We have the pleasure to invite you for a research seminar in the ‘BIOUNCERTAINTY’ research project. The seminar will take place on Thursday, April 8th, at 5:30pm on MS Teams (link below).

Abstract: We propose a fundamental challenge to the feasibility of moral progress: most extant theories of progress, we will argue, assume an unrealistic level of cognitive control people must have over their moral judgements for moral progress to occur. Moral progress depends at least in part on the possibility of individual people improving their moral cognition to eliminate the pernicious influence of various epistemically defective biases and other distorting factors. Since the degree of control people can exert over their moral cognition tends to be significantly overestimated, the prospects of moral progress face a formidable problem, the force of which has thus far been underappreciated. In the paper, we will provide both conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis, and explain its most important implications.

The talk is based on a joint paper by Michael Klenk and Hanno Sauer.

Michael Klenk is a lecturer in ethics and the philosophy of technology at the Technische Universiteit Delft. His research covers foundational topics about the nature of morality, moral change, and moral knowledge. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions and use resources from metaethics, epistemology, anthropology, and moral psychology in pursuit of answers.