Naturalism and the Normative Domain: Accounting for Normativity with the Help of 18th Century Empathy-Sentimentalism

Abstract: Moral sentimentalism has seen a tremendous rise in popularity in recent years within contemporary meta-ethical theory, since it promises to delineate the normative domain in a naturalistically unobjectionable manner. After showing that both Michael Slote and Jesse Prinz’s sentimentalist positions fall short of fulfilling this promise, this essay argues that contemporary sentimentalists are advised to take their clues from Adam Smith rather than David Hume. While Hume was absolutely right in emphasizing the importance of empathy in the moral context, his official description of the mechanisms of empathy as articulated in the Treatise falls fundamentally short for this purpose. Adam Smith’s conception of empathy, a conception that in fact is closer to some of Hume’ remarks in the Enquiry rather than the Treatise, as essentially involving perspective taking and his appeal to the impartial spectator perspective proves to be more fertile. Only in this manner do sentimentalists have any hope of accounting for the intersubjective normative and obligatory dimension of moral judgments.Keywords: Moral Sentimentalism; Empathy; Adam Smith; David Hume; Michael Slote; Jesse Prinz Naturalismo e dominio normativo: affermare il normativo con l’aiuto delle teorie dell’empatia e del sentimentalismo del XVIII secolo Riassunto: Negli ultimi anni il sentimentalismo morale ha conosciuto un incredibile incremento di popolarità nel dibattito meta-etico contemporaneo, poiché promette di delineare il dominio del normativo secondo una prospettiva inequivocabilmente naturalistica. Dopo aver mostrato come le posizioni sentimentaliste di Michael Slote e Jesse Prinz non sono in grado di mantenere questa promessa, in questo lavoro si afferma che i sostenitori contemporanei del sentimentalismo sono invitati a trarre ispirazione da Adam Smith piuttosto che da David Hume. Se Hume aveva assolutamente ragione nel sottolineare l’importanza dell’empatia in ambito morale, la sua descrizione ufficiale dei meccanismi dell’empatia, così come viene presentata nel Treatise, in fin dei conti non si mostra all’altezza di questo compito. La concezione dell’empatia di Adam Smith, che nei fatti è più vicina ad alcuni tratti dello Hume dell’Enquiry piuttosto che a quello del Treatise, implicando fondamentalmente l’assunzione di prospettiva e richiamando la prospettiva dello spettatore disinteressato, dimostra di essere più feconda. Solo così i teorici del sentimentalismo possono sperare di render conto del carattere necessitante e intersoggettivamente normativo dei giudizi morali.Parole chiave: Sentimentalismo morale; Empatia; Adam Smith; David Hume; Michael Slote; Jesse Prin

Chapitre 3. Empathie et narration : repenser la différence entre sciences naturelles et sciences humaines

Comme on le sait, la philosophie herméneutique (ou interprétativiste) des sciences sociales, a toujours soutenu une division méthodologique stricte entre sciences humaines et sociales, d’une part, et sciences naturelles, d’autre part. Ce dualisme méthodologique a été exprimé par Droysen dans des termes qui ont fait école, en affirmant que « la recherche historique ne cherche pas à expliquer, c’est-à-dire à déduire et à raisonner par inférence, mais à comprendre », et il en est de même dans la..

Davidson, Reasons, and Causes: A Plea for a Little Bit More Empathy

In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the centrality of various forms of empathy for our understanding of another person’s mindedness. While I will argue that we need to abandon Davidson’s position of anomalous monism, I will also show that my account is fully compatible with Davidson’s non-reductive and interpretationist account of meaning and mental content. Indeed, my account does more justice to the empathic capacities underlying our interpretive capacities, which Davidson himself has to acknowledge in thinking about the constitutive features of thought and meaning. More specifically, I will propose a new way of philosophically safeguarding the causal-explanatory autonomy of our ordinary action explanations by showing how our empathic capacities are involved in epistemically delineating the domain of rational agency

Social Cognition and the Allure of the Second-Person Perspective: In Defense of Empathy and Simulation

This essay serves as an evaluation of challenges to the orthodox way of conceiving mindreading abilities by defending a 2006 claim by the author that those abilities involve basic and reenactive empathy

Ethical Sentimentalism : New Perspectives

Karsten R. Stueben is a co-editor. In recent years there has been a tremendous resurgence of interest in ethical sentimentalism, a moral theory first articulated during the Scottish Enlightenment. \u27Ethical Sentimentalism\u27 promises a conception of morality that is grounded in a realistic account of human psychology, which, correspondingly, acknowledges the central place of emotion in our moral lives. However, this promise has encountered its share of philosophical difficulties. Chief among them is the question of how to square the limited scope of human motivation and psychological mechanism - so easily influenced by personal, social, and cultural circumstance - with the seeming universal scope and objective nature of moral judgment. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation of the sentimentalist project with a particular eye to this difficulty. Each essay offers critical clarification, innovative answers to central challenges, and new directions for ethical sentimentalism in general.--Publisher description.https://crossworks.holycross.edu/hc_books/1025/thumbnail.jp

Empathy and agency: The problem of understanding in the human sciences

A crucial debate currently raging in the fields of cognitive and social science centers around general and specific approaches to understanding the actions of others. When we understand the actions of another person, do we do so on the basis of a general theory of psychology, or on the basis of an effort to place ourselves in the particular position of that specific person? Hans Kgler and Karsten Stuebers Empathy and Agency addresses this and other issues vital to current social science, in an advanced and diverse analysis of the foundations of social-scientific methodology based on recent cognitive psychology. The book serves as both an introduction to the debate for non-academic audiences and as a catalyst for further discussion for serious theorists. Empathy and Agency provides a solid foundation of the fundamental issues in social and cognitive science, but also presents the most influential paradigms in the field at this time. How do we, as interpreters and theorists in the human and social sciences, understand agency? What are the methods, models, and mediating theoretical frameworks that allow us to give a reliable and adequate account of beliefs, actions, and cultural practices? More specifically, how can we as interpretive analysts employ our own cognitive capacities so as to render the beliefs, intentions, and actions of other human beings intelligible? These are the leading questions that a group of well-established social philosophers explore in this volume in light of the most recent (and hotly debated) findings in cognitive science, developmental psychology, and philosophy of mind. In particular, the debate concerning simulation -- whether agents interpret others by means of implicit theoretical assumptions, or whether they rather simulate their behavior by putting themselves in their shoes -- has produced a wide set of important empirical and philosophical insights. This book takes up those insights and discusses their impact in the context of their most important paradigms in social methodology today.A systematic introduction pertaining to the understanding-explanation debate sets the stage, followed by eleven chapters representing the different approaches tot he field. The paradigms include Wittgensteinian, Davidsonian and Diltheyan approaches, hermeneutics and critical theory, game theory, naturalized epistemology, philosophy of history and twentieth-century social theory, as well as simulation approach proper. As stake are the relation between everyday and social-scientific interpretation, the role of empathy (or role-taking) in understanding human agency, the implications of attributing rationality in the course of interpretation, as well as the relation between rational and causal models in social explanation. The discussions cut across well-established disciplinary boundaries so that the book appeals to both analytic and hermeneutic traditions within philosophy. In addition, the book speaks to all who are engaged in interpreting or explaining human agency in the cultural and social sciences