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The Forum is open to everyone, including students, visitors, and faculty members from all departments and institutes!

The 60 minute lecture is followed by a 10 minute break and a 30-60 minute discussion. The language of presentation is English or Hungarian.
 

The scope of the Forum includes all aspects of theoretical philosophy, including:

  • logic and philosophy of formal sciences
  • philosophy of science
  • modern metaphysics
  • epistemology
  • philosophy of language
  • problems in history of philosophy and history of science, relevant to the above topics
  • particular issues in natural and social sciences, important for the discourses in the main scope of the Forum.

Location









 
 
 


10 January (Friday) 4:15 PM  Room 226
Joint TPF and LaPoM session!
Joseph Sweetman*
and
Attila Tanyi**
  * University of Exeter
** University of Tromsø 
 
Consequentialist Demands, Intuitions, and Experimental Methodology
It is commonly held that philosophical intuitions have some evidential value; they count in favour or against philosophical theories and approaches. Perhaps nowhere is this evidential role of intuition more important than in both moral theory and (empirical) moral psychology. For moral theory, such supposed intuitions form, among others, the basis of claims that consequentialism is inherently over-demanding: The Demandingness Objection (henceforth: Objection). But is this charge correct? Perhaps, but we think that, before any such verdict can be reached, it is important to empirically flesh-out the supposed intuitive basis of the Objection. In this paper, we explain the Objection (section II) and theorizing on intuitions (section III) before we propose an account of moral intuitions as quasi-perceptual seemings that are characterized by being non-inferential, spontaneous, non-doxastic, phenomenologically distinctive, non-sensory, intrinsically motivating, and stable (section IV). We then go on to explore the difficulties in empirically testing for these “markers” of moral intuition (section V) before outlining a series of empirical studies that could, ultimately, shed light on the evidential value of the intuitions behind the Objection (section VI). In doing so, we also draw attention to the failure of much (empirical) moral psychology and cognitive (neuro)science to give proper consideration to the ontology and experimental epistemology of moral intuition: Philosophical reflection and analysis reveals that not every moral judgment is based on intuition and that not every intuition is a moral intuition. Drawing on insights from epistemology, moral philosophy, and cognitive (neuro)science, our account offers an integrative conceptual analysis and empirical directions for advancing both moral theory and the cognitive (neuro)science of morality.