Moral Reasoning

Moral reasoning is a form of practical reasoning wherein one attempts to give or find reasons for morally approving or disapproving actions. All reasoning involves premises that lead to a conclusion. A premise is a judgment, expressible in a statement, which contains two elements. The first is the subject, and the second is what logicians call a predicate. The predicate is what is asserted about the subject. There are two types of reasoning, practical and theoretical, and they each have their own characteristics. In theoretical reasoning one “argues” from two descriptive premises such as “All humans are mortal” and “Socrates is human” to a descriptive conclusion “Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” However, the practical syllogism, as Aristotle noted, is an argument whose conclusion recommends an action or at least provides a judgment that a certain action ought to be performed. Furthermore, one of the premises is usually a value or attitudinal judgment (normative), while the other is a definitional or factual judgment. For example, Peter either pays Paul more or thinks he should pay Paul more (conclusion) because he thinks paying a pittance is unfair (value judgment), and he is paying Paul a pittance (definitional or factual depending on the criteria of pittance). So the practical reasoning either leads to the action of Peter paying Paul more or at least the assertion that Paul should be paid more.