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Moral Psychology

[email protected]

Hi, I'm Steve Butterfill and next year I'll be teaching a module called moral psychology. The science of good and evil. Question mark.

Moral psychology is the study of psychological aspects of ethical abilities.

Humans have a variety of ethical abilities, abilities that concern their actions, their judgments, and their emotional life.
Understanding these abilities matters for understanding human sociality. The success of the species as well as its weaknesses.
It matters for understanding the sources of political conflict, and perhaps even how political conflict can be avoided.
It also matters for understanding the basis for accepting or rejecting ethical principles and styles of reasoning.
So moral psychology is the study of the psychological aspects of ethical abilities.
If you take this module, we're going to ask what ethical abilities humans have and what underpins those ethical abilities.
We will ask what the consequences of this are for understanding, and perhaps resolving political conflict, and we will ask whether or not this makes a difference to the kind of ethical principles you should accept.
The module is called moral psychology. I'm Steve Butterfill, the lecturer and if you have any questions, do look at the links around the video. Then send me an email. My address is in all of those links.
Thanks for listening.
Structure of this course

Course Structure

 

Part 1: psychological underpinnings of ethical abilities

What ethical abilities do humans have? What states and processes underpin them?

Part 2: political consequences

What, if anything, do discoveries about ethical abilities imply for political conflict?

Part 3: implications for ethics

What, if anything, do scientific discoveries tell us about ethics?

There will also be a little on the evolution, and the development, of ethical abilities along the way. And we will also explore a little of the research on cultural diversity.

‘Science can advance ethics by revealing the hidden inner workings of our moral judgments [..] Once those inner workings are revealed we may have less confidence in some of [...] the ethical theories that are explicitly or implicitly based on them’

Greene, 2014 pp. 695--6

Assessment and Seminars

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Any questions? Email me or ask on the Moral Psychology team (there’s a link by this video).