Hadis Farokhi Kakesh

Research interests

Moral philosophy, neuropsychology, ethics of technology, philosophy of science

Other information

My research is generously supported with an internal award (RCUK) by the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester.

I did an MSc in philosophy of science at Sharif University of Technology, Iran and a BA in English literature at University of Tehran, Iran.

Current research

One of the important domains of study in moral philosophy, which takes a particular position on moral statements and judgments, is non-cognitivism. Traditional accounts of ethical non-cognitivism proposed that ethical judgements are not representational or descriptive of any state of affairs. More recent and more sophisticated versions of the theory propose that ethical utterances do not express beliefs, but rather, they are expressions of non-cognitive attitudes. According to these theories, the ethical judgement that ‘lying is wrong’ should be understood as an attitude of disapproval towards lying or as acceptance of a range of relevant plans (that rule out lying), rather than a belief that ‘lying is wrong’. There are various non-cognitivist theories of ethics, however, most of the arguments here are based on ordinary examples and thought experiments and they lack a firm systematic empirical basis.

One of the things I want to undertake in my research is introducing scientific research into this field. My distinctive approach to this field will be drawn on various empirical evidence and I will supplement these conceptual claims by systematic investigation with actual experimental findings. I believe we can provide empirical support for noncognitivist theories to make them more plausible.

The key questions I am willing to explore in this research are:

1. Can we explain the content of moral judgements by non-cognitive theories of ethics?
2. As it seems the non-cognitivist debate is largely theoretical, is it possible to apply empirical findings from neuropsychology?

Presentations

“Ethics of Technology: epistemological or ethical argument?”, 1st International Congress on Ethics in Science and Technology, Tehran, IRAN, 4th-8th December 2017.