The project will explore what light a truly interdisciplinary perspective can shed on the nature of norms, the character of moral emotions, the role of sentiment in moral judgment, the role of reason in moral judgment, the origin of morals, and other fundamental issues in philosophical ethics.
Questions here include: What are norms? How do we represent moral norms? What is the structure of the psychological systems involved in the acquisition, processing, complying with, and enforcing moral norms? To what extent is moral psychology culturally universal? To what extent is it culturally variable? How are moral norms culturally transmitted? What can we learn about moral norms from the nature of the cultural transmission? How does empirical work on moral psychology interact with normative theories in ethics and meta-ethical theory?