Sentimentalism comes in many varieties: explanatory sentimentalism, judgment sentimentalism, metaphysical sentimentalism, and epistemic sentimentalism. This encyclopedia entry gives an overview of the positions and main arguments pro and con.

This chapter offers an overview of four key debates about the roles of emotion in morality. First, many believe that emotions are an important psychological mechanism for explaining altruistic behavior and moral conscience in humans. Second, there is considerable debate about the causal role of affective reactions in moral judgment. Third, some philosophers have argued that emotions have a constitutive role in moral thought and even moral facts. Finally, philosophers disagree about whether affective influence undermines the justification of moral beliefs (...) or, in suitable circumstances, guides us toward moral truth. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of this book argued that moral philosophy should be based on seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences. Chapter 2 argued that these principles support basing normative moral philosophy on a particular problem of diachronic instrumental rationality: the ‘problem of possible future selves.’ Chapter 3 argued that a new moral principle, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, is the rational solution to this problem. Chapter 4 argued that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three equivalent formulations akin to but superior to (...) Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Chapter 5 argued that my principle’s three formulations make it rational to adopt a Moral Original Position to derive moral principles. The present chapter derives Four Principles of Fairness from the Moral Original Position--principles of coercion minimization, mutual assistance, fair negotiation, and virtue—and unifies them into a single principle of rightness: Rightness as Fairness. Finally, this chapter argues that Rightness as Fairness entails a novel approach to applied ethics called ‘principled fair negotiation’, illustrating how the theory provides a plausible new framework for addressing applied cases including lying, suicide, trolleys, torture, distribution of scarce resources, poverty, and the ethical treatment of animals. (shrink)

Essay I explores brain machine interface technologies. These make direct communication between the brain and a machine possible by means of electrical stimuli. This essay reviews the existing and emerging technologies in this field and offers an inquiry into the ethical problems that are likely to emerge. Essay II, co-written with professor Sven-Ove Hansson, presents a novel procedure to engage the public in deliberations on the potential impacts of technology. This procedure, convergence seminar, is a form of scenario-based discussion that (...) is founded on the idea of hypothetical retrospection. The theoretical background and the results of the five seminars are presented. Essay III discusses moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement that alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behavior. Moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy is behavioral enhancement. The second strategy, favored by prominent defenders of moral enhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Essay IV considers the possibility and potential desirability of sensory enhancement. It is proposed that existing sensory modalities in vertebrate animals are proof of concept of what is biologically possible to create in humans. Three considerations on the normative aspects of sensory enhancement are also presented in this essay. Essay V rejects disease prioritarianism, the idea that the healthcare system ought to prioritize the treatment of diseases. Instead, an approach that focuses on what medicine can accomplish is proposed. Essay VI argues that from the idea that species have an intrinsic value and that humanity has a collective responsibility to protect animal species from extinction, the conclusion that we ought to recreate species follows. Essay VII argues that unknown existential risks have not been properly addressed. It proposes a heuristic for doing so, and a concrete strategy. This strategy consists in building refuges that could withstand a large number of catastrophic events. (shrink)

In the past few years, the subject of AI rights—the thesis that AIs, robots, and other artefacts (hereafter, simply ‘AIs’) ought to be included in the sphere of moral concern—has started to receive serious attention from scholars. In this paper, I argue that the AI rights research program is beset by an epistemic problem that threatens to impede its progress—namely, a lack of a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness: the problem of explaining why certain brain states give rise (...) to experience. To motivate this claim, I consider three ways in which to ground AI rights—namely: superintelligence, empathy, and a capacity for consciousness. I argue that appeals to superintelligence and empathy are problematic, and that consciousness should be our central focus, as in the case of animal rights. However, I also argue that AI rights is disanalogous from animal rights in an important respect: animal rights can proceed without a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. Not so with AI rights, I argue. There we cannot make the same kinds of assumptions that we do about animal consciousness, since we still do not understand why brain states give rise to conscious mental states in humans. (shrink)

Ethicists have become increasingly skeptical about the importance of empathy in producing moral concern for others. One of the main claims made by empathy skeptics is a psychological thesis: empathy is not the primary psychological process responsible for producing moral concern. Some of the best evidence that could confirm or disconfirm this thesis comes from research on empathizing with animals. However, this evidence has not been discussed in any of the prominent critiques of empathy. In this paper, I investigate six (...) different empirical claims commonly made about empathy toward animals. I find all six claims to be problematic, though some are more plausible than others, and argue that empathy is indeed not psychologically central to producing moral concern for animals. I also review evidence indicating that other moral emotions, particularly anger, are more strongly engaged with producing moral concern for animals, and are thus more capable of achieving various normative aims in animal ethics. The conclusion of my argument is that empathy should lose its currently privileged place. (shrink)

Although the word empathy only recently came into existence, eighteenth century philosopher, David Hume, significantly contributed to our current understanding of the term. Hume was among the first to suggest that an empathic mechanism is the central means by which we make ethical judgments and glean moral knowledge. In this paper, I explore Hume's moral sentimentalism, and I argue that his conception of empathy provides a surprisingly apposite framework for interpreting and addressing a current issue in practical ethics: the moral (...) significance of ultra-violent video games. Ultimately, I attempt to show that a Humean account of morality uniquely explains the dangers of ultra-violent video gaming by elucidating a direct connection between playing such games and moral harm. (shrink)

Moral distress has been the subject of extensive research and debate in the nursing ethics literature since the mid-1980s, but the concept has received comparatively little attention from those working outside of applied ethics. In this article, I defend a care ethical account of moral distress, according to which the phenomenon is the product of an agent’s inability to live up to one of her caring commitments. This account has a number of attractions. First, it places a greater emphasis on (...) the importance of the relationship between the caregiver and her cared-for than that found in previous accounts. Second, it does not make problematic assumptions about the correctness of a caregiver’s moral judgments, as has been claimed in relation to previous accounts of moral distress. Finally, my account allows for a clear conceptual distinction to be drawn between moral distress and other forms of negative moral emotion such as guilt and regret. Earlier accounts draw this distinction by appealing to the causal aetiology of moral distress, but as I show here, such appeals are ultimately unsuccessful unless they are made from an explicitly care ethical starting point. One of the implications of my account is that moral distress has the potential to occur in the context of any caregiving relationship. This claim is explored in the final section of the paper, in relation to student-teacher and parent-child caregiving. (shrink)

According to agent-based approaches to virtue ethics, the rightness of an action is a function of the motives which prompted that action. If those motives were morally praiseworthy, then the action was right; if they were morally blameworthy, the action was wrong. Many critics find this approach problematically insensitive to an act’s consequences, and claim that agent-basing fails to preserve the intuitive distinction between agent- and act-evaluation. In this article I show how an agent-based account of right action can be (...) made sensitive to an act’s consequences. According to the approach which I defend, an action is right just in case it realizes an agent’s morally praiseworthy motive. Conversely, an action is wrong just in case it realizes a morally blameworthy motive. Specifying act-evaluation in terms of the realization, rather than the expression, of an agent’s motives allows an agent-based approach to distinguish between agent- and act-evaluation. This is because an agent may act from a morally praiseworthy motive, but fail to realize that motive. Her action will therefore not have been the right one, despite its being the expression of morally praiseworthy motives. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that virtue ethics should be understood as a form of ethics which integrates various domains of the practical in relation to which virtues are excellences. To argue this it is necessary to distinguish two senses of the “moral”: the broad sense which integrates the domains of the practical and a narrow classificatory sense. Virtue ethics, understood as above, believes that all genuine virtue should be understood as what I call virtues proper. To possess a virtue (...) proper (such as an excellent disposition of open-mindedness, an epistemic virtue) is to possess a disposition of overall excellence in relation to the sphere or field of the virtue (being open to the opinions of others). Overall excellence in turn involves excellence in integrating to a sufficient degree, standards of excellence in all relevant practical domains. Epistemic virtues, sporting virtues, moral virtues, and so on are all virtues proper. In particular it is impossible for an epistemic virtue to be a moral (narrow sense) vice. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmpathy has been taken to play a crucial role in ethics at least since the Scottish Enlightenment. More recently, a revival of moral sentimentalism and empirical research on moral behavior has prompted a renewed interest in empathy and related concepts and on their contribution to moral reasoning and to moral behavior. Furthermore, empathy has recently entered our public discourse as having the power to ameliorate our social and political interactions with others.The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent (...) to which such a role can be actually granted. Before focusing on a positive assessment, I will delve into a few problems our ordinary concept of empathy and our commonsensical way of conceiving its connection to ethics will need to face. Specifically, I will show how an exaggerated reliance on the ordinary concept of empathy could lead to an underestimation of its biases and potential limitations, how a naïve conception of its connection to morality can overlook relevant counterexam... (shrink)

A growing interest across disciplines in the nature of empathy has sparked a debate over the place of empathy in morality. Proponents are eager to capitalize on the apparent close connection between empathy and altruism, while critics point to serious problems in our exercise of empathy - we are naturally biased, empathize too much or too little, and prone to making all sorts of mistakes in empathizing. The proponents have a promising response, that it is not empathy simpliciter, but empathy (...) in some “proper” form, that does the work they claim for it. This paper aims to propose a cautiously optimistic position for the proponent by rethinking the suggested approach. I argue that empathy plays two important roles in morality, one epistemic and the other relational, but the proponent must be careful not to exaggerate the contribution that empathy, even in its “proper” form, can make to our moral life. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor obvious reasons sentimentalists have been hesitant to offer accounts of moral reasons for action: the whole idea at least initially smacks of rationalist notions of morality. But the sentimentalist can seek to reduce practical to sentimentalist considerations and that is what the present paper attempts to do. Prudential reasons can be identified with the normal emotional/motivational responses people feel in situations that threaten them or offer them opportunities to attain what they need. And in the most basic cases altruistic/moral (...) reasons involve the empathic transfer of one person’s prudential reasons and emotions to another person or persons who can help them. Practical/moral reasons for self-sacrifice also depend on empathic transfer and can vary in strength with the strength of the transfer. (shrink)

It is commonly suggested that empathy is a morally important quality to possess and that a failure to properly empathize with others is a kind of moral failure. This suggestion assumes that empathy involves caring for others’ well-being. Skeptics challenge the moral importance of empathy by arguing that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient to care for others’ well-being. This challenge is misguided. Although some forms of empathy may not be morally important, empathy with another’s basic well-being concerns is both (...) necessary and sufficient to care for another’s well-being, provided that one’s empathy is both cognitive and affective. I further defend the idea that empathy of this form is a moral virtue. In doing so, I address three challenges to empathy’s status as a virtue: (1) that empathy is unnecessary for being ethical, (2) that it is not useful for promoting ethical behavior, and (3) that an empathetic person can lack other traits central to being virtuous, such as being motivated by the moral good and being disposed to do virtuous things whenever appropriate opportunities arise. I argue that these challenges are mistaken. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical overview of the debate about corporate moral responsibility. Parties to the debate address whether corporations are the kinds of entities that can be blamed when they cause unjustified harm. Proponents of CMR argue that corporations satisfy the conditions for moral agency and so they are fit for blame. Their opponents respond that corporations lack one or more of the capacities necessary for moral agency. I review the arguments on both sides and conclude ultimately that what (...) divides the two is not so much competing conceptions of the corporation as it is disagreement about what moral agency requires. Homing in on the real site of contention will, it is hoped, allow future participants in the debate to focus their efforts more productively. (shrink)

Many comparative philosophers discuss ceyinzhixin 惻隱之心 and its moral psychological nature to understand the Confucian heart-mind and the unique Confucian approach to other-concerning love. This essay examines and analyzes different interpretations of ceyinzhixin. First, it surveys and compares the four interpretations in recent publications of comparative Chinese philosophy, and analyzes their moral psychological viewpoints. Second, three major approaches to ceyinzhixin and their differences are analyzed. Third, the moral psychological complexity of ceyinzhixin and the advantage of the integrative approach are discussed. (...) The integrative approach, in comparison to other approaches, explains both the complexity and the unity of ceyinzhixin better and develops an inclusive and comprehensive interpretation of ceyinzhixin and the unique moral psychological nature of the Confucian heart-mind in its empathic other-concerning love. (shrink)

Philosophical and empirical moral psychologists claim that emotions are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment. The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence in favor of both claims and to show how a moderate rationalist position about moral judgment can be defended nonetheless. The experimental evidence for both the necessity- and the sufficiency-thesis concerning the connection between emotional reactions and moral judgment is presented. I argue that a rationalist about moral judgment can be happy to accept the (...) necessity-thesis. My argument draws on the idea that emotions play the same role for moral judgment that perceptions play for ordinary judgments about the external world. I develop a rationalist interpretation of the sufficiency-thesis and show that it can successfully account for the available empirical evidence. The general idea is that the rationalist can accept the claim that emotional reactions are sufficient for moral judgment just in case a subject’s emotional reaction towards an action in question causes the judgment in a way that can be reflectively endorsed under conditions of full information and rationality. This idea is spelled out in some detail and it is argued that a moral agent is entitled to her endorsement if the way she arrives at her judgment reliably leads to correct moral beliefs, and that this reliability can be established if the subject’s emotional reaction picks up on the morally relevant aspects of the situation. (shrink)

Most philosophers who advance an ethics of care do not claim that their theories are meant to account for all of morality, or that they can, or should, replace the traditional Western philosophical approaches to moral theory. However, one care ethicist, Michael Slote, holds that his theory can be used to understand all of individual and political morality. Moreover, while Kantianism, utilitarianism, and both ancient and contemporary Aristotelian ethics are all uncomfortable with supererogation and are typically committed to assumptions that (...) rule out the possibility of someone acting beyond the call of duty, Slote claims that the way in which his theory accommodates supererogation constitutes a real advantage over other approaches to ethics. My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on the truth of this claim by showing that Slote’s theory has considerable difficulty accommodating supererogation. (shrink)

Agent-based virtue ethical theories must deal with the problem of right action: if an action is right just in case it expresses a virtuous motive, then how can an agent perform the right action but for the wrong reason, or from a vicious motive? Some recent agent-based accounts purport to answer this challenge and two other related problems. Here I assess these accounts and show them to be inadequate answers to the problem of right action. Overall, it is shown that (...) the most recent and promising attempts at squaring agent-based virtue ethics with commonsense morality are flawed, and so, the case for agent-basing in general that much dimmer. (shrink)

The importance of emotions is supported by many authors of the ethics of care in contrast to the rationalistic paradigm of justice. However, the reference to the emotions remains generic. By focusing on three paradigmatic typologies, I propose to investigate this aspect further, and distinguish between the different emotions that motivate care. I will try, first, to offer a reflection on which emotions are likely to motivate ethical action within an ethics of care; second, to survey different potential obstacles to (...) these emotions and propose how they might be overcome to more successfully achieve good care and ethical action. (shrink)

Summary The term empathy has become a linguistic commonplace in everyday communication as well as in interdisciplinary research. The results of the research questions, raised in the last hundred (and more) years, coming from different areas, such as aesthetics, psychology, neurosciences and literary theory, lack in fact a clear concept of empathy. Not surprisingly, a recent paper has identified up to 43 distinct definitions of empathy in academic publications. By reconstructing the main research lines on empathy, our paper highlights the (...) reasons for this conceptual inadequacy and the deficiencies in the theorization of empathy that create misleading interpretations thereof. Along the line connecting Plato’s insights on empathic experiences to the present neuroscientific experiments, a broad spectrum of issues is deployed for which “empathy” functions as an umbrella term covering a net of categorical relationships – projection, transfer, association, expression, animation, anthropomorphization, vivification, fusion, and sympathy – that only partially overlap. Our paper therefore recommends that “empathy” should not be assumed as a self-evident notion but instead preliminarily clarified in its definition every time we decide to have recourse to it. (shrink)

Most twenty-first century ethicists conceive of character as a stable, enduring state that is internal to the agent who possesses it. This paper argues that writers in the 17th and 18th centuries did not share this conception: as they conceived it, character is fragile and has a social ontology. The paper goes on to show that Hume’s conception of character was more like his contemporaries than like ours. It concludes with a look at the significance of such a conception for (...) current debates about the place of character in ethics. (shrink)

Some of the greatest harms perpetrated by human beings—mass murders, for example—are directly caused by a small number of individuals, yet the full force of the transgressions would not obtain without the indirect contributions of many others. To combat such evils, Larry May argues that we ought to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility within communities. More specifically, we ought to develop a propensity to feel ashamed of ourselves when we choose to be associated with others who transgress. Grant that (...) we ought to assume greater moral responsibility for contributing to harms that we do not directly commit. My goal is to challenge May’s claim that we should move towards a shame culture, and to argue that we ought to focus on cultivating empathy-based care and guilt instead. An established research program spearheaded by June Tangney has shown that individuals who are disposed to feel shame are more likely to hide from scrutiny, blame others, get angry, and become aggressive. Cultivating shame, in short, is a recipe for increasing antisocial behavior. Policies that promote feelings of empathy-based care and guilt, however, seem better designed to achieve the desired result, namely, minimizing the harms caused by groups. (shrink)

The paper connects two central ethical views, both with a rich tradition, sentimentalism and contractualism. From the former, it also borrows the response-dependentist metaphysics. The idea of combining the two has been sketched before, but not systematically and explicitly; for instance, in various comments on classical authors, especially on Kant and elsewhere, most prominently in Habermas. Here is the kernel of the present proposal. Our initial practical intuitions are emotion-based and the values, when detected, are response-dependent. This is the starting (...) point borrowed from sentimentalism. These intuitions get improved by reflection, and by dialogue that crucially involves perspective taking. If all goes well, this results in insights, in particular into principles that all rational parties can agree about in a kind of “contract.” This brings two traditions, the one of David Hume and Adam Smith, and the other of Kant, together. The resulting theory would be a kind of sentimentalist, response-dependentist contractualism. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how critical realism can resolve persistent theoretical debates in the human rights literature. Critical realism is a philosophy of science that proposes a complex ontological framework to study causal relations. Methodological and theoretical decisions in research are always premised on some ontological presumption whether they are explicitly stated or not. However, much of the social sciences follow the discipline’s empiricist orthodoxy which often dismisses ontological inquiry. As a consequence, theoretical and methodological debates persist without scholars recognizing how (...) they reflect deeper ontological differences. I argue that this is the case with human rights research and demonstrate how critical realism can resolve tensions between universalism and relativism. Critical realism proposes that social relations resolve across multiple ontological levels. This ontological framework can illustrate how universal structures on one level can generate diverse human rights standards on another level relative to the cultural conditions that bring them about. (shrink)

This article investigates Michael Slote’s call for rebalancing Western moral philosophy by using Chinese philosophy, especially Confucianism, as a form of moral sentimentalism. I agree with the need for a correction of the over reliance on reason in Western moral philosophy, but I reject the rational/sentimental dichotomy and focus on the importance of the will. I make use of the important contribution made by Daoism and the conduct concept of wu-wei 無為. I explain the use of wu-wei in Daoist texts (...) as a nominative to denote a type of conduct, as a verb in moral imperatives, and as an aspiration for human moral behavior. I consider how appropriating this concept into Western moral thought offers significant solutions to three seemingly intractable problems: weakness of will, universalization of moral duties, and the conception of life as plagued by moral dilemmas. I conclude that wu-wei is not the result of some experience of alternative consciousness. It is an alternative consciousness that is shown in behavior, but not able to be said in language. (shrink)

This paper considers, firstly, to what extent the administration of oxytocin can augment the capacity of empathy in human beings; and secondly, whether or not such practice ought to be allowed. In relation to the latter, the author develops an argument in favour of this intervention by virtue of its consistency with the belief that, if a therapeutic treatment is to be considered acceptable, it is essential that it maximizes the well-being of those affected and that it does not compromise (...) the autonomy of the patient. Having rejected several objections related to the nature of this intervention, the author finally questions its morality on the basis of a concern with its universalizability. (shrink)

In his recent work, Michael Slote argues that empathy is what Hutcheson called 'the moral sense'. The most innovative argument he offers for this claim is that our empathic reactions play a crucial role in fixing the reference of moral terms. I argue that Slote's bold proposal faces all the main problems of analytical naturalism, as well as some of its own. I suggest that empathy may nevertheless play a more modest and indirect role in acquiring moral knowledge.

As we learn more about the human brain, novel biotechnological means to modulate human behaviour and emotional dispositions become possible. These technologies could be used to enhance our morality. Moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement, alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behaviour in order to make that person more moral. I will argue that moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy, well known from science fiction, is behavioural enhancement. The second strategy, favoured by (...) prominent defenders of moral bioenhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I will argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Furthermore, I will argue that the usual arguments against other instances of human enhancement do not apply to moral bioenhancement, or apply only to the first strategy, behavioural enhancement. (shrink)

High-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder typically lack cognitive empathy, compromising their moral agency from both a Kantian and a Humean perspective. Nevertheless, they are capable of exhibiting moral behavior, and sometimes, they exhibit what may be deemed ‘super-moral’ behavior. The empathy deficit poses, to varying degrees, limitations with respect to their moral motivation and moral agency. To compensate for this deficit, individuals with HF-ASD rely primarily, and justifiably, on the formation and application of moral rules. Educators who focus predominantly (...) on empathy, however, may be less effective in the moral education of individuals with HF-ASD because they neglect the preference for rules of the latter. In this article, I argue that an individualized balance of empathy-based and rule-based strategies in the context of moral education is needed to assist individuals with HF-ASD in their challenges with moral motivation and moral agency. (shrink)

It has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at (...) the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy. (shrink)

This article offers a critique and reformulation of the concept of empathy as it is currently used in the context of medicine and medical care. My argument is three pronged. First, that the instrumentalised notion of empathy that has been common within medicine erases the term’s rich epistemological history as a special form of understanding, even a vehicle of social inquiry, and has instead substituted an account unsustainably structured according to the polarisations of modernity. I suggest that understanding empathy by (...) examining its origins within the phenomenological tradition, as a mode of intersubjective understanding, offers a different and profitable approach. Secondly, I argue that the appropriation of empathy in medicine means that, ironically, empathy can function as a technique of pastoral power, in which virtue, knowledge and authority remain with the doctor. And thirdly, empathy is in danger of being resourced as a substitute for equity and funding within health systems. I conclude however with hope for the productive possibilities for empathy. (shrink)

Breithaupt’s central claim is that “empathy can be regarded as a mechanism for strengthening a decision” . My concern is that it is not clear what is meant by “strengthen.” Does empathy merely give more motivational “oomph” to a decision already made, or does it strengthen a decision in the normative sense—does it give more reason for the decision?

We raise two objections to Slote’s article. First, empathy cannot provide information about the world in the direct way Slote proposes. Emotional contagion might be able to do so, but this type of process is different from the empathic one. Second, even if we accept his view of empathy, his claim that we make moral judgments via empathizing with the ‘warmth’ or ‘coldness’ of the actor seems misguided because, we usually empathize with the patient, and we empathize with emotions, not (...) “temperatures”. (shrink)

