Mind-Brain Lecture: Gabriel Abend (New York)
In recent years a new experimental science of morality has emerged, led by neuroscientists and psychologists. In this paper I ask what this new science of morality can and can’t claim to have discovered about morality. I argue that the object of study of much recent work is not morality, but a particular kind of individual moral judgment. But this is a small and peculiar sample of morality. There are many things that are moral, yet not moral judgments. There are also many things that are moral judgments, yet not of that particular kind. If moral things are various and diverse, then empirical research about one kind of individual moral judgment doesn’t warrant theoretical conclusions about morality in general. If that kind of individual moral judgment is a peculiar thing, then it’s not obvious what it tells us about other moral things. Indeed, it’s not obvious what its theoretical importance is to begin with. In light of these arguments, I call for a pluralism of methods and objects of inquiry in the scientific investigation of morality, so that it transcends its problematic overemphasis on a particular kind of individual moral judgment. Gabriel Abend is Assistant Professor of Sociology, New York University.
