Nils-Eric Sahlin: “How can we be moral when we are so irrational?”
Nils-Eric Sahlin, Professor and Chair of Medical Ethics of the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University, will deliver a Games and Decisions lecture, “How can we be moral when we are so irrational?” Renowned for his contributions to decision theory, the philosophy of risk, and the theory of evidence, recently Sahlin has been examining the interface between morality and rationality. What follows is an abstract of his lecture to be delivered Wednesday, January 25, 2012, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Normative ethics usually presupposes background accounts of human agency, and although different ethical theorists might have different pictures of human agency in mind, there is still something like a standard account that most of mainstream normative ethics can be understood to rest on. Ethical theorists tend to have Rational Man, or at least some close relative to him, in mind when constructing normative theories. It will be argued here that empirical findings raise doubts about the accuracy of this kind of account; human beings fall too far short of ideals of rationality for it to be meaningful to devise normative ideals within such a framework. Instead, it is suggested, normative ethics could be conducted more profitably if the idea of unifying all ethical concerns into one theoretical account is abandoned. This disunity of ethical theorizing would then match the disunited and heuristic-oriented nature of our agency.
Games and Decisions Discussion Group
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
12:30-1:30 pm BH 150
As usual, all are invited to attend. To ensure that we can accommodate all lunchtime guests, please contact Kevin Zollman to signal your intention to attend.
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Nils-Eric Sahlin, Professor and Chair of Medical Ethics of the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University, will deliver a Games and Decisions lecture, “How can we be moral when we are so irrational?” Renowned for his contributions to decision theory, the philosophy of risk, and the theory of evidence, recently Sahlin has been examining the interface between morality and rationality. What follows is an abstract of his lecture to be delivered Wednesday, January 25, 2012, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Jonah N. Schupbach
Horacio Arló-Costa
Jeff Helzner
Gregory Wheeler
Jon Williamson
Vincenzo Crupi
Jake Chandler
Arthur Paul Pedersen
Sonja Smets
Carlo Martini
