Well said Birgitta - I certainly agree. I should add that the dispositionalism that I am endorsing can be construed as empirically discoverable rather than merely conceptual in nature; that is, it is not analytic.

As you know the word "normal" has at least two meanings. There is the statistical sense, where something is said to be normal if it satisfies one or more mathematical requirements.  The context of inquiry will conventionally specify whether the math requirements are  demanding or easy going.  So theft may be normal statistically but since most of us consider it  bad, we may speak of it, given your theory,  as abnormal in the normative sense.  Which meaning do you intend?  Finally if your theory is to have some utility,  I would recommend that you spend a lot of time defining the word "normal" because in the second sense it looks as if your theory is circular, since you are trying to define "bad" and in the first sense it may involve the naturalist fallacy since it is clear that there are many statistical normals are surely not always good.

Good luck with your work and consider separating your theory from traditional conventionalism!

Thank you Brendan,

You are correct in that I'm taking the term "normal" here to mean "within the distribution of a normal population." So to take your example, most people (within this normally distributed population) would respond to theft with feelings of moral disapprobation. This “disposition to respond”, then, affirms that theft has a moral salience for most people, which, accordingly, makes it morally wrong simpliciter.

I am concerned about circularity, but I feel it can be avoided if I take the dispositions as evidential. That is the theory is not conceptual.

I appreciate your time,

Jim

It seems like moral dispositionalism is only circular if normal people believe in it. If that occurs, then the basis for their strong feelings against some crime might be their belief 1) in dispositionalism and 2) that they (normal people) have strong feelings against that crime.

When someone asks a normal person why they feel what they do about abortion, they will curiously attempt to justify having their strong feelings with the fact that they are having those strong feelings! 

And if those normal people don't believe in moral dispositionalism, then curiously the explanation of their disposition includes talk of beliefs that have nothing to do with moral dispositionalism - perhaps the golden rule, God or karma comes up.

But none of that is quite as problematic if you deemphasize the role of beliefs in creating moral dispositions and instead emphasize a narrative involving raw emotions that seem to arise rather autonomously with respect to the agent's beliefs. But thoughts and beliefs seem to play key parts in deciding the sorts of emotions we feel (see the currently popular appraisal theory of emotion, for example), so this could create other challenges for your idea. 

Some problems with moral dispositionism in general might be

the problem of defining "normal" (defining normal to include every person born, ever, might suggest assigning value to relatively archaic beliefs, though population weighting might favor more modern values though at the same time perhaps not Western ones),

the naturalistic fallacy,

the is-ought problem,

moral disagreement - even between between normal people,

the accuracy of its narrative about how moral dispositions work, 

etc.

Sorry I got cut off. I was ending by suggesting  that the analytic character of your theory  might be revealed in your methodological design.

Brendan

An interesting discussion. Please carry on . I am keenly following. How can we separate belief, thoughts, feelings/emotions and how we act and react to those feelings in different settings? Do we always act and react in the same way? What defines our psychological state? What role does the environment play. The role of agency, social acceptability or consequences- pain and pleasure?

Without going thru the derivation let me say that every person is sovereign of himself/herself. That implies that he/she may choose his/her morality. The circularity or not of morality is therefore relevant only to the individual's evaluations. Where chosen moralities are similar people have something in common and may join together in a club, organization or country. However, when the governance of everybody is involved morality is not a good base because it results in imposition of the most popular morality onto everybody. Instead, the rules governing every body should be objective.

My apolgies for the delay in responding. I have just now returned to this part of my conjecture. I wanted to share how I am attempting to deflate the circularity problem:

"Now, to avoid circularity, R obviously cannot be simply taken as instantiating in X a conceptual moral value V. Instead, it apprehends our dispositions to respond as empirically discoverable “data”. To clarify this point a bit further, suppose that you round a corner and witness a gang of hoodlums setting a live cat on fire (Harman, 1977), an act that most people would instantly judge as morally abhorrent. There is no requirement that we appeal to a universally recognized conceptual truth here; our shared sense of indignation is better understood as a result of our common moral sensibility."