We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar in the ‘BIOUNCERTAINTY’ research project. This week Tomasz Żuradzi will give a talk: "Rational framing effects and morally valid reasons". The seminar will take place on Wednesday, 6th of April, at 17:30 p.m. in the room 25 of Institute of Philosophy of Jagiellonian University and via MS Teams.

Abstract

I argue that the best explanation of many reversals or shifts in some canonical experiments on framing effects (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman 1981) refers to reasons, including morally valid reasons supported by some normative moral doctrines. Surprisingly, most research in moral psychology, behavioral economics, and experimental ethics on framing effects concentrate on the very existence and the scale of this effect while neglecting an explanatory dimension. For example, many studies on the Asian Disease Problem (ADP) do not even mention an ethical dimension of this choice situation, which consists of making life-saving decisions (cf. Dreisbach & Guevara 2017). In my paper, I accept Bermúdez's (2021) claim that frames often function reflectively by making salient particular reason-giving aspects of a decision. However, I also argue that the scope of rational framing effects may be broader than Bermúdez assumes. In particular, I describe how non-consequentialist reasons may help explain and justify the typical pattern of choices in the cases like ADP: the distinction between doing and allowing (Woollard 2015) and fairness in uncertain prospects (Spiekermann 2022).

Link to the MS Teams meeting