About The Workshop

The CNY Moral Psychology Workshop is an opportunity for philosophers to present papers in progress and to receive useful feedback on their work. Its goal is to bring together those interested in moral psychology for fruitful interaction and discussion, and thereby, emphasize how moral psychology (as it was traditionally construed) remains an important, coherent, and distinct variety of philosophical inquiry.

This workshop meets once a year. Each workshop will feature 4 papers in an informal, seminar-style format.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

• • The Nature of Morally Relevant Mental States: What is desire, pleasure, emotion, or intention? What is anger, conscience, regret, respect, or sympathy? What kinds of objects can these states be directed towards? What sort of rational relations do they bear to other mental states? Does acting ethically or virtuously presuppose the possession of any such states? 

  • Moral Motivation: Are all actions, as Hume thought, actuated by some sort of desire or passion? Or are some actions motivated, as Kant thought, by a recognition that they accord with duty or reason alone? How do emotions or conscience or sympathy operate in the course of motivating a morally commendable action?

  • The Virtues: What is courage, generosity, modesty, or kindness? Similar questions occur for vices: what is wickedness, cruelty, or hypocrisy? What do all virtues have in common, and what makes them good? What is the difference between virtue and vice? How are virtues cultivated? 

  • Irrationality and Moral Failures: What is ‘akrasia’ or weakness of will? What is self-deception? Could it sometimes be morally acceptable or commendable to be weak-willed or self-deceived? Is it possible to do evil or wrong in a clear-eyed way, without ignorance, akrasia, or self-deception? Are there other sorts of interesting moral failures with psychological sources?

  • Subjective Theories of Value: Could desires, pleasure, or emotions be part of the standard for what makes something good, or what constitutes a good life for a person, or what constitutes a reason for action? Is pleasure the sole good, as hedonists suggest?

  • Moral Responsibility: What does it mean to be morally responsible for an action? Does responsibility involve, as Strawson thought, “reactive attitudes,” such as blame and praise? Can one be responsible for having or lacking virtues? Is one responsible for desires, thoughts, or emotions?  

The current organizers of the Workshop are John Monteleone (Le Moyne College), Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini (Union College), and Joseph Spino (Le Moyne College).