Event
The Empathy in Moral Obligation. An Exercise in Creature Construction| Title of the event | The Empathy in Moral Obligation. An Exercise in Creature Construction |
| Series | Gastvorträge am Philosophischen Seminar SoSe 2018 |
| Organizer | Philosophisches Seminar |
| Speaker | Prof. Dr. Neil Roughley |
| Speaker institution | Universität Duisburg-Essen - Institut für Philosophie |
| Category | Campus Leben |
| Registration required | Nein |
| Details | In this talk I argue that we cannot make sense of moral obligation without drawing on a conception of empathy. The key conception is that central to Adam Smith’s moral theory and involves an agent ‘going along with’ the emotion of another. In an exercise of Gricean creature construction, I claim that the creatures for whom moral obligation can exist must be fitted out with a specific set of dispositions: to the non-normative attitude of resentment*, to Smithian empathy, to vicarious resentment* or indignation*, and finally with the capacity to empathise with an impartial empathiser, where the first two dispositions are presupposed by the latter two. The construction culminates in the claim that the contents of our moral obligations are the (counterfactual) objects of indignation* of an impartial empathiser. Neither a society of psychopaths nor a community of chimpanzees could develop anything approaching human morality, because they lack this suite of dispositions. |
| Date | Start: 09.05.2018, 18:00 Uhr Ende: 09.05.2018 , 20:00 Uhr |
| Location |
Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude (Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5) ZHG 005 |
| Contact |
0551 39 4722 gholler@gwdg.de |
| External link | http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/veranstaltungen... |