chapter, we argue for an intimate interrelationship between critical thinking, creative thinking and ethical reasoning. Indeed we argue for an underlying unity between them. We begin by establishing the interdependence of criticality and creativity in the life of the mind. That life is manifest in three basic forms: uncriticality, sophistic criticality, and Socratic criticality. Each of these forms of thought implies an ethically significant pattern, which we illuminate. This leads to the challenge of living an ethical life when humans so routinely confuse ethics with other modes of thinking. Thus, the most common “counterfeits” of ethics are analyzed at length. The chapter concludes with some important implications of the absence of any one of the triad in human thought, given their innate dependence on one another.

Ever since the nineteenth century, and increasingly thereafter, knowledge, reasoning, and insight have become more and more specialized and compartmentalized. The threads that unify them have become obscured. The threads that diversify them are now highlighted. Yet life itself is not compartmentalized. Reality does not offer itself up to us in sealed compartments. The various dimensions of who we are interact and interrelate. So it is with modes of thinking. The critical and creative dimensions of thought interpenetrate and interface with our capacity to reflect ethically. Each of the three is better understood in relation to the other two. Each deepens and develops one another.

If we would understand the creative mind, then we must study the manner in which it is dependent on criticality. If we would understand the critical mind, then we must study the way it is dependent on creativity. If we would understand the highest levels of criticality and creativity, we must study their dependence on ethical reflection. Intellectual work is a common denominator of all three: creativity, criticality, and ethical reflection. Intellectual constructs are their shared products (constructs such as novels, editorials, critiques). Intellectual traits are what take them to higher levels of functioning. Let us consider first how to overcome the dichotomy between thought that is fundamentally creative and thought that is fundamentally critical.

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Concluding Essay: New Apophatic Paths in Current Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking: A Streamlined Conception

Fostering the Virtues of Inquiry

For deeper understanding of intellectual virtues, see Paul & Elder ( 2006a ).

The U.S. now has a higher percentage of its citizens in prison than any other country in the world (recently surpassing Russia) (Human Rights Watch, August 2008 )

See the website of Amnesty International for acts that are unethical in themselves: http://www.amnesty.org/

Human Rights Watch (2008). http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/usdom12292.htm

Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Meier, A. (2003). Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall . New York: W.W. Norton.

Moore, B., Jr. (2000). Moral Purity and Persecution in History . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (1948). United Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/

Paul, R. & Elder, L. (2006a). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall.

Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2006b). The Thinker's Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation . Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.

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Paul, R., Elder, L. (2009). Critical Thinking, Creativity, Ethical Reasoning: A Unity of Opposites. In: Cross, T., Ambrose, D. (eds) Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89368-6_8

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Moral Reasoning

While moral reasoning can be undertaken on another’s behalf, it is paradigmatically an agent’s first-personal (individual or collective) practical reasoning about what, morally, they ought to do. Philosophical examination of moral reasoning faces both distinctive puzzles – about how we recognize moral considerations and cope with conflicts among them and about how they move us to act – and distinctive opportunities for gleaning insight about what we ought to do from how we reason about what we ought to do.

Part I of this article characterizes moral reasoning more fully, situates it in relation both to first-order accounts of what morality requires of us and to philosophical accounts of the metaphysics of morality, and explains the interest of the topic. Part II then takes up a series of philosophical questions about moral reasoning, so understood and so situated.

1.1 Defining “Moral Reasoning”

1.2 empirical challenges to moral reasoning, 1.3 situating moral reasoning, 1.4 gaining moral insight from studying moral reasoning, 1.5 how distinct is moral reasoning from practical reasoning in general, 2.1 moral uptake, 2.2 moral principles, 2.3 sorting out which considerations are most relevant, 2.4 moral reasoning and moral psychology, 2.5 modeling conflicting moral considerations, 2.6 moral learning and the revision of moral views, 2.7 how can we reason, morally, with one another, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the philosophical importance of moral reasoning.

This article takes up moral reasoning as a species of practical reasoning – that is, as a type of reasoning directed towards deciding what to do and, when successful, issuing in an intention (see entry on practical reason ). Of course, we also reason theoretically about what morality requires of us; but the nature of purely theoretical reasoning about ethics is adequately addressed in the various articles on ethics . It is also true that, on some understandings, moral reasoning directed towards deciding what to do involves forming judgments about what one ought, morally, to do. On these understandings, asking what one ought (morally) to do can be a practical question, a certain way of asking about what to do. (See section 1.5 on the question of whether this is a distinctive practical question.) In order to do justice to the full range of philosophical views about moral reasoning, we will need to have a capacious understanding of what counts as a moral question. For instance, since a prominent position about moral reasoning is that the relevant considerations are not codifiable, we would beg a central question if we here defined “ morality ” as involving codifiable principles or rules. For present purposes, we may understand issues about what is right or wrong, or virtuous or vicious, as raising moral questions.

Even when moral questions explicitly arise in daily life, just as when we are faced with child-rearing, agricultural, and business questions, sometimes we act impulsively or instinctively rather than pausing to reason, not just about what to do, but about what we ought to do. Jean-Paul Sartre described a case of one of his students who came to him in occupied Paris during World War II, asking advice about whether to stay by his mother, who otherwise would have been left alone, or rather to go join the forces of the Free French, then massing in England (Sartre 1975). In the capacious sense just described, this is probably a moral question; and the young man paused long enough to ask Sartre’s advice. Does that mean that this young man was reasoning about his practical question? Not necessarily. Indeed, Sartre used the case to expound his skepticism about the possibility of addressing such a practical question by reasoning. But what is reasoning?

Reasoning, of the sort discussed here, is active or explicit thinking, in which the reasoner, responsibly guided by her assessments of her reasons (Kolodny 2005) and of any applicable requirements of rationality (Broome 2009, 2013), attempts to reach a well-supported answer to a well-defined question (Hieronymi 2013). For Sartre’s student, at least such a question had arisen. Indeed, the question was relatively definite, implying that the student had already engaged in some reflection about the various alternatives available to him – a process that has well been described as an important phase of practical reasoning, one that aptly precedes the effort to make up one’s mind (Harman 1986, 2).

Characterizing reasoning as responsibly conducted thinking of course does not suffice to analyze the notion. For one thing, it fails to address the fraught question of reasoning’s relation to inference (Harman 1986, Broome 2009). In addition, it does not settle whether formulating an intention about what to do suffices to conclude practical reasoning or whether such intentions cannot be adequately worked out except by starting to act. Perhaps one cannot adequately reason about how to repair a stone wall or how to make an omelet with the available ingredients without actually starting to repair or to cook (cf. Fernandez 2016). Still, it will do for present purposes. It suffices to make clear that the idea of reasoning involves norms of thinking. These norms of aptness or correctness in practical thinking surely do not require us to think along a single prescribed pathway, but rather permit only certain pathways and not others (Broome 2013, 219). Even so, we doubtless often fail to live up to them.

Our thinking, including our moral thinking, is often not explicit. We could say that we also reason tacitly, thinking in much the same way as during explicit reasoning, but without any explicit attempt to reach well-supported answers. In some situations, even moral ones, we might be ill-advised to attempt to answer our practical questions by explicit reasoning. In others, it might even be a mistake to reason tacitly – because, say, we face a pressing emergency. “Sometimes we should not deliberate about what to do, and just drive” (Arpaly and Schroeder 2014, 50). Yet even if we are not called upon to think through our options in all situations, and even if sometimes it would be positively better if we did not, still, if we are called upon to do so, then we should conduct our thinking responsibly: we should reason.

Recent work in empirical ethics has indicated that even when we are called upon to reason morally, we often do so badly. When asked to give reasons for our moral intuitions, we are often “dumbfounded,” finding nothing to say in their defense (Haidt 2001). Our thinking about hypothetical moral scenarios has been shown to be highly sensitive to arbitrary variations, such as in the order of presentation. Even professional philosophers have been found to be prone to such lapses of clear thinking (e.g., Schwitzgebel & Cushman 2012). Some of our dumbfounding and confusion has been laid at the feet of our having both a fast, more emotional way of processing moral stimuli and a slow, more cognitive way (e.g., Greene 2014). An alternative explanation of moral dumbfounding looks to social norms of moral reasoning (Sneddon 2007). And a more optimistic reaction to our confusion sees our established patterns of “moral consistency reasoning” as being well-suited to cope with the clashing input generated by our fast and slow systems (Campbell & Kumar 2012) or as constituting “a flexible learning system that generates and updates a multidimensional evaluative landscape to guide decision and action” (Railton, 2014, 813).

Eventually, such empirical work on our moral reasoning may yield revisions in our norms of moral reasoning. This has not yet happened. This article is principally concerned with philosophical issues posed by our current norms of moral reasoning. For example, given those norms and assuming that they are more or less followed, how do moral considerations enter into moral reasoning, get sorted out by it when they clash, and lead to action? And what do those norms indicate about what we ought to do do?

The topic of moral reasoning lies in between two other commonly addressed topics in moral philosophy. On the one side, there is the first-order question of what moral truths there are, if any. For instance, are there any true general principles of morality, and if so, what are they? At this level utilitarianism competes with Kantianism, for instance, and both compete with anti-theorists of various stripes, who recognize only particular truths about morality (Clarke & Simpson 1989). On the other side, a quite different sort of question arises from seeking to give a metaphysical grounding for moral truths or for the claim that there are none. Supposing there are some moral truths, what makes them true? What account can be given of the truth-conditions of moral statements? Here arise familiar questions of moral skepticism and moral relativism ; here, the idea of “a reason” is wielded by many hoping to defend a non-skeptical moral metaphysics (e.g., Smith 2013). The topic of moral reasoning lies in between these two other familiar topics in the following simple sense: moral reasoners operate with what they take to be morally true but, instead of asking what makes their moral beliefs true, they proceed responsibly to attempt to figure out what to do in light of those considerations. The philosophical study of moral reasoning concerns itself with the nature of these attempts.

These three topics clearly interrelate. Conceivably, the relations between them would be so tight as to rule out any independent interest in the topic of moral reasoning. For instance, if all that could usefully be said about moral reasoning were that it is a matter of attending to the moral facts, then all interest would devolve upon the question of what those facts are – with some residual focus on the idea of moral attention (McNaughton 1988). Alternatively, it might be thought that moral reasoning is simply a matter of applying the correct moral theory via ordinary modes of deductive and empirical reasoning. Again, if that were true, one’s sufficient goal would be to find that theory and get the non-moral facts right. Neither of these reductive extremes seems plausible, however. Take the potential reduction to getting the facts right, first.

Contemporary advocates of the importance of correctly perceiving the morally relevant facts tend to focus on facts that we can perceive using our ordinary sense faculties and our ordinary capacities of recognition, such as that this person has an infection or that this person needs my medical help . On such a footing, it is possible to launch powerful arguments against the claim that moral principles undergird every moral truth (Dancy 1993) and for the claim that we can sometimes perfectly well decide what to do by acting on the reasons we perceive instinctively – or as we have been trained – without engaging in any moral reasoning. Yet this is not a sound footing for arguing that moral reasoning, beyond simply attending to the moral facts, is always unnecessary. On the contrary, we often find ourselves facing novel perplexities and moral conflicts in which our moral perception is an inadequate guide. In addressing the moral questions surrounding whether society ought to enforce surrogate-motherhood contracts, for instance, the scientific and technological novelties involved make our moral perceptions unreliable and shaky guides. When a medical researcher who has noted an individual’s illness also notes the fact that diverting resources to caring, clinically, for this individual would inhibit the progress of my research, thus harming the long-term health chances of future sufferers of this illness , he or she comes face to face with conflicting moral considerations. At this juncture, it is far less plausible or satisfying simply to say that, employing one’s ordinary sensory and recognitional capacities, one sees what is to be done, both things considered. To posit a special faculty of moral intuition that generates such overall judgments in the face of conflicting considerations is to wheel in a deus ex machina . It cuts inquiry short in a way that serves the purposes of fiction better than it serves the purposes of understanding. It is plausible instead to suppose that moral reasoning comes in at this point (Campbell & Kumar 2012).

For present purposes, it is worth noting, David Hume and the moral sense theorists do not count as short-circuiting our understanding of moral reasoning in this way. It is true that Hume presents himself, especially in the Treatise of Human Nature , as a disbeliever in any specifically practical or moral reasoning. In doing so, however, he employs an exceedingly narrow definition of “reasoning” (Hume 2000, Book I, Part iii, sect. ii). For present purposes, by contrast, we are using a broader working gloss of “reasoning,” one not controlled by an ambition to parse out the relative contributions of (the faculty of) reason and of the passions. And about moral reasoning in this broader sense, as responsible thinking about what one ought to do, Hume has many interesting things to say, starting with the thought that moral reasoning must involve a double correction of perspective (see section 2.4 ) adequately to account for the claims of other people and of the farther future, a double correction that is accomplished with the aid of the so-called “calm passions.”

If we turn from the possibility that perceiving the facts aright will displace moral reasoning to the possibility that applying the correct moral theory will displace – or exhaust – moral reasoning, there are again reasons to be skeptical. One reason is that moral theories do not arise in a vacuum; instead, they develop against a broad backdrop of moral convictions. Insofar as the first potentially reductive strand, emphasizing the importance of perceiving moral facts, has force – and it does have some – it also tends to show that moral theories need to gain support by systematizing or accounting for a wide range of moral facts (Sidgwick 1981). As in most other arenas in which theoretical explanation is called for, the degree of explanatory success will remain partial and open to improvement via revisions in the theory (see section 2.6 ). Unlike the natural sciences, however, moral theory is an endeavor that, as John Rawls once put it, is “Socratic” in that it is a subject pertaining to actions “shaped by self-examination” (Rawls 1971, 48f.). If this observation is correct, it suggests that the moral questions we set out to answer arise from our reflections about what matters. By the same token – and this is the present point – a moral theory is subject to being overturned because it generates concrete implications that do not sit well with us on due reflection. This being so, and granting the great complexity of the moral terrain, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever generate a moral theory on the basis of which we can serenely and confidently proceed in a deductive way to generate answers to what we ought to do in all concrete cases. This conclusion is reinforced by a second consideration, namely that insofar as a moral theory is faithful to the complexity of the moral phenomena, it will contain within it many possibilities for conflicts among its own elements. Even if it does deploy some priority rules, these are unlikely to be able to cover all contingencies. Hence, some moral reasoning that goes beyond the deductive application of the correct theory is bound to be needed.

In short, a sound understanding of moral reasoning will not take the form of reducing it to one of the other two levels of moral philosophy identified above. Neither the demand to attend to the moral facts nor the directive to apply the correct moral theory exhausts or sufficiently describes moral reasoning.

In addition to posing philosophical problems in its own right, moral reasoning is of interest on account of its implications for moral facts and moral theories. Accordingly, attending to moral reasoning will often be useful to those whose real interest is in determining the right answer to some concrete moral problem or in arguing for or against some moral theory. The characteristic ways we attempt to work through a given sort of moral quandary can be just as revealing about our considered approaches to these matters as are any bottom-line judgments we may characteristically come to. Further, we may have firm, reflective convictions about how a given class of problems is best tackled, deliberatively, even when we remain in doubt about what should be done. In such cases, attending to the modes of moral reasoning that we characteristically accept can usefully expand the set of moral information from which we start, suggesting ways to structure the competing considerations.

Facts about the nature of moral inference and moral reasoning may have important direct implications for moral theory. For instance, it might be taken to be a condition of adequacy of any moral theory that it play a practically useful role in our efforts at self-understanding and deliberation. It should be deliberation-guiding (Richardson 2018, §1.2). If this condition is accepted, then any moral theory that would require agents to engage in abstruse or difficult reasoning may be inadequate for that reason, as would be any theory that assumes that ordinary individuals are generally unable to reason in the ways that the theory calls for. J.S. Mill (1979) conceded that we are generally unable to do the calculations called for by utilitarianism, as he understood it, and argued that we should be consoled by the fact that, over the course of history, experience has generated secondary principles that guide us well enough. Rather more dramatically, R. M. Hare defended utilitarianism as well capturing the reasoning of ideally informed and rational “archangels” (1981). Taking seriously a deliberation-guidance desideratum for moral theory would favor, instead, theories that more directly inform efforts at moral reasoning by we “proletarians,” to use Hare’s contrasting term.

Accordingly, the close relations between moral reasoning, the moral facts, and moral theory do not eliminate moral reasoning as a topic of interest. To the contrary, because moral reasoning has important implications about moral facts and moral theories, these close relations lend additional interest to the topic of moral reasoning.

The final threshold question is whether moral reasoning is truly distinct from practical reasoning more generally understood. (The question of whether moral reasoning, even if practical, is structurally distinct from theoretical reasoning that simply proceeds from a proper recognition of the moral facts has already been implicitly addressed and answered, for the purposes of the present discussion, in the affirmative.) In addressing this final question, it is difficult to overlook the way different moral theories project quite different models of moral reasoning – again a link that might be pursued by the moral philosopher seeking leverage in either direction. For instance, Aristotle’s views might be as follows: a quite general account can be given of practical reasoning, which includes selecting means to ends and determining the constituents of a desired activity. The difference between the reasoning of a vicious person and that of a virtuous person differs not at all in its structure, but only in its content, for the virtuous person pursues true goods, whereas the vicious person simply gets side-tracked by apparent ones. To be sure, the virtuous person may be able to achieve a greater integration of his or her ends via practical reasoning (because of the way the various virtues cohere), but this is a difference in the result of practical reasoning and not in its structure. At an opposite extreme, Kant’s categorical imperative has been taken to generate an approach to practical reasoning (via a “typic of practical judgment”) that is distinctive from other practical reasoning both in the range of considerations it addresses and its structure (Nell 1975). Whereas prudential practical reasoning, on Kant’s view, aims to maximize one’s happiness, moral reasoning addresses the potential universalizability of the maxims – roughly, the intentions – on which one acts. Views intermediate between Aristotle’s and Kant’s in this respect include Hare’s utilitarian view and Aquinas’ natural-law view. On Hare’s view, just as an ideal prudential agent applies maximizing rationality to his or her own preferences, an ideal moral agent’s reasoning applies maximizing rationality to the set of everyone’s preferences that its archangelic capacity for sympathy has enabled it to internalize (Hare 1981). Thomistic, natural-law views share the Aristotelian view about the general unity of practical reasoning in pursuit of the good, rightly or wrongly conceived, but add that practical reason, in addition to demanding that we pursue the fundamental human goods, also, and distinctly, demands that we not attack these goods. In this way, natural-law views incorporate some distinctively moral structuring – such as the distinctions between doing and allowing and the so-called doctrine of double effect’s distinction between intending as a means and accepting as a by-product – within a unified account of practical reasoning (see entry on the natural law tradition in ethics ). In light of this diversity of views about the relation between moral reasoning and practical or prudential reasoning, a general account of moral reasoning that does not want to presume the correctness of a definite moral theory will do well to remain agnostic on the question of how moral reasoning relates to non-moral practical reasoning.

2. General Philosophical Questions about Moral Reasoning

To be sure, most great philosophers who have addressed the nature of moral reasoning were far from agnostic about the content of the correct moral theory, and developed their reflections about moral reasoning in support of or in derivation from their moral theory. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions that are somewhat agnostic about the content of moral theory have arisen around important and controversial aspects of moral reasoning. We may group these around the following seven questions:

How do relevant considerations get taken up in moral reasoning?
Is it essential to moral reasoning for the considerations it takes up to be crystallized into, or ranged under, principles?
How do we sort out which moral considerations are most relevant?
In what ways do motivational elements shape moral reasoning?
What is the best way to model the kinds of conflicts among considerations that arise in moral reasoning?
Does moral reasoning include learning from experience and changing one’s mind?
How can we reason, morally, with one another?

The remainder of this article takes up these seven questions in turn.

One advantage to defining “reasoning” capaciously, as here, is that it helps one recognize that the processes whereby we come to be concretely aware of moral issues are integral to moral reasoning as it might more narrowly be understood. Recognizing moral issues when they arise requires a highly trained set of capacities and a broad range of emotional attunements. Philosophers of the moral sense school of the 17th and 18th centuries stressed innate emotional propensities, such as sympathy with other humans. Classically influenced virtue theorists, by contrast, give more importance to the training of perception and the emotional growth that must accompany it. Among contemporary philosophers working in empirical ethics there is a similar divide, with some arguing that we process situations using an innate moral grammar (Mikhail 2011) and some emphasizing the role of emotions in that processing (Haidt 2001, Prinz 2007, Greene 2014). For the moral reasoner, a crucial task for our capacities of moral recognition is to mark out certain features of a situation as being morally salient. Sartre’s student, for instance, focused on the competing claims of his mother and the Free French, giving them each an importance to his situation that he did not give to eating French cheese or wearing a uniform. To say that certain features are marked out as morally salient is not to imply that the features thus singled out answer to the terms of some general principle or other: we will come to the question of particularism, below. Rather, it is simply to say that recognitional attention must have a selective focus.

What will be counted as a moral issue or difficulty, in the sense requiring moral agents’ recognition, will again vary by moral theory. Not all moral theories would count filial loyalty and patriotism as moral duties. It is only at great cost, however, that any moral theory could claim to do without a layer of moral thinking involving situation-recognition. A calculative sort of utilitarianism, perhaps, might be imagined according to which there is no need to spot a moral issue or difficulty, as every choice node in life presents the agent with the same, utility-maximizing task. Perhaps Jeremy Bentham held a utilitarianism of this sort. For the more plausible utilitarianisms mentioned above, however, such as Mill’s and Hare’s, agents need not always calculate afresh, but must instead be alive to the possibility that because the ordinary “landmarks and direction posts” lead one astray in the situation at hand, they must make recourse to a more direct and critical mode of moral reasoning. Recognizing whether one is in one of those situations thus becomes the principal recognitional task for the utilitarian agent. (Whether this task can be suitably confined, of course, has long been one of the crucial questions about whether such indirect forms of utilitarianism, attractive on other grounds, can prevent themselves from collapsing into a more Benthamite, direct form: cf. Brandt 1979.)

Note that, as we have been describing moral uptake, we have not implied that what is perceived is ever a moral fact. Rather, it might be that what is perceived is some ordinary, descriptive feature of a situation that is, for whatever reason, morally relevant. An account of moral uptake will interestingly impinge upon the metaphysics of moral facts, however, if it holds that moral facts can be perceived. Importantly intermediate, in this respect, is the set of judgments involving so-called “thick” evaluative concepts – for example, that someone is callous, boorish, just, or brave (see the entry on thick ethical concepts ). These do not invoke the supposedly “thinner” terms of overall moral assessment, “good,” or “right.” Yet they are not innocent of normative content, either. Plainly, we do recognize callousness when we see clear cases of it. Plainly, too – whatever the metaphysical implications of the last fact – our ability to describe our situations in these thick normative terms is crucial to our ability to reason morally.

It is debated how closely our abilities of moral discernment are tied to our moral motivations. For Aristotle and many of his ancient successors, the two are closely linked, in that someone not brought up into virtuous motivations will not see things correctly. For instance, cowards will overestimate dangers, the rash will underestimate them, and the virtuous will perceive them correctly ( Eudemian Ethics 1229b23–27). By the Stoics, too, having the right motivations was regarded as intimately tied to perceiving the world correctly; but whereas Aristotle saw the emotions as allies to enlist in support of sound moral discernment, the Stoics saw them as inimical to clear perception of the truth (cf. Nussbaum 2001).

That one discerns features and qualities of some situation that are relevant to sizing it up morally does not yet imply that one explicitly or even implicitly employs any general claims in describing it. Perhaps all that one perceives are particularly embedded features and qualities, without saliently perceiving them as instantiations of any types. Sartre’s student may be focused on his mother and on the particular plights of several of his fellow Frenchmen under Nazi occupation, rather than on any purported requirements of filial duty or patriotism. Having become aware of some moral issue in such relatively particular terms, he might proceed directly to sorting out the conflict between them. Another possibility, however, and one that we frequently seem to exploit, is to formulate the issue in general terms: “An only child should stick by an otherwise isolated parent,” for instance, or “one should help those in dire need if one can do so without significant personal sacrifice.” Such general statements would be examples of “moral principles,” in a broad sense. (We do not here distinguish between principles and rules. Those who do include Dworkin 1978 and Gert 1998.)

We must be careful, here, to distinguish the issue of whether principles commonly play an implicit or explicit role in moral reasoning, including well-conducted moral reasoning, from the issue of whether principles necessarily figure as part of the basis of moral truth. The latter issue is best understood as a metaphysical question about the nature and basis of moral facts. What is currently known as moral particularism is the view that there are no defensible moral principles and that moral reasons, or well-grounded moral facts, can exist independently of any basis in a general principle. A contrary view holds that moral reasons are necessarily general, whether because the sources of their justification are all general or because a moral claim is ill-formed if it contains particularities. But whether principles play a useful role in moral reasoning is certainly a different question from whether principles play a necessary role in accounting for the ultimate truth-conditions of moral statements. Moral particularism, as just defined, denies their latter role. Some moral particularists seem also to believe that moral particularism implies that moral principles cannot soundly play a useful role in reasoning. This claim is disputable, as it seems a contingent matter whether the relevant particular facts arrange themselves in ways susceptible to general summary and whether our cognitive apparatus can cope with them at all without employing general principles. Although the metaphysical controversy about moral particularism lies largely outside our topic, we will revisit it in section 2.5 , in connection with the weighing of conflicting reasons.

With regard to moral reasoning, while there are some self-styled “anti-theorists” who deny that abstract structures of linked generalities are important to moral reasoning (Clarke, et al. 1989), it is more common to find philosophers who recognize both some role for particular judgment and some role for moral principles. Thus, neo-Aristotelians like Nussbaum who emphasize the importance of “finely tuned and richly aware” particular discernment also regard that discernment as being guided by a set of generally describable virtues whose general descriptions will come into play in at least some kinds of cases (Nussbaum 1990). “Situation ethicists” of an earlier generation (e.g. Fletcher 1997) emphasized the importance of taking into account a wide range of circumstantial differentiae, but against the background of some general principles whose application the differentiae help sort out. Feminist ethicists influenced by Carol Gilligan’s path breaking work on moral development have stressed the moral centrality of the kind of care and discernment that are salient and well-developed by people immersed in particular relationships (Held 1995); but this emphasis is consistent with such general principles as “one ought to be sensitive to the wishes of one’s friends”(see the entry on feminist moral psychology ). Again, if we distinguish the question of whether principles are useful in responsibly-conducted moral thinking from the question of whether moral reasons ultimately all derive from general principles, and concentrate our attention solely on the former, we will see that some of the opposition to general moral principles melts away.

It should be noted that we have been using a weak notion of generality, here. It is contrasted only with the kind of strict particularity that comes with indexicals and proper names. General statements or claims – ones that contain no such particular references – are not necessarily universal generalizations, making an assertion about all cases of the mentioned type. Thus, “one should normally help those in dire need” is a general principle, in this weak sense. Possibly, such logically loose principles would be obfuscatory in the context of an attempt to reconstruct the ultimate truth-conditions of moral statements. Such logically loose principles would clearly be useless in any attempt to generate a deductively tight “practical syllogism.” In our day-to-day, non-deductive reasoning, however, such logically loose principles appear to be quite useful. (Recall that we are understanding “reasoning” quite broadly, as responsibly conducted thinking: nothing in this understanding of reasoning suggests any uniquely privileged place for deductive inference: cf. Harman 1986. For more on defeasible or “default” principles, see section 2.5 .)

In this terminology, establishing that general principles are essential to moral reasoning leaves open the further question whether logically tight, or exceptionless, principles are also essential to moral reasoning. Certainly, much of our actual moral reasoning seems to be driven by attempts to recast or reinterpret principles so that they can be taken to be exceptionless. Adherents and inheritors of the natural-law tradition in ethics (e.g. Donagan 1977) are particularly supple defenders of exceptionless moral principles, as they are able to avail themselves not only of a refined tradition of casuistry but also of a wide array of subtle – some would say overly subtle – distinctions, such as those mentioned above between doing and allowing and between intending as a means and accepting as a byproduct.

