Chiron Workshop 2012
Research Group in Philosophy
4th edition
Emotions, Morality and Neuroscience
à propos Jesse Prinz
May 25th
Sala Conecta
Unisinos – São Leopoldo - RS
2001-2011
Chiron: Research Group in Philosophy — Philosoophy - Unisinos - Brazil
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Chiron
Workshop 2012
Emotions, Morality and Neuroscience
à propos Jesse Prinz
Description:
Jesse Prinz has excelled in defense of naturalism in morality, in particular a kind of subjectivist,
relativistic and a-rationalistic naturalism. His sensibility theory comprises a rejection of innatism in
morals, besides to involve theses on philosophy of language, epistemology and empirical oriented
disciplines like moral psychology, cognitive sciences and neuroscience. The fourth workshop of the
Chiron Group will discuss the best-known arguments put forward by Prinz in the field of morality, in
addition to confronting them with the positions of Brazilian colleagues. Furthermore, Prinz will
present and discuss a still unpublished work on the moral self and will put in perspective the empirical
turn in philosophy in the beginning of this century.
Coordinator:
Adriano Naves de Brito (Unisinos)
Invited speakers:
Jesse Prinz (CUNY)
Marco Antônio Oliveira de Azevedo (Unisinos)
Nythamar de Oliveira (PUC-RS)
Program
Friday 25th May 2012
Part I
10:30 – Jesse Prinz (CUNY)
The Empirical Turn
12:00 – Lunch
14:00 – Jesse Prinz (CUNY)
The Moral Self
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Part II
(Moderators: Flávio Williges and Tiegue Rodrigues)
15:00 – Nythamar de Oliveira (PUC-RS / CNPq)
The Social Construction of Contractualism: Pragmatic Normativity and Weak Naturalism
16:00 – Coffee Break
16:30 – Adriano N. de Brito (Unisinos - Chiron / CNPq)
Is, Ought, but no Truth
17:30 – Marco A. de Azevedo (Unisinos - Chiron)
Duties, Oughts and Prinz’s Agent-Relativism.
18:30 – Plenary
19:00 – End of the workshop
By:
Chiron Group at Unisinos (Students):
André Luiz Olivier da Silva (PhD)
Matheus de Mesquita Silveira (PhD)
Marinei Carvalho (Master)
Mônica Gonçalves Leite (Undergraduate)
Viviane Zarembski Braga (Undergraduate)
Cássio Terra Yeda (Undergraduate)
Registration: at the workshop (R$ 10,00)
With the support of:
2001-2011
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Abstracts:
The Empirical Turn
Jesse Prinz (CUNY)
[email protected]
The early 20th Century saw a linguistic turn in philosophy, in which traditional philosophical problems
were re-interpreted as problems about linguistic meaning, and formal logic became a widely used
philosophical tool. The 21st century has begun with an empirical turn, in which philosophers are
increasingly brining empirical resources to bear on philosophical problems. The roots of that turn are
discussed, different methodologies are described, and examples are given across several philosophical
domains. The empirical turn has also faced a number of objections, and it has raised questions about
the fate of philosophy. These concerns are largely misplaced, because traditional methods can exist
along side empirical methods and play complementary roles.
The Moral Self
Jesse Prinz (CUNY)
[email protected]
Those who study morality rarely discuss the personal identity, and those who discuss personal identity
discuss moral implications of their views, but rarely entertain the possibility that morality may play a
more foundational role in identity. But these two research areas may converge. Morality may
fundamentally involve identity, and conversely. This presentation argues that morality plays a role in
both synchronic and diachronic identity, and identity plays a role in the nature and function of morality. If the resulting picture is correct, then existing theories of identity have been too individualistic, and
theories of morality have been too universalistic. Identity and morality can be better understood when
seen as parts of the same system, a system called moral tribalism. The Social Construction of Contractualism: Pragmatic Normativity and Weak Naturalism
Nythamar de Oliveira (PUC-RS / CNPq)
[email protected]
The Hegelian critique of Kantian formalism has been evoked by Habermas, Honneth, and
communitarians to dismiss contractualism as a self-defeating model that fails to account for the social
dimension of any theory of justice that takes intersubjectivity, recognition, and alterity seriously. More
recently, Parfit has recast the correlated problems of normativity and rationality in Contractualism,
understood as a view that appeals "to the principles that everyone could rationally choose to be the
principles that everyone accepts," so that political philosophers such as Rawls and Scanlon may be said
to propose what might be called "Kantian versions of Contractualism." He proceeds then to defend
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one form of Non-Naturalist Cognitivism by rejecting Non-Cognitivism and two forms of Naturalism
(namely, eliminativism and nihilism). Normativity is no illusion, according to Parfit, as it ultimately
involves irreducibly normative truths. In effect, for Parfit, "words, concepts, and claims may be either
normative or naturalistic. Some fact is natural if such facts are investigated by people who are working
in the natural or social sciences. According to Analytical Naturalists, all normative claims can be
