Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

An increasingly popular suggestion is that empathy and/or sympathy plays a foundational role in understanding harm norms and being motivated by them. In this paper, I argue these emotions play a rather more moderate role in harms norms than we are often led to believe. Evidence from people with frontal lobe damage suggests that neither empathy, nor sympathy is necessary for the understanding of such norms. Furthermore, people's understanding of why it is wrong to harm varies and is by no (...) means limited to considerations of welfare arising from the abilities to sympathize and/or empathize. And the sorts of considerations of welfare that are central to sympathy and, to some extent empathy, are often already moralized. As such, these considerations cannot form the non-moral foundation of harm norms. Finally, empathy and sympathy are not the only emotions that motivate harm norms. Indeed, much of the evidence that has been adduced in favor of the motivational force of empathy and sympathy are studies on helping, which is quite a different behavior than aggression inhibition. Understanding and being motivated by harm norms are complex abilities. To understand them better, we need to move beyond the current fixation on empathy and sympathy. (shrink)

In this paper, I evaluate one of the most prominent accounts of how emotion regulation features in empathy. According to this account, by Nancy Eisenberg and colleagues, empathy develops into either personal distress or sympathy depending on the ability to regulate one’s empathic distress. I argue that recent evidence suggests that empathic distress and sympathy co-occur throughout the empathic episode, that a certain degree of empathic distress may be necessary for prosocial motivation, as high emotion regulation leads to loss of (...) this motivation, and that emotion regulation is not an unmitigated good since much of it is achieved by dehumanizing the sufferer or minimizing her pain. A fertile ground for further research, I suggest, is the role of up-regulation of sympathy. (shrink)

It is often argued that the ability to imagine what others think and feel is central to moral functioning. In this paper, I consider to what extent this is true. I argue that neither the ability to think of others as having representational mental states, nor the ability to imagine being in their position, is necessary for moral understanding or moral motivation. I go on to argue that the area in which thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings appears to play (...) the largest role is that of supererogatory actions. Being able to get on well with others seems to be importantly predicated on our ability to think about their thoughts and feelings and being able to take up their perspective. However, when it comes to grosser moral norms and restrictions, such as harm norms, there is little reason to think that thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings plays a central role in understanding such norms or being motivated by them. (shrink)

Compassionate Moral Realism, by MarshallColin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 265 + xi.

It is often argued that the ability to imagine what others think and feel is central to moral func- tioning. In this paper, I consider to what extent this is true. I argue that neither the ability to think of others as having representational mental states, nor the ability to imagine being in their position, is necessary for moral understanding or moral motivation. I go on to argue that the area in which thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings appears to (...) play the largest role is that of supererogatory actions. Being able to get on well with others seems to be importantly predicated on our ability to think about their thoughts and feelings and being able to take up their perspective. However, when it comes to grosser moral norms and restrictions, such as harm norms, there is little reason to think that thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings plays a central role in understanding such norms or being motivated by them. (shrink)

Many spectacular claims about psychopaths are circulated. This contribution aims at providing the reader with the more complex reality of the phenomenon (or phenomena), and to point to issues of particular interest to philosophers working in moral psychology and moral theory. I first discuss the current evidence regarding psychopaths’ deficient empathy and decision-making skills. I then explore what difference it makes to our thinking whether we regard their deficit dimensionally (as involving abilities that are on or off) and whether we (...) focus on primary or secondary psychopathy. My conclusion is that most grand claims about psychopathy settling long-standing debates in moral philosophy and psychology are overblown, but there is much to be learnt from this disorder when it comes to formulating modern theories of moral psychology. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers to argue that psychopaths are not morally responsible because they lack some of the essential capacities for morality. In legal terms, they are criminally insane. Typically, however, the insanity defense is not available to psychopaths. The primary reason is that they appear to have the knowledge and understanding required under the M’Naghten Rules. However, it has been argued that what is required for moral and legal responsibility is ‘deep’ moral understanding, something that psychopaths do not (...) have either due to their lacking empathy or practical reason. In the first part of the paper, I argue that psychopaths do not lack the abilities required for deep moral understanding, although they have deficits in those areas. According the M’Naghten Rules, therefore, psychopaths are not insane. Under a less strict formulation of the insanity plea, like the Model Penal Code, however, there is a good case to be made for their lacking substantial capacity. I argue that because psychopathy is an essentially moral disorder, and because of the nature of psychopathic violence, psychopaths should not be excused under the insanity plea. It would be tantamount to excusing someone for committing a crime because they are bad. Arguably, this contravenes the entire system of law. (shrink)

