Particularism and the Classification and Reclassification of Moral Cases

Is it possible to learn to classify cases as morally acceptable or unacceptable without using moral principles? Jonathan Dancy has suggested that moral reasoning (including learning) could be done without moral principles, and he has suggested that neural network models could aid in understanding how to do this. This article explores Dancy's suggestion by presenting a neural network model of case classification. The author argues that although some nontrivial case classification might be possible without the explicitly consulting or executing moral principles, the process of reclassifying cases is best explained by using moral principles.This article is part of a special issue on Machine Ethics.