Publication details
Periodická soustava základních morálních prvků
| Title in English | The periodic table of foundational moral elements |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Studia paedagogica |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | |
| Field | Philosophy and religion |
| Keywords | neuroethics; periodic table of moral elements; hierarchical reductionism |
| Description | The goal of the paper is to show how the approach to the investigation of moral phenomena has changed in the past decades. First, I inquire into the history of science of the 19th century (medicine, chemistry) and I show a parallel with the development of contemporary ethics. Next, I suggest how evolutionary biology in collaboration with neuroscience has used hierarchical reductionism to arrive at the foundational elements and mechanisms of morality. In an analogy with the periodic table of chemical elements, I show the possibility of identifying the foundational elements of morality. I argue that naturalistic approach of hierarchical reductionism will gradually enable a more exact explication of moral phenomena. Finally, I present two illustrations of naturalistic reductionism that enable ethics to reach empirically verifiable explanations of some moral phenomena in an unprecedented extent. |
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