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Harvard University Press
January 2008
On Sale: January 15, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0674026098
EAN: 9780674026094
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Philosphy
In the past few decades, scientists of human
nature--including experimental and cognitive psychologists,
neuroscientists, evolutionary theorists, and behavioral
economists--have explored the way we arrive at moral
judgments. They have called into question commonplaces about
character and offered troubling explanations for various
moral intuitions. Research like this may help explain what,
in fact, we do and feel. But can it tell us what we ought to
do or feel? In Experiments in Ethics, the philosopher Kwame
Anthony Appiah explores how the new empirical moral
psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical
ethics. Some moral theorists hold that the realm of morality must be
autonomous of the sciences; others maintain that science
undermines the authority of moral reasons. Appiah elaborates
a vision of naturalism that resists both temptations. He
traces an intellectual genealogy of the burgeoning
discipline of "experimental philosophy," provides a
balanced, lucid account of the work being done in this
controversial and increasingly influential field, and offers
a fresh way of thinking about ethics in the classical tradition. Appiah urges that the relation between empirical research
and morality, now so often antagonistic, should be seen in
terms of dialogue, not contest. And he shows how
experimental philosophy, far from being something new, is
actually as old as philosophy itself. Beyond illuminating
debates about the connection between psychology and ethics,
intuition and theory, his book helps us to rethink the very
nature of the philosophical enterprise.
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