Project description
Fundamentalist beliefs under the ethical microscope
Fundamentalism is one of the serious challenges that societies face today, with experts still searching for the reasons why some people are vulnerable to radicalisation while others are not. The EU-funded EXTREME project will offer a new normative-theoretical model to understand, evaluate, and prevent fundamentalist beliefs. In opposition to much contemporary literature, it will not try to explain fundamentalism through psychological, political, or economic factors. Rather, it will study the fundamentalist as a normal and relatively rational person with misguided and harmful ideas for which he or she is usually responsible. The project will combine analytic philosophy with historical and empirical research literature and normative-theoretical analysis, aiming to explore the responsibility for fundamentalist beliefs. In particular, it will study the reasons behind fundamentalist beliefs generation, the role the social environment plays, the obligations fundamentalists are inclined to violate and the circumstances that facilitate such violations.
Objective
Fundamentalism harms our societies. It consists of a complex set of actions, sentiments, and attitudes that have all sorts of detrimental effects regarding, for example, the education of fundamentalist minorities, the perception of public safety, and the general image of religions.
Scholars in fundamentalism studies have developed various models to better understand fundamentalism, such as the Radicalization Model. Increasingly, though, they are dissatisfied with these models, since they are often unable to explain why some individuals turn to fundamentalism while others do not. This project will provide a new normative-theoretical framework that is needed to better understand and assess one of the main reasons for fundamentalist behaviour: fundamentalist beliefs. In order to do this, I combine influential methods in analytic philosophy, like conceptual analysis and reflective equilibrium, with literature reviews of empirical and historical research and normative-theoretical analysis of case studies.
The epistemology and ethics of fundamentalism that I develop addresses five questions. First, what makes extreme beliefs fundamentalist beliefs, and how do they relate to other cognitively detrimental phenomena? Second, how does the social environment affect the rationality of fundamentalist beliefs? Third, what obligations regarding their beliefs do fundamentalists violate? Fourth, which circumstances, like indoctrination, excuse people for violating such obligations? Fifth, how does this epistemology and ethics of fundamentalist belief help to better understand and assess fundamentalism?
This project breaks new ground in epistemology and ethics by exploring responsibility for extreme beliefs and fundamentalist beliefs in particular. It is also beneficial to the academics fields involved in fundamentalism studies, because those fields are largely based on historical and empirical work rather than conceptual and ethical analysis.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy epistemology
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2019-STG
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1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands
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