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Neural reality and social convention: do they overlap?
Author(s) -
Mosterín Jesús
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/nyas.12170
Subject(s) - compassion , dignity , realm , pleasure principle , norm (philosophy) , pleasure , fallacy , psychology , convention , social psychology , sociology , epistemology , philosophy , law , political science , social science , psychotherapist
Neural reality is part of nature, independent of our cultural agreements. Social conventions are part of culture and fictions created and sustained by our accords. The classical Greeks had already established a difference between phýsis (nature, reality) and nómos (norm, law). Pain, pleasure, emotion, and compassion belong to the first realm. Rights, duties, guilt, responsibility, and dignity are in the second. Do they overlap anywhere? Perhaps around the emotion of compassion, which is morally relevant but also neurologically real. We briefly consider the relation of compassion to mirror neurons and neuromodulators in the brain. When jumping from neurons to norms, we must beware of the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy.