| Description |
1 online resource |
| Series |
Routledge studies in ethics and moral theory ; 46 |
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Routledge studies in ethics and moral theory ; 46.
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| Contents |
Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 1.1 Moral Realism and Anti-Realism; 1.2 The Scientific Approach; 1.3 Approach, Theses and Contents; 2 Metatheoretical Considerations; 2.1 Introduction; 2.2 The Objection from Hume's Law; 2.3 The Objection from Non-Naturalism; 2.4 The Semantics and Philosophical Psychology Objection; 2.5 The Logical Priority Objection; 2.6 Conclusion; 3 Folk Moral Realism; 3.1 Introduction; 3.2 Experience, Truth and Objectivity; 3.3 Ordinary People; 3.4 Research on Folk Moral Realism; 3.5 Incomprehensiveness of Answer Choices |
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3.6 Conflation with Distinct Issues3.7 First-Order Moral and Epistemic Intuitions; 3.8 Classification and Instructions; 3.9 Two Fundamental Worries; 3.10 Conclusion; 4 Moral Disagreement; 4.1 Introduction; 4.2 Disagreement and Morality; 4.3 Widespreadness; 4.4 Eliminative Explanations; 4.5 Research on Moral Disagreement; 4.6 Defending One's Honor; 4.7 Punishing an Innocent; 4.8 Actions and Omissions; 4.9 Conclusion; 5 Moral Judgments and Emotions; 5.1 Introduction; 5.2 Moral Judgments' Association with Emotions; 5.3 Sentimentalism's Empirical Predictions |
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5.4 Research on Moral Judgments and Emotions5.5 The Co-Occurrence Hypothesis; 5.6 The Causal Influence Hypothesis; 5.7 The Causal Sufficiency Hypothesis; 5.8 The Causal Necessity Hypothesis; 5.9 Conclusion; 6 The Evolution of Morality; 6.1 Introduction; 6.2 Moral Judgments and Adaptations; 6.3 Variants of the Adaptation Hypotheses; 6.4 Debunking Requirements; 6.5 Research on the Evolution of Morality; 6.6 The Argument from Design; 6.7 The Universality Argument; 6.8 The Poverty of Stimulus Argument; 6.9 Conclusion; 7 Conclusion; 7.1 Comprehensiveness; 7.2 Empirical Focus |
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7.3 Clarificatory Focus7.4 Metatheoretical Considerations; Index |
| Summary |
Are there objective moral truths (things that are morally right or wrong independently of what anybody thinks about them)? To answer this question more and more scholars have recently begun to appeal to evidence from scientific disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, and anthropology. This book investigates this novel scientific approach in a comprehensive, empirically focused, partly clarificatory, and partly metatheoretical way. It argues for two main theses. First, it is possible for the empirical sciences to contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate. And second, most appeals to science that have so far been proposed are insufficiently empirically substantiated. The book's main chapters address four prominent science-based arguments for or against the existence of objective moral truths: the presumptive argument, the argument from moral disagreement, the sentimentalist argument, and the evolutionary debunking argument. For each of these arguments Thomas Pölzler first identifies the sense in which its underlying empirical hypothesis would have to be true in order for the argument to work. Then he shows that the available scientific evidence fails to support this hypothesis. Finally, he also makes suggestions as to how to test the hypothesis more validly in future scientific research. Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences is an important contribution to the moral realism/anti-realism debate that will appeal both to philosophers and scientists interested in moral psychology and metaethics |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed May 17, 2018) |
| Subject |
Ethics.
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Science.
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Science -- Moral and ethical aspects.
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Ethics
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Science
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sciences (philosophy)
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PHILOSOPHY -- Ethics & Moral Philosophy.
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PHILOSOPHY -- Social.
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ethics (philosophy)
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Ethics.
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Science.
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Science -- Moral and ethical aspects.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781315145211 |
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1315145219 |
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9781351383332 |
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1351383337 |
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9781351383349 |
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1351383345 |
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9781351383325 |
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1351383329 |
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