| | Joe, thank you for this conception. It is innovative and thought out well. I imagine the moral science you have framed would have some overlap with economics. I gather Sean Carroll* would be skeptical of your proposal.
In the Subject Index for Objectivity, the entry for Evidence is subdivided into three subdivisions: Evidence and Belief, Philosophic Evidence, and Scientific Evidence. If you decide to study further by way of developing your theory further, you might like to read the V1N4 pages 50–54 cited under Philosophic Evidence. That is from Tibor Machan’s essay “Evidence of Necessary Existence.”* Ethics might stand not only on that philosophic evidence for ultimate foundations, but on some additional philosophic evidence special to ethics, and if so, that further philosophic evidence would likely have to be part of the foundation for scientific exploration of morality.
In his presentation in OPAR, Peikoff layers in nicely the additional metaphysical circumstance, beyond Rand's most general metaphysics, that must be recognized for what Rand called her scientific morality. That was the circumstance of the existence of life and its nature, including its relation to value. Recognizing that relation has some feel of distinctly philosophical analysis, specifically, consideration of what depends on what conceptually. I wonder if this biological picture and Rand's location of value within that realm would need to be part of your assumed framework for the scientific investigations of morality you have in mind. (Related: a, b)
There is a three-volume work, out in 2008 from MIT Press, that is likely pertinent to further elaboration of your idea. It’s title is Moral Psychology, and it is edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. The subtitles of the volumes are:The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development Your expectation that a moral philosopher standing on deontology would not get with this program is assuredly true. I saw the most brutal Author Meets Critic session (of APA), over a related divide, when Thomas Hurka* commented on Patricia Churchland’s* Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality.
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 3/12, 5:20am)
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