Speakers conference Moral Emotions
James W. McAllister
James W. McAllister is senior lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Leiden. He is president of the Dutch Society for Philosophy of Science and editor of the Routledge journal, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. He gained his Ph.D. at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, in 1989. He has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Delft University of Technology, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Wassenaar. His publications include Beauty and Revolution in Science (Cornell University Press, 1996) and The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts (coeditor; Cambridge University Press, 1995). Part of his current research concerns the role of emotion in decision making in science.
Title: Emotional Judgement and Rational Warrant in the Resolution of Dilemmas
Dilemmas, such as those encountered in the assessment of technological risks, are cases of conflicting obligations. A person caught in a dilemma is subject to two or more requirements that cannot be reconciled within the system of precepts that the person acknowledges. In this paper, I consider the role of emotional judgements in the resolution of dilemmas. There are good grounds for thinking that there is no alternative to relying on emotional judgement in resolving dilemmas. This conclusion, however, leaves open the question whether and under what conditions the outcome of an emotional judgement is rationally warranted. I will consider two possible mechanisms, based on coherence and induction, able to ensure that human emotional judgements are rationally warranted.
References
- McAllister, James W. 2005. “Emotion, Rationality, and Decision Making in Science”, in Petr Hájek, Luis Valdés-Villanueva, and Dag Westerståhl, eds., Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress. London: King’s College Publications; pp. 559–576.
- McAllister, James W. 2007. “Dilemmas in Science: What, Why, and How”, in Adriaan in ’t Groen, Henk Jan de Jonge, Eduard Klasen, Hilje Papma, and Piet van Slooten, eds., Knowledge in Ferment: Dilemmas in Science, Scholarship and Society. Leiden: Leiden University Press; pp. 13–24.
