Experimental Ethics: Toward an Empirical Moral Philosophy

Academic philosophy has experienced a major upheaval in the last decade. Venturous young philosophers, psychologists, and economists have begun to challenge the traditional stance that philosophy is an undertaking best pursued from the safety and calm of an arm-chair. Instead, they took the gloves off and brought philosophical questions to the experimental laboratory. This volume sets the stage for the development of a consistent theoretical framework for one of the branches of Experimental Philosophy: the empirical study of human moral reasoning, that is, Experimental Ethics. To this end it assembles contributions from philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists, economists, and sociologists active in this lively and growing field of research. These elaborate and substantiated works will enable its readers to immerse themselves into Experimental Ethics' history, its current topics and future perspectives, its methodology, and the criticism it is subject to.

Table of Contents:
List of Contributors PART I : EXPERIMENTAL MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 1. Introduction: Towards an Empirical Moral Philosophy; C. Lutge, M. Uhl and H. Rusch 2. Experimental Philosophy; K.A. Appiah 3. Chances, Problems and Limits of Experimental Ethics; C. Lutge 4. A Brief History of Experimental Ethics; N. Dworazik and H. Rusch PART II: APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL ETHICS: CASE STUDIES Introduction 5. The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Role of the Philosopher; E. Schwitzgebel 6. Explaining the Knobe Effect; V. Wagner 7. Trolleys and Double Effect in Experimental Ethics; E. Di Nucci 8. Utilitarianism, the Difference Principle, or Else? An Experimental Analysis of the Impact of Social Immobility on the Democratic Election of Distributive Rules; S. Wolf and A. Lenger 9. Value Assignments in Experimental Environmental Ethics; U. Frey PART III: ON METHODOLOGY Introduction 10. Implicit Morality - A Methodological Survey; N. Strominger et al 11. How to Gauge Moral Intuitions? Prospects for a New Methodology; M. Bruder and A. Tanyi 12. Descriptive and Pragmatic Levels of Empirical Ethics; A. Bunge and A. Skulmowski 13. Robust Intuitions, Experimental Ethics and Experimental Economics: Bringing Reflective Equilibrium into the Lab; F. Aguiar et al PART IV: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Introduction 14. Experimental Philosophy is Useful - But not in a Specific Way; J. Rosenthal 15. Intuitions, Experiments, and Armchairs; N. Mukerji PART V: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES Introduction 16. Large-scale Social Experiments in Experimental Ethics; J.F. Muller 17. Philosophy as the Behaviorist Views It?; H. Rusch 18. Outlook Index

About the Author :
Christoph Luetge is Full Professor of Business Ethics, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany Hannes Rusch is a Research Associate in Behavioral Economics (JLU Giessen) and Business Ethics, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany Matthias Uhl is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Business Ethics, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany