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abstract: I present two challenges to the theory of moral sentimentalism that Michael Slote defends in his book. The first challenge aims to show that there are cases in which we empathize with an agent and yet judge her actions to be morally wrong. If such cases are plausible, then we have good reason to doubt Slote's claim that moral judgments are an affective attitude of warmth or chill and, thus, are purely sentiments. The second challenge is more of a suggestion. At the end of my paper, I suggest that perhaps one important role that empathy plays in our moral phenomenology is to mitigate the scope of our moral judgments. If this is right, it tells not only against Slote's account but against moral sentimentalist approaches more broadly.
Michael Slote's Moral Sentimentalism (2010) provides a far-reaching articulation and defense of the role of empathy in both our moral phenomenology and our moral theorizing. Particularly striking is the completeness of the project at both the meta- and normative ethical levels. Here, I wish to engage with the metaethical view defended by Slote and raise a potential problem case in order to press for further detail and clarification of his view.
I begin with a very brief summary of Slote's account of moral judgment as grounded in empathic approval. Slote offers a two-tiered account of the role of empathy in moral judgment. At the ground level, as it were, we empathize with those in need or in pain. This he calls "agential empathy" (2010, 21). Thus, agential empathy is the first-order reaction agents have to those in need or in pain. Moral approval (or disapproval) occurs at a second level (or order) and consists in our empathetic warmth (or chill) toward those engaged in agential empathy. We are warmed to those actions that display agential warmth. Those actions that display agential indifference chill us. These affective states constitute our concepts of moral approval or disapproval. From this account of moral approval and disapproval, Slote gives a purely sentimentalist account of moral judgment. We judge something to be morally good "if and only if [it] reflects or expresses agential warmth" and if we in turn feel warmth toward that agential warmth (2010, 63). Moral judgments,...