Empathy, Shared Intentionality, and Motivation by Moral Reasons

Internalists about reasons generally insist that if a putative reason, R, is to count as a genuine normative reason for a particular agent to do something, then R must make a rational connection to some desire or interest of the agent in question. If internalism is true, but moral reasons purport to apply to agents independently of the particular desires, interests, and commitments they have, then we may be forced to conclude that moral reasons are incoherent. Richard Joyce (2001) develops an argument along these lines. Against this view, I argue that we can make sense of moral reasons as reasons that apply to, and are capable of motivating, agents independently of their prior interests and desires. More specifically, I argue that moral agents, in virtue of their capacities for empathy and shared intentionality, are sensitive to reasons that do not directly link up with their pre-existing ends. In particular, they are sensitive to, and hence can be motivated by, reasons grounded in the desires, projects, commitments, concerns, and interests of others. Moral reasons are a subset of this class of reasons to which moral agents are sensitive. Thus, moral agents can be motivated by moral reasons, even where such reasons fail to link up to their own pre-existing ends.     

A Reminder and a Suggestion

… concerned with the whole of man's life … dignity of a human being … develop harmoniously their physical, moral, and intellectual endowments … acquire a sense of responsibility in striving endlessly to form their own lives properly … foster a sense of values … to prepare for professional life … as they develop their own personality … stimulate students to act for themselves….     

Book reviews

Religion and Globalisation. Peter Beyer, 1994 London: Sage Publications 250 pp., £12.95 pb, £37.50 hb ISBN 0–8039–8917–2

The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom. Friedhelm Hardy, 1994 Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions 4, Cambridge University Press xiii + 613 pp. £55.00, US$74.95 ISBN 0–521–44181–1

Judaism and Other Faiths. Dan Cohn‐Sherbok, 1994 Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ix + 186 pp., £40.00 hb ISBN 0–312–10384–0.

Women in Religion Jean Holm with John Bowker, eds., 1994 London and New York: Pinter Publishers 181 pp., £29.50 hb, £9.99 pb ISBN 1–85567–108–5 hb, ISBN 1–85567–109–3 pb

Attitudes to Nature. Jean Holm (ed.) with John Bowker, 1994 London and New York: Pinter Publishers 172 pp., £23.50 hb, £9.99 pb ISBN 1–85567–092–5 hb, ISBN 1–85567–093–3 pb

Sacred Writings. Jean Holm (ed.) with John Bowker, 1994 London and New York: Pinter Publications 201 pp., £29.50 hb, £9.99 pb ISBN 1–85567–106–9 hb; 1–85567–107–7 pb

The Gospel of Buddha. Paul Carus, 1994 Oxford: Oneworld Publications 306 pp., £6.95 ISBN 1–85168–026–8

The New Religious Order: The Passionists and the Option for the Poor. James Sweeney CP, 1994 London: Bellew Publishing 240 pp., £35.00 ISBN 1–85725–105–9

Religions in the UK: A Multi‐Faith Directory. Paul Weller (ed), researched by Rachelle Castle and Paul Weller, 1993 Mickleover, Derby: University of Derby, in association with The Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom 651 pp., £25.00 (incl. p&p) ISBN 0–901437–06–9     

Life stress,social support,and locus of control during early adolescence: Interactive effects

Examined the relationships between negative events, locus of control, social support, and psychological adjustment in an early adolescent sample. Of interest were the potential stress-buffering effects of social support and the conjunctive effects of social support and locus of control upon adjustment. Family support was positively related to adjustment in several domains, whereas school support was only related to school competence. Peer support was positively related to peer competence and anxiety, and negatively related to school competence. Examination of the buffering hypothesis suggested that both family and school support served to moderate the relationship between negative events and school competence. Conjunctive effects were also detected in that school support buffered number of negative events best for those individuals with an internal locus of control for successes.     

study of taste perception

Taste stimulus identification was studied in order to more thoroughly examine human taste perception. Ten replicates of an array of 10 taste stimuli—NaCl, KCl, Na glutamate, quinine.HCl, citric acid, sucrose, aspartame, and NaCl-sucrose, acid-sucrose, and quinine-sucrose mixtures—were presented to normal subjects for identification from a list of corresponding stimulus names. Because perceptually similar substances are confused in identification tasks, the result was ataste confusion matrix. Consistency of identification for the 10 stimuli (T ₁₀) and for each stimulus pair (T ₂) was quantified with measures derived from information theory. Forty-two untrained subjects made an average of 57.4% correct identifications. An averageT ₁₀ of 2.25 of the maximum 3.32 bits and an averageT ₂ of 0.84 of a maximum 1.0 bit of information were transmitted. In a second experiment, 40 trained subjects per-formed better than 20 untrained subjects. The results suggested that the identification procedure may best be used to assess taste function following 1–2 training replicates. The patterns of taste confusion indicate that the 10 stimuli resemble one another to varying extents, yet each can be considered perceptually unique.