A related role for a strong form of generality in moral reasoning comes from the Kantian thought that one’s moral reasoning must counter one’s tendency to make exceptions for oneself. Accordingly, Kant holds, as we have noted, that we must ask whether the maxims of our actions can serve as universal laws. As most contemporary readers understand this demand, it requires that we engage in a kind of hypothetical generalization across agents, and ask about the implications of everybody acting that way in those circumstances. The grounds for developing Kant’s thought in this direction have been well explored (e.g., Nell 1975, Korsgaard 1996, Engstrom 2009). The importance and the difficulties of such a hypothetical generalization test in ethics were discussed the influential works Gibbard 1965 and Goldman 1974.

Whether or not moral considerations need the backing of general principles, we must expect situations of action to present us with multiple moral considerations. In addition, of course, these situations will also present us with a lot of information that is not morally relevant. On any realistic account, a central task of moral reasoning is to sort out relevant considerations from irrelevant ones, as well as to determine which are especially relevant and which only slightly so. That a certain woman is Sartre’s student’s mother seems arguably to be a morally relevant fact; what about the fact (supposing it is one) that she has no other children to take care of her? Addressing the task of sorting what is morally relevant from what is not, some philosophers have offered general accounts of moral relevant features. Others have given accounts of how we sort out which of the relevant features are most relevant, a process of thinking that sometimes goes by the name of “casuistry.”

Before we look at ways of sorting out which features are morally relevant or most morally relevant, it may be useful to note a prior step taken by some casuists, which was to attempt to set out a schema that would capture all of the features of an action or proposed action. The Roman Catholic casuists of the middle ages did so by drawing on Aristotle’s categories. Accordingly, they asked, where, when, why, how, by what means, to whom, or by whom the action in question is to be done or avoided (see Jonsen and Toulmin 1988). The idea was that complete answers to these questions would contain all of the features of the action, of which the morally relevant ones would be a subset. Although metaphysically uninteresting, the idea of attempting to list all of an action’s features in this way represents a distinctive – and extreme – heuristic for moral reasoning.

Turning to the morally relevant features, one of the most developed accounts is Bernard Gert’s. He develops a list of features relevant to whether the violation of a moral rule should be generally allowed. Given the designed function of Gert’s list, it is natural that most of his morally relevant features make reference to the set of moral rules he defended. Accordingly, some of Gert’s distinctions between dimensions of relevant features reflect controversial stances in moral theory. For example, one of the dimensions is whether “the violation [is] done intentionally or only knowingly” (Gert 1998, 234) – a distinction that those who reject the doctrine of double effect would not find relevant.

In deliberating about what we ought, morally, to do, we also often attempt to figure out which considerations are most relevant. To take an issue mentioned above: Are surrogate motherhood contracts more akin to agreements with babysitters (clearly acceptable) or to agreements with prostitutes (not clearly so)? That is, which feature of surrogate motherhood is more relevant: that it involves a contract for child-care services or that it involves payment for the intimate use of the body? Both in such relatively novel cases and in more familiar ones, reasoning by analogy plays a large role in ordinary moral thinking. When this reasoning by analogy starts to become systematic – a social achievement that requires some historical stability and reflectiveness about what are taken to be moral norms – it begins to exploit comparison to cases that are “paradigmatic,” in the sense of being taken as settled. Within such a stable background, a system of casuistry can develop that lends some order to the appeal to analogous cases. To use an analogy: the availability of a widely accepted and systematic set of analogies and the availability of what are taken to be moral norms may stand to one another as chicken does to egg: each may be an indispensable moment in the genesis of the other.

Casuistry, thus understood, is an indispensable aid to moral reasoning. At least, that it is would follow from conjoining two features of the human moral situation mentioned above: the multifariousness of moral considerations that arise in particular cases and the need and possibility for employing moral principles in sound moral reasoning. We require moral judgment, not simply a deductive application of principles or a particularist bottom-line intuition about what we should do. This judgment must be responsible to moral principles yet cannot be straightforwardly derived from them. Accordingly, our moral judgment is greatly aided if it is able to rest on the sort of heuristic support that casuistry offers. Thinking through which of two analogous cases provides a better key to understanding the case at hand is a useful way of organizing our moral reasoning, and one on which we must continue to depend. If we lack the kind of broad consensus on a set of paradigm cases on which the Renaissance Catholic or Talmudic casuists could draw, our casuistic efforts will necessarily be more controversial and tentative than theirs; but we are not wholly without settled cases from which to work. Indeed, as Jonsen and Toulmin suggest at the outset of their thorough explanation and defense of casuistry, the depth of disagreement about moral theories that characterizes a pluralist society may leave us having to rest comparatively more weight on the cases about which we can find agreement than did the classic casuists (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988).

Despite the long history of casuistry, there is little that can usefully be said about how one ought to reason about competing analogies. In the law, where previous cases have precedential importance, more can be said. As Sunstein notes (Sunstein 1996, chap. 3), the law deals with particular cases, which are always “potentially distinguishable” (72); yet the law also imposes “a requirement of practical consistency” (67). This combination of features makes reasoning by analogy particularly influential in the law, for one must decide whether a given case is more like one set of precedents or more like another. Since the law must proceed even within a pluralist society such as ours, Sunstein argues, we see that analogical reasoning can go forward on the basis of “incompletely theorized judgments” or of what Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” (Rawls 1996). That is, although a robust use of analogous cases depends, as we have noted, on some shared background agreement, this agreement need not extend to all matters or all levels of individuals’ moral thinking. Accordingly, although in a pluralist society we may lack the kind of comprehensive normative agreement that made the high casuistry of Renaissance Christianity possible, the path of the law suggests that normatively forceful, case-based, analogical reasoning can still go on. A modern, competing approach to case-based or precedent-respecting reasoning has been developed by John F. Horty (2016). On Horty’s approach, which builds on the default logic developed in (Horty 2012), the body of precedent systematically shifts the weights of the reasons arising in a new case.

Reasoning by appeal to cases is also a favorite mode of some recent moral philosophers. Since our focus here is not on the methods of moral theory, we do not need to go into any detail in comparing different ways in which philosophers wield cases for and against alternative moral theories. There is, however, an important and broadly applicable point worth making about ordinary reasoning by reference to cases that emerges most clearly from the philosophical use of such reasoning. Philosophers often feel free to imagine cases, often quite unlikely ones, in order to attempt to isolate relevant differences. An infamous example is a pair of cases offered by James Rachels to cast doubt on the moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting die, here slightly redescribed. In both cases, there is at the outset a boy in a bathtub and a greedy older cousin downstairs who will inherit the family manse if and only if the boy predeceases him (Rachels 1975). In Case A, the cousin hears a thump, runs up to find the boy unconscious in the bath, and reaches out to turn on the tap so that the water will rise up to drown the boy. In Case B, the cousin hears a thump, runs up to find the boy unconscious in the bath with the water running, and decides to sit back and do nothing until the boy drowns. Since there is surely no moral difference between these cases, Rachels argued, the general distinction between killing and letting die is undercut. “Not so fast!” is the well-justified reaction (cf. Beauchamp 1979). Just because a factor is morally relevant in a certain way in comparing one pair of cases does not mean that it either is or must be relevant in the same way or to the same degree when comparing other cases. Shelly Kagan has dubbed the failure to take account of this fact of contextual interaction when wielding comparison cases the “additive fallacy” (1988). Kagan concludes from this that the reasoning of moral theorists must depend upon some theory that helps us anticipate and account for ways in which factors will interact in various contexts. A parallel lesson, reinforcing what we have already observed in connection with casuistry proper, would apply for moral reasoning in general: reasoning from cases must at least implicitly rely upon a set of organizing judgments or beliefs, of a kind that would, on some understandings, count as a moral “theory.” If this is correct, it provides another kind of reason to think that moral considerations could be crystallized into principles that make manifest the organizing structure involved.

We are concerned here with moral reasoning as a species of practical reasoning – reasoning directed to deciding what to do and, if successful, issuing in an intention. But how can such practical reasoning succeed? How can moral reasoning hook up with motivationally effective psychological states so as to have this kind of causal effect? “Moral psychology” – the traditional name for the philosophical study of intention and action – has a lot to say to such questions, both in its traditional, a priori form and its newly popular empirical form. In addition, the conclusions of moral psychology can have substantive moral implications, for it may be reasonable to assume that if there are deep reasons that a given type of moral reasoning cannot be practical, then any principles that demand such reasoning are unsound. In this spirit, Samuel Scheffler has explored “the importance for moral philosophy of some tolerably realistic understanding of human motivational psychology” (Scheffler 1992, 8) and Peter Railton has developed the idea that certain moral principles might generate a kind of “alienation” (Railton 1984). In short, we may be interested in what makes practical reasoning of a certain sort psychologically possible both for its own sake and as a way of working out some of the content of moral theory.

The issue of psychological possibility is an important one for all kinds of practical reasoning (cf. Audi 1989). In morality, it is especially pressing, as morality often asks individuals to depart from satisfying their own interests. As a result, it may appear that moral reasoning’s practical effect could not be explained by a simple appeal to the initial motivations that shape or constitute someone’s interests, in combination with a requirement, like that mentioned above, to will the necessary means to one’s ends. Morality, it may seem, instead requires individuals to act on ends that may not be part of their “motivational set,” in the terminology of Williams 1981. How can moral reasoning lead people to do that? The question is a traditional one. Plato’s Republic answered that the appearances are deceiving, and that acting morally is, in fact, in the enlightened self-interest of the agent. Kant, in stark contrast, held that our transcendent capacity to act on our conception of a practical law enables us to set ends and to follow morality even when doing so sharply conflicts with our interests. Many other answers have been given. In recent times, philosophers have defended what has been called “internalism” about morality, which claims that there is a necessary conceptual link between agents’ moral judgment and their motivation. Michael Smith, for instance, puts the claim as follows (Smith 1994, 61):

If an agent judges that it is right for her to Φ in circumstances C , then either she is motivated to Φ in C or she is practically irrational.

Even this defeasible version of moral judgment internalism may be too strong; but instead of pursuing this issue further, let us turn to a question more internal to moral reasoning. (For more on the issue of moral judgment internalism, see moral motivation .)

The traditional question we were just glancing at picks up when moral reasoning is done. Supposing that we have some moral conclusion, it asks how agents can be motivated to go along with it. A different question about the intersection of moral reasoning and moral psychology, one more immanent to the former, concerns how motivational elements shape the reasoning process itself.

A powerful philosophical picture of human psychology, stemming from Hume, insists that beliefs and desires are distinct existences (Hume 2000, Book II, part iii, sect. iii; cf. Smith 1994, 7). This means that there is always a potential problem about how reasoning, which seems to work by concatenating beliefs, links up to the motivations that desire provides. The paradigmatic link is that of instrumental action: the desire to Ψ links with the belief that by Φing in circumstances C one will Ψ. Accordingly, philosophers who have examined moral reasoning within an essentially Humean, belief-desire psychology have sometimes accepted a constrained account of moral reasoning. Hume’s own account exemplifies the sort of constraint that is involved. As Hume has it, the calm passions support the dual correction of perspective constitutive of morality, alluded to above. Since these calm passions are seen as competing with our other passions in essentially the same motivational coinage, as it were, our passions limit the reach of moral reasoning.

An important step away from a narrow understanding of Humean moral psychology is taken if one recognizes the existence of what Rawls has called “principle-dependent desires” (Rawls 1996, 82–83; Rawls 2000, 46–47). These are desires whose objects cannot be characterized without reference to some rational or moral principle. An important special case of these is that of “conception-dependent desires,” in which the principle-dependent desire in question is seen by the agent as belonging to a broader conception, and as important on that account (Rawls 1996, 83–84; Rawls 2000, 148–152). For instance, conceiving of oneself as a citizen, one may desire to bear one’s fair share of society’s burdens. Although it may look like any content, including this, may substitute for Ψ in the Humean conception of desire, and although Hume set out to show how moral sentiments such as pride could be explained in terms of simple psychological mechanisms, his influential empiricism actually tends to restrict the possible content of desires. Introducing principle-dependent desires thus seems to mark a departure from a Humean psychology. As Rawls remarks, if “we may find ourselves drawn to the conceptions and ideals that both the right and the good express … , [h]ow is one to fix limits on what people might be moved by in thought and deliberation and hence may act from?” (1996, 85). While Rawls developed this point by contrasting Hume’s moral psychology with Kant’s, the same basic point is also made by neo-Aristotelians (e.g., McDowell 1998).

The introduction of principle-dependent desires bursts any would-be naturalist limit on their content; nonetheless, some philosophers hold that this notion remains too beholden to an essentially Humean picture to be able to capture the idea of a moral commitment. Desires, it may seem, remain motivational items that compete on the basis of strength. Saying that one’s desire to be just may be outweighed by one’s desire for advancement may seem to fail to capture the thought that one has a commitment – even a non-absolute one – to justice. Sartre designed his example of the student torn between staying with his mother and going to fight with the Free French so as to make it seem implausible that he ought to decide simply by determining which he more strongly wanted to do.

One way to get at the idea of commitment is to emphasize our capacity to reflect about what we want. By this route, one might distinguish, in the fashion of Harry Frankfurt, between the strength of our desires and “the importance of what we care about” (Frankfurt 1988). Although this idea is evocative, it provides relatively little insight into how it is that we thus reflect. Another way to model commitment is to take it that our intentions operate at a level distinct from our desires, structuring what we are willing to reconsider at any point in our deliberations (e.g. Bratman 1999). While this two-level approach offers some advantages, it is limited by its concession of a kind of normative primacy to the unreconstructed desires at the unreflective level. A more integrated approach might model the psychology of commitment in a way that reconceives the nature of desire from the ground up. One attractive possibility is to return to the Aristotelian conception of desire as being for the sake of some good or apparent good (cf. Richardson 2004). On this conception, the end for the sake of which an action is done plays an important regulating role, indicating, in part, what one will not do (Richardson 2018, §§8.3–8.4). Reasoning about final ends accordingly has a distinctive character (see Richardson 1994, Schmidtz 1995). Whatever the best philosophical account of the notion of a commitment – for another alternative, see (Tiberius 2000) – much of our moral reasoning does seem to involve expressions of and challenges to our commitments (Anderson and Pildes 2000).

Recent experimental work, employing both survey instruments and brain imaging technologies, has allowed philosophers to approach questions about the psychological basis of moral reasoning from novel angles. The initial brain data seems to show that individuals with damage to the pre-frontal lobes tend to reason in more straightforwardly consequentialist fashion than those without such damage (Koenigs et al. 2007). Some theorists take this finding as tending to confirm that fully competent human moral reasoning goes beyond a simple weighing of pros and cons to include assessment of moral constraints (e.g., Wellman & Miller 2008, Young & Saxe 2008). Others, however, have argued that the emotional responses of the prefrontal lobes interfere with the more sober and sound, consequentialist-style reasoning of the other parts of the brain (e.g. Greene 2014). The survey data reveals or confirms, among other things, interesting, normatively loaded asymmetries in our attribution of such concepts as responsibility and causality (Knobe 2006). It also reveals that many of moral theory’s most subtle distinctions, such as the distinction between an intended means and a foreseen side-effect, are deeply built into our psychologies, being present cross-culturally and in young children, in a way that suggests to some the possibility of an innate “moral grammar” (Mikhail 2011).

A final question about the connection between moral motivation and moral reasoning is whether someone without the right motivational commitments can reason well, morally. On Hume’s official, narrow conception of reasoning, which essentially limits it to tracing empirical and logical connections, the answer would be yes. The vicious person could trace the causal and logical implications of acting in a certain way just as a virtuous person could. The only difference would be practical, not rational: the two would not act in the same way. Note, however, that the Humean’s affirmative answer depends on departing from the working definition of “moral reasoning” used in this article, which casts it as a species of practical reasoning. Interestingly, Kant can answer “yes” while still casting moral reasoning as practical. On his view in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason , reasoning well, morally, does not depend on any prior motivational commitment, yet remains practical reasoning. That is because he thinks the moral law can itself generate motivation. (Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and Religion offer a more complex psychology.) For Aristotle, by contrast, an agent whose motivations are not virtuously constituted will systematically misperceive what is good and what is bad, and hence will be unable to reason excellently. The best reasoning that a vicious person is capable of, according to Aristotle, is a defective simulacrum of practical wisdom that he calls “cleverness” ( Nicomachean Ethics 1144a25).

Moral considerations often conflict with one another. So do moral principles and moral commitments. Assuming that filial loyalty and patriotism are moral considerations, then Sartre’s student faces a moral conflict. Recall that it is one thing to model the metaphysics of morality or the truth conditions of moral statements and another to give an account of moral reasoning. In now looking at conflicting considerations, our interest here remains with the latter and not the former. Our principal interest is in ways that we need to structure or think about conflicting considerations in order to negotiate well our reasoning involving them.

One influential building-block for thinking about moral conflicts is W. D. Ross’s notion of a “ prima facie duty”. Although this term misleadingly suggests mere appearance – the way things seem at first glance – it has stuck. Some moral philosophers prefer the term “ pro tanto duty” (e.g., Hurley 1989). Ross explained that his term provides “a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g., the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant.” Illustrating the point, he noted that a prima facie duty to keep a promise can be overridden by a prima facie duty to avert a serious accident, resulting in a proper, or unqualified, duty to do the latter (Ross 1988, 18–19). Ross described each prima facie duty as a “parti-resultant” attribute, grounded or explained by one aspect of an act, whereas “being one’s [actual] duty” is a “toti-resultant” attribute resulting from all such aspects of an act, taken together (28; see Pietroski 1993). This suggests that in each case there is, in principle, some function that generally maps from the partial contributions of each prima facie duty to some actual duty. What might that function be? To Ross’s credit, he writes that “for the estimation of the comparative stringency of these prima facie obligations no general rules can, so far as I can see, be laid down” (41). Accordingly, a second strand in Ross simply emphasizes, following Aristotle, the need for practical judgment by those who have been brought up into virtue (42).

How might considerations of the sort constituted by prima facie duties enter our moral reasoning? They might do so explicitly, or only implicitly. There is also a third, still weaker possibility (Scheffler 1992, 32): it might simply be the case that if the agent had recognized a prima facie duty, he would have acted on it unless he considered it to be overridden. This is a fact about how he would have reasoned.

Despite Ross’s denial that there is any general method for estimating the comparative stringency of prima facie duties, there is a further strand in his exposition that many find irresistible and that tends to undercut this denial. In the very same paragraph in which he states that he sees no general rules for dealing with conflicts, he speaks in terms of “the greatest balance of prima facie rightness.” This language, together with the idea of “comparative stringency,” ineluctably suggests the idea that the mapping function might be the same in each case of conflict and that it might be a quantitative one. On this conception, if there is a conflict between two prima facie duties, the one that is strongest in the circumstances should be taken to win. Duly cautioned about the additive fallacy (see section 2.3 ), we might recognize that the strength of a moral consideration in one set of circumstances cannot be inferred from its strength in other circumstances. Hence, this approach will need still to rely on intuitive judgments in many cases. But this intuitive judgment will be about which prima facie consideration is stronger in the circumstances, not simply about what ought to be done.

The thought that our moral reasoning either requires or is benefited by a virtual quantitative crutch of this kind has a long pedigree. Can we really reason well morally in a way that boils down to assessing the weights of the competing considerations? Addressing this question will require an excursus on the nature of moral reasons. Philosophical support for this possibility involves an idea of practical commensurability. We need to distinguish, here, two kinds of practical commensurability or incommensurability, one defined in metaphysical terms and one in deliberative terms. Each of these forms might be stated evaluatively or deontically. The first, metaphysical sort of value incommensurability is defined directly in terms of what is the case. Thus, to state an evaluative version: two values are metaphysically incommensurable just in case neither is better than the other nor are they equally good (see Chang 1998). Now, the metaphysical incommensurability of values, or its absence, is only loosely linked to how it would be reasonable to deliberate. If all values or moral considerations are metaphysically (that is, in fact) commensurable, still it might well be the case that our access to the ultimate commensurating function is so limited that we would fare ill by proceeding in our deliberations to try to think about which outcomes are “better” or which considerations are “stronger.” We might have no clue about how to measure the relevant “strength.” Conversely, even if metaphysical value incommensurability is common, we might do well, deliberatively, to proceed as if this were not the case, just as we proceed in thermodynamics as if the gas laws obtained in their idealized form. Hence, in thinking about the deliberative implications of incommensurable values , we would do well to think in terms of a definition tailored to the deliberative context. Start with a local, pairwise form. We may say that two options, A and B, are deliberatively commensurable just in case there is some one dimension of value in terms of which, prior to – or logically independently of – choosing between them, it is possible adequately to represent the force of the considerations bearing on the choice.

Philosophers as diverse as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill have argued that unless two options are deliberatively commensurable, in this sense, it is impossible to choose rationally between them. Interestingly, Kant limited this claim to the domain of prudential considerations, recognizing moral reasoning as invoking considerations incommensurable with those of prudence. For Mill, this claim formed an important part of his argument that there must be some one, ultimate “umpire” principle – namely, on his view, the principle of utility. Henry Sidgwick elaborated Mill’s argument and helpfully made explicit its crucial assumption, which he called the “principle of superior validity” (Sidgwick 1981; cf. Schneewind 1977). This is the principle that conflict between distinct moral or practical considerations can be rationally resolved only on the basis of some third principle or consideration that is both more general and more firmly warranted than the two initial competitors. From this assumption, one can readily build an argument for the rational necessity not merely of local deliberative commensurability, but of a global deliberative commensurability that, like Mill and Sidgwick, accepts just one ultimate umpire principle (cf. Richardson 1994, chap. 6).

Sidgwick’s explicitness, here, is valuable also in helping one see how to resist the demand for deliberative commensurability. Deliberative commensurability is not necessary for proceeding rationally if conflicting considerations can be rationally dealt with in a holistic way that does not involve the appeal to a principle of “superior validity.” That our moral reasoning can proceed holistically is strongly affirmed by Rawls. Rawls’s characterizations of the influential ideal of reflective equilibrium and his related ideas about the nature of justification imply that we can deal with conflicting considerations in less hierarchical ways than imagined by Mill or Sidgwick. Instead of proceeding up a ladder of appeal to some highest court or supreme umpire, Rawls suggests, when we face conflicting considerations “we work from both ends” (Rawls 1999, 18). Sometimes indeed we revise our more particular judgments in light of some general principle to which we adhere; but we are also free to revise more general principles in light of some relatively concrete considered judgment. On this picture, there is no necessary correlation between degree of generality and strength of authority or warrant. That this holistic way of proceeding (whether in building moral theory or in deliberating: cf. Hurley 1989) can be rational is confirmed by the possibility of a form of justification that is similarly holistic: “justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view” (Rawls 1999, 19, 507). (Note that this statement, which expresses a necessary aspect of moral or practical justification, should not be taken as a definition or analysis thereof.) So there is an alternative to depending, deliberatively, on finding a dimension in terms of which considerations can be ranked as “stronger” or “better” or “more stringent”: one can instead “prune and adjust” with an eye to building more mutual support among the considerations that one endorses on due reflection. If even the desideratum of practical coherence is subject to such re-specification, then this holistic possibility really does represent an alternative to commensuration, as the deliberator, and not some coherence standard, retains reflective sovereignty (Richardson 1994, sec. 26). The result can be one in which the originally competing considerations are not so much compared as transformed (Richardson 2018, chap. 1)

Suppose that we start with a set of first-order moral considerations that are all commensurable as a matter of ultimate, metaphysical fact, but that our grasp of the actual strength of these considerations is quite poor and subject to systematic distortions. Perhaps some people are much better placed than others to appreciate certain considerations, and perhaps our strategic interactions would cause us to reach suboptimal outcomes if we each pursued our own unfettered judgment of how the overall set of considerations plays out. In such circumstances, there is a strong case for departing from maximizing reasoning without swinging all the way to the holist alternative. This case has been influentially articulated by Joseph Raz, who develops the notion of an “exclusionary reason” to occupy this middle position (Raz 1990).

“An exclusionary reason,” in Raz’s terminology, “is a second order reason to refrain from acting for some reason” (39). A simple example is that of Ann, who is tired after a long and stressful day, and hence has reason not to act on her best assessment of the reasons bearing on a particularly important investment decision that she immediately faces (37). This notion of an exclusionary reason allowed Raz to capture many of the complexities of our moral reasoning, especially as it involves principled commitments, while conceding that, at the first order, all practical reasons might be commensurable. Raz’s early strategy for reconciling commensurability with complexity of structure was to limit the claim that reasons are comparable with regard to strength to reasons of a given order. First-order reasons compete on the basis of strength; but conflicts between first- and second-order reasons “are resolved not by the strength of the competing reasons but by a general principle of practical reasoning which determines that exclusionary reasons always prevail” (40).

If we take for granted this “general principle of practical reasoning,” why should we recognize the existence of any exclusionary reasons, which by definition prevail independently of any contest of strength? Raz’s principal answer to this question shifts from the metaphysical domain of the strengths that various reasons “have” to the epistemically limited viewpoint of the deliberator. As in Ann’s case, we can see in certain contexts that a deliberator is likely to get things wrong if he or she acts on his or her perception of the first-order reasons. Second-order reasons indicate, with respect to a certain range of first-order reasons, that the agent “must not act for those reasons” (185). The broader justification of an exclusionary reason, then, can consistently be put in terms of the commensurable first-order reasons. Such a justification can have the following form: “Given this agent’s deliberative limitations, the balance of first-order reasons will likely be better conformed with if he or she refrains from acting for certain of those reasons.”

Raz’s account of exclusionary reasons might be used to reconcile ultimate commensurability with the structured complexity of our moral reasoning. Whether such an attempt could succeed would depend, in part, on the extent to which we have an actual grasp of first-order reasons, conflict among which can be settled solely on the basis of their comparative strength. Our consideration, above, of casuistry, the additive fallacy, and deliberative incommensurability may combine to make it seem that only in rare pockets of our practice do we have a good grasp of first-order reasons, if these are defined, à la Raz, as competing only in terms of strength. If that is right, then we will almost always have good exclusionary reasons to reason on some other basis than in terms of the relative strength of first-order reasons. Under those assumptions, the middle way that Raz’s idea of exclusionary reasons seems to open up would more closely approach the holist’s.

The notion of a moral consideration’s “strength,” whether put forward as part of a metaphysical picture of how first-order considerations interact in fact or as a suggestion about how to go about resolving a moral conflict, should not be confused with the bottom-line determination of whether one consideration, and specifically one duty, overrides another. In Ross’s example of conflicting prima facie duties, someone must choose between averting a serious accident and keeping a promise to meet someone. (Ross chose the case to illustrate that an “imperfect” duty, or a duty of commission, can override a strict, prohibitive duty.) Ross’s assumption is that all well brought-up people would agree, in this case, that the duty to avert serious harm to someone overrides the duty to keep such a promise. We may take it, if we like, that this judgment implies that we consider the duty to save a life, here, to be stronger than the duty to keep the promise; but in fact this claim about relative strength adds nothing to our understanding of the situation. Yet we do not reach our practical conclusion in this case by determining that the duty to save the boy’s life is stronger. The statement that this duty is here stronger is simply a way to embellish the conclusion that of the two prima facie duties that here conflict, it is the one that states the all-things-considered duty. To be “overridden” is just to be a prima facie duty that fails to generate an actual duty because another prima facie duty that conflicts with it – or several of them that do – does generate an actual duty. Hence, the judgment that some duties override others can be understood just in terms of their deontic upshots and without reference to considerations of strength. To confirm this, note that we can say, “As a matter of fidelity, we ought to keep the promise; as a matter of beneficence, we ought to save the life; we cannot do both; and both categories considered we ought to save the life.”

Understanding the notion of one duty overriding another in this way puts us in a position to take up the topic of moral dilemmas . Since this topic is covered in a separate article, here we may simply take up one attractive definition of a moral dilemma. Sinnott-Armstrong (1988) suggested that a moral dilemma is a situation in which the following are true of a single agent:

He ought to do A .
He ought to do B .
He cannot do both A and B .
(1) does not override (2) and (2) does not override (1).

This way of defining moral dilemmas distinguishes them from the kind of moral conflict, such as Ross’s promise-keeping/accident-prevention case, in which one of the duties is overridden by the other. Arguably, Sartre’s student faces a moral dilemma. Making sense of a situation in which neither of two duties overrides the other is easier if deliberative commensurability is denied. Whether moral dilemmas are possible will depend crucially on whether “ought” implies “can” and whether any pair of duties such as those comprised by (1) and (2) implies a single, “agglomerated” duty that the agent do both A and B . If either of these purported principles of the logic of duties is false, then moral dilemmas are possible.

Jonathan Dancy has well highlighted a kind of contextual variability in moral reasons that has come to be known as “reasons holism”: “a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, in another” (Dancy 2004). To adapt one of his examples: while there is often moral reason not to lie, when playing liar’s poker one generally ought to lie; otherwise, one will spoil the game (cf. Dancy 1993, 61). Dancy argues that reasons holism supports moral particularism of the kind discussed in section 2.2 , according to which there are no defensible moral principles. Taking this conclusion seriously would radically affect how we conducted our moral reasoning. The argument’s premise of holism has been challenged (e.g., Audi 2004, McKeever & Ridge 2006). Philosophers have also challenged the inference from reasons holism to particularism in various ways. Mark Lance and Margaret Olivia Little (2007) have done so by exhibiting how defeasible generalizations, in ethics and elsewhere, depend systematically on context. We can work with them, they suggest, by utilizing a skill that is similar to the skill of discerning morally salient considerations, namely the skill of discerning relevant similarities among possible worlds. More generally, John F. Horty has developed a logical and semantic account according to which reasons are defaults and so behave holistically, but there are nonetheless general principles that explain how they behave (Horty 2012). And Mark Schroeder has argued that our holistic views about reasons are actually better explained by supposing that there are general principles (Schroeder 2011).

This excursus on moral reasons suggests that there are a number of good reasons why reasoning about moral matters might not simply reduce to assessing the weights of competing considerations.

If we have any moral knowledge, whether concerning general moral principles or concrete moral conclusions, it is surely very imperfect. What moral knowledge we are capable of will depend, in part, on what sorts of moral reasoning we are capable of. Although some moral learning may result from the theoretical work of moral philosophers and theorists, much of what we learn with regard to morality surely arises in the practical context of deliberation about new and difficult cases. This deliberation might be merely instrumental, concerned only with settling on means to moral ends, or it might be concerned with settling those ends. There is no special problem about learning what conduces to morally obligatory ends: that is an ordinary matter of empirical learning. But by what sorts of process can we learn which ends are morally obligatory, or which norms morally required? And, more specifically, is strictly moral learning possible via moral reasoning?

Much of what was said above with regard to moral uptake applies again in this context, with approximately the same degree of dubiousness or persuasiveness. If there is a role for moral perception or for emotions in agents’ becoming aware of moral considerations, these may function also to guide agents to new conclusions. For instance, it is conceivable that our capacity for outrage is a relatively reliable detector of wrong actions, even novel ones, or that our capacity for pleasure is a reliable detector of actions worth doing, even novel ones. (For a thorough defense of the latter possibility, which intriguingly interprets pleasure as a judgment of value, see Millgram 1997.) Perhaps these capacities for emotional judgment enable strictly moral learning in roughly the same way that chess-players’ trained sensibilities enable them to recognize the threat in a previously unencountered situation on the chessboard (Lance and Tanesini 2004). That is to say, perhaps our moral emotions play a crucial role in the exercise of a skill whereby we come to be able to articulate moral insights that we have never before attained. Perhaps competing moral considerations interact in contextually specific and complex ways much as competing chess considerations do. If so, it would make sense to rely on our emotionally-guided capacities of judgment to cope with complexities that we cannot model explicitly, but also to hope that, once having been so guided, we might in retrospect be able to articulate something about the lesson of a well-navigated situation.

A different model of strictly moral learning puts the emphasis on our after-the-fact reactions rather than on any prior, tacit emotional or judgmental guidance: the model of “experiments in living,” to use John Stuart Mill’s phrase (see Anderson 1991). Here, the basic thought is that we can try something and see if “it works.” For this to be an alternative to empirical learning about what causally conduces to what, it must be the case that we remain open as to what we mean by things “working.” In Mill’s terminology, for instance, we need to remain open as to what are the important “parts” of happiness. If we are, then perhaps we can learn by experience what some of them are – that is, what are some of the constitutive means of happiness. These paired thoughts, that our practical life is experimental and that we have no firmly fixed conception of what it is for something to “work,” come to the fore in Dewey’s pragmatist ethics (see esp. Dewey 1967 [1922]). This experimentalist conception of strictly moral learning is brought to bear on moral reasoning in Dewey’s eloquent characterizations of “practical intelligence” as involving a creative and flexible approach to figuring out “what works” in a way that is thoroughly open to rethinking our ultimate aims.

Once we recognize that moral learning is a possibility for us, we can recognize a broader range of ways of coping with moral conflicts than was canvassed in the last section. There, moral conflicts were described in a way that assumed that the set of moral considerations, among which conflicts were arising, was to be taken as fixed. If we can learn, morally, however, then we probably can and should revise the set of moral considerations that we recognize. Often, we do this by re-interpreting some moral principle that we had started with, whether by making it more specific, making it more abstract, or in some other way (cf. Richardson 2000 and 2018).

So far, we have mainly been discussing moral reasoning as if it were a solitary endeavor. This is, at best, a convenient simplification. At worst, it is, as Jürgen Habermas has long argued, deeply distorting of reasoning’s essentially dialogical or conversational character (e.g., Habermas 1984; cf. Laden 2012). In any case, it is clear that we often do need to reason morally with one another.

Here, we are interested in how people may actually reason with one another – not in how imagined participants in an original position or ideal speech situation may be said to reason with one another, which is a concern for moral theory, proper. There are two salient and distinct ways of thinking about people morally reasoning with one another: as members of an organized or corporate body that is capable of reaching practical decisions of its own; and as autonomous individuals working outside any such structure to figure out with each other what they ought, morally, to do.

The nature and possibility of collective reasoning within an organized collective body has recently been the subject of some discussion. Collectives can reason if they are structured as an agent. This structure might or might not be institutionalized. In line with the gloss of reasoning offered above, which presupposes being guided by an assessment of one’s reasons, it is plausible to hold that a group agent “counts as reasoning, not just rational, only if it is able to form not only beliefs in propositions – that is, object-language beliefs – but also belief about propositions” (List and Pettit 2011, 63). As List and Pettit have shown (2011, 109–113), participants in a collective agent will unavoidably have incentives to misrepresent their own preferences in conditions involving ideologically structured disagreements where the contending parties are oriented to achieving or avoiding certain outcomes – as is sometimes the case where serious moral disagreements arise. In contexts where what ultimately matters is how well the relevant group or collective ends up faring, “team reasoning” that takes advantage of orientation towards the collective flourishing of the group can help it reach a collectively optimal outcome (Sugden 1993, Bacharach 2006; see entry on collective intentionality ). Where the group in question is smaller than the set of persons, however, such a collectively prudential focus is distinct from a moral focus and seems at odds with the kind of impartiality typically thought distinctive of the moral point of view. Thinking about what a “team-orientation” to the set all persons might look like might bring us back to thoughts of Kantian universalizability; but recall that here we are focused on actual reasoning, not hypothetical reasoning. With regard to actual reasoning, even if individuals can take up such an orientation towards the “team” of all persons, there is serious reason, highlighted by another strand of the Kantian tradition, for doubting that any individual can aptly surrender their moral judgment to any group’s verdict (Wolff 1998).

This does not mean that people cannot reason together, morally. It suggests, however, that such joint reasoning is best pursued as a matter of working out together, as independent moral agents, what they ought to do with regard to an issue on which they have some need to cooperate. Even if deferring to another agent’s verdict as to how one morally ought to act is off the cards, it is still possible that one may licitly take account of the moral testimony of others (for differing views, see McGrath 2009, Enoch 2014).

In the case of independent individuals reasoning morally with one another, we may expect that moral disagreement provides the occasion rather than an obstacle. To be sure, if individuals’ moral disagreement is very deep, they may not be able to get this reasoning off the ground; but as Kant’s example of Charles V and his brother each wanting Milan reminds us, intractable disagreement can arise also from disagreements that, while conceptually shallow, are circumstantially sharp. If it were true that clear-headed justification of one’s moral beliefs required seeing them as being ultimately grounded in a priori principles, as G.A. Cohen argued (Cohen 2008, chap. 6), then room for individuals to work out their moral disagreements by reasoning with one another would seem to be relatively restricted; but whether the nature of (clearheaded) moral grounding is really so restricted is seriously doubtful (Richardson 2018, §9.2). In contrast to what such a picture suggests, individuals’ moral commitments seem sufficiently open to being re-thought that people seem able to engage in principled – that is, not simply loss-minimizing – compromise (Richardson 2018, §8.5).

What about the possibility that the moral community as a whole – roughly, the community of all persons – can reason? This possibility does not raise the kind of threat to impartiality that is raised by the team reasoning of a smaller group of people; but it is hard to see it working in a way that does not run afoul of the concern about whether any person can aptly defer, in a strong sense, to the moral judgments of another agent. Even so, a residual possibility remains, which is that the moral community can reason in just one way, namely by accepting or ratifying a moral conclusion that has already become shared in a sufficiently inclusive and broad way (Richardson 2018, chap. 7).

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for help received from Gopal Sreenivasan and the students in a seminar on moral reasoning taught jointly with him, to the students in a more recent seminar in moral reasoning, and, for criticisms received, to David Brink, Margaret Olivia Little and Mark Murphy. He welcomes further criticisms and suggestions for improvement.

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47 Moral Thinking

Liane Young, Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

Published: 03 June 2013
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This chapter presents several current models of moral thinking, with a focus on the cognitive processes that support people’s moral judgments and justifications. These models are not mutually exclusive; rather, based on recent evidence from psychology and neuroscience, they posit different cognitive processes as the primary source of moral thinking. This chapter therefore does not quantify the evidence for one model versus another but instead reviews evidence for each model separately. These models, discussed in turn, emphasize the role of conscious principled reasoning, emotional processing, theory of mind, and a domain-specific “moral faculty” that integrates information from other cognitive systems to compute specifically moral judgments.

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Dr. Richard Paul
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Each year it sponsors an annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform. It has worked with the College Board, the National Education Association, the U.S. Department of Education, as well as numerous colleges, universities, and school districts to facilitate the implementation of critical thinking instruction focused on intellectual standards. The following studies demonstrate:

the fact that, as a rule, critical thinking is not presently being effectively taught at the high school, college and university level, and yet
it is possible to do so.

To assess students' understanding of critical thinking, we recommend use of the International Critical Thinking Test as well as the Critical Thinking Interview Profile for College Students . To assess faculty understanding of critical thinking and its importance to instruction, we recommend the Critical Thinking Interview Profile For Teachers and Faculty . By registering as a member of the community, you will have access to streaming video, which includes a sample student interview with Dr. Richard Paul and Rush Cosgrove.

Principal Researchers: Dr. Richard Paul, Dr. Linda Elder, and Dr. Ted Bartell

Executive Summary

(Complete Study is available for purchase.) On September 29, 1994 Governor Wilson signed legislation authored by Senator Leroy Greene (SB1849) directing the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to conduct a study of teacher preparation programs to assess the extent to which these programs prepare candidates for teaching credentials to teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills in elementary and secondary schools. During the spring of 1995, Commission staff began to conceptualize a study design that would yield descriptive information on course content and teaching practices being employed by postsecondary faculty to train teacher candidates. With assistance from the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University, an interview protocol was designed for use in telephone interviews with a cross-section of education and subject matter faculty in both public and private colleges and universities in California. During the study planning process, a decision was made to design respondent selection procedures in such a way as to assure that information collected would be generalizable to all faculty preparing teachers across the state. To accomplish this objective, two statewide probability samples were designed: a sample of teacher education faculty, and a separate sample of Arts and Sciences faculty teaching courses in Commission-approved subject matter programs. There were three major objectives in this study. The first was to assess current teaching practices and knowledge of critical thinking among faculty teaching in teacher preparation programs in California. The second was to identify exemplary teaching practices that enhance critical thinking. The third was to develop policy recommendations based on the results of the study. The study included 38 public colleges and universities and 28 private ones.

The Concept of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Used in the Study

The concept of critical thinking and problem solving used in this study is "minimalist," that is, one which captures the essential dimensions of the concept reflected in the following: its etymology and dictionary definition, major definitions and explanations in the literature, a brief history of the idea, major tests of critical thinking, and the basic values it presupposes. This minimalist concept of critical thinking is embedded not only in a core body of research over the last 30 to 50 years but is also derived from roots in ancient Greek. The word ’’critical’’ derives etymologically from two Greek roots: "kriticos" (meaning discerning judgment) and "kriterion" (meaning standards). Etymologically, then, the word implies the development of "discerning judgment based on standards." In Webster's New World Dictionary, the relevant entry reads "characterized by careful analysis and judgment" and is followed by the gloss: "critical, in its strictest sense, implies an attempt at objective judgment so as to determine both merits and faults." Applied to thinking, then, we might provisionally define critical thinking as thinking that explicitly aims at well-founded judgment and hence utilizes appropriate evaluative standards in the attempt to determine the true worth, merit, or value of something. The tradition of research into critical thinking reflects the common perception that human thinking left to itself often gravitates toward prejudice, over-generalization, common fallacies, self-deception, rigidity, and narrowness. The critical thinking tradition seeks ways of understanding the mind and then training the intellect so that such "errors", "blunders", and "distortions" of thought are minimized. It assumes that the capacity of humans for good reasoning can be nurtured and developed by an educational process aimed directly at that end. It assumes that sound critical thinking maximizes our ability to solve problems of importance to us by helping us both to avoid common mistakes and to proceed in the most rational and logical fashion. For example, those who think critically typically engage in intellectual practices of the following sort, monitoring, reviewing, and assessing: goals and purposes; the way issues and problems are formulated; the information, data, or evidence presented for acceptance, interpretations of such information, data, or evidence; the quality of reasoning presented or developed, basic concepts or ideas inherent in thinking, assumptions made, implications and consequences that may or may not follow; points of view and frames of reference. In monitoring, reviewing and assessing these intellectual constructs, those who think critically characteristically strive, for such intellectual ends as clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logicalness. Each of these modes of thinking help us to accomplish the ends for which we are thinking and hence to solve the problems inherent in pursuing those ends.

