deficient in that form of reasoning. It might be that they are not aware
of the general principles or that they have difficulties applying them to
particular cases. Now the clinical study of sociopaths suggests a rather
different situation. These people have no difficulty describing what
they did or what they were planning to do as violating moral rules—
for instance, as hurting people without justification. If anything, some
criminal sociopaths seem to have a very keen sense of what is wrong
and why, and they often entertain precise descriptions of the effects
their actions will have on others. They seem to apply all the rules of
moral reasoning but this somehow does not give them the motivation
[176] to act differently. To know that some course of action is wrong is not
really what we mean by a "moral" judgement if it does not divert you
from doing it.
But then where do the feelings come from? They seem far more
complex than other types of emotional reactions, like the fear of an
unseen presence or the pleasure of getting more than expected. Fear
alerts us to danger and forces us to focus on a possible source of harm;
the pleasure derived from beneficial situations leads the individual to
recognize where his or her best interests lie. But there is nothing
straightforward about feeling guilty after lying to a friend. There is no
obvious danger there. Feeling proud that we did not lie is equally
complex. We get no clear reward to behave morally, indeed in many
cases we have to forgo some possible gratification. So why should this
trigger a pleasurable feeling? One solution is to look at how people
acquire moral sentiment—that is, how children gradually identify
moral norms in their particular group and form their own system of
intuitions.
EARLY MORALITY
That young children are morally incompetent may seem obvious.
They often behave in ways clearly excluded by local moral standards.
Adults use a whole panoply of measures (from good examples to
threats or coercion) in the hope of correcting that. Children do
change and in general gradually acquire intuitions similar to those of
adults, so that whatever measures were taken by adults are invariably
construed as the cause of these changes. But psychologists know that
this is a gross oversimplification. Children may not be totally incom-
petent in the domain. Indeed, it would be difficult to explain theRELIGION EXPLAINED