Abstract: Moral intuition is an important concept in recent moral judgment researches. This paper makes a comment on theoretical and empirical researches over the following three topics in recent ten years or so--What is moral intuition? What is the underlying mechanism of moral intuition? Is moral intuition motivated by emotions or rules? Based on extant literature, the authors suggest that there are several conceptual and theoretical problems with above questions. For the first question, some researchers argue that moral intuition is a special social intuition which emphasizes on the key function of emotions. Neural cognitive researches have found that moral intuitions is related to the function of certain brain areas such as cingulate cortex, basal ganglia, lateral prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the orbito-frontal cortex, temporo-parietal junction. These brain areas are also associated with processing of re-evaluation of emotional stimuli, motives and intentions. In addition, the authors also analyzed the essential difference between moral intuition and moral heuristic, and argues that they are two different concepts, for that the former emphasizes the rapidity and integrity of processing, while the latter emphasizes the utilization of simple rules that based on small samples in the short-term memory. Therefore, the essential differences between them were ignored when researchers used the two terms equally. For the question 2 above, both of the universal moral grammar framework (UMG）and the moral foundation theory (MFT) take moral intuition as innate and modularized. However, the greatest challenge that the two theories face is that the modularized mechanism and its classification are inconsistent with the findings in contemporary neuroscience. Accordingly, the authors argue that the embody-metaphor framework of morality with emphasis on the evolution, culture and individual experience may be a promising direction of the origin and formation of moral intuition. Finally, for the question 3, this article shows that it is difficult to adjudicate whether moral intuition mainly motives by emotions or by rules. However, the following points are worthy of noting. First, Studies of the classification of intuitions imply that moral intuition may have different subtypes which could be formed by different mechanisms; Second, recent researches suggest that moral intuition is closely associated with the emotional cognition, including emotional recognition and classification, conferring value (not emotion itself) and moral rules(or beliefs).

Key words: moral intuition , moral heuristics, UMG , moral foundation theory

摘要： 自Haidt 提出道德判断的社会直觉模型后，道德直觉便成为道德心理研究中的重要课题。本文围绕这三方面的问题就最近10多年来道德直觉的相关理论与实证研究进行了评述，得到如下结论：（1）道德直觉作为社会直觉的一种，它既有一般社会直觉的一些共性特点，又有其特殊性。从目前道德的神经认知研究结果来看，与一般社会直觉的神经机制相比，道德直觉过程还涉及到眶额皮层、颞顶联合区以及前额叶的更多脑区。相关研究表明这些脑区涉及到情绪刺激的再评价、以及对行为动机、意图、心理理论等认知成分的联合处理。（2）对于道德直觉的起源与形成问题，尽管道德直觉表现出跨文化的普遍性，但是目前还没有充分的证据支持道德直觉的先天论；同时，本研究认为基于“进化-文化-个人”的具身隐喻过程可能是道德直觉形成的重要机制。（3）目前道德判断研究的有关理论与实证研究仍然难以回答道德直觉加工的情理之争问题，但有几点发现值得注意：一是从加工的水平差异角度来看，道德直觉可能存在不同的亚类形式，且不同类型的道德直觉可能有着不同的学习获得机制与加工机制；二是道德直觉判断不完全是情绪直接作用的结果，而与道德情境中的情绪认知以及情绪背后的道德规则（信念）之间有着重要联系。

关键词: 道德直觉, 道德启发式, UMG, 道德基础理论