The moral sense is a distinctive conception of moral
judgment formulated by Francis Hutcheson and fol-
lowed, with some modification, by David Hume. By
the word “sense” they meant feeling; the moral sense
is the capacity to experience feelings of approval and
disapproval, and the theory of the moral sense is to
be contrasted with the view that moral distinctions are
perceived by reason. The expression “moral sense” has
been used by other philosophers with less precision.
An explicit theory of a moral sense can be attributed
only to Hutcheson and Hume, and is to be understood
within the context of an empiricist epistemology and
as standing opposed to rationalist theories of ethics.
