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ABSTRACT Contractualist moral theories view morality as a matter of mutually beneficial agreements among rational agents. Compared to its rivals in moral philosophy–consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics–contractualism has only recently started to attract attention in empirical work on the cognitive science of morality. Is it fruitful to adopt a contractualist lens to better understand how moral cognition works? After introducing the main contractualist theories in contemporary moral philosophy, I present five reasons to take inspiration from this family of normative theories to develop descriptive accounts of morality. Then, I review how the contractualist framework has been used to contribute to our understanding of moral cognition at three interrelated levels of analysis: Morality's evolutionary logic, its cognitive organization, and the specific cognitive processes and forms of reasoning involved in moral judgment and decision making. First, several evolutionary accounts of morality argue that its evolutionary logic must be understood in contractualist terms. Second, resource‐rational contractualism proposes that the subcomponents of moral cognition–including well‐studied rule‐ and outcome‐based mechanisms, and much less studied agreement‐based processes–are organized to efficiently approximate the outcome of explicit negotiation under resource constraints. Third, recent empirical developments suggest that three characteristically contractualist forms of reasoning–virtual bargaining, we‐reasoning, and universalization–can be involved in producing moral judgments and decisions in a variety of contexts. Beyond the traditional distinction between rules and consequences, these various research programs open a third way for the cognitive science of morality, one based on agreement. This article is categorized under:Psychology > Reasoning and Decision MakingEconomics > Interactive Decision‐MakingPhilosophy > Value
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Producing Moral Palatability in the Mexican Surrogacy Market
Scholars have long debated the relationship between morality and the market. Some argue that morality tempers market interests, while others argue that the market has its own moral order. Meanwhile, feminist scholars have argued that a false binary between altruism, family, and intimacy on the one hand, and the cold calculus of the market on the other, is based in gender ideologies. Norms around motherhood, in particular, emphasize self-sacrifice, love, and altruism in opposition to self-interested market logics. Commercial surrogacy blurs the line between family and commerce and is therefore an ideal setting for studying tensions between altruism and profit. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with 114 actors in the Mexican surrogacy industry, I demonstrate that treating altruism and commercialism as dichotomous can further market interests by preserving the moral palatability and profitability of the industry while perpetuating power asymmetries rooted in gender, race, class, and nationality between surrogate mothers and intended parents.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1656229
- PAR ID:
- 10523324
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Gender & Society
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0891-2432
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 273-295
- Size(s):
- p. 273-295
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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