On the Nature of Moral Conflicts

In this paper we make use of the idea that the emotional devices are essential mechanisms in the process of moral judgment formation, in order to support a more general thesis regarding the nature of the moral choice. From the assumption that moral choices are always the result of a compromise between individual interests and social motivations, our aim is to defend the idea that the achievement of this compromise is the final product of a competition process between different processing systems, and that the whole process is orchestrated by emotions. This conclusion stems from data regarding the study of moral dilemmas. In fact, moral dilemmas require an evaluation among interests in competition, between concomitant options which are based on opposite motivations, and thus they highlight the conflict that characterizes, at different levels, the expression of any judgment of moral appropriateness.