Empirical Moral Psychology in the Philosophy Curriculum

By any measure, contemporary research in moral psychology has been a remarkable success. Psychologists and neuroscientists have reported a vast array of findings and proposed a wide range of theories about the mental processes underlying moral judgment and moral behavior, and have collectively produced extraordinary insights into the moral mind. It is unclear, however, that moral psychology is equally a pedagogic success: as with any pathbreaking research, there are challenging questions about how advances in research should inform instruction. The intensely interdisciplinary nature of moral psychology makes these questions particularly acute, because individual instructors trained in specialized fields may lack comprehensive expertise. This symposium brings together representatives of the disciplines that have been most involved in the field’s development, philosophy and psychological science, to discuss and debate how research in moral psychology can best be integrated into the curriculum in philosophy.

Register for this event with Kim Girman at kgirman@princeton.edu.