Current Teaching Practices and Knowledge of Critical Thinking

In-depth interviews were utilized to provide information on how faculty tend to think about critical thinking and the manner in which that thinking influences the design of their classes. Questions were designed to shed light on the extent to which students in teacher preparation programs in California are being taught in ways that facilitate skill in critical thinking and the ability to teach it to others. There were three goals of this component of the study. The first was to ensure that any faculty who had a developed notion of critical thinking (of any kind) would have a full opportunity and much encouragement to spell out that notion. We wanted to make sure that everyone interviewed was encouraged to express their actual views and to express them in detail. The second goal was to examine the views expressed to see: a) how many faculty actually had a developed view and b) how much internal coherence there was in any given faculty view. In other words, we sought to determine how many faculty had seriously thought through the concept of critical thinking--irrespective of how they defined it, and then, once we had a full expression of any given person's views, we examined what was said, not only for clarity but also for coherence. The third goal was to determine the extent to which the views expressed demonstrated an internalization of traditional "minimalist" elements of critical thinking. We sought to determine, in other words, how much of the common core of meaning now attached to the traditional concept by those working in the field of critical thinking research (and reflected in its semantics and history) has been internalized by faculty teaching in teacher preparation programs. Data collection included both closed-ended and open-ended questions. In addition, the coders of responses made judgments about some important global features of the responses made (using minimalist components of critical thinking as criteria). The open-ended questions, and the follow-up questions, were designed, as indicated above, to provide maximum opportunity for individuals to articulate virtually any concept of critical thinking that they favored. The follow-up questions’’ main function was that of ensuring that the most specific and precise views that could be obtained were obtained. Since the interviews lasted 45 minutes on average, the interviewees had ample opportunity to express their views. The same interview protocol was utilized for both education faculty and subject matter faculty. A total of 140 interviews were completed, representing a 78% response rate among those contacted for an interview. Since the samples were constructed so as to be representative in a statistical sense of all faculty involved in teacher preparation in California, the results can in fact be generalized to teacher preparation faculty in the state as a whole. The results of the analysis were as follows: 1) Though the overwhelming majority (89%) claimed critical thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction, only a small minority (19%) could give a clear explanation of what critical thinking is. Furthermore, according to their answers, only 9% of the respondents were clearly teaching for critical thinking on a typical day in class. 2) Though the overwhelming majority (78%) claimed that their students lacked appropriate intellectual standards (to use in assessing their thinking), and 73% considered that students learning to assess their own work was of primary importance, only a very small minority (8%) could enumerate any intellectual criteria or standards they required of students or could give an intelligible explanation of what those criteria and standards were. 3) While 50% of those interviewed said that they explicitly distinguish critical thinking skills from traits, only 8% were able to provide a clear conception of the critical thinking skills they thought were most important for their students to develop. Furthermore the overwhelming majority (75%) provided either minimal or vague allusion (33%) or no allusion at all (42%) to intellectual traits of mind. 4) When asked how they conceptualized truth, a surprising 41% of those who responded to the question said that knowledge, truth and sound judgment are fundamentally a matter of personal preference or subjective taste. 5) Although the majority (67%) said that their concept of critical thinking is largely explicit in their thinking, only 19% could elaborate on their concept of thinking. 6) Although the vast majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary importance to their instruction, 77% of the respondents had little, limited or no conception of how to reconcile content coverage with the fostering of critical thinking. 7) Although the overwhelming majority (81%) felt that their department’s graduates develop a good or high level of critical thinking ability while in their program, only 20% said that their departments had a shared approach to critical thinking, and only 9% were able to clearly articulate how they would assess the extent to which a faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking. The remaining respondents had a limited conception or no conception at all of how to do this. 8) Although the vast majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary importance to their instruction, only `a very small minority could clearly explain the meanings of basic terms in critical thinking. For example, only 8% could clearly differentiate between an assumption and an inference, and only 4% could differentiate between an inference and an implication. 9) Only a very small minority (9%) mentioned the special and/or growing need for critical thinking today in virtue of the pace of change and the complexities inherent in human life. Not a single respondent elaborated on the issue. 10) In explaining their views of critical thinking, the overwhelming majority (69%) made either no allusion at all, or a minimal allusion, to the need for greater emphasis on peer and student self-assessment in instruction. 11) From either the quantitative data directly, or from minimal inference from those data, it is clear that a significant percentage of faculty interviewed (and, if representative, most faculty):

do not understand the connection of critical thinking to intellectual standards.
are not able to clarify major intellectual criteria and standards.
inadvertently confuse the active involvement of students in classroom activities with critical thinking in those activities.
are unable to give an elaborated articulation of their concept of critical thinking.
cannot provide plausible examples of how they foster critical thinking in the classroom.
are not able to name specific critical thinking skills they think are important for students to learn.
are not able to plausibly explain how to reconcile covering content with fostering critical thinking.
do not consider reasoning as a significant focus of critical thinking.
do not think of reasoning within disciplines as a major focus of instruction.
cannot specify basic structures essential to the analysis of reasoning.
cannot give an intelligible explanation of basic abilities either in critical thinking or in reasoning .
do not distinguish the psychological dimension of thought from the intellectual dimension.
have had no involvement in research into critical thinking and have not attended any conferences on the subject.
are unable to name a particular theory or theorist that has shaped their concept of critical thinking.

Some Policy Recommendations

If it is essential for teachers to foster critical thinking, then it is essential for those who teach the teachers to have at least baseline knowledge of the concept of critical thinking. Those who teach prospective teachers must be sufficiently well-informed about critical thinking not only to be able to explain it in a general way to their students, they must also regularly model instruction for critical thinking in their own classroom procedures and policies. The design of their classes must reflect an explicit critical thinking orientation, so that students not only systematically think through the content of their courses, but also come to see how the design of a course can require and cultivate critical thinking and thoughtfulness — or fail to do so. On our view, four interventions are requisite for substantive change to occur. First, we must disseminate the information faculty need to change their perceptions. Second, we must provide for faculty skill-building through appropriate professional development. Third, we must establish a mandate to systematically teach critical thinking (and how to teach for it) in all programs of teacher education. And fourth, we must develop an exit examination in critical thinking for all prospective teachers. Let us look at each of these proposed interventions in turn. 1) Information Dissemination: Sufficient awareness, grounded in intellectual humility, must be generated in those communities of faculty teaching in teacher preparation programs leading to the recognition a) that there is a general lack of knowledge on the part of the teaching faculty of the baseline concept of critical thinking, and b) that most students in teacher preparation programs are now graduating without knowledge of critical thinking or how to teach for it. There are seven forms of information that need wide dissemination. At present none of these categories of information are widely disseminated in the teaching community. The categories are as follows:

We need to disseminate information that documents the problem at the k-12 teaching level.
We need to disseminate information on teaching for critical thinking within particular disciplines (such as math).
We need to disseminate information about the process that faculty go through as they initially develop their ability to bring critical thinking successfully into the classroom (especially regarding those who display intellectual humility).
We need to disseminate information about exemplary teaching practices of individuals, as they reach high levels of success.

Qualitative Generalizations: Interpreting Responses to Open-Ended Questions

A close look at the open-ended responses obtained in the interviews provides a realistic sense of the empirical foundation for generalizations that go beyond purely quantitative data. Many of the samples from the interviews are vivid and deeply revealing. A full airing of these samples, with commentary, is contained in Appendix A. The data collected enabled us to present illustrative profiles of faculty who had a vague and or internally incoherent conception of critical thinking in contrast to those who had a developed notion of critical thinking (irrespective of their orientation toward it). If we assume that those who had a vague or internally contradictory concept of critical thinking simply haven't thought much on the subject, and those who had a clear, well-elaborated, and internally coherent concept had thought seriously about the subject, then we can infer that comparatively few faculty members have thought seriously about critical thinking. In other words, we were able to get a strong sense of how many faculty members had seriously thought through the concept of critical thinking--irrespective of how they defined it, and then, we were able to separate out those whose views were not only highly elaborated but coherent. From delving into the rich details of the open-ended responses, one finds not only confirmation of the quantitative data, but also powerful support for significant qualitative generalizations. What is more, a close look at individual cases reveals that there is significant contrast between those faculty members who have a developed concept of critical thinking and those who do not. The profiles of individual faculty that are summarized below illustrate clearly the kind of differences which existed between those who were articulate in explaining how they approach critical thinking and those who were not. It also confirmed what the quantitative data showed, namely, that many faculty members, without knowing it, are confused about the basic concepts and skills of critical thinking. Let us now look at some illustrative faculty profiles from the study Each profile represents one person from the study. Each profile is anonymous--in keeping with the commitment made to all of those who agreed to be interviewed.

Some Illustrative Profiles

The Basic Pattern What follows is a series of "profiles" which suggest some of the basic patterns of thinking found in particular faculty members who participated in the interviews. Most faculty answered open-ended questions with vague answers, rather than clear and precise answers. In many of their answers there were internal "tensions" and in some cases outright contradictions. The magic talisman were phrases like "constructivism", "Bloom's Taxonomy", "process-based", "inquiry-based", "beyond recall", "active learning", "meaning-centered" and such like — phrases that under probing questions the majority of interviewees were unable to intelligibly explain in terms of critical thinking. The most common confusion, perhaps, was confusion between what is necessary (for critical thinking) and what is sufficient (for it). For example, active engagement is necessary to critical thinking, but one can be actively engaged and NOT THINK CRITICALLY. To illustrate, many gang members are actively engaged in gang activities, but that does not make them critical thinkers. It is not THAT you are engaged but HOW you are engaged that matters. Virtually all of those interviewed identified critical thinking and the learning of intellectual standards as primary objectives in instruction, yet few could give a clear explanation of what their concept of either was. Virtually all said that students lacked intellectual standards when they entered their classes, yet implied, at the same time, that they left with those intellectual standards in place. They also overwhelmingly stated or implied that their students left them with a good level of critical thinking as well as a good level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. By direct statement or by implication, most claimed that they permeated their instruction with an emphasis on critical thinking and that the students internalized the concepts in their courses as a result. Yet only the rare interviewee mentioned the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely, relevantly, or logically, etc. Very few mentioned any of the basic skills of thought, such as the ability to clarify questions, gather relevant data, reason to logical or valid conclusions, identify key assumptions, trace significant implications, or enter without distortion into alternative points of view. Intellectual traits of mind, such as intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance, intellectual responsibility, and so on, are virtually unheard of by the interviewees. After listening to the interviews it becomes obvious that irrespective of the diversity of language used, the central problem is that most faculty have not carefully thought through any concept of critical thinking, have no sense of intellectual standards they can put into words, and are, therefore, by any reasonable interpretation, in no position to foster critical thinking in their own students or to help them to foster it in their future students--except to inculcate into their students the same vague views that they have. Now let's look at some specific profiles.

Weak Profiles

Profile A (8) Professor A thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in his instructional objectives. He identifies his concept of critical thinking as intuitive and a product of his own thinking. He does not distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to him, his students come to class with well-developed intellectual standards and graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and a high level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. His responses to the open-ended questions, however, are quite vague in general and suggest that he hasn't in fact thought much about critical thinking. His explanation of critical thinking, for example, is vague and possibly self-contradictory: "Critical thinking means to think analytically and be aware that everyone thinks for himself. All thinking is critical to some extent. Anyone who thinks intelligently. Reflectiveness." When asked what critical thinking skills are most important for students to develop, he says, "I can't answer this. I can't identify skills." When asked how he would assess the extent to which another faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking in their classes, the vagueness of his thinking about critical thinking is again apparent when he says "You look at their publishing. And I'd hear from students. They'd be complaining. It takes time." When asked for his personal conception of intellectual standards, it is clear that he does not have one: "That’s a hard question to answer. I don't think I see an answer to it." In addition to his general lack of clear thinking about critical thinking, it is apparent that he is also confused about the basic concepts in critical thinking. When asked to explain the difference between an assumption and an inference, he says, "An inference is something based on information. An assumption is based on feeling and a lack of thinking." (Ignoring the fact that we can make empirically well-founded assumptions and infer something based on prejudices or stereotypes.)

