Sveinung Sundfør Sivertsen

If right and wrong is only a question of what you feel, can we still become better people? In my PhD project, I aim to answer this question by developing a procedural, normative ethic that is compatible with sentimentalim in metaethics.

Briefly, this entails showing that there are one or several norms for how one ought to go about figuring out what one ought and ought not to do. These procedural norms must legitimise the answer at which one arrives, and the challenge is that the norms must do so even if we assume that "right" and "wrong" are properties created by our emotional reactions to things and people.The idea is, roughly, that one can have genuine moral progress by following these norms, even if there is no universal standard of right and wrong.

I'm inspired by Jesse Prinz' theory of "constructive sentimentalism", and am using, i.a. Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments in the development of the project.