Psychopaths are renowned for their immoral behavior. They are ideal candidates for testing the empirical plausibility of moral theories. Many think the source of their immorality is their emotional deficits. Psychopaths experience no guilt or remorse, feel no empathy, and appear to be perfectly rational. If this is true, sentimentalism is supported over rationalism. Here, I examine the nature of psychopathic practical reason and argue that it is impaired. The relevance to morality is discussed. I conclude that rationalists can explain (...) the moral deficits of psychopaths as well as sentimentalists. In the process, I identify psychological structures that underpin practical rationality. (shrink)

It used to be thought that folk psychology is the only game in town. Focusing merely on what people do will not allow you to predict what they are likely to do next. For that, you must consider their beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. Recent evidence from developmental psychology and fMRI studies indicates that this conclusion was premature. We parse motion in an environment as behavior of a particular type, and behavior thus construed can feature in systematizations that we know. Building (...) on the view that folk psychological knowledge is knowledge of theoretical models, I argue that social knowledge is best understood as lying on a continuum between behavioral and full-blown psychological models. Between the two extremes, we have what I call social models. Social models represent social structures in terms of their overall purpose and circumscribe individuals' roles within them. These models help us predict what others will do or plan what we should do without providing information about what agents think or want. Thinking about social knowledge this way gives us a more nuanced picture of what capacities are engaged in social planning and interaction, and gives us a better tool with which to think about the social knowledge of animals and young children. (shrink)

Some people are now quite optimistic about the possibility of treating psychopathy with drugs that directly modulate brain function. I argue that this optimism is misplaced. Psychopathy is a global disorder in an individual’s worldview, including his social and moral outlook. Because of the unity of this Weltanschauung, it is unlikely to be treatable in a piecemeal fashion. Recent neuroscientific methods do not give us much hope that we can replace, in a wholesale manner, problematic views of the world with (...) more socially desirable ones. There are, therefore, principled reasons that psychopathy is so singularly treatment resistant. (shrink)

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)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

This volume, written by a new generation of scholars engaged with contemporary global movements for social justice and peace, reflects their efforts in trying ...

In this article, I investigate the ethical potential of Victorian literature that markedly discourages readerly sympathy with the protagonists. Generating sympathy for fictional characters was, and often still is, considered to be the primary way in which the novel promotes ethical thoughts, feelings, and behavior in readers. For this reason, the ethical prospects of novels that fail or refuse to make their main characters appealing and instead inspire aversion in readers have received very little critical attention. Taking an unpopular novel (...) by Anthony Trollope as my primary example, I analyze how the formal narrative strategy of “disnarration” (theorized by Gerald Prince) creates profound dislike for the book’s protagonists. Further, I propose that these same passages of disnarration, by emphasizing the text’s fictionality, can encourage readers to seek the sympathetic fulfillment that the text refuses them by engaging with the real world. In this way, I argue, even Victorian realist novels that defy the conventions of sympathy might still share an investment in realizing the ethical potential of fiction. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the ethical potential of Victorian literature that markedly discourages readerly sympathy with the protagonists. Generating sympathy for fictional characters was, and often still is, considered to be the primary way in which the novel promotes ethical thoughts, feelings, and behavior in readers. For this reason, the ethical prospects of novels that fail or refuse to make their main characters appealing and instead inspire aversion in readers have received very little critical attention. Taking an unpopular novel (...) by Anthony Trollope as my primary example, I analyze how the formal narrative strategy of “disnarration” (theorized by Gerald Prince) creates profound dislike for the book’s protagonists. Further, I propose that these same passages of disnarration, by emphasizing the text’s fictionality, can encourage readers to seek the sympathetic fulfillment that the text refuses them by engaging with the real world. In this way, I argue, even Victorian realist novels that defy the conventions of sympathy might still share an investment in realizing the ethical potential of fiction. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the ethical potential of Victorian literature that markedly discourages readerly sympathy with the protagonists. Generating sympathy for fictional characters was, and often still is, considered to be the primary way in which the novel promotes ethical thoughts, feelings, and behavior in readers. For this reason, the ethical prospects of novels that fail or refuse to make their main characters appealing and instead inspire aversion in readers have received very little critical attention. Taking an unpopular novel (...) by Anthony Trollope as my primary example, I analyze how the formal narrative strategy of “disnarration” (theorized by Gerald Prince) creates profound dislike for the book’s protagonists. Further, I propose that these same passages of disnarration, by emphasizing the text’s fictionality, can encourage readers to seek the sympathetic fulfillment that the text refuses them by engaging with the real world. In this way, I argue, even Victorian realist novels that defy the conventions of sympathy might still share an investment in realizing the ethical potential of fiction. (shrink)

Empathy plays a central role in the history and contemporary study of ethics, interpersonal understanding, and the emotions, yet until now has been relatively underexplored. _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy_ is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting field and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the _Handbook_ is divided into six parts: Core issues History of empathy Empathy and understanding (...) Empathy and morals Empathy in art and aesthetics Empathy and individual differences. Within these sections central topics and problems are examined, including: empathy and imagination; neuroscience; David Hume and Adam Smith; understanding; evolution; altruism; moral responsibility; art, aesthetics, and literature; gender; empathy and related disciplines such as anthropology. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, particularly ethics and philosophy of mind and psychology, the _Handbook_ will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as anthropology and social psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a version of theory theory, so-called model theory, according to which theories are families of models, which represent real-world phenomena when combined with relevant hypotheses, best interpreted in terms of know-how. This form of theory theory has a number of advantages over traditional forms, and is not subject to some recent charges coming from narrativity theory. Most importantly, practice is central to model theory. Practice matters because folk psychological knowledge is knowledge of the world only (...) if it is combined with knowledge of how to apply it. By combining the general and the particular in this way, model theory gives a deep and explanatorily satisfactory account of the centrality of practice. Model theory accounts not just as well as, but better than, narrativity theory for the fact that our folk psychological explanations appear to contain, or form part of, narratives. (shrink)

Hybrid accounts of folk psychology maintain that we sometimes theorize and sometimes simulate in order to understand others. An important question is why this is the case. In this paper, I present a view according to which simulation, but not theory, plays a central role in empathy. In contrast to others taking a similar approach to simulation, I do not focus on empathy’s cognitive aspect, but stress its affective-motivational one. Simulating others’ emotions usually engages our motivations altruistically. By vicariously feeling (...) what others are feeling, we directly come to be motivated by their projects and concerns. Simulation contrasts with more theoretical approaches to psychological attribution that help us understand and explan others, but that do not move us altruistically. This helps us see why we would posit two different folk psychological approaches instead of merely one. (shrink)

In empirically minded research, it is widely agreed that emotions play an important, even essential, role in moral judgment. Experimental research on moral development, psychopathology, helping behavior, moral judgment, and moral justification has been used to support different new forms of sentimentalism. This article reviews this evidence critically and proposes that although it suggests that emotions play a role in moral judgment, it does so in a more limited way than is often assumed to be the case. Some evidence shows (...) merely that emotions play a role in decision-making, other that emotions are implicated in certain types of moral judgment. What is required, it seems, is a new conceptualization of what is at stake in the rationalism versus sentimentalism debate. (shrink)

Résumé Si l’absence de moralité des psychopathes a été largement étudiée, il existe peu de recherches sur leurs capacités esthétiques. Pourtant, beaucoup d’études cliniques de cas montrent qu’ils présentent un grave déficit dans ce domaine. Cet article se propose d’en chercher les causes. Il analyse les forces et les limites de l’hypothèse d’un manque d’empathie pour expliquer ces carences esthétiques, et montre pourquoi l’hypothèse d’un manque de distance psychique se révèle plus féconde. Celle-ci permet en outre de comprendre le lien (...) de l’esthétique et de l’éthique par leur filiation commune : elles ont pour socle commun la capacité à prendre de la distance par rapport à des intérêts étroitement égoïstes. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the benefits of anxiety. Among these is the proposal that anxiety is a moral emotion. If it is, we ought to cultivate it. But people who are anxious are also less happy. So it seems that asking people to be morally better persons involves asking them to be less happy than they might otherwise be. In this paper, I consider ways to avoid this consequence, all of which rely on emotion regulation. (...) Emotion regulation is supposed to balance one’s anxiety sufficiently so as to have relatively little impact on one’s happiness. As it turns out, emotion regulation is not as simple a solution as one might think. People who are very good at regulating their moral emotions do so at a cost: they assist others in need less and think of other people in demeaning or dehumanizing ways. This shows that using emotion regulation to maximize aspects of happiness—particularly happy feelings—reduces, rather than enhances, one’s moral goodness. One might therefore think that aiming towards equanimity instead promises a better solution since we avoid the over-exertion of emotion regulation and its consequent negative effects. Although that is true, we are still stuck with the problem that the ways people typically reduce their negative reactions to others that suffer—which I show is a form of moral emotions—are highly morally problematic. If we are to hope to solve the apparent conflict between cultivating anxiety and being happy, I argue, we need to take a different approach. Instead of proceeding by thinking about emotions in an almost atomistic way, according to which we experience only one definable type at a time, which can be understood statically, we must think of emotion more holistically. That is, we should consider more carefully the context in which an emotion occurs, how it unfolds over time, what other emotions arise alongside it or are otherwise connected to it, and the significance to the person of the experience as a whole. Such a richer picture of person’s affective experience in morally relevant situations shows how emotion regulation can be deployed without leading to the morally problematic thoughts and actions described earlier. I use empathic distress as an example of moral emotions to exemplify why such an approach does more justice to the phenomena, in addition to being friendlier to anxiety-positive views. (shrink)

According to the Humean theory of motivation, we only have a reason to act if we have both a belief and a pro-attitude. When it comes to moral reasons, it matters a great deal what that pro-attitude is; pure self-interest cannot combine with a belief to form a moral reason. A long tradition regards empathy and sympathy as moral motivators, and recent psychological evidence supports this view. I examine what I take to be the most plausible version of this claim: (...) empathy or sympathy is necessary for someone to be motivated not to harm others. I argue that one can be motivated not to harm others even if one cannot feel either empathy or sympathy. The evidence comes from the clinical population of people with frontal lobe damage. In addition, if empathy is a moral motivator, we have a conflict with moral autonomy. Either empathy morally motivates, but agents are not autonomous, or agents are autonomous and need not be motivated by empathy. Sympathy suffers from two shortcomings as a moral motivator: it is unlikely that we must sympathize with ourselves in order to feel obligated not to harm ourselves, and there appears to be many other considerations that motivate us not to harm others: fear of harming ourselves, reluctance to add to the cycle of violence, and so on. These considerations are more self-centered than empathy or sympathy, but, perhaps for that very reason, they do not conflict with moral autonomy. (shrink)

Psychological ascriptions are most commonly understood to be Machiavellian and objective (Dennett 1987, Fodor 1987, Heal 1986, Whiten & Byrne 1988). We ascribe thoughts, feelings, and desires to others to better understand them. Since we must cooperate, compete, or simply co-exist with others, the more we know about their psychology the better. Being aimed at understanding others—in relative independence from us—psychological ascriptions are objective. Such ascriptions are also Machiavellian to the extent that their ultimate aim is to help us plan (...) our interactions with others, so as best to serve our self-interest. Thinking about psychological ascriptions in this way permeates theorizing about folk psychology. It is true both of those that hold that psychological attribution is the result of the application of a psychological theory (theory theorists) and of those that maintain that it is the culmination of a process of simulation—Verstehen (simulationists). Both sides think that common sense psychology is, in some sense, continuous with science; theory theorists that it is continuous with natural science, simulationists that it is continuous with humanistic science. These views, I shall argue, are too narrow. Psychological ascriptions are pragmatic; their function varies from one context of ascription to another depending on our interests in others. Our interests are not always self-interests, nor are they to be understood as consciously entertained desires or projects. Our interests are shaped by our natures, and our natures include our sociality. So whereas the way we think about others is a function of our interests, those interests are much broader than the more narrow self-interests that we are aware of having. Folk psychological ascriptions need be neither Machiavellian nor objective. (shrink)

This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

This article considers how race and gender shape latina and Latino paths to school success in college. A purposive sample of successful high school and college students was selected. Through interviews, fieldwork, and school records, the researchers find that Latinas navigate successfully through negative stereotypes by maintaining positive definitions of themselves and by emphasizing their group membership as Latina. Young Latino men also see themselves as part of a larger cultural group but tend to have less positive racial and ethnic (...) identities than women do. Typically, they are supported by mentors, such as white athletic coaches, and tend to draw from the meritocratic ethos of sports, regarding their success in individualistic terms. While successful Latinas do not assimilate in the ways predicted by the literature, the young men in this study accept the individualistic and meritocratic ethos of the dominant culture, but with a psychological price. (shrink)