Academic Resources
After hunger, a human's most important need is to know what is virtuous.
Saint Louis University has received a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to explore the subject of intellectual humility. The Templeton Foundation will contribute over $2.7 million to the project, with contributions by SLU bringing the total grant to over $3 million. The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility project is being led by John Greco and Eleonore Stump.
The BCCP aims to bring the sophia of Christ to bear upon fundamental ideas concerning humanity’s place in the cosmos, and, in the light of this divine wisdom, to examine important issues that arise when humans try to live the Gospel in the modern world.
In 2005 a research team at Baylor University’s Sociology Department, along with the Institute for Studies of Religion, secured funding from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct two national surveys of American religious beliefs, values, and behaviors. In 2009 Baylor University began funding additional waves. The Baylor Religion Surveys currently have five waves, conducted in 2005, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2017.
Sir John Templeton lived in an era of unparalleled scientific and technological progress. The accelerating pace of scientific discovery led Sir John to wonder whether the methods of science might be harnessed to make similar progress in understanding the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind. Today, the Foundation that bears his name aspires to fulfill his vision — relentless curiosity in pursuit of infinite discovery.
We believe that a full understanding of morality and virtue can be achieved only by examining the morally excellent, for example, those who risked their lives saving others during the Holocaust (Monroe, 2006), or members of the Amish community who demonstrated forgiveness following the slaughter of 10 Amish schoolgirls in 2006 (Dreher, 2006). Just as much attention has been paid to how geniuses and high-performing businesses function and thrive, the morally exceptional represent a form of “genius” that deserves such attention. Three aims: (1) Jumpstart a field of study on the morally exceptional similar to the study of exceptional cognitive talent. (2) Integrate philosophical, theological, and psychological expertise to characterize the morally exceptional. (3) Answer big questions about the morally exceptional.
Neuroscientific research and emerging neurotechnologies afford several conceptual, social, ethical, and regulatory issues, from potential privacy threats to understanding consciousness and the meaning of human and personal identity. Neuroethics focuses on those issues.
Defining Wisdom (University of Chicago) As part of the Wisdom Research project, the Wisdom Research Network website features the latest news and publications on wisdom science, and encourages interdisciplinary discussions about how wisdom can play a role in the professions and in public life.
Established in 2009 with a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the initiative grew out of sociologist, Christian Smith’s work on Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money (Oxford 2008). That book examines the complex reasons for the illiberal financial giving of American Christians, and suggests that more liberal giving could accomplish world-transforming change. The research Smith began there is now being extended and developed by a Notre Dame research group conducting interviews around the country in order to understand why some people practice generosity and others don’t.
Founded by a small group of philosophers over a grey New Jersey weekend in April 2003, the Moral Psychology Research Group fosters collaborative interdisciplinary research on human mentation and morality. Topics on which the group is working include moral reasoning, character, evaluative diversity, moral emotion, positive psychology, moral rules, the neural correlates of ethical judgment, and the attribution of moral responsibility. This work is everywhere informed by contemporary empirical research in the biological, social and behavioral sciences, and is frequently informed by our own empirical work in such areas as development, culture, social cognition, and brain science. A collaboratively authored volume treating these issues, The Moral Psychology Handbook, appeared with Oxford University Press in June 2010.
The Stanford Prison Experiment web site features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.
One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
Ethics Updates is designed primarily to be used by ethics instructors and their students. It is intended to provide resources and updates on current literature, both popular and professional, that relates to ethics.
PhilPapers is a comprehensive directory of online philosophical articles and books by academic philosophers.
The purpose of the IEP is to provide detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia’s articles are written with the intention that most of the article can be understood by advanced undergraduates majoring in philosophy and by other scholars who are not working in the field covered by that article. The IEP articles are written by experts but not for experts in analogy to the way the Scientific American magazine is written by scientific experts but not primarily for scientific experts.
The SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. Consequently, our dynamic reference work maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research.
PEA Soup is a blog designed to provide a forum for discussing philosophy, ethics, and academia. Its mission is to transcend geographical barriers so that moral philosophers from across the globe can converse in much the way that they would with their nearby colleagues. The primary subject matter is ethics, where this includes not only metaethics, normative ethical theory, and applied ethics, but also cognate areas of philosophy, including political philosophy, philosophy of action, and personal identity. The secondary foci are other philosophical issues and professional issues, such as those that arise in teaching philosophy.
The Situationist is a forum for scholars, students, lawyers, policymakers, and interested citizens to examine, discuss, and debate the effect of situational forces – that is, non-salient factors around and within us – on law, policy, politics, policy theory, and our social, political, and economic institutions. The Situationist is associated with The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.
Ethics Etc is a forum for discussing contemporary philosophical issues in normative ethics, metaethics, moral epistemology, moral psychology, applied ethics, social and political philosophy, law, and other related areas. Its method is analytical, and it encourages the posting of new ideas and arguments that have not been fully worked out.
The Character Project is a large interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at exploring human character from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, and theology.
An online archive of academic resources for the study of character and related topics. The site includes links to books, journals, journal articles, faculty websites, and much more.
