1st Edition
Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy
This volume presents new research on the use of experimental methodologies in moral and social philosophy. The contributions reflect the growing plurality of methodologies and strategies for implementing experimental work on morality to new domains, problems, and topics.
Philosophers are exploring the ways in which empirical approaches can transform our idea of the good, our understanding of the social nature of norms and morality, and our methods of fulfilling ethical goals. The chapters in this volume extend experimental work on morality to previously underexplored areas. The contributions in Part 1 explore the methods and foundations of experimental work in areas such as folk moral judgments, metaethical beliefs, moral explanations, and reflective equilibrium. Part 2 focuses on issues in normative ethics and legal and political philosophy such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, theories of justice, and criminal responsibility. Finally, the chapters in Part 3 tackle various applied ethical issues, including feminist X-Phi, animal welfare, experimental bioethics, and self-driving cars.
Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, applied ethics, experimental philosophy, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law.
Chapter 1 and 15 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
1. The Experimental Turn in Moral and Political Philosophy Antonio Gaitán, Fernando Aguiar and Hugo Viciana
Part 1: Methods and Foundations
2. The Natural Law Thesis Under Empirical Scrutiny Ivar R. Hannikainen, Brian Flanagan and Karolina Prochownik
3. Concrete Over Abstract: Experimental Evidence of Reflective Equilibrium in Population Ethics Philipp Schoenegger and Ben Grodeck
4. Trolley Problems Reimagined: Sensitivity to Ratio, Risk, and Comparisons Dana Kay Nelkin, Craig R. M. McKenzie, Samuel C. Rickless and Arseny Ryazanov
5. The Psychology of Metaethics: Evidence For and Against Folk Moral Objectivism Lieuwe Zijlstra
6. The Explanatory Redundancy Challenge to Moral Properties Thomas Pölzler
7. Belief Distributions and the Measure of Social Norms Cuizhu Wang
8. Coming Full Circle: Incentives, Reactivity, and the Experimental Turn Mariìa Jimeìnez Buedo
Part 2: Normative Ethics and Legal and Political Philosophy
9. Virtues for Real-world Utilitarians Stefan Schubert and Lucius Caviola
10. What Experiments Can Teach Us About Justice and Impartiality: Vindicating Experimental Political Philosophy Aureìlien Allard and Florian Cova
11. A Behavioral Ethics Perspective on the Theory of Criminal Law and Punishment Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg and Yuval Feldman
12. Behavioral Ethics and the Extent of Responsibility Douglas Husak
13. Against Moorean Defences of Speciesism François Jaquet
Part 3: Applied Issues
14. Experimental Bioethics and the Case for Human Enhancement Blanca Rodrìguez
15. The Use and Abuse of Moral Preferences in the Ethics of Self-Driving Cars Norbert Paulo, Leonie Alina Möck and Lando Kirchmair
16. Adaptive Preferences: An Empirical Investigation of Feminist Perspectives Urna Chakrabarty, Romy Feiertag, Anne-Marie McCallion, Brain McNiff, Jesse Prinz, Montaque Reynolds, Sukhvinder Shahi, Maya Von Ziegesar, and Angella Yamamoto
17. Reactionary Attitudes: Strawson, Twitter, and the Black Lives Matter Movement Anastasia Chan, Marinus Ferreira, and Mark Alfano
Biography
Hugo Viciana is an ‘Emergia’ talent attraction research fellow and lecturer at the Departamento de Filosofía, Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain. His previous work has been published in journals such as Biology & Philosophy, AJOB Empirical Bioethics, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Psychological Science, and PNAS.
Antonio Gaitán is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities (Philosophy, Language and Literature), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, España. His previous work on ethics and moral psychology has been published in journals such as Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Teorema, and PLoS One.
Fernando Aguiar is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council (IFS-CSIC). He is a founding member of the Spanish Association of Experimental Philosophy (AEFEX). His work in experimental ethics, political philosophy, and moral psychology has been published in journals such as Economics & Philosophy, Journal of Economic Methodology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Science and Engineering Ethics.
