Moral character evaluation: Testing another's moral-cognitive machinery

People evaluate the moral character of others not only based on what they do, but also on what leads them to do it. Because an agent's state of mind is not directly observable, people typically engage in mindreading—attempts at inferring mental states—when forming moral evaluations. The present paper identifies a general target of such mental state inference, mental occurrents—a catchall term for the thoughts, beliefs, principles, feelings,...