Naturalistic Approaches to Ethics and Meta-ethics

This workshop will bring together researchers whose work contributes to a scientific understanding of our moral practice and/or examines how this understanding comes to bear on traditional meta-ethical topics including but not limited to the truth, objectivity, meaning and epistemology of moral judgments. We will have a broad range of approaches represented to promote fruitful interdisciplinary interaction, including moral psychology, game theory, evolutionary biology and philosophical analysis.

Registration

There is no registration fee, and anyone who wishes to attend is welcome. If you are planning to attend, please register by emailing Max Barkhausen ([email protected]) or Camil Golub ([email protected]).

Format

Five two-hour sessions, each devoted to a paper. All the participants will be expected to read the papers in advance. Each session will begin with a set of comments on the given paper, followed by a response from the authors, followed by an extended discussion.

Schedule

Saturday, October 18th

10 am    Regina Rini (NYU), TBA. Commentator: Nic Bommarito (NYU/University at Buffalo). 

1:30 pm    Justin D'Arms (Ohio State University) and Daniel Jacobson (University of Michigan), Emotional Fittingness without Cognitivism. Commentator: Max Barkhausen (NYU). 

4 pm    Brian Skyrms (University of California, Irvine), Evolution and the Social Contract. Commentator: Ryan Muldoon (University of Pennsylvania). 

Sunday, October 19th

10 am    Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke University), Implicit Moral Attitudes. Commentator: Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU). 

1:30 pm    Sharon Street (NYU), Normativity and Water: The Analogy and Its Limits. Commentator: Jada Twedt Strabbing (Fordham University).   

Readings

The papers will be made available before the workshop to all the registered attendees.