restated in naturalistic terms, and such claims, when they are true, state natural facts. According to
Non-Analytical Naturalists, though some claims are irreducibly normative, such claims, when they are
true, state natural facts. According to Non-Naturalist Cognitivists, such claims state irreducibly
normative facts." (Parfit, On What Matters, vol II, p.10) In this talk, I would like to respond to Parfit's
extreme views of both cognitivism and naturalism by offering a mitigated or weak-version account of
constructivism, such as the one outlined by Rawls's own conception of Contractarianism, which could
be reasonably translated into a normative conception of person and society. I shall argue that Rawls's
"deontology with a Humean face" turns out to be much closer to Habermas's discourse ethics than
usually thought, as the normativity of meaning unveils rules for the correct use of expressions and
words, as these rules ought to be followed by speakers, actors or members of a given community or
social group. For Habermas, pragmatic normativity entails an epistemic conception of meaning that
anchors understanding to practical normative responses of speaking, acting members of a given
community. Habermas's pragmatic reconstruction of the normativity of the practice of linguistic
communication, especially as communicative action inevitably resorts to reason and language for both
speaking and acting in a meaningful way, is just another variant of the same kind of constructionism
inherent in Rawls's contractarianism and reflective equilibrium. According to this view, normative
pragmatics and political constructivism are ultimately compatible with nonreductive versions of
naturalism (and materialism), as long as the social, public dimension of consent or agreement can be
shown to be decisive for moral normativity in a conventional or nonnatural sense.
Is, Ought, but no Truth
Adriano Naves de Brito (Unisinos - Chiron / CNPq)
[email protected]
Prinz argues that moral claims can be true by means of the approbation or disapprobation of the
speaker, if they correspond to each other. The thesis may lead to the overcoming of the is-ought gap,
but commit him to realism and subjectivism. While very much sympathetic to naturalism, I resist both
moral realism and moral subjectivism. In this paper I want to discuss the relations - and the absence of
them - between truth and moral, and, in addition to that, to give some plausibility to a defense of a
moral naturalism not committed to the existence of moral facts or moral truths. It is a fact that moral
agents approve and disapprove actions, but the truth of that description is neither sufficient nor
necessary for the prescriptive character of the moral claims they may utter. One may effectively
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prescribe a norm that one is not emotionally in tune with, and, the other way around, one may be
unable to enforce a norm despite one’s affective approbation of it. Therefore, the epistemic vocabulary
seems not to be adequate to describe normative facts and this is a thesis I would like to argue for.
Moreover, I would like to suggest an alternative to face the is-ought dichotomy based on the will. An
alternative which should favor, on one hand, replacing truth by moral objectivity in our description of
morality and, on the other hand, including evolved preferences in it.
Duties, Oughts and Prinz’s Agent-Relativism.
Marco Antônio Oliveira de Azevedo (Unisinos/Chiron)
[email protected]
In The emotional construction of morals (2007), Jesse Prinz offers a coherent naturalist approach to the
foundations of human moral normativity. He classifies his view as a sensibility theory, a realist
approach conspicuously opposed to the anti-realist bent of traditional emotivism. I sympathize with
Prinz’s general approach; nevertheless, I have some specific disagreements. The first concerns the “isought” problem. I don’t think it is possible to construe a realist and a naturalist approach in ethics
without answering the famous problem positively, that is, without showing that it is actually possible to
make the suspect transition – at least if we take “normativity” as a natural fact (as Hume, I think,
actually thought). In this part, I will compare Priz’s approach with Adriano Naves de Brito’s. My
suggestion is substantially different from both of them. Actually, my arguments are very similar to John
Searle’s (and Neil MacComick’s). Prinz thinks that Searle’s argument is not cogent. But the correct
understanding of the argument requires taking “obligations” (and duties) factually. Hence, what a
naturalist theory must explain is how it is possible to pass from the fact that one is under a particular
obligation to a required action (or how duties can be “agent-relative reasons for action”). In effect, in
the second part, I will present my approach on the concept of “reason for action”, mainly influenced
by Judith Jarvis Thomson’s approach and her distinction between “duties” and “oughts”. In the last
part, I will make some comments on the problem of relativism. I agree with Prinz that descriptive
relativism is true; but Prinz is committed to agent-relativism. I will present some arguments against
agent-relativism that depend on the acceptance of the distinction between “duty” and “ought”.
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