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Eugine_Nier comments on Morality is not about willpower - Less Wrong
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What do you call the part of your mind that judges whether proposed actions are good or evil?
I would need evidence that there is a part of my mind that specializes in judging whether proposed actions are good or evil.
You referred to some plans as good and some plans as evil; therefore, something in your mind must be making those judgements (I never said anything about specializing).
In that case, I call that part of my mind "my mind".
The post could be summarized as arguing that the division of decisions into moral and amoral components, if it is even neurally real, is not notably more important than the division of decisions into near and far components, or sensory and abstract components, or visual and auditory componets, etc.
Notice I said mind not brain. So I'm not arguing that it necessarily always takes place in the same part of the brain.
Oh yes, I should probably state my position. I want to call the judgement about whether a particular action is good or evil the "moral component", and everything else the "amoral" component. Thus ethics amounts to two things:
1) making the judgement about whether the action is good or evil as accurate as possible (this is the "wisdom" part)
2) acting in accordance with this judgement, i.e., performing good actions and not performing evil actions (this is the "willpower" part)
Why do you want to split things up that way? As opposed to splitting them up into the part requiring a quick answer and the part you can think about a long time (certainly practical), or the part related to short-term outcome versus the part related to long-term outcome, or other ways of categorizing decisions?