Reasons and Rationality. The project explains how we assess the truth and falsehood of everyday claims about what people have reason to do. It also explains what legitimizes our practice of praising and blaming people for their success and failure at doing what we think they have reason to do. In so doing it provides a foundation for both our ordinary practice of holding people responsible, and for the more institutionalised counterpart of this ordinary practice in the law.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101601
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$337,940.00
Summary
Wellbeing, preferences, and basic goods. Since individual choice and public policy aim at promoting wellbeing, it is crucial to understand what wellbeing is. This project develops an account of wellbeing that is grounded in individual preferences, but acknowledges that people sometimes desire what is harmful to them.
Regulating Autologous Stem Cell Therapies in Australia. This project aims to develop an ethical and regulatory framework for the use of autologous adult stem cell therapies in Australia. These therapies are increasingly being offered to patients for diseases and conditions that lack scientific evidence of safety and efficacy. This study aims to address this problem using a mixed methods approach to generate empirical data and theoretical, ethical and legal insights that will guide the responsibl ....Regulating Autologous Stem Cell Therapies in Australia. This project aims to develop an ethical and regulatory framework for the use of autologous adult stem cell therapies in Australia. These therapies are increasingly being offered to patients for diseases and conditions that lack scientific evidence of safety and efficacy. This study aims to address this problem using a mixed methods approach to generate empirical data and theoretical, ethical and legal insights that will guide the responsible development, translation and regulation of innovative stem cell therapies in Australia and internationally. Anticipated outcomes will improve patient advocacy and public knowledge about adult stem cell therapies, and facilitate better relationships between patients, researchers and clinicians.Read moreRead less
The Evolution of the Social Brain: How Emotions and Moral Judgement Interact in the Generation of Cooperative Behaviour. Understanding the psychological forces that underpin human interactions is a necessary step to knowing how to improve those interactions. Comprehending the complex interplay of emotions and moral judgements lying behind decision-making in the social sphere will help explain such things as corruption, risk-taking, domestic violence, and political affiliation. Such knowledge can ....The Evolution of the Social Brain: How Emotions and Moral Judgement Interact in the Generation of Cooperative Behaviour. Understanding the psychological forces that underpin human interactions is a necessary step to knowing how to improve those interactions. Comprehending the complex interplay of emotions and moral judgements lying behind decision-making in the social sphere will help explain such things as corruption, risk-taking, domestic violence, and political affiliation. Such knowledge can guide the design of effective social policy, and is vital for a realistic educational strategy. This project will strengthen Australia's excellent reputation in philosophy, bring here leading scholars from diverse fields, build international research networks, and in particular forge an ongoing partnership between the ANU and the California Institute of Technology.Read moreRead less
The Demands of Reason. We may reason well or badly, depending on whether we satisfy two kinds of demands. We must register all and only relevant considerations and we must respond correctly to them. But ‘the demands of reason’, as described in this project, remain inadequately understood. Drawing on work from philosophy, psychology, political and legal theory, and the social sciences, this project aims to investigate the nature, power and reach of reason’s demands. It aims to shed light on what ....The Demands of Reason. We may reason well or badly, depending on whether we satisfy two kinds of demands. We must register all and only relevant considerations and we must respond correctly to them. But ‘the demands of reason’, as described in this project, remain inadequately understood. Drawing on work from philosophy, psychology, political and legal theory, and the social sciences, this project aims to investigate the nature, power and reach of reason’s demands. It aims to shed light on what they are; whether they have the positive transformative power attributed to them by enlightenment thinkers; and whether they can be adduced to explain the nature and origin of other important normative demands, such as the demands of morality, prudence and law.Read moreRead less
The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also co ....The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also consider how the normative and conceptual claims made by such theories, about what must be true of a moral judgment, are connected to descriptive claims about the psychology of the moral agents who make them.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100811
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$366,036.00
Summary
Justifying war. This project will develop a comprehensive new account of the ethics of war. Radically departing from the current philosophical orthodoxy in its focus on the distinctively collectivist dimensions of war's morality, it will offer a new take on both the positive reasons that justify warfare and the constraints on starting, fighting and ending wars.
Political normativity and the feasibility requirement. Commonsense says that claims about how social and political life ought to be arranged must not make infeasible demands. This project will investigate this piece of commonsense and explore its implications for a number of pressing issues, such as climate change, multiculturalism, political participation, inequality, historical justice, and the rules of war.
Benefiting from injustice. This project argues that people can acquire duties to compensate victims of injustice when they benefit from these injustices, even when they neither caused the injustices nor could have prevented them. We explore the implications of this argument for the treatment of colonised peoples, and for policies on climate change and international trade.
Changing your mind by changing your brain: An interventionist perspective on cognitive neuroscience. Functional neuroimaging provides a tremendous amount of information about the brain, but what it shows about the mind is less clear. Addressing this fundamental philosophical question requires developing a detailed account of theory-testing in cognitive neuroscience. This project aims to connect neuroimaging to theories of explanation that focus on the way one variable can make a difference to an ....Changing your mind by changing your brain: An interventionist perspective on cognitive neuroscience. Functional neuroimaging provides a tremendous amount of information about the brain, but what it shows about the mind is less clear. Addressing this fundamental philosophical question requires developing a detailed account of theory-testing in cognitive neuroscience. This project aims to connect neuroimaging to theories of explanation that focus on the way one variable can make a difference to another. By linking neuroimaging to facts about manipulable relationships between the brain and the mind, it will also provide a bridge between neuroimaging and complementary technologies for directly intervening on the brain. This, in turn, will provide a platform from which to explore the theoretical and ethical consequences of direct brain manipulation.Read moreRead less