What's fair? The unconscious calculus of our moral faculty.

This essay argues that much of the research in moral psychology has focused on moral performance, on what people do. The study of moral competence, in contrast, has largely been ignored. I use the analogy to linguistics as a model for exploring our moral competence, and suggest that we are endowed with a moral faculty that operates over the causes and consequences of actions. This moral faculty is endowed with principles and parameters that are universal. Acquiring a particular moral system entails setting the parameters. On this model, emotions such as empathy are consequences (as opposed to causes) of unconscious but principled moral evaluations.