Department of Philosophy Fall 2015 Course Offering

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Department of Philosophy Fall 2015 Course Offering PHIL4000A – Evolution and Ethics Instructor: Michael Stingl Day/Time: Thursday (3:05 – 5:45 p.m.) Course Description: Are things morally good or bad because we think so, or do we think so because some things really are morally good or bad? Standard accounts of evolutionary ethics are antirealist: while cognitive and emotional moral capacities may have evolved, moral values are not themselves real parts of the environment of any species. Moral capacities incline us to act in certain sorts of ways, but they do not respond to any sort of moral facts that might exist independently of such capacities. In addition to looking at standard approaches to evolutionary ethics, this course will examine a realist alternative according to which moral values like helping others in need are real aspects of the environments of species whose evolutionary development is on what can be called a moral trajectory. While part of the argument between these two general approaches to evolution and ethics will be philosophical, the course will significantly examine relevant empirical work from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, behavioural economics and history. Prerequisite(s): 3rd year standing Recommended Background: A major in Philosophy, Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology, Anthropology, or Economics Textbooks: 1. James, Scott. Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics (Wiley, 2011). ISBN: 9781405193962 2. Students will be asked to select a book from one of the following: Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism and Shame, Basic Books, 2012. Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, Princeton University Press, 2011. Martin Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice, Cambridge University Press, 2000. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Harvard University Press, 2009. Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment, Oxford University Press, 2004. Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals, Oxford University Press, 2007. Michael Shermer, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, Henry Holt & Co., 2015. Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, Princeton University Press, 1981, with a new afterword, 2011. Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, McClelland & Stewart, 2009. .

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Evolution Confers Morality
Evolution Confers Morality Matt Young Department of Physics Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado 80401 www.mines.edu/~mmyoung [Paper presented Darwin Week, February 9, 2011, in Old Main at the University of Colorado. A shorter paper was presented to third Colorado Skepticamp, May 9, 2009, at the Tivoli Student Union in Denver. Based in part on Chapter 17 of Young and Strode, 2009. All figures are mine, in the public domain, or used with permission. Copyright 2011 by Matt Young.] [Paul Cézanne] IANA IANAB IANAL Ф from modification Descends with [Rembrandt van Rijn] IANAB But Some of my best friends are biologists I am coeditor of Why Intelligent Design Fails I am coauthor of Why Evolution Works (And Creationism Fails) So I am at least a fellow traveler Define morality same way as same morality Define Mass Pornography Time Length Definition [Official portrait] Francis Collins – Human Genome Project Morality is uniquely human Debatable Altruism is uniquely human propositions Inductive leap Morality must have been conferred by God Rejects arguments based on ] H disparate ethical codes I N [ Rejects sociobiological argument that morality could be evolved trait IANAФ But Serious philosophical problems with idea that God conferred morality Suppose that God said murder was moral Would it be so? No Moral code would take precedence over God God would be a pipeline We look elsewhere for the origin of morality Collins refers to a Moral Law So is there a moral law? I will Analogous to assume Law of gravity not Laws of logic or mathematics If I am wrong, title of talk is How our sense of morality evolved Evidence that morality is somehow built in Incest taboo Brother and sister Over 21, consenting adults, and all that Agree to sleep together Just once To see what it is like Is that wrong? Take special Why? precautions to avoid pregnancy Will never tell anyone Always wrong Almost always Further evidence Sometimes Gay marriage Never wrong Adultery Stem-cell research Authoritative God Abortion Benevolent G od P.M.
