Postdoctoral Research Project: Moral luck, Character and Responsibility (2010 - 2012)
My current postdoctoral research mainly focuses on the phenomenon of moral luck and its repercussions for agency and responsibility. The research, largely belonging to moral psychology, divides into four main areas: moral luck and moral responsibility, reactive attitudes and values, character in situation, and related themes in moral and epistemic agency.
Moral Luck and Moral Responsibility The main part of my postdoctoral research plan is devoted to the phenomenon of moral luck. In my PhD Dissertation I argued for the reality of moral luck while denying that such a phenomenon entails a real paradox. In general, I claimed that luck necessarily interferes in our moral agency, so that it is impossible to isolate attributions of moral responsibility from luck. In order to reach this conclusion, I distinguish two steps. The first one consists of trying to rebut what I call the Global Case against Moral Luck, i.e. the case against all kinds of moral luck. However, a successful rebuttal of the Global Case does not involve, in my view, that all kinds of moral luck are, ipso facto, vindicated; but only that to find a single general line of argument is not possible. The existence of some particular kinds of moral luck (formative, circumstantial, consequential) is still in need of being proved. This would be the second step of my case for moral luck. Moreover, I am also interested in diagnosing the true nature of the conflict of intuitions involved in the phenomenon of moral luck.
Reactive Emotions, Blameworthiness and Value
There exists a polemic regarding the role played by reactive attitudes in our practices of attributing moral responsibility and finding out value. I also appeal to the significance of reactive attitudes in order to carry out my project of proving the existence of moral luck and accommodating it in our conception of morality and the practical domain.
Whole Agents: Moral and Epistemic
In recent literature, inquiry into connections between epistemic and moral agency (virtues, deliberation, justification, etc) and responsibility is widespread. I will devote part of my research to explore the relationship between belief and the will (the cognitive and the conative), and the epistemic condition for moral responsibility.
Methodology
My research makes use of two kinds of extra-philosophical sources, in addition to the philosophical literature. For some topics I draw on empirical data, mainly on those findings in social psychology that have recently been employed by some philosophers to undermine our notion of character traits, but also upon some surveys of folk intuitions brought to light the last years by experimental philosophers. In general, the use of empirical data follows from the conviction that philosophical claims must meet the pertinent empirical constraints. On the other hand, biographical case studies, taken from history or literature, are also adduced to illustrate particular points. These cases add some flesh to abstract claims. In particular, resorting to literary passages is usually profitable given that novelists often anticipate philosophical ideas, especially when philosophers look for descriptions more than explanations.
However, my research is philosophical in nature. The methods to be used are basically the same as in any other area of philosophy: conceptual analysis, rational argumentation, and phenomenological description. It must also be pointed out that my research is conducted within a general framework: the defense of the moral luck phenomenon and the aim of making explicit its repercussions for agency and moral responsibility.