A two-tiered cognitive architecture for moral reasoning

The view that moral cognition is subserved by a two-tiered architecture is defended: Moral reasoning is the result both of specialized, informationally encapsulated modules which automatically and effortlessly generate intuitions; and of general-purpose, cognitively penetrable mechanisms which enable moral judgment in the light of the agent's general fund of knowledge. This view is contrasted with rival architectures of social/moral cognition, such as Cosmides and Tooby's view that the mind is wholly modular, and it is argued that a two-tiered architecture is more plausible.