An extended conception of rationality and moral actions

People often go through a conflict between obeying and refusing a moral requirement, although they generally know what they should do morally. This kind of conflict occurs often when a moral requirement does not accord with the individual desires of people. Faced with such a conflict, people want to get the reasons why they should act on the moral requirement. They seek to find the reasons why they should be moral at all. One of the important tasks of moral philosophers has been to provide persuasive reasons to be moral. One way to do this is to show that moral actions are the result of rational choices. If moral philosophers succeed in justifying morality in this way, they will be able to meet the challenge to moral authority that is implied by the question of Why should we be moral?" and contribute to extirpating the widespread moral apathy in contemporary society."