BMBF-Symposium: Can psychology replace ethics?

On the potentials and risks of empirical research into human morality for our ethical self-image
 

Project director:

AOR Dr. Julia Dietrich

Phone: +49 / 7071 / 29-77987
E-Mail: julia.dietrichspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

Coordinator:

Dr. Cordula Brand 

Phone: +49 / 7071 / 29-75672
E-Mail: cordula.brandspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

Project Description

In recent years, a broad interdisciplinary field of research as emerged that is dedicated to the empirical investigation of human morality. However, this development poses a professional as well as a discursive challenge for not only the field of ethics but also the empirical sciences: Can ethics still maintain a claim of validity despite the fact that empirical research suggests that not reason, but intuition guides human action? Do the participating academic disciplines bear a social responsibility for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary discussions in this context? The challenges that arise from the controversy surrounding “rationality vs. intuition" for our ethical self-image and practice of decision-making must be explored and discussed.

Thus, the symposium will explore the risks and potentials of the findings on “rationality vs. intuition” from the field of moral psychology in terms of how they affect our ethical self-image and decision-making practices. The symposium is an interdisciplinarily oriented project that has been conceptualized for young scholars from neurobiology, the cognitive sciences, developmental and social psychology, developmental biology, the social sciences as well as the fields of philosophy and meta-ethics.

Economic, political, and legal policy makers as well as the general public will be actively involved in the discussion process by way of the Internet. The results of the symposium will not only appear in a scientific journal but also online. Furthermore, the participants will acquire additional scholarly qualifications: In the spirit of “learning by explaining”, the participants will be trained in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary discourse so that they learn how to place their respective academic perspective in the context of the philosophy of science, reflect upon the social relevance of their research results and later illustrate these in a clear and intelligible manner.