Research in Philosophy

Philosophy research deals with issues that are fundamental for understanding the world and our own existence, questions about norms, values, knowledge, reality, consciousness and thought.

Within normative research , questions are posed about what characterizes a good society, a real action or a good life. This is also where ethical questions such as how legislation or practice should be applied in health care and the police system are dealt with. Within meta-ethics , we examine the conditions of normative thinking: Are there better or worse ways to attempt to answer the normative questions? Can we arrive at objectively correct answers to questions of value or are they inevitably subjective, or bound to different times or cultures? Related questions concern among other things the meaning of life and the compatibility of a scientific world view with the idea that we have free will and are responsible for our choices and actions.

Within epistemology and theory of science general questions are posed about our knowledge of the outside world, the future or individual thought, along with specific questions about the nature and reliability of scientific knowledge. Onthology and metaphysics deal with questions about the nature of time or existence, as well as the relationship between reality and possibility. Within philosophy of mind we examine the nature of the mind and its relation to the material world. In the philosophy of language we ask how linguistic communication works and how language allows us to convey information about the world and our thoughts.

The philosophy often deals with questions that many of us naturally ask, perhaps as early as childhood, but where the responses seem to depend on personal preference Philosophical research attempts to find systematic ways to answer these questions. The discipline of philosophy is therefore as old as the systematic scientific thinking. Many of the questions that occupy philosophers today were discussed as early as in ancient Greece and many other sciences can be said to have originated in philosophy. Research topics such as physics, computer science, psychology, economics and social science can trace their origins back to a time when via philosophical approaches we found systematic ways to address issues with subject-specific empirical or mathematical methods. In many other contexts, philosophy focuses primarily on critically examining concepts and assumptions in other research including the philosophical, and more generally in the philosophy of life and the world.

In the research environment for Cultural Sciences, research is conducted in epistemology (on a priori knowledge), philosophy of language (on conditional statements) and moral psychology (on moral responsibility and moral motivation) as well as research on discord and objectivity. At other departments of LiU, philosophical research is largely focused on ethics. Employees at the Centre for Applied Ethics and Division of Health and Society conduct normative research in medical ethics, animal ethics, global justice but also deals with questions of identity and meaning and phenomenological questions about sex and bodily normality.
 

Research

Centre of Applied Ethics, CTE

Current projects