This book digs into the complex archaeology of empathy illuminating controversies, epistemic problems and unanswered questions encapsulated within its cross-disciplinary history.
The authors ask how a neutral innate capacity to directly understand the actions and feelings of others becomes charged with emotion and moral values associated with altruism or caregiving. They explore how the discovery of the mirror neuron system and its interpretation as the neurobiological basis of empathy has stimulated such an enormous body of research and how in a number of these studies, the moral values...