EFTA00769736.pdf

From: marc hauser To: Jeffrey Epstein Subject: a proposal Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:44:59 +0000 Attachments: Hauser&Sinnott-Armstrong_NSF_LinguisticAnal.doc dear jeff i hope this note finds you well. i wanted to ask whether you might be interested in supporting a large scale project aimed at understanding the nature of our moral judgments. The last several years of funding from NSF have generated massive number of projects, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. I have managed to assemble collaborators working on genetics, neurobiology, behavior, development, and evolution, targeting normal populations, patients with focal lesion, individuals with genetic mutations that lead to focal brain damage, children and animals; using wild and creative technologies, including TMS (allowing for focal suppression of brain function), behavioral genetics and imaging, and virtual reality. I don't think this is something that traditional funding will support as it is very large scale. But it has the potential to generate terrifically exciting results, with implications for not only basic research, but clinical applications, politics, law and education. The study centers around the linguistic analogy to morality that i have been pushing. I am attaching a sketch of the project, that i sent to the ex-director of NSF, David Lightfoot. He just stepped down, unfortunately, so who knows what will happen; lightfoot was very invested in the linguistic analogy as he is a chomskyan by training! it is a sketch, but i thought might be useful as a starting point. i don't know if this is of any interest, but if so, would be keen to talk further. best marc Marc Hauser, Harvard College Professor Departments of Psychology and Human Evolutionary Biology Harvard University 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138 office teUfax: 617-496-7077 URL: www.wjh.harvard.edu/—mnkylab For Appointment: I. check my calendar at: —All%20Events.ics 2. email me with possible days and times EFTA00769736