Sripada, Chandra Sekhar (Author)
The last decade has witnessed a dramatic increase in scientific interest in the psychological and evolutionary basis for moral judgment and behavior. In this dissertation, I bring philosophical scrutiny to conceptual issues that arise within the scientific fields investigating morality and trace the implications of these scientific results for traditional philosophical concerns. Chapters one and two of the dissertation focus on moral psychology. In these chapters, I construct a theory of the psychology that subserves moral norms---one that is anchored in the burgeoning scientific literature on the psychological basis for moral judgment and behavior. A major theme that emerges from my discussion is that the psychology that subserves moral norms permits much more variation in the contents of moral norms than most 'moral nativists' typically suppose. Chapters three and four focus on evolutionary issues. In these chapters, I argue that game theoretic models of the evolution of morality, and other kinds of norms and values as well, have been widely misinterpreted by evolutionary-minded theorists. I clarify the structure of these game theoretic models, and then use this discussion as a backdrop to illuminate two topics of central philosophical concern---the origin and nature of moral diversity and the malleability of human nature. The final chapter turns to metaethics. Perhaps the most fundamental question in metaethics is 'What is the nature of morality?' Philosophers have traditionally addressed this question using a prioristic methods such as conceptual analysis. In chapter 5, I argue for a quite different approach in which moral norms are viewed as _natural kinds_ in the social sciences. That is, I argue that moral norms are theoretical kinds whose true nature is revealed by scientific inquiry. The methodology I use in building my account of moral norms demonstrates that there are naturalistically grounded alternatives to aprioristic methodologies in addressing traditional metaethical questions.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/11 (2006): 4050. UMI pub. no. 3195753.
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