Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment

If you’ve ever been tangled in debates about morality—wondering if there’s some universal truth or if it’s all just subjective—Allan Gibbard’s “Wise Choices, Apt Feelings” is a deep dive into exactly what’s going on when we make normative judgments. Normative judgments are those fancy-sounding calls about what’s right, wrong, rational, or appropriate. Gibbard’s big idea: these judgments don’t point to some objective moral facts floating out there. Nope. They’re expressions of our attitudes, feelings, and social conditioning.

Forget the old-school moral realism that treats ethical facts like scientific facts. Gibbard’s approach fits into the expressivist camp—a meta-ethical stance that says when you say "stealing is wrong," you’re not stating a fact; you’re expressing disapproval and trying to get others to share that feeling. It’s not about uncovering moral facts but about airing your normative stance. This might sound like a fancy way of saying “morality is just feelings,” but Gibbard brings more nuance.

He digs into what he calls "normative psychology," the mental machinery behind how we internalize social norms and act on them. Think guilt, resentment, or shame not as just awkward feelings but as evolutionary tools that keep societies from falling apart. These emotions help nudge us toward cooperation and discourage freeloading. So, the moral emotions we all know and love (or hate) aren’t just fluff—they’re part of the glue holding us together.

But hold on, Gibbard isn’t throwing subjectivity on the bonfire just yet. He acknowledges the nagging sense that some moral judgments feel objective, like there’s a right answer. His solution? Objectivity emerges from intersubjective agreement. That’s philosopher-speak for saying when a group of people rationally hash out their attitudes and settle on shared norms, they create a kind of objectivity. It’s not cosmic truth, but it’s a practical, working consensus that guides behavior and expectations. So, morality is less about eternal truths and more about the social contract we keep tweaking.

What makes Gibbard’s work stand out is how he doesn’t just sit in an armchair philosophizing. He pulls in evolutionary biology and psychology to back up his claims. The development of moral emotions isn’t just cultural fluff; it has roots in evolutionary pressures favoring social cohesion. Psychology shows how we process these attitudes internally, with emotions playing a starring role in moral reasoning. This interdisciplinary mix is refreshing—it grounds slippery moral talk in real-world science.

Still, the book isn’t a casual read. It’s dense and packed with heavy-duty philosophical argumentation that might intimidate anyone not used to this terrain. Plus, some critics argue that Gibbard’s expressivism struggles with the stubborn feeling that some moral principles seem universal and objective—like “murder is wrong” doesn’t just depend on your feelings or society’s mood that day.

Published in 1990, “Wise Choices, Apt Feelings” came at a time when philosophers were seriously questioning the idea of moral facts. Gibbard’s contribution helped shape ongoing debates about what moral language really does and how we can understand normative judgments without resorting to mystical moral realities.

At its heart, the book invites us to rethink morality not as a set of fixed truths but as a complex dance of attitudes, feelings, and social agreements shaped by our evolutionary past. It’s a sharp, sometimes challenging, but ultimately rewarding look at why we say what we say when we talk about right and wrong.