Understanding Oughts by Assessing Moral Reasoning or Moral Emotions

As an empirical science, moral psychology does not claim to establish a universal ethic. Instead, it investigates differences between groups, cultures, or individuals, as well as changes within these entities. Differences and changes are observed and analyzed with respect to the contents and structure of moral norms, their generality or speciicity, the flexibility or rigidity with which norms are applied, their development, processes of moral socialization and internalization, reasons given for norms, reactions when they are violated, and their influences on experiences, judgments, and actions. Before we investigate these questions, we need to understand how moral rules are represented psychologically. What does it mean to say that we should act in such and such a way or that we are not allowed to act thus and so (Tugendhat, 1984, p. 3)