Abstract
In his recent work, Michael Slote argues that empathy is what Hutcheson called ‘the moral sense’, the basic source of moral knowledge. The most innovative argument he offers for this is based on the semantic thesis that our empathic reactions play a crucial role in fixing the reference of moral terms. In this paper, I argue that in virtue of its well-motivated departures from Kripke’s original account, Slote's bold proposal faces 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.
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Notes
See Kauppinen 2015 for my take on the expressive function of the law.
In fairness to Slote, he has responded, or attempted to respond, to at least some of these criticisms, for example in Slote 2013. I am not convinced by the responses he sketches. For example, he thinks anger cannot amount to moral disapproval, because it is a ‘hot’ emotion. I disagree with the underlying assumption here, but also want to note that indignation or righteous anger need not be as hot as non-moral anger, which seems to be what Slote has in mind.
“Tis only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that causes such a feeling or sentiment, as denominates it morally good or evil.” (Hume, Treatise, 472) I used to agree with this view (see Kauppinen 2010), but have come to think that we can have genuine (if often inappropriate) moral feelings without empathizing.
Beyond this broad similarity, the details of Hume’s, Smith’s, and my own view differ considerably. I discuss the relationship among these accounts in Section 2 of Kauppinen 2014.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lilian O’Brien, Neil Roughley, Tuukka Tanninen, Philipp Schwind and participants at a moral psychology seminar at the University of Duisburg-Essen in December 2016 for helpful comments and discussions on the issues discussed in this paper.
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Kauppinen, A. Empathy as the Moral Sense?. Philosophia 45, 867–879 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9816-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9816-1