Position: Evaluations of AI Moral Reasoning Still Miss Half of the Picture

[2608.14566] Position: Evaluations of AI Moral Reasoning Still Miss Half of the Picture Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2608.14566 (cs) [Submitted on 29 May 2026] Title: Position: Evaluations of AI Moral Reasoning Still Miss Half of the Picture Authors: Aidan Kierans , Ritam Dutt , Kaley Rittichier , Shiri Dori-Hacohen , Avijit Ghosh View a PDF of the paper titled Position: Evaluations of AI Moral Reasoning Still Miss Half of the Picture, by Aidan Kierans and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Recent work on evaluating the moral competence of large language models (LLMs) has focused primarily on what we call the moral value problem, i.e., whether model outputs align with human moral values. In contrast, the moral norm problem, i.e., whether models can identify and correctly apply context-sensitive moral norms, remains underexplored. We posit that this imbalance stems from the field's reliance on descriptive ethics frameworks, such as Moral Foundations Theory and Kohlberg's stages of moral development, which emphasize value representation over normative application. We review existing benchmarks and evaluation methods, and show that they cluster heavily around the value problem, while discussion regarding normative ethics remains underrepresented. We identify three crucial gaps: (i) the absence of high-quality ground-truth data for moral norms and their applications, (ii) insufficient evaluation of intermediate reasoning processes, and (iii) limited attention to the identification of morally relevant features in context. Subsequently, we propose a research agenda that includes the development of standardized formal representations for normative theories, the construction of expert-annotated datasets capturing norm application, and evaluation protocols that explicitly distinguish between values-level and norms-level competence. Our goal is to encourage a more systematic study of normative reasoning in LLMs. Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for archival publication at the ACL 2026 Workshop on Evaluating Evaluations (EvalEval) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) Cite as: arXiv:2608.14566 [cs.AI] (or arXiv:2608.14566v1 [cs.AI] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.14566 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Aidan Kierans [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 29 May 2026 16:50:08 UTC (38 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Position: Evaluations of AI Moral Reasoning Still Miss Half of the Picture, by Aidan Kierans and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from

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