Scope

Abstract

Commonsense, as well as experimental psychology, indicates that there are subtle distinctions in the normative domain. Many people, both adults and children, think that it’s worse to produce a bad consequence than to allow it and that it’s worse to produce a bad consequence with intent than to produce it with mere foreknowledge. People also often think that it’s forbidden to treat people of their own community in a certain way, but not that it’s forbidden to treat people in other communities in that way. It has been unclear exactly how these distinctions arise in ordinary moral thought. This chapter draws on the “size principle,” which is implicated in word learning, to explain how children would use scant and equivocal evidence to acquire these aspects of moral systems.