Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong will serve as Visiting Distinguished Fellow starting January 2007.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is a Professor of Philosophy and Hardy Professor of Legal Studies at Dartmouth College. He has also served as Visiting Professor at The John's Hopkins University and Princeton University. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he is also author of several books, including Moral Dilemmas and Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (with Robert J. Fogelin), as well as God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (with William Lane Craig) and Moral Skepticisms.

Having made many contributions to moral theory, informal logic, and the philosophy of law, Professor Sinnott-Armstrong has turned his attention to psychology, brain science, and its meta-ethical implications. He is part of an exciting, continually developing synthesis between moral theory and recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience. The potential implications for how we conceive of ourselves and our place in the world are profound.

Tentative List of Lectures

Series Title: Where is Morality in the Brain?

Lecture 1: What is a Moral Judgment?

Time: Wednesday, Jan. 10, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Location: Sage Center, Psychology Room 1314

This lecture will provide background on (a) some traditional philosophical debates, especially between Hume and Kant, (b) and some more recent psychological theories about moral judgment, especially by Kohlberg, Gilligan, Turiel, Shweder, Haidt, and Hauser. I will close by questioning the unity of morality.

Lecture 2: What can Brain Lesions Reveal about Moral Judgment?

Time: Wednesday, Jan. 17, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Location: Sage Center, Psychology Room 1314

This lecture will (a) introduce Phineas Gage along with other patients studied by Damasio, (b) summarize recent studies of their moral judgments (by Young, Cushman, and Hauser), and (c) discuss Roskies's argument that these cases refute moral internalism - the common philosophical claim that moral judgments necessarily imply motivation.

Lecture 3: What can fMRI Reveal about Moral Judgment?

Time: Wednesday, Jan. 24, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Location: Sage Center, Psychology Room 1314

This lecture will (a) summarize findings by Moll, Greene, and our own group (including an ongoing study, I hope), (b) discuss their implications for the traditional philosophical issue of whether moral judgments are based on reason or emotion, and (c) respond to methodological criticisms by Casebeer.

Lecture 4: What can Mental Illness Reveal about Moral Judgment?

Time: Monday, Jan. 29, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Location: Sage Center, Psychology Room 1314

This lecture will cover studies of moral judgments by psychopaths (using work by Hare, Blair, and Kiehl) and by autistics (using work by Blair, Frith, and McGeer). I will close the series by returning to the issue of whether morality is unified enough for scientific study.