MIGHT · Moral Impossibility: Rethinking Choice and Conflict
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-01-01 → 2023-12-31
- EU contribution
- €144,981
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Moral Impossibility: Rethinking Choice and Conflict
The aim of the action has been to develop and propose a new philosophical framework based on the concept of moral impossibility (MI) as a key domain of moral experience with important theoretical and practical ramifications. The project’s objectives included using MI to help us re-think the boundaries within which deliberation, choice, public and private debate, and the shaping of personal and social identity take place. In its applied element, MI can help gain a different understanding of intractable moral conflict. The project’s deliverables have included two academic events (a workshop and a conference), international academic talks, two major outreach events (experiential philosophy workshops), two podcasts, two public articles, submissions of scientific papers and of one book proposal. All of this has contributed to making MI a recognised field of enquiry and, through the academic events and the book proposal in particular, encouraged other philosophers to think about the questions that MI raises, thereby co-developing its potential and opening new avenues into future research. The research objectives are: 1 To propose a unified conception of MI, contributing to moral theory on decision beyond rational deliberation. Including literature review and assessment of the moral psychology of choice, motivation, and freedom. 2 To assess the moral value of different types of MI, and the desirability or otherwise of silencing morally problematic possibilities. 3 To offer a new approach to cases of intractable moral conflict, through an analysis of contemporary case studies. The career objectives are: 1 To forge new international collaborations (linking CE at Pardubice with CEPL in Dublin and with the Messerli Institute at the University of Vienna). 2 To expand the researcher’s skillset, including supervision training and social science methodology. 4 To increase grant application potential by further training. 5 To reach professional maturity creating a clear research line and acquiring the Habilitation for Associate Professor.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The project aims to offer a theoretical framework for a significant yet under-explored set of phenomena which I will call ‘moral impossibility’ (MI), and to use the theoretical understanding achieved to propose a new approach to intractable moral conflict. MI refers to what – for moral reasons – lies outside the range of possibilities available in one’s choices. While empirical and logical impossibilities are widely accepted, moral ones are far less obvious, yet they shape and delimit, often silently, all choices. These include the possibilities we never consider, those we cannot make sense of (e.g. because too morally abhorrent), and those we consider but cannot bring ourselves to carry out. Neglecting the role of MI leads to crucial misrepresentations of situations of conflict in contemporary philosophy. Using recent case-studies, I propose to analyse intractable moral conflict in terms of moral possibilities that are not shared between the parties, in opposition to the dominant ‘disagreement’ model. The objectives of the research are 1) to construct a conceptual framework of MI, 2) to conduct a normative analysis of its most controversial manifestations, and 3) to use the conceptual and normative frameworks to offer a new understanding of the causes, meaning, and possible resolution, of intractable moral conflict. Each objective corresponds to a work package with a distinct methodology and contributing to a different branch of ethics: moral theory/moral psychology, normative ethics, and applied ethics. The action, proposed at a crucial stage in my research career, will be carried out at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value at the University of Pardubice, where I will be trained in its distinctive research methods, case study analysis, and included in its wide European and global networks, and where I will in turn set up a new Czech-Irish link with my home institution (UCD)'s Centre for Ethics in Public Life.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERZITA PARDUBICE · PardubiceCoordinatorCzechia
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union