Department of History and Philosophy of Science will hold the 44th Tokyo Colloquium of Cognitive Philosophy. Everyone is welcome.

Date & Time: November 15th (Friday), 17:30-19:30
Venue: the 14th Building, Room 710 on the 7th floor, Komaba Campus

Presenter: Regina Rini (Oxford University)
Title: Moral Psychology and the Narrative Self

Abstract:
Recent research in cognitive science appears to show that many of our moral judgments are generated in surprising and peculiar ways. It is sometimes claimed that becoming aware of these psychological origins should lead us toward scepticism about moral judgment. Yet it is hard to understand how this scepticism works or what to do about it, because our only grounds for evaluating the normative import of cognitive scientific findings are our moral judgments themselves, the very thing put into doubt by those findings. This paper aims to make sense of this confusing situation. I suggest that we can achieve some clarity by thinking about the moral self in narrative terms. What cognitive science reveals is the extent to which we are not the characters we had assumed ourselves to be, and what it may offer is an opportunity to reassert authorial control.