Altruismo parrocchiale, punizione antisociale e punizione altruistica: quale contributo possono dare gli studi empirici per la comprensione dell’etica?

In her contribution, Morese takes into account three phenomena that are particularly interesting for understanding how human beings actually behave towards others when their group identities are involved – i.e. parochial altruism, antisocial punishment, and altruistic punishment. The aim of this commentary is to understand if and to what extent the behavioral and fMRI data reported by Morese can also inform our moral normative theories. That is, if they can inform us not only about how human beings actually behave, but also influence our understanding of how they should behave; if they tell us something about the “ought” as well as the “is”

Is Affective Intentionality Necessarily Irrelevant in Social Cognition?

The aim of this work is to understand the meaning and the extent of “affective intentionality”, to discover whether or not it is analogous to other concepts of intentionality and if it can play a role in social cognition. I will compare Searle’s conception of intentionality, in particular affective intentionality, with Scheler’s concept of sympathy. The reason for this is that I believe the comparison shows that it is not always necessary to presuppose something to have affective intentionality

The Methods of Neuroethics: Is the Neuroscience of Ethics Really a New Challenge to Moral Philosophy?

Within the otherwise lively debate on neuroethics, little attention has been devoted to the peculiar methodological issues and challenges it faces. My aim is to track down its methodological specificities. Firstly, I will investigate to which traditional debates neuroethics bears similarity and to what extent it actually represents a novelty in ethical thinking. While the ethics of neuroscience is akin to bioethics, the neuroscience of ethics seems akin to moral psychology. And yet they differ as far as the level of explanation of human moral behavior and reasoning is concerned. Thus, while the neuroscience of ethics and moral psychology share a family resemblance, they cannot be reduced to one another. Secondly, I will explore three different philosophical temperaments towards the role empirical findings can and should have in normative ethics and in metaethics. Prudential reasons would recommend openness to new sources of evidence without risking either reductionism nor neglect

Against a Broad Definition of "Empathy"

Abstract: In this paper I will try to provide some arguments against a broad definition of “empathy”. Firstly, I will deal with attempts to define empathy as an umbrella concept. Then, I will try to point out the four main elements which contribute to the confusion that researchers in both the social and political as well as the scientific and philosophical domains face when dealing with empathy. In order to resolve this confusion, I suggest applying David Marr’s distinction to the field of empathy. Instead of providing an umbrella definition for empathy, which tries to account for all the data coming from different disciplines, I believe understanding that there are different levels of explanations and that different disciplines can contribute to each of them will provide a more detailed and less confused definition of empathy.Keywords: Empathy; D. Marr; de Waal; Identification; Helping-behavior; Cost-benefit Analysis. Contro una definizione ampia di "empatia"Riassunto: In questo articolo cercherò di fornire alcuni argomenti contrari all’adozione di una definizione ampia di “empatia”. In primo luogo cercherò di definire la nozione di empatia come una sorta di ombrello concettuale. Proverò poi a indicare i quattro principali elementi responsabili delle confusioni di cui gli studiosi cadono vittima sia in ambito sociale e politico sia in ambito scientifico e filosofico quando si occupano di empatia. Per sgombrare il campo da questa confusione proporrò di applicare la distinzione avanzata da David Marr al campo dell’empatia. Anziché dare una definizione di empatia come una sorta di ombrello concettuale, cercando di tenere insieme tutte le evidenze provenienti da discipline diverse, sono convinta che la comprensione del fatto che possono darsi livelli differenti di spiegazione e che discipline diverse possano contribuire ognuna per proprio conto alla comprensione di questi livelli costituisca la via migliore per raggiungere una definizione di empatia più specifica e meno confusa.Parole chiave: Empatia; Marr; De Waal; Identificazione; Comportamento di aiuto; Analisi costi/benefici

How Do We Understand Others? Empathy and Theory-Theory of Mind as Two Different, but Cooperative, Mechanisms for Sensibility

The aim of this paper is to understand whether Theory-Theory of Mind (TToM) can be considered the one and only source of our understanding of others or not. I support the idea that TToM cannot have such a role and that it can be played only by basic empathy - a sui generis perception. In this paper, I challenge TToM as basic, I then consider the notion of “empathy” and I provide a very narrow definition of low-level empathy, that I compare to Scheler’s account on affective phenomena

The Emotions: From the (Inter)Personal to the Normative Dimension

Recent debate in the intersection between philosophy and cognitive sciences have underlined the relevance of emotions in our lives. Emotions seem to play several different roles: from our inner and personal experience of the world, especially in all its alleged value aspects, to our relations to others. Yet, philosophical and scientific debate has not reached a consensus on what emotions are and on their specific contribution to our personal and social lives. In this introductory chapter we present the different debates on emotions this issue focuses on and we briefly summarize the papers collected here

The Ship of Theseus Puzzle

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence

Nothing at Stake in Knowledge

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism