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What's the psychology of moral feeling?" and this is an issue I'm going to
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talk about now but I'm going to return to next week when we deal with
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issues such as liking and disliking, racial prejudice and other things.
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But I want to deal now with a couple of interesting case studies
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about moral feelings from a psychological point of view.
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The first one I want to deal with is empathy. And empathy has different
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definitions but we can simply view it as the feeling that
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your pain matters to me.If you are hurt, that is, in some sense, painful for me.
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If you are sad, that affects my own mood. I am not a selfish creature.
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I am built, I am hard wired, to be attuned to your pain.
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This is an old observation.Adam Smith,who is often falsely viewed as a proponent
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of selfishness and hardheadedness, was quite explicit about the pull this has.