David Moss
My research looks at how individuals think about morality, particularly focusing on thinking about politics, charity and metaethics.
My background is in philosophy and I now work across disciplines using a variety of methodologies to conduct empirical and theoretical research.
My thesis research uses in depth interviews with UK citizens to investigate how they think of political issues in moral and non-moral terms.
I am presently working on projects in experimental social psychology, investigating reputational influences of effective giving, perceptions of charity cost-effectiveness variance and character evaluation and overhead aversion, with colleagues at Cornell and the University of Oxford.
I have written about methodology in experimental philosophy and trialed a novel method of qualitative research for investigating philosophical problems. I remain interested in and write about political theory and the connections between normative theory and empirical facts about how people actually think and talk politically.
Feel free to contact me regarding the content summarised in the talks and publications below.
Supervisors: Dr Ben Clements and Professor Peter Lunt
My background is in philosophy and I now work across disciplines using a variety of methodologies to conduct empirical and theoretical research.
My thesis research uses in depth interviews with UK citizens to investigate how they think of political issues in moral and non-moral terms.
I am presently working on projects in experimental social psychology, investigating reputational influences of effective giving, perceptions of charity cost-effectiveness variance and character evaluation and overhead aversion, with colleagues at Cornell and the University of Oxford.
I have written about methodology in experimental philosophy and trialed a novel method of qualitative research for investigating philosophical problems. I remain interested in and write about political theory and the connections between normative theory and empirical facts about how people actually think and talk politically.
Feel free to contact me regarding the content summarised in the talks and publications below.
Supervisors: Dr Ben Clements and Professor Peter Lunt
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Talks by David Moss
I draw on qualitative social research I conducted, using semi-structured interviews with around 50 members of the movement, to clarity some of the categories that are necessary to make sense of Effective Altruism as a philosophy, and as a movement.
My talk described my empirical research project which used in-depth interviews with members of the British public to investigate how they think about politics and their own political decision-making. A core interest was how they conceptualised politics in moral or non-moral terms.
I described 5 broad ways in which such research into how the public actually think about politics may be relevant: at the level of implementation (e.g. motivation, feasibility, non-ideal theory);
as a general resource, inspiration or orientation for political theorising even if the principles of one's normative theory are not grounded in or sensitive to facts about how citizens actually think; as a form of experimental political philosophy, concerned with verifying or debunking whether 'we' hold the normative intuitions intuitions that theorists sometimes posit are intuitive or hold wide assent; it may have "direct" relevance for a variety of normative positions, including Williamian political realism or deliberative democracy; it may also have relevance in a variety of Geussian realist ways (though in this talk I focus on ideology critique).
The talk covered 3 key findings concerning: the moralised aspect of ordinary citizens' talk; the non-liberal moral content of their talk (alongside a discussion of some methodological issues raised by this research and prior studies); and a discussion of akrasia and folk moral relativism.
I conclude by discussing some of the most interesting (in my view) ways forward for this kind of research. The development of the application of Geussian ideology critique as a distinct method for empirical research and of highly deliberative Socratic questioning as a means of verifying what non-theorist citizens think about normative theories and political questions after reflective deliberation in concert with normative theorists. This latter method breaks down the distinction between empirical and normative research as well as between theory formation and theory dissemination and reflection.
We describe 'Democratic Architecture' a normative framework and practical project for placing urban developments under democratic control. We draw on deliberative democracy, to emphasise the value of a jury of local citizens working directly with an architect to develop designs for urban developments and to reach a consensus as to what best meets the needs of the local area. Hence both sides benefit from each other's contributions: the locals benefit from the specialist technical knowledge of the expert, aiding their deliberations and the architect gains from their creativity and lived experience of the local area.
We describe some of the context that leads to individuals being alienated from their local environment and disenfranchised from the process of urban production (despite attempts at consultation, participation and engagement). We also describe how the emphasis on deliberative democracy values might produce additional benefits for participants and how the emphasis on democracy might allow the project to be linked to wider political movements. We describe some of our practical implementations of this project, as well as work by others, and conclude by describing how Democratic Architecture might shape the future."
This talk outlines a novel pilot study I conducted during the summer of 2011, which used qualitative research methods to explore various meta-ethical questions concerning individuals' moral thought and talk.
Almost all empirical philosophical research into meta-ethical questions has been conducted using quantitative methods: structured surveys, followed by quantitative analysis. At most, a couple of open questions are thrown in as a supplement, largely to test that respondents are competently answering the real questions. In this presentation I first consider a number of examples of these investigations, foremost Goodwin and Darley's work on moral objectivism. In this way I hope to make clear some of the methodological challenges facing the employment of these methods to investigate meta-ethical questions, and to highlight the motivations for utilising the qualitative methods I have chosen.
My study conducted a small number of in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with people, all but one non-philosophers, from a variety of backgrounds, selected for convenience and diversity (due to the exploratory nature of this pilot study). With my questions I targeted various traditional meta-ethical questions (for example: objectivism versus relativism, cognitivism versus non-cognitivism). I purposefully left questions relatively open, allowing respondents to choose whether to commit to different positions, rather than presenting a forced choice. In consequence, I gained a rich set of responses which showed great variation and which deviated from standard meta-ethical classifications in various interesting ways.
These results confirm the findings of previous experimental research, which suggest that traditional meta-ethicists' intuitions about how 'we' think and talk morally are deeply problematic and fail to account for diversity in individuals' moral responses. My findings also offer explanations for various results in previous research which have gone largely unremarked upon, for example, the 'intermediately objective' responses reported by Goodwin and Darley. However, my findings also raise difficulties for previous experimental approaches. These methods are, I suggest, best suited to measuring relatively easily categorised responses. Therefore, they will face problems if individuals' moral thought and talk does not easily fit into such categorisations due to its variability, complexity and confusion.
I close with some consideration of how qualitative methodology might supplement empirical investigations into the meta-ethical nature of individuals' moral thought and talk: as a mode of investigation in itself, as a means of verifying the findings of traditional quantitative studies and as an exploratory means of refining the distinctions that traditional experimental methods should investigate. This discussion will, I hope, shed light on some of the methodological challenges involved in the empirical investigation of philosophical questions and suggest some positive paths for development, as well as presenting some novel empirical insights into an area of recent investigation."
I draw on qualitative social research I conducted, using semi-structured interviews with around 50 members of the movement, to clarity some of the categories that are necessary to make sense of Effective Altruism as a philosophy, and as a movement.
My talk described my empirical research project which used in-depth interviews with members of the British public to investigate how they think about politics and their own political decision-making. A core interest was how they conceptualised politics in moral or non-moral terms.
I described 5 broad ways in which such research into how the public actually think about politics may be relevant: at the level of implementation (e.g. motivation, feasibility, non-ideal theory);
as a general resource, inspiration or orientation for political theorising even if the principles of one's normative theory are not grounded in or sensitive to facts about how citizens actually think; as a form of experimental political philosophy, concerned with verifying or debunking whether 'we' hold the normative intuitions intuitions that theorists sometimes posit are intuitive or hold wide assent; it may have "direct" relevance for a variety of normative positions, including Williamian political realism or deliberative democracy; it may also have relevance in a variety of Geussian realist ways (though in this talk I focus on ideology critique).
The talk covered 3 key findings concerning: the moralised aspect of ordinary citizens' talk; the non-liberal moral content of their talk (alongside a discussion of some methodological issues raised by this research and prior studies); and a discussion of akrasia and folk moral relativism.
I conclude by discussing some of the most interesting (in my view) ways forward for this kind of research. The development of the application of Geussian ideology critique as a distinct method for empirical research and of highly deliberative Socratic questioning as a means of verifying what non-theorist citizens think about normative theories and political questions after reflective deliberation in concert with normative theorists. This latter method breaks down the distinction between empirical and normative research as well as between theory formation and theory dissemination and reflection.
We describe 'Democratic Architecture' a normative framework and practical project for placing urban developments under democratic control. We draw on deliberative democracy, to emphasise the value of a jury of local citizens working directly with an architect to develop designs for urban developments and to reach a consensus as to what best meets the needs of the local area. Hence both sides benefit from each other's contributions: the locals benefit from the specialist technical knowledge of the expert, aiding their deliberations and the architect gains from their creativity and lived experience of the local area.
We describe some of the context that leads to individuals being alienated from their local environment and disenfranchised from the process of urban production (despite attempts at consultation, participation and engagement). We also describe how the emphasis on deliberative democracy values might produce additional benefits for participants and how the emphasis on democracy might allow the project to be linked to wider political movements. We describe some of our practical implementations of this project, as well as work by others, and conclude by describing how Democratic Architecture might shape the future."
This talk outlines a novel pilot study I conducted during the summer of 2011, which used qualitative research methods to explore various meta-ethical questions concerning individuals' moral thought and talk.
Almost all empirical philosophical research into meta-ethical questions has been conducted using quantitative methods: structured surveys, followed by quantitative analysis. At most, a couple of open questions are thrown in as a supplement, largely to test that respondents are competently answering the real questions. In this presentation I first consider a number of examples of these investigations, foremost Goodwin and Darley's work on moral objectivism. In this way I hope to make clear some of the methodological challenges facing the employment of these methods to investigate meta-ethical questions, and to highlight the motivations for utilising the qualitative methods I have chosen.
My study conducted a small number of in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with people, all but one non-philosophers, from a variety of backgrounds, selected for convenience and diversity (due to the exploratory nature of this pilot study). With my questions I targeted various traditional meta-ethical questions (for example: objectivism versus relativism, cognitivism versus non-cognitivism). I purposefully left questions relatively open, allowing respondents to choose whether to commit to different positions, rather than presenting a forced choice. In consequence, I gained a rich set of responses which showed great variation and which deviated from standard meta-ethical classifications in various interesting ways.
These results confirm the findings of previous experimental research, which suggest that traditional meta-ethicists' intuitions about how 'we' think and talk morally are deeply problematic and fail to account for diversity in individuals' moral responses. My findings also offer explanations for various results in previous research which have gone largely unremarked upon, for example, the 'intermediately objective' responses reported by Goodwin and Darley. However, my findings also raise difficulties for previous experimental approaches. These methods are, I suggest, best suited to measuring relatively easily categorised responses. Therefore, they will face problems if individuals' moral thought and talk does not easily fit into such categorisations due to its variability, complexity and confusion.
I close with some consideration of how qualitative methodology might supplement empirical investigations into the meta-ethical nature of individuals' moral thought and talk: as a mode of investigation in itself, as a means of verifying the findings of traditional quantitative studies and as an exploratory means of refining the distinctions that traditional experimental methods should investigate. This discussion will, I hope, shed light on some of the methodological challenges involved in the empirical investigation of philosophical questions and suggest some positive paths for development, as well as presenting some novel empirical insights into an area of recent investigation."