Call for Papers:
- Call for Papers
Practical Reason and Moral Motivation
Helsinki Research Project in Theoretical Ethics
Workshop on Moral Judgment and Moral Psychology
Helsinki, Finland, December 13th-14th, 2005
Invited speakers:
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Simon Blackburn (University of Cambridge)
Jonathan Dancy (The University of Reading and The University of Texas at Austin)
Questions about the nature of moral judgment have always been at the center of metaethical debates between various cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories. While much of the classic debate turned on the status of moral judgments as linguistic expressions – are they truth-apt and perhaps literally true, or not? Are there corresponding facts in the world? – in recent years the popularity of minimalism about truth and facts has threatened to trivialize the issue. Perhaps because of that, it has become common to focus on the psychological states that those utterances express. The basic questions then become: Do moral judgments in this psychological sense consist in beliefs, desires, or perhaps some more complex attitudes? How do they hook up to motivation and action? This new focus has led to the development of sophisticated theories of the psychological role of moral judgment (and its close cousin reasons judgment).
We look forward to reading quality papers on issues including but not limited to the following:
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How do moral utterances convey the psychological states they express – as a matter of their truth conditions, by means of conversational or conventional implicature, or some other means?
Whether moral judgments consist in cognitive or non-cognitive states, what is the content of those states?
What explains their connection to motivation?
What is the essential difference between beliefs and desires?
Are moral judgments judgments about reasons?
What is it to act on reasons?
How do reasons function in the explanation of action?
What is the relationship between reasons and rationality?
What kind of authority do moral and reasons judgments have for the agent and why?
Does rationality demand that one is motivated accordingly? What is the relationship vbetween autonomy and acting on such judgments?
Is the focus on the psychological a good way to put the basic questions of metaethics? Can it shed new light on classic problems, such as the Frege-Geach challenge and the alleged queerness of moral properties?
Papers should be between 3000 and 4000 words in length. Since this is a workshop, we put special emphasis on new ideas and new developments of old themes in the selection process. Graduate students are encouraged to submit. Each paper will be allotted a full hour to provide ample time for comments and discussion.
Drafts of papers with all identifying information on a separate cover sheet should be submitted no later than September 15th 2005 to Antti Kauppinen(amkauppi@mappi.helsinki.fi). PDF, Word and RTF formats are preferred. Those who wish to submit a hard copy instead (though we recommend electronic submission) can mail their paper and cover sheet to Antti Kauppinen, Department of Social and Moral Philosophy, P.O. Box 9, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. We aim to announce the list of accepted papers within two weeks of the deadline. The final conference program will be posted by mid-October on our website http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/kfilo/metaethics-workshop.htm.
The workshop is organized by the Academy of Finland research project Practical Reason and Moral Motivation, directed by professor Timo Airaksinen.