Profile B (10) Professor B thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in her instructional objectives. She says her concept of critical thinking is explicit and a product of her own thinking. She does not distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to her, students come to class with well-developed intellectual standards and graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and a high level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. Her responses to the open-ended questions, however, are quite vague in general and suggest that she hasn't clarified the difference between "constructing beliefs" and "constructing knowledge." She in general assumes that if students are actively engaged and "thinking for themselves", they are ipso facto thinking critically. Nowhere does she mention that students actively construct prejudice as well as knowledge, poor thinking as well as sound thinking. Nowhere does she mention the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely, relevantly, logically, etc... When asked to explain her concept of critical thinking, she says: "Critical thinking consists in the active construction of knowledge and valuing social justice, a continuing examining of things as they are and might be..." When asked what critical thinking skills are most important for students to develop, she says, "I don't think in terms of critical thinking skills. To think critically is to be a competent observer of events and to have a disposition to ask questions about them, to classify and find patterns...". (Note that a person can have the disposition to ask superficial or loaded questions and that all persons, poor reasoners as well as good reasoners, classify and find patterns--merely in virtue of being language users). When asked how she would assess the extent to which another faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking in their classes, she equates critical thinking with active learning, saying: "Critical thinking is built into an active learning model. How are we supporting students in becoming active, autonomous learners. Active participation, reflection, a personal experience and the ability to make connection between their own views and others. Lively dialogue." When asked for her personal conception of intellectual standards, she looks to find a way to equate intellectual standards with active processing, saying: "A process conception. There is no finite set of standards to achieve but the learner engages in active dialogue with self and others with increasingly insightful learning..." Profile C (14) Professor C thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in his instructional objectives. He identifies his concept of critical thinking as explicit and a product of one or more theories of critical thinking to which he explicitly subscribes. He claims to distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to him, his students do not come to class with well-developed intellectual standards, but graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and good ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. His responses to the open-ended questions, however, are quite vague in general and suggest that he assumes that critical thinking is an automatic by-product of the use of discipline-based procedures. It is evident, however, that he has not thought through what the differences are between, say, the "scientific method" and "Bloom's taxonomy." He nowhere discusses the standards and criteria implicit in sound scientific work. His explanation of critical thinking is: "Critical thinking is investigative inquiry, to observe, interpret, and predict." When asked what critical thinking skills are most important for students to develop, he says, "To analyze, predict, compare, observe... all of those listed by Bloom...all the science processes." When asked how he would assess the extent to which another faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking in their classes, he says "Ask them to compare a lecture approach with an investigative inquiry approach. Have them do a self-assessment after they did an inquiry unit." Though the above answer suggests that Professor C understands the importance of having students engage in self- and peer-assessment, it is also clear that he has not thought through the intellectual criteria or standards that students need to effectively do such self-assessment. To some extent, he appears to equate intellectual standards with intellectual autonomy (forgetting that I can think for myself and yet do a poor job of it). For example, when asked for his personal conception of intellectual standards, he says: "All thoughts should be tentative. Are we using the processes and holding thoughts tentatively. In all cases, we should let the students develop their own level of understanding." In addition to his vague thinking about critical thinking, it is apparent that he is also confused about the basic concepts in critical thinking. When asked to explain the difference between an assumption and an inference, and says, "Assumptions don't have data behind them. Inferences do." In saying this, he of course fails to remember that assumptions can be well or poorly grounded and inferences are sometimes based on stereotypes or imagined facts. Nowhere in the interview does Professor C mention any of the basic skills of thought such as clarifying the question; gathering relevant data, reasoning to logical or valid conclusions; identifying key assumptions; tracing significant implications, or entering without distortion into alternative points of view, neither does he mention important intellectual traits of mind, such as intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance, intellectual responsibility, etc... Profile D (15) Professor D illustrates a person who seems torn between negating critical thinking and its importance while simultaneously claiming to permeate her teaching with it (as something vitally important). On the one hand, she says that critical thinking is of primary importance in her instructional objectives, but on the other hand, says that "it is not so much critical thinking (that students need) but information." On the one hand she says that critical thinking is explicit in her thinking and that it is a product of one or more theories of critical thinking to which she explicitly subscribes, but she goes on to say that "I never read critical thinking books." She says that critical thinking "is embedded in everything I do," but cannot articulate any critical thinking skills or standards that she emphasizes. Profile E Professor E (16) illustrates a person who seems torn between a view in which critical thinking is based on objective standards and skills, on the one hand, and a subjective view, on the other (in which whatever satisfies the individual as an autonomous thinker is the only ultimate basis for critical thought). This tension is suggested in Professor E's explanation of his concept of critical thinking: "Information must be processed. To analyze and synthesize a viewpoint that is your own is critical thinking. Values come into it. We should have the capacity to look at things objectively." When he delineates skills that are important for students to develop, he names values and process, but does not clearly state any skill as such: "(They need to learn) objectivity, (to) weigh through information, balance views, accept new information and process it" When Professor E explains his conception of intellectual standards we see again him oscillating between the objective and subjective. He says that "...accuracy and truth are both relative. ... What is the truth at that moment? (But) be available to find that one is not accurate and that the truth is not comfortable," At the same time Professor E is one of the rare individuals who ranks program graduates as low both in critical thinking abilities and in knowledge of how to teach for critical thinking. Profile F (19) Professor F thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in her instructional objectives. She says her concept of critical thinking is explicit and a product of one or more theories to which she explicitly subscribes (though unable to cite any theory when asked). She says she does distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to her, students come to class without well-developed intellectual standards but graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and in fostering critical thinking in their future students. Her responses to the open-ended questions, however, are peppered with a diversity of responses (and it is not quite clear whether they add up to a coherent notion or represent confusion of thought). Nowhere does she mention that students actively construct prejudice as well as knowledge, poor thinking as well as sound thinking. Nowhere does she mention the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely, relevantly, logically, etc... When asked to explain her concept of critical thinking, she says: "Everyone has a different view of critical thinking. I think of it as thinking skills. I think of words like analytical, evaluative, judgmental and I think of my field and activities I would do with my students. Logic and patterns. For example, classifying skills. Looking at a set of buttons--which one is different. I'm thinking of open-endedness, unifying ideas, and problem-solving." She provides a similar answer when asked for her personal conception of intellectual standards: "Open-endedness, trying something new, analyze situations and problem solve, making estimates to see if your answers are reasonable, consider the viewpoint, judge the data, check their work." She is unable to give a coherent explanation of the difference between an assumption and an inference or between an inference and an implication. Profile G (76) Professor G is a good example of one who equates critical thinking with thinking for oneself and, beyond that, applies no discernible intellectual standards. She says critical thinking is of primary importance in her instructional objectives, that her concept of critical thinking is explicit and a product of her own thinking. She does not distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. On the other hand, she says that knowledge, truth, and sound judgment are not fundamentally a matter of one's personal preference or subjective taste. She says that it is of primary importance for students to acquire sound intellectual criteria or standards and to learn how to assess their own work. According to her, students come to class without well-developed intellectual standards but graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and a high level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. When asked to explain her concept of critical thinking she says: "Critical thinking is being able to look at a situation and analyze what is going on and ask questions that enable you to get at alternatives. To be able to make up your mind by getting beyond the rhetoric." Her responses to the open-ended questions, however, are quite vague and suggest that she hasn't clarified, for example, the difference between "constructing beliefs" and "constructing knowledge." She in general assumes that if students are actively engaged and "thinking for themselves", they are ipso facto thinking critically. Nowhere does she mention that students can actively construct prejudice as well as knowledge, poor thinking as well as sound thinking. Nowhere does she mention the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely, relevantly, logically, etc... When asked to describe a typical day in class that fosters critical thinking she says: "I use a holistic, constructivist basis. Students construct their own meaning, working together, dynamic, in living and breathing class discussions and debates." When asked what critical thinking skills are most important for students to develop, she is quite vague. She says, "Being able to assess validity, to look at and assess their own work, what the next step ought to be, to be able to choose issues that are important." When asked how she would assess the extent to which another faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking in their classes, she equates critical thinking with active learning, saying: . "I would look at students' products. Look for originality. Going beyond the task." When asked for her personal conception of intellectual standards, she says: "(I would look for them to) take their own positions. I don't know that I would apply general standards." She is unclear about the differences between assumptions, inferences, and implications. Profile H Professor H (79) is representative of the many faculty members who equate the fact of students actively "processing" information with their thinking critically about it. Most of those who think this way tend to think in terms of Bloom's taxonomy. Hence, critical thinking then is viewed as going beyond "knowledge" acquisition. Knowledge acquisition is viewed essentially as lower order memorization and recall, while "processing" is viewed as going beyond recall to "internalization". Professor H thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in his instructional objectives. He identifies his concept of critical thinking as explicit and a product of his own thinking (as well as theory). He says he distinguishes critical thinking skills, traits, and values (though his subsequent answers do not support this claim). According to him, his students do not come to class with well-developed intellectual standards, but that it is "of primary importance" that they acquire such standards and learn thereby to assess their own work. He claims that students in the program graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability as well as a good level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. His responses to the open-ended questions, however, are vague and suggest that he hasn't in fact thought much about critical thinking. He explains his concept of critical thinking as follows: "Critical thinking is analyzing an event before a decision is made." He says that "almost all" of his instruction is based on critical thinking because "as long as it is not knowledge acquisition, it is critical thinking. Students analyze and draw their own conclusions." When asked what critical thinking skills are most important for students to develop, he says, "The skills of analysis and recognition of multiple perspectives and then picking out the appropriate action." When asked how he would assess the extent to which another faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking in their classes, he says "Do they go beyond recall to have the students analyzing and putting it back together to make a decision on their own?" When asked for his personal conception of intellectual standards, he says "Are they using all the information? (Are they considering) multiple viewpoints?" His understanding of basic critical thinking terms is vague. He explains the difference between an assumption and an inference as follows: "An assumption is something that takes place automatically. In an inference you are going in some direction." Concerning the difference between an inference and an implication, he says: "An inference is more biased. An implication is sounder judgments, something that would follow a chain of events." (Note, he is unaware that inferences can be valid or invalid, well or poorly supported, and an implication to thought follows whether or not we ever act upon it--and hence need not be related to any chain of events).

Strong Profiles

Profile J (26) Professor J thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in his instructional objectives. He identifies his concept of critical thinking as a product of one or more theories of critical thinking to which he explicitly subscribes. He does not distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to him, his students graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and a good level of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. His responses to the open-ended questions, however, are relatively clear and elaborated. He cites Paulo Friere and John Dewey as fundamental influences in his thinking about critical thinking. He says his main goal is the "empowerment" of students. He says he strives to model critical thinking with his students in a variety of ways, including evaluating various aspects of the course with the students (e.g., what structures being used are working and which are not having their designed effect). He is especially concerned with the intellectual and linguistic development of students and in encouraging students to begin to take charge of their minds and their lives. He develops special strategies to use in helping students to read critically and he challenges the students continually to examine their own presuppositions, as well as the presuppositions of the status quo, of society, of schooling--not excepting his own instructional design. Rather than focus on covering information, professor J helps students to learn skills of finding and assessing information. He concentrates his effort on key concepts which help students assimilate new information. He wants students to discover different modes of thinking that enable them to question dominant sources of information. He wants students to develop a critical understanding of the social context of education and often has students discuss the ultimate purpose of education. Gaining perspective, learning new frames of reference, questioning assumptions, evaluating information for its relevance to their values, involving students in more "authentic" modes of assessment--these are central goals and emphases. Professor J has a well-elaborated conception of intellectual standards. He emphasizes students clarifying their views, evaluating relevance, identifying implications, accurately recognizing presuppositions, determining the coherence of views presented, adhering to the rigors of the scientific method with its goals of accuracy and precision, evaluating reasoning for its validity, and striving for soundness in judgment. Profile K (25) Professor K thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance in her instructional objectives. She says her concept of critical thinking is explicit and a product of one of more theories of critical thinking to which she explicitly subscribes. She cites Matthew Lipman as a fundamental source of theory. She does distinguish critical thinking skills, traits, and values. According to her, students do not come to class with well-developed intellectual standards but he thinks they do graduate with a good level of critical thinking ability and a high good of ability to foster critical thinking in their future students. Her responses to the open-ended questions are relatively clear and well-elaborated. She defines critical thinking as effective problem solving. She fosters it by systematically confronting students, contradicting them to get them to think. She models alternative views, plays devil's advocate, and holds students responsible for their thinking. Hence, though she is a "constructivist" she does not assume that students will automatically construct knowledge simply because they are actively engaged. She believes they must experience careful cultivation within an environment in which they are systematically challenged. She believes in "whole-hearted responsibility." Students must own their decisions and be accountable. She designs her classes so that students must evaluate each other's work. She uses a case study approach, but one in which students critique other students on their cases studies. She uses lecture to present theory, but then students are forced to critique their own understanding of the theories and apply them to their cases. She focuses 40% to 50% of class time on interactive activities, but she holds students responsible for a level of performance in those activities. She designs ways to hold students responsible to do their assigned reading so that they are prepared for the in-class work. She argues that students must continually go back and forth between experience and theory, and between thinking and reflecting on where that thinking is coming from. She argues that students must become conscious of their own theories and what they are based on. Theories must be considered with their objections. Professor K's conception of intellectual standards is framed in the context of the above remarks. Students must express and defend their views, hear objections and answer the objections, hear other views and learn from those views. They must consider alternatives and check their reasoning to make sure it is logical. They must also check their information sources. Professor L (18) Professor L is important as a rare example of a professor whose answers regarding critical thinking reflect intellectual humility. She explicitly admits that her knowledge of critical thinking is limited. She tries to make critical thinking primary in her classes, but she freely admits that she has only her only critical thinking intuitions to go on. In her view critical thinking is the ability to define a problem and develop a solution to it. It includes recognizing strategies that are effective, using criteria for "correct" performance, and then assessing their own performance. Concerning reconciling content coverage with fostering critical thinking, she says that if you give students the material so fast that they are not able to learn it, then coverage makes no sense. She gives a good example from volleyball. She says it would do you no good to hear lectures on volleyball if you are not able to use them effectively in performance of the game. Concerning the component skills of critical thinking, she freely admits that she has never studied critical thinking intellectually, and so "I'm not sure how to explain it." Concerning her personal conception of intellectual standards, her refreshing answer is "This is something I haven't thought about." (The strength of this profile is in the intellectual humility that it displays. This is a professor who is clearly ready to learn.) Professor M (92) Professor M thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance to his instructional objectives. He thinks of knowledge, truth and sound judgment as not fundamentally a matter of his own personal preference or subjective taste. He does not distinguish between critical thinking skills and traits. He was one of the few faculty members in the study to state that the students in his department develop only a low level ability to think critically. Professor M's responses to the open ended questions were relatively clear and elaborated. He sees critical thinking as "being able to reach the sensible conclusions on the basic of logic and evidence, the ability to perceive contradictions...to attempt to resolve them." He says that on a typical class day he focuses on "presenting problems to students as opposed to conclusions." In terms of the critical thinking skills he thinks are the most important for students to develop, he says they most need to develop the ability to seek and evaluate evidence, to use logic to reach defensible conclusions. Furthermore he says that they must be able to evaluate positions of their own and others, "to go beyond superficial understandings of reality." Professor M says that he places strong emphasis on helping students develop philosophical underpinnings of their eventual teaching procedures through a critical thinking approach. He goes on to say that he wants to students to "approach teaching as an intellectual task as opposed to a technical one. One of his primary objectives is to help students develop their ability to gather relevant points of view when dealing with broad, complex issues. Furthermore, he expresses the view that teachers should not present students with "finished answers." Rather they should help students construct their own meanings by teaching them to think through issues in a critical manner. In focusing on the philosophy of education, he presents the key concept as "a logically consistent interrelated set of principles about the nature of knowledge, learning, and teaching that generates practical solutions for the everyday problems of teaching." He makes it clear to students that they are responsible for forming their own philosophy, for determining the principles they think are important which will guide what they do in the classroom. Some questions he uses to guide their thinking are:

What are the proper aims of education? (Not what works, but what purposes are worth working for?)
What knowledge is worth knowing (teaching)?
Who should decide what knowledge is worth knowing?
What is an educated person?
What kind of relationships should teachers establish with students?
To what extent should teachers prepare students to be agents for change?
To what extent should they prepare them to 'fit it'?"

Before students write answers to these questions, Prof. M leads a discussion which explores all points of view relevant to the issues embedded in them. In these discussions, he tries to persuade them of each of the varying points of view. Then after exposure to these differing views, they write their philosophy of teaching, pointing out principles they believe are important in good teaching, and supporting their positions through reasoned judgment. Professor N (104) Professor N thinks of critical thinking as of primary importance to his instructional objectives. He says that his concept of critical thinking is largely explicit in his thinking. Furthermore, in his concept of critical thinking he explicitly distinguishes critical thinking skills from traits. His responses to the open ended questions are relatively well elaborated. He describes his concept of critical thinking as gathering evidence, evaluating evidence, evaluating the sources of evidence, defining and dissecting the argument or thesis of any given piece of writing for its logic, identifying the points of view and question at issue, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. Professor N says that critical thinking involves being aware of one's value judgments and having the willingness to evaluate the evidence before coming to a conclusion. Professor N argues that "content without critical thinking is empty content." He believes that "content without the ability to evaluate it is content that will be mastered only for the length of the course." On the contrary, he says that teachers must organize content so that it is presented logically and so that students some to understand the connections between ideas. In his world history class, he encourages students to think critically about evidence, and what evidence reveals. In this class he uses multiple "primary sources" of information, dating from the time under investigation (e.g. Epic literature, pyramid tombs, Plato's Republic). He provides students with questions they should think through as they read and investigate the information, questions such as "What was the purpose of the author, or what was the purpose of a particular practice? What can this fragment from the past reveal about the culture under investigation? What pieces of information are relevant and why? For his exams, students are asked to develop and then compare arguments on both sides of an issue. They are to determine why certain arguments are more persuasive than others. He says that through his exams, students must demonstrate their ability to consider all points of view which are relevant to an issue, and to document their positions through reasoning. Professor O (45) Professor O considers critical thinking as having primary importance to her instructional objectives. She says that critical thinking is explicit in her thinking, and that it is largely a product of one or more theories of critical thinking. She distinguishes critical thinking skills and traits in her concept of critical thinking. Her responses to the open ended questions, and to follow-up interview questions, were clear and relatively well-elaborated. She understands critical thinking as learning how to think at an in-depth level, to be able to identify and think about problems, situations, and resolutions in a precise and focused manner. She also says that critical thinking means carefully assessing alternatives, figuring out the pros and cons of each. She adds to her definition that critical thinking involves applying reasoning and logic to problems and circumstances in a critical, disciplined and thorough manner. To develop the critical thinking abilities of her students, she has them select a topic to analyze related to a complex problem in education. She then has them critically analyze the different sides to the issue, think through the implications of the possible solutions to the problem, and then come up with recommendations. They are then to turn in the final product (paper) as well as make a presentation to the class which focuses on the process they went through in reaching their final conclusions or recommendations. Furthermore, she says that she tries to combine informal lecture with group discussions, where there is "a lot of give and take." She says that she believes strongly in using Socratic questioning to "draw students out." Professor O requires students to develop their own philosophies of education throughout the course, by focusing on questions such as "What is the ultimate purpose of education? Who is to be educated? Is everyone to be educated? Or are only a privileged few to be educated? She asks students to answer these questions, providing their reasoning for each answer. She asks them to consider alternative ways of answering the question. In preparation for writing their philosophies of education, Professor O asks students to take on roles with respect to particular complex questions related to education, and then debate the issues with one another. She often asks them to take a point of view which differs from their own and to debate from that position. In her classes, professor O requires students to routinely critique each other's work. She does this by having them exchange papers and review one another's papers. She provides guidelines for the standards they are to focus on. Students are to use standards such as: What are the key questions in the paper? How well organized is the paper? How specific are the details? How in-depth are the ideas explored? To what extent are the ideas well thought through? How understandable are the ideas?

Overall Conclusions and Implications

Critical thinking is clearly an honorific phrase in the minds of most teacher educators such that they feel obliged to claim both familiarity with it and commitment to it in their teaching, despite the fact that few have had any in-depth exposure to the research on the concept and most have only a vague understanding of what it is and what is involved in bringing it successfully into instruction. Critical thinking is commonly confused with active involvement in learning (forgetting that active involvement alone is quite compatible with active "mis-learning"). A vague appeal to words from Bloom's Taxonomy (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) is often taken to be demonstrative of knowledge of critical thinking. Even faculty in the CSU, which has a formal policy on critical thinking instruction, is apparently largely unfamiliar with the "definition of critical thinking" and specifications of what minimal conditions for instruction in it are inherent in the policy. It is clear that virtually all departments represented in the study uncritically assume that instruction in critical thinking takes place--without any effort to verify this assumption. In fact, we found no evidence in these interviews of any systematic efforts that have been made to assess instruction for critical thinking within any of the schools of education studied. What is more, there is little understanding of how to assess it--should schools of education desire to do it. Most disturbingly, since the overwhelming majority assumes that the faculty already understand and emphasize critical thinking in their classes, any "in-house" assessment would doubtless be perceived as a pointless "political" process to be carried out with a minimum of effort (but with a clear sense of how to achieve the politically correct answer). In other words, since professors in schools of education assume that they understand critical thinking and how to teach for it, and that they are already successful in teaching their students both, it follows that it will be exceedingly difficult to produce substantial changes in teacher certification programs in these areas. It is clear from the results of the study that we are very far from a state of affairs in which critical thinking is a hallmark of instruction in teacher preparation programs. Present instruction is likely to produce teachers who, on the one hand, are confident that they not only understand critical thinking but also know how to teach for it, but who, in point of fact, understand neither. Many will equate critical thinking with mere active involvement or "cooperative learning." Others will believe that some acquaintance with the terms of Bloom's Taxonomy or Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intellegences is equivalent to understanding critical thinking. Some will equate it with an emphasis on learning styles or with concept maps or some other tool or facet or dimension of learning. Others will equate the whole of critical thinking with some component part of it. Some will therefore emphasize multiple points of view (and take that to be the whole of it). Some will emphasize recognizing one's assumptions. Some will emphasize questioning information sources. Some will emphasize analyzing concepts. But very few will have a comprehensive sense of the whole or a realistic idea of how to cultivate it while teaching the content of a subject or discipline. Using the criteria of the California State Universities and Colleges as an alternative reference point, it is clear that, based on the information we have gathered, the overwhelming number of those certified to teach have little understanding of how to teach so that students will understand "the relationship of language to logic,... (or have) the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief....(or acquire) the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought." Finally, given the information gathered in this study, it is highly likely that most of those certified to teach have, given present instruction, little understanding of what reasoning is, what assumptions are, what inferences are, what implications are, or what it is to reason with intellectual discipline within a subject field (historically, biologically, psychologically, ...). It appears likely that we are now certifying teachers who not only have little understanding of critical thinking, or how to teach it, but also wrongly and confidently think they do. The end result is that California classrooms are places in which both teachers and students lack explicit knowledge of how to reason in a disciplined way about serious subjects and questions. In the absence of that understanding, one can expect a drifting toward intellectual relativism (i.e., toward the view that all answers sincerely believed and defended are equally good since, as far as they can see, there is no final way to intellectually assess competing answers other than by degree of active involvement in their defense). Subjectivity of response, subjectivity of grading, intellectual undisciplined answers will in all likelihood be unconsciously encouraged. Open-mindedness will be confused with the willingness to accept everyone's answer to a complex question as equally "right" (for them). Given the facts revealed in this study, it is unlikely that students preparing to teach are being instructed in the basic structures of reasoning. Students studying history, biology, and mathematics will not recognize that historians, biologists, and mathematicians equally make assumptions, develop specialized concepts, reason to conclusions, make interpretations of data, trace implications and consequences, define problems, concerns, and issues, and think within a disciplinary frame of reference or point of view. Students studying English, Physics, and Chemistry will not recognize that thinking clearly, accurately, and precisely; thinking deeply, broadly, and logically; are equally important intellectual criteria in every subject. Students will continue to lack any insight into the fact that moral issues and problems require as much disciplined reasoning and clarity of definition as does reasoning in any other domain. Students will graduate, in short, without any plausible semblance of intellectual perspective and discipline. If we are interested in teachers certified in California having a reasonable grounding in the rudiments of critical thinking based on a rich, substantive concept of it, or at least a minimalist, baseline concept, then we have a major task facing us, not the least of which is persuading the majority of the faculty that they do not already know what they confidently assume that they do know.

Limitations of the Study

There were numerous limitations of our study. Some were limitations of time and resources. We were limited in the quantity of people we could interview. We were limited as to the length of the interview. We were limited in the time we had to collect exemplary practices, as well as in the time designated to assembling the report as a whole. There are therefore limitations in the richness of the data collected. With more time and financial support we could have conducted interviews in yet greater depth. We could have engaged in greater study of exemplary practices including, for example, classroom visitations. We could have broadened the net in soliciting exemplary practices and thereby obtained examples from even more disciplines. We could have interviewed teachers in the field, new graduates from teacher education programs, even students at the K-12 level. Very much more might have been done, had there been the time and dollars to do it.

Nevertheless, despite the obvious limitations of the study, certain patterns in the data we did collect were so consistent across a wide variety of faculty that we believe the study unequivocally establishes some things beyond question, perhaps the main one being that most faculty teaching in teacher education programs have not thought systematically or deeply enough about critical thinking to express a clear, elaborated, and coherent conception of it. It is also beyond question, given the data of the study, that a high percentage of faculty members simply assume that they and their colleagues do understand critical thinking and do effectively teach it. It is also beyond question, from the data we gathered, that it is possible to identify college and university faculty who have devoted some significant portion of their time to developing a clear, well-elaborated, and coherent conception of critical thinking and are actively engaged in developing a variety of effective ways to cultivate critical thinking in their students. What remains to be seen is whether or not we develop the academic and political motivation to pursue a realistic, long-range solution to these problems. It is difficult to predict at this time the degree of resistance and denial that will emerge from education faculty, and the broader education community, to the results of this study. No professional group likes to hear that it has significantly failed to act effectively in fostering a basic value and in furthering an end importantly connected both to its prestige and mission. We can only point to the fact that there are a growing number of faculty nationally who are recognizing the failure of colleges and universities to effectively teach students to think critically and become effective problem solvers. Unfortunately, the history of education does not provide us with a similarly large problem that was solved in the education community by some set of strategies which we could now appropriate, which could be used in developing strategies to rectify the problems clearly documented in the study.

Critical Thinking Advisory Task Force

An Advisory Task Force was appointed consisting of teacher educators, subject matter faculty, and K-12 teachers and administrators to guide the study design, interpretation of data, and policy recommendations. The following individuals served as members of the Critical Thinking Advisory Task Force for this study:

, Teacher
Edison High School Stockton
Unified School District

, Professor
School of Education St. Mary's College

, Professor
Department of Education
University of California, Santa Barbara

, Professor
School of Education
California State University, Los Angeles

, Teacher
Spurgeon Intermediate School
Santa Ana Unified School District

, Professor
Jack Fraenkel, Professor College of Education
San Francisco State University

,
President Lorand and Company, Inc.
Richard Pope, Teacher
Toyon Elementary School
Berryessa Union Elementary School District

, Principal
Los Gatos High School
Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union
High School District

, Professor
Department of Sociology
California State University,
Los Angeles School of Education

University of the Pacific

IMAGES

PPT
The morality of critical thinking by Kali Lachance
Critical Thinking: Morality + Law (PPT) by Philosop-HER
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Critical Thinking: Morality + Law (PPT) by Philosop-HER
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VIDEO

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COMMENTS

Critical Thinking, Moral Integrity and Citizenship
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Ethical thinking and critical thinking are both important and it helps to understand how we need to use them together to make decisions. Critical thinking helps us narrow our choices. Ethical thinking includes values as a filter to guide us to a choice that is ethical. Using critical thinking, we may discover an opportunity to exploit a ...
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promote critical thinking and moral reasoning skills, which can aid teachers in incorporating values integration in their language and literature curricula. By using literature as a tool for values education, students are exposed to a range of perspectives and ethical dilemmas that can help them
(PDF) Critical Thinking and Moral Reasoning: Can You Have One without
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5 8.5 Thinking Beyond the Opposites: Toward a Better and More Humane World. Critical, creative, and ethical thinking working together are intellectually more powerful than any one of these forms in isolation. This is especially obvious if one contemplates the opposites of any of the three combined with the other two.
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In recent decades, approaches to critical thinking have generally taken a practical turn, pivoting away from more abstract accounts - such as emphasizing the logical relations that hold between statements (Ennis, 1964) - and moving toward an emphasis on belief and action.According to the definition that Robert Ennis (2018) has been advocating for the last few decades, critical thinking is ...
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The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique conducts advanced research and disseminates information on critical thinking. Each year it sponsors an annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform. It has worked with the College Board, the National Education Association, the U.S. Department of Education, as ...