Воркшоп Большого проекта Прикладная этика: Workshop for Early Career Researchers «Inductive Methods in Ethics, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Mind»

Abstract

The inductive approach to metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind combines classical methods of conceptual analysis and reliance on our moral and metaphysical intuitions with paying more attention to the empirical results of the relevant sciences. The ongoing research in psychology and neuroscience has uncovered many phenomena directly relevant to understanding the mechanisms underlying our mental acts and our moral judgments. Empirical studies have shown that a diverse range of subconscious factors, including implicit biases, influence our moral evaluations and conscious choices. Neuroimaging techniques are being used to discover the neural underpinnings of our conscious choices and predict the outcome of these choices before the subject is aware of them. This is often seen as a threat to free will and moral responsibility.

The workshop «Inductive Methods in Ethics, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Mind» aims to bring together the empirical data from psychology, neuroscience, and social sciences, and the theoretical apparatus of philosophy of mind, ethics, and metaphysics. In particular, we will discuss the perspectives of reductive and non-reductive accounts of mind, the challenges and the potential benefits of naturalistic and scientifically informed accounts of free will and moral responsibility, and the ways that ethical and metaphysical concepts of agency, possibility, control, and moral responsibility need to be modified in light of scientific progress.