Why Moral Competence Cannot Be Purely Cognitive
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20141899 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eric Christian Barnes (0000-0002-8018-8773, Philosophy Department Southern Methodist University Dallas Texas USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.70096 |
| OpenAlex | W7163410305 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
It is widely held that moral competence is a necessary condition for moral accountability. Although moral competence may be defined in various ways, a family of views can be classified as cognitive accounts insofar as they identify moral competence with either the possession of a true belief regarding the moral status of one's action or the capacity to form such a belief. I argue that cognitive accounts are untenable because they cannot adequately accommodate cases involving divergent agents who reach conflicting moral judgements. In their place, I defend a hybrid account of moral competence that understands such competence as consisting in a conjunction of cognitive and motivational capacities
Cognition · Competence (human resources) · Moral authority · Moral disengagement · Moral reasoning · Social cognitive theory of morality · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
| Highly cited | No |
|---|