Utilitarianism and Empathy, or: Are Kantians Abnormally Empathic?

I just made some comments on a new psychology research article on the topic of how moral judgement link to emotional features in the journal PLOS ONE, entitled Low Levels of Empathic Concern Predict Utilitarian Moral Judgment. As with other articles of this type, I am a bit concerned by the sloppy use of ethical theoretical terminology among psychology and cognitive science researchers, as well as biased reportings of results. The secondary title of this little post is meant as a well-meant and humorous wink to the authors of the article and other researchers in the field of moral psychology as to what they may be unwittingly assuming when reporting their findings....

J.J.C. "Jack" Smart - R.I.P.

I just learned via various sources on Facebook and Twitter that the Australian philosopher J.J.C. a.k.a. Jack Smart passed away today at the age of 92. The very fact that this sad news is immediately echoing around the world tells you something about his stature, and a further glimpse of this can be caught by visiting his webpage at Monash University, which besides his distinguished carreer reveals that he was busy publishing high quality papers as late as at the age of 86.

His most well-known philosophical achievements were his championship of physicalism in the philosophy of mind (sometimes known as the identity theory) and of utilitarianism in ethics. The significance of the former work, Smart has described best himself here. My own contact with his work mainly connected to the latter. As so many others in my own and several subsequent generations of philosophy students, I was introduced both to advanced normative ethical theory, to sophisticated utilitarianism and to the art of debating the most heated and basic ethical issues without any loss of civility or philosophical depth through Smart's and Bernard William's little pro & con gem, Utilitarianism: For and Against.

I met Jack Smart only once, when he was visiting Stockholm University some time in the late 1980's or early 1990's and I remember how impressed I was by his kind gentleness that in no way cut down any of the stark clarity I had met in his writing. No less impressive, of course, since he was already then far from young. More information about his life and philosophy can be found here.