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sections of “Experimental Moral Philosophy” for the SEP

For anyone interested in experimental philosophy and/or moral philosophy:

Don Loeb and I are writing the entry for "Experimental Moral Philosophy" for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  This is a daunting task, given the huge amount of interesting and diverse work that's relevant.  On my blog, I'm going to be posting drafts of the sections that I write (and maybe the sections that Don writes) for public comments.  If you think I'm getting things totally wrong, or missing something crucial, or am just plain stupid, please let me know in the comments there or by email.

Some posts are now available (others will be added periodically):

(6) a section on wellbeing

(5)  a section on the linguistic analogy

(4)  a section on emotion and affect

(3)  a section on intentionality attributions at the side-effect effect (AKA Knobe effect)

(2) a section on situationism and virtue theory

(1) an introductory section on the projects that experimental ethics is especially suited to

 

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2 responses to “sections of “Experimental Moral Philosophy” for the SEP”

  1. Anon Early Career Peep

    I’ve heard people say that one shouldn’t spend time working on encyclopedia entries as a junior faculty member (even SEP), because 1) it takes a ridiculous amount of time, and 2) it plays little to no role in tenure decisions. Do you have information to the contrary? Would love to know. Thanks! And good luck!

    Reply
  2. Mark Alfano

    Thanks for the question, which is a fair one. This article has taken quite a bit of time (about a year now, and still not quite done). I don’t know about tenure decisions, but I’d guess that depends on one’s institution. At University of Oregon, where I’ll be up for tenure in a few years, I don’t think this will be completely discounted.
    One thing that SEP articles in particular seem to be good for is gaining some name recognition. If you’re the editor of the relevant category at philpapers.org (which I also think is useful), that won’t get people to remember your name. But if your SEP article is something people end up going to for info or sending their students to, then it could help you down the line.
    So, I guess my basic answer is: it depends on what you want to get out of it. If you’re on the brink of a tenure decision, then writing an encyclopedia article — even an SEP article — is probably not prudent. If you feel pretty confident in the research portion of your tenure file, it might be worthwhile to work on something like this.
    I should also mention that I’m under contract to write a textbook on moral psychology (probably also not an ideal career move, but whatever), and I’ve found the background reading for this SEP article helpful for that. The takeaway there, I guess, is that if it fits nicely into other stuff you’re doing, then the time you spend on it might also count as time spent on other things.

    Reply

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