Following a Kantian line of thought, Anne Colby and Lawrence Kohlberg observe that “Moral judgments … direct, command, or oblige us to take some action. Moral prescriptions are not merely commands to perform particular actions, however. They are imperatives deriving from some rule or principle of action that the speaker takes as binding on his own actions.” Moral judgments, Colby and Kohlberg are saying, are products of the application of abstract laws to particular cases. This Kantian position has enjoyed widespread endorsement.

Undoubtedly, some moral judgments do arise through a process that involves reflecting on and reasoning about general principles. But this is more the exception than the rule. For the most part, moral judgment is not a process of deriving imperatives for action from abstract propositions.