Fence Crossing or Fence Mending?

I mentioned in the Introduction that I favoured an interdisciplinary approach to exploring selves – more as an articulation of faith than a reasoned conclusion. I want to make amends in this chapter by arguing for crossover engagement of a certain kind in self research. There are those who find methodological ruminations recherché or even pointless. They believe that the proof of the pudding lies solely in the eating, not in any justification of cooking methods. I recommend that those readers skip this methodological interlude and go straight to Chapter 4. For those who want to persevere, however, let me note that my discussion will be set in the context of a certain current discourse about the relationship between moral philosophy and moral psychology. There we have recently witnessed burgeoning literature on the need for more integrative work – a fence-crossing, peacemaking process – between these two research cultures. Rather than confining themselves to their previously preferred armchair psychology, some moral philosophers have begun to realise that they may be putting themselves at a competitive advantage by utilising evidence extracted by social scientists on people's actual moral beliefs. Similarly, the idea of availing oneself of conceptual insights delivered by philosophers evidently now meets with less hostility in some social science circles than it has in the past.