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Morality Without Mindreading
Author(s) -
Monsó Susana
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12146
Subject(s) - morality , empathy , psychology , possession (linguistics) , moral disengagement , moral psychology , a priori and a posteriori , moral reasoning , theory of mind , epistemology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , philosophy , cognition , neuroscience , linguistics
Can animals behave morally if they can't mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe that mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable moral content. Therefore, at least one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori , non‐mindreading animals can be moral.