Philosophical Analysis of Psychological Conceptions of Morality: Оn the Basis of Elliot Turiel’s Moral Psychology

The results of a study of Elliot Turiel’s conception of morality in light of philosophical understanding of moral phenomena are presented. Turiel proposed to purify the theory of moral development from mixing moral and non-moral structures of human psyche. ‘The moral domain,’ in his view, develops in parallel with other ‘domains of social judgment’ and has its own dynamics. To prove this thesis, Turiel formulates his answer to the questions of what morality is and how the boundaries of what can be morally evaluated are drawn. For Turiel, the main features of moral judgment are the following: 1) it is based on universally applicable, unalterable, and impersonal prescriptions (the form of morality); 2) it contains an evaluation of the impact of an agent’s intentional act on the welfare of a vulnerable recipient (the content of morality). Moral judgments are judgments that approve of promoting the welfare of another person and condemn harming and injustice. In light of the philosophical typology of definitions of morality, Turiel’s definition is not only content-based (substantive) but also normative. Turiel justifies the introduction of substantive features into the definition of morality, along with formal ones, by the fact that the moral domain is based on the universal characteristics of social interaction (first of all, on the experience of being harmed, which every person has since an early age). The substantive definition of morality focused on welfare, harm, and justice is met with the charge of cultural and historical bias. Critics see it as reflecting the dominant values and norms of Western culture. In relation to Turiel’s conception, this accusation is elaborated by Jonathan Haidt. However, Turiel’s discussion with his earlier critics shows that substantive conceptions of morality can successfully integrate facts from non-Western cultures into their theoretical scheme. But the most important thing is that only they can fully express the universal dimension of morality