The need for philosophical practice to integrate various methods, both conceptual and those based on the use of emotions, raises the question as to whether its methodology is necessarily eclectic, in terms of the collection of various methodologies used in philosophy, or whether there is a way to move beyond eclecticism. This is the main subject of this paper. In other words, the question is whether there is such a thing as an ‘integrative’ methodology and, if so, what distinguishes such (...) a method from mere eclecticism. In this text, we define the methodological procedure of integrativeness as the process of systematizing perspectives into an orientational answer to the demands of a specific problem. What differentiates such an approach from mere summation is a new contribution that results from a synergistic and systematic meeting of positions and argumentations whose final result differs from its initial elements. Diversity in the form of a multidimensional relationship towards life and the world results in numerous perspectives, which is a value that should be cultivated and integrated into a reflective and actional perception of the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This work explains the practical benefits of a new and pluralistic notion of empathy that I call relational empathy. Rather than defining empathy as a thing or an activity, as most scholars have done, I define empathy as a set of three conceptually distinct though experientially overlapping relations: the relations of feeling into, feeling with, and feeling for. I then turn to historical discourses about empathy from the late 1700s to the present to demonstrate how different conceptualizations and definitions (...) of empathy during this time span are descriptions of one, two or all three of these relations. I then explain how relational empathy has the potential both to dissolve mere verbal disputes about what empathy is and to shift our attention away from narrowly conceived theories about the ‘nature’ of empathy and toward more practical concerns. Finally, I explain how my theory of relational empathy can help to resolve a number of problems throughout the healthcare system. (shrink)

In recent decades, the idea has become common that so-called virtue ethics constitutes a third option in ethics in addition to consequentialism and deontology. This paper argues that, if we understand ethical theories as accounts of right and wrong action, this is not so. Virtue ethics turns out to be a form of deontology . The paper then moves to consider the Aristotelian distinction between right or virtuous action on the one hand, and acting rightly or virtuously on the other. (...) It is claimed that virtue might play an important role in an explanation of acting virtuously , but that such explanations can be charged with ‘double-counting’ the moral value of the virtues. The paper concludes that, if we focus on the question of the value of virtue, rather than on the notion of right action, there is room for a self-standing and important view which could be described as virtue ethics. (shrink)

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo-Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross-pollination from a variety of disciplines is a (...) strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today. (shrink)

The Confucian philosopher Mengzi believes that ‘extending’ one's kindness facilitates one's moral development and that it is intimately tied to performing morally good actions. Most interpreters have taken Mengzian kindness to be an emotional state, with the extension of kindness to centrally involve feeling kindness towards more people or in a greater number of situations. I argue that kindness cannot do all the theoretical work that Mengzi wants it to do if it is interpreted as an emotion. I submit that (...) Mengzi's notion of extending kindness is best understood as the exercise of a capacity for intelligently performing kind actions. (shrink)

In the first place, I propose to specify the debate between non-anthropocentrists and anthropocentrists as one between those who defend that the environment has intrinsic value, that is, value that while independent of all relation to human beings is still morally binding, and those who deny this, i.e., assert that the environment only has extrinsic value. I argue for the second option but claim that this should not be an obstacle to address some of the worries of environmental ethics, since (...) extrinsic value is not limited to instrumental value. In this regard, I present sentimentalism as an alternative according to which there are ways of valuing things as ends in themselves and not only as means. (shrink)

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most destructive in recent history. Scientists attributed the hurricanes’ increased intensity, frequency, duration, and reach to climate change (Sn...

Para algunos la empatía es “el centro del universo moral”, mientras que para otros juega un papel secundario o, en todo caso, éticamente poco fiable. Acudiendo tanto a sus precursores filosóficos –como Hume y Smith–, como a sus investigadores contemporáneos en el campo de la psicología – como Hoffman y Batson–, este artículo elabora una defensa ponderada del papel de la empatía en la motivación, el desarrollo y el juicio morales, reconociendo sus limitaciones.

Despite its linguistic roots in ancient Greek, the concept of empathy is of recent intellectual heritage. Yet its history has been varied and colorful, a fact that is also mirrored in the multiplicity of definitions associated with the empathy concept in a number of different scientific and non-scientific discourses. In its philosophical heyday at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, empathy had been hailed as the primary means for gaining knowledge of other minds and as the method (...) uniquely suited for the human sciences, only to be almost entirely neglected philosophically for the rest of the century. Only recently have philosophers become again interested in empathy in light of the debate about our folk psychological mindreading capacities. In the second half of the last century, the task of addressing empathy was mainly left to psychologists who thematized it as a psychological phenomenon and process to be studied by the method of the empirical sciences. Particularly, it has been studied by social psychologists as a phenomenon assumed to be causally involved in creating prosocial attitudes and behavior. Nevertheless, within psychology it is at times difficult to find agreement of how exactly one should understand empathy; a fact of which psychologists themselves have become increasingly aware. The purpose of this entry is to clarify the concept of empathy by surveying its history in various philosophical and psychological discussions and by indicating why empathy was and should be regarded to be of such central importance in understanding human agency in ordinary contexts, in the human sciences and for the constitution of ourselves as social and moral agents. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard argues that in order to avoid the threat of moral skepticism, our moral theories must show how the claims they make about the nature of our actions obligate us to act morally. A theory that can justify the normativity of morality in this way answers what Korsgaard calls “the normative question.” Although Korsgaard claims that only Kantian theories of morality, such as her own, can answer the normative question, I argue that Adam Smith’s (...) sentimentalist moral theory, as presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, can answer the normative question as well. As a result, it is possible to respond to the moral skeptic in the way Korsgaard outlines without accepting some of the theoretical drawbacks of Korsgaard’s own moral theory. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to fill, in part, three lacunae in contemporary philosophical scholarship: first, the failure to identify the two distinct types of dialogism—psychological and interpersonal—that have been operative in discussions of the dialogical self; second, the lack of acknowledgement of the six most prominent features of interpersonal dialogism; and third, the unwillingness to recognize that interpersonal dialogism is a crucial feature of human ethical agency and identity. In Chapter One, I explain why dialogism has been relatively neglected—and certainly underappreciated—in (...) contemporary Western philosophy. In Chapter Two, I offer a picture of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism. I explain why and how Bakhtin focuses on the novel in his account of dialogism. I then offer an account of Bakhtin’s claim regarding the dialogism of the ‘inner’ speech of thought. In the second part of Chapter Two, I offer an account of Gadamer’s conception of dialogism. I begin my examination of Gadamer by discussing the event ontology that serves as the metaphysical framework for his account of “play” (Spiel) and dialogue. In doing so, I explain some of the most important ideas in this part of his thought, such as his notion of understanding, tradition, effective history, the fusion of horizons, and the text. I explain what Gadamer means by genuine conversation, or dialogue, and I then describe one of the most important ideas in Gadamer’s thought—his notion of “play.” In Chapter Three, I give a critical account of the most influential contemporary account of dialogism in psychology, offered by Hubert Hermans et al., specifically in terms of their establishment of dialogical self theory. My examination consists of several parts. First, I discuss the ways they conceptualize the self, temporally and spatially. Second, I offer a description of their account of I-positions within the dialogical self. Third, I examine their claims about the necessary features of the dialogical self, and argue against one of their claims, which says that dominance relations are intrinsic to dialogue. Fourth, I describe their account of the four kinds of relations that can emerge within the self (2010, 121). Fifth, I briefly discuss their view regarding the “[t]hree models of self and identity, associated with different historical phases” (4), that have predominated in Western history. Sixth, I consider their claim that there are “positions” within the self in addition to the “I-positions” noted above. And lastly, I evaluate their account of (what they call) the nine “features of good dialogue” (10). In Chapter Four, I offer a critical evaluation of the account of dialogue and dialogism developed by Dmitri Nikulin, arguably the leading contemporary philosopher on the subjects. While I address the features of his account that I think are correct, I ultimately argue that it is problematic for three main reasons: first, it fails to recognize the proper relationship between dialogue and agency; second, its elucidation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for dialogue contains conceptual inconsistencies; and third, its conception of the relation between dialogue and personhood has potentially disastrous ethical implications. In Chapter Five, I show how Heidegger’s notions of Dasein’s “Being-with” (Mitsein), “discourse” (Rede), and “solicitude” (Fursorge) help lay the groundwork for recognizing some important features of dialogism. I do three things in Chapter Six. First, I briefly discuss Charles Taylor’s work on dialogism. Second, I offer my account of the seven most prominent features of dialogism. And third, I argue that dialogism is a crucial feature of ethical agency and identity. To do so, I offer an example of a personal (and social) virtue, namely, empathy, which illustrates the important role dialogism plays in ethical agency. (shrink)