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Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff
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Critical Review: the Emotional Construction of Morals
Philosophical Psychology, 2013 Vol. 26, No. 3, 461–475, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2012.673767 Critical review: The Emotional Construction of Morals Erick Ramirez Jesse Prinz’s The Emotional Construction of Morals is an ambitious and intriguing contribution to the debate about the nature and role of emotion within moral psychology. I review Prinz’s recent claims surrounding the nature of emotional concepts as ‘‘embodied representations of concern’’ and survey his later arguments meant to establish a form of cultural relativism. Although I suggest that other theories of emotional representation (i.e. prototype views) would better serve Prinz’s aims, the underlying meta-ethical relativism that results is well defended and represents a significant advance for constructivist Sentimentalists. Keywords: Emotion; Meta-Ethics; Moral Psychology; Sentimentalism 1. Introduction The late Robert Solomon is quoted on the back cover of Jesse Prinz’s last book on emotions, Gut reactions (2004), saying that it was ‘‘an exciting book, I couldn’t put it down, but I fought with it every inch of the way.’’ One might very well say the same about Prinz’s companion book, The emotional construction of morals. Prinz’s arguments are sophisticated, empirically informed, and his conclusions enticing. Still, I fought with it every inch of the way. Prinz’s latest project is at its heart an attempt to accommodate empirical data on the emotions with our intuitions about morality. Prinz tries to explain our folk notions, not just of emotion but also of our moral practices and, in giving us those explanations, draws intriguing conclusions about the nature of both.
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Embodied Emotions
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Review of Jesse Prinz's the Emotional Construction of Morals
Moral relativists gone wild The Emotional Construction of Morals by Jesse J. Prinz (Oxford University Press, 2007) Reviewed by Richard Joyce for Mind 118 (2009) [penultimate draft] Many of us now have a pretty good idea of what to anticipate from a new book by Jesse Prinz. We expect lively philosophy enriched by numerous studies from the empirical sciences, an ambitious and confident engagement with Big Problems, many novel and intriguing arguments, and an author whose joy at immersing himself in the thick of the argumentative fray is obvious. Yet we also expect to see indulged the temptation to pack so much into a limited space that the reader can almost feel Prinz’s thoughts eagerly jostling to win a place on the page, with a sense of hastiness and a degree of superficiality the inevitable consequences. In short, we expect a fun ride with a dose of exasperation. The Emotional Construction of Morals satisfies and further entrenches these expectations. In what follows I will outline the eight chapters of the book in turn—often very briefly—pausing on what strike me as some of the more troubling aspects of Prinz’s case. The critical attitude adopted throughout should not be taken to imply that I do not think it a very stimulating and worthwhile piece of philosophy. Chapter 1 introduces us to emotionism, the thesis that emotions are in some manner essential to morality. Hedonic utilitarianism is a kind of emotionism (since it makes happiness essential to moral status), as is emotivism, as is sensibility theory. Prinz delineates various relations that may hold between emotions and morality and homes in on a strong form of the thesis which he wishes to defend.
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Book Reviews
Journal of cognition and culture �4 (�0�4) �49–�55 brill.com/jocc Book Reviews Joshua Alexander Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction. Polity Press: Cambridge, MA, 2012. US$22.95 Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction is somewhat narrower in scope than Experimental Philosophy by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (2008, Oxford University Press, Oxford) and broader than Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). The brevity, concise writing style, and focus will make Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction a useful background text for undergraduate teaching and the best introduction to this exciting field for some time to come. Because the field of experimental philosophy is new, customary readers of Journal of Cognition and Culture may not be aware of the purview of such a book. First, Alexander’s book requires background knowledge in analytic phi- losophy; the audience is exclusively analytic philosophy students and profes- sionals. This allows the book its tight focus but gives the impression that, just like in mainstream analytic philosophy, philosophers are still talking amongst themselves. For example, we don’t have an account of the treatment of the cognitive psychology of reasoning and other cognate disciplines in this book. This, and larger discussion of the work of Jesse Prinz, Shaun Nichols and Shaun Gallagher would have been most welcome. Second, Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction appears to dichotomize experimental philosophy and main- stream analytic philosophy in ways that oversimplify how philosophers work. It omits any consideration of the historical tradition of experimental philoso- phy that went under the name ‘natural philosophy’. Overall Experimental Philosophy does not aim to answer fundamental ques- tions about the relationship of philosophy to empirical research, but rather aims to provide helpful, clearly structured summaries of articles, with glosses on them, that have appeared in the recent experimental philosophical litera- ture.
