The Philosophy Underlying the Science of Moral Behavior

FAIN: FT-59871-12

Robyn Lynne Bluhm
Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA 23529-0001)

Recent work by psychologists and neuroscientists has investigated moral reasoning in order to better understand how we reason about moral problems. Philosophers have debated about the implications of this scientific work for normative, philosophical ethics, disagreeing about whether and how scientific theories about the way we do reason about morality should influence moral theories about the way we should reason. To date, however, this philosophical literature has not examined the philosophical assumptions that underlie the scientific theories themselves. Such assumptions include (often implicit) beliefs about how to understand the nature of morality and of moral reasoning. This project will fill an important gap in the philosophical literature by (1) clarifying the philosophical assumptions underlying scientific examinations of morality and (2) showing that philosophical analyses of these theories need to take their underlying assumptions into account.