Emotions, Imagination, and Moral Reasoning

This volume brings together philosophical perspectives on emotions, imagination and moral reasoning with contributions from neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, personality theory, developmental psychology, and abnormal psychology.

The book explores what we can learn about the role of emotions and imagination in moral reasoning from psychopathic adults in the general community, from young children, and adolescents with callous unemotional traits, and from normal child development. It discusses the implications for philosophical moral psychology of recent experimental work on moral reasoning in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. Conversely, it shows what cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have still to learn from philosophical perspectives on moral reasoning, moral reflection, and moral responsibility. Finally, it looks at whether experimental methods used for researching moral reasoning are consistent with the work in social psychology and with philosophical thought on adult moral reasoning in everyday life.

The volume''s wide-ranging perspectives reflect the varied audