About the Speaker:

Jesse Prinz is currently the John J. Rogers Distinguished Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. In the spring he will be returning to his hometown of New York City as Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, Graduate Center.

Jesse has research interests in cognitive science, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of language, moral psychology, and aesthetics. His first three books are: Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (MIT: 2002), Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion (OUP: 2004), and The Emotional Construction of Morals (OUP: 2007). He also has two forthcoming titles: Beyond Human Nature (London: Penguin; New York: Norton) and The Conscious Brain (Oxford). He has published numerous articles on concepts, emotions, morals, consciousness, and other topics.

We are very lucky to have Jesse as our guest -- please tell your friends about the talk and help spread the word!

Abstract of "An Empirical Defense of Moral Relativism":
We've all met people whose moral or political values seem to differ from our own. Conservatives view liberals with horrified disbelief and conversely. And moral differences are even more dramatic when we consult the anthropological record. But the mere fact that people disagree doesn't mean that there is no fact about who is right. The argument from moral disagreement to moral relativism depends on the fundamental nature of morality. I argue that empirical research on morality supports relativism, and threatens the view that there is a single true morality. I also address a number of objections that purport to show that relativism is false or dangerous doctrine.