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The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgments
Philosophical Explorations, Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2006 THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF MORAL JUDGMENTS Jesse Prinz Recent work in cognitive science provides overwhelming evidence for a link between emotion and moral judgment. I review findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and research on psychopathology and conclude that emotions are not merely correlated with moral judgments but they are also, in some sense, both necessary and sufficient. I then use these findings along with some anthropological observations to support several philosophical theories: first, I argue that sentimentalism is true: to judge that something is wrong is to have a sentiment of disapprobation towards it. Second, I argue that moral facts are response-dependent: the bad just is that which cases disapprobation in a community of moralizers. Third, I argue that a form of motivational internalism is true: ordinary moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, and all non-motivating moral judgments are parasitic on these. Introduction In the early 1970s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram instructed his graduate students to approach strangers on a New York City subway and request their seats. Almost all of Milgram’s students refused to try this, and the one student who was willing to go came back quickly and reported that he had to abort the experiment before collecting enough data. The student had not been physically threatened in any way, and indeed the majority of people he asked willingly gave up their seats. Milgram couldn’t understand why his student came back prematurely, and he decided to descend into the subway and perform the experiment himself. This is how he recalls his experience: The words seemed lodged in my trachea and would simply not emerge.
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MORALITY IS a CULTURALLY CONDITIONED RESPONSE Jesse Prinz
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CURRICULUM VITAE John Bickle December 2020
CURRICULUM VITAE John Bickle December 2020 Mailing Address: Department of Philosophy and Religion P.O. Box JS Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS 39762 (662) 325-2382 fax: (662) 325-3340 E-mail Addresses: [email protected] URLs: http://www.philosophyandreligion.msstate.edu/faculty/bickle.php https://www.umc.edu/Education/Schools/Medicine/Basic_Science/Neurobiology/John_Bi ckle,_PhD.aspx ___________________________________________________________________________ CURRENT ACADEMIC POSITIONS Professor (Tenured) of Philosophy Mississippi State University Affiliate Faculty Department of Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences University of Mississippi Medical Center EDUCATION B.A. University of California, Los Angeles, June 1983 M.A., Ph.D. University of California, Irvine, June 1989 Field: Philosophy; Scientific Concentration: Neurobiology. Doctoral Dissertation: Toward a Scientific Reformulation of the Mind-Body Problem AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION Philosophy of Neuroscience, Philosophy of Science (especially Scientific Reductionism), Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Cognition and Consciousness AREAS OF COMPETENCE Moral Psychology and the Moral Virtues, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Logical Positivism (especially the Philosophy of Rudolph Carnap), Libertarian Political Philosophy ______________________________________________________________________________ PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS (94) BOOKS (4) 2014 Engineering the Next Revolution in Neuroscience. (Co-authors: Alcino J. Silva and Anthony Landreth).
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Are Emotions Necessary and Sufficient for Maing Moral Judgments?
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Extraneous Influences on Morality, Aesthetics, and Perception
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2017 Evaluative Mind: Extraneous Influences on Morality, Aesthetics, and Perception Angelika Luiza Seidel The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1918 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] EVALUATIVE MIND: EXTRANEOUS INFLUENCES ON MORALITY, AESTHETICS, AND PERCEPTION by ANGELIKA L. SEIDEL A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York 2017 ii © 2017 ANGELIKA L. SEIDEL All Rights Reserved iii Evaluate Mind: Extraneous Influences on Morality, Aesthetics, and Perception by Angelika L. Seidel This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Stefano Ghirlanda Chair of Examining Committee Date Richard J Bodnar Executive Officer Jesse Prinz, Ph.D Glen Hass, Ph.D Curtis Hardin, Ph.D Aaron Kozbelt, Ph.D THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract Evaluative mind: Extraneous influences on morality, aesthetics, and perception by Angelika L. Seidel Advisor: Stefano Ghirlanda, Jesse Prinz In a series of experiments I examine extraneous factors that influence evaluative judgments and perception. Specifically, I focus on two kinds of evaluative states: moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation.
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