Psychopathy, autism, and basic moral emotions: Evidence for sentimentalist constructivism

Philosophers and psychologists often claim that moral agency is connected with the ability to feel, understand, and deploy moral emotions. In this chapter, I investigate the nature of these emotions and their connection with moral agency. First, I examine the degree to which these emotional capacities are innate and/or ‘basic’ in a philosophically important sense. I examine three senses in which an emotion might be basic: developmental, compositional, and phylogenetic. After considering the evidence for basic emotion, I conclude that emotions are not basic in a philosophically important sense. Emotions, I argue, are best understood as socially constructed concepts. I then investigate whether these emotions are necessary for moral agency. In order to do this I examine the philosophical and psychological literature on psychopathy and autism (two conditions defined in terms of empathic and emotional deficits). Persons with psychopathy appear incapable of distinguishing moral from non-moral norms. Additionally, while persons with autism often struggle to develop their empathic capacities, they are capable of understanding and deploying moral emotions like guilt and shame. I conclude that, in line with the conceptual act theories of emotion, that only contagion-based empathy is necessary for the acquisition of moral concepts

Project FOCUS

History and Purpose Started with 1 student in 2015 1 to 25 students in 4 years Purpose: give an opportunity for this population to have the opportunity to go to college Community Service Paradigm Project Defines a problem, implements, achieve goalhttps://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/educ_fys_103/1053/thumbnail.jp

Conjoint Behavioral Consultation with Spanish-Speaking Families

Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC) is a strengths-based, problem-solving, decision-making model of service delivery that involves parents and teachers working collaboratively to promote positive outcomes related to a student’s development (Sheridan & Kratochwill, 2008). Research has indicated that CBC is an acceptable and effective model. However, very little research has been done to assess the effectiveness of CBC with minority clients, and even less work has been done that focuses on Spanish-speaking Latinx families. Additionally, the research that investigates consultation with minority clients who have limited English skills often involves interpreters. The purpose of this study is to extend the CBC literature to working with Spanish-speaking Latinx families. The present study will investigate several possible outcomes for implementing empirically supported interventions within the context of CBC for children or adolescents exhibiting externalizing behavior concerns in the school and home setting. In particular, there is interest in the extent to which conducting CBC using a Spanish-speaking consultant will result in positive outcomes on various measures for all participants

The University as a Pluralistic System: The Case of Minority Faculty Recruitment and Retention

Recently there has been considerable emphasis placed in higher education on the recruitment and retention of minority faculty. There is an expanding literature indicating the problems relating to the inadequate pool of such faculty and strategies and approaches related to effective recruitment and retention.[1] It is apparent that there is considerable interest in this area. Given the predicted demographic patterns and characteristics in the population during the remainder of this century, it is understandable that colleges and universities are pursuing a more diverse faculty. The recruitment and retention of minority faculty, however, is only one component -- though a critically important one -- of the total university environment. The extent of effectiveness in this area will depend upon the totality of the other components in which it is embedded and that characterize the university as a whole

Meeting on the Bridge: is it possible for secular feminism and public theology to work together?

In this paper, the argument is that secular feminism and public theology accomplish little in separation to one another. If both are working toward a more just horizon, their inability to work together simply confirms that their methodologies are flawed even while contending they practice justice while separate from one another. In this paper I contend that the force of violence that is spread by fundamentalist religious groups has been exacerbated by the community division between the secular and the religious sphere of human life. Secular social movements like feminism and Christian public theology have failed to fill this gap partly because of their maintenance of this separation which fails to see what each in conjunction have to offer people seeking a home

Neurosurgery for psychopaths? The problems of empathy and neurodiversity

I argue that deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a bad approach for incarcerated psychopaths for two reasons. First, given what we know about psychopathy, empathy, and DBS, it is unlikely to function as an effective treatment for the moral problems that characterize psychopathy. Second, considerations of neurodiversity speak against seeing psychopathy as a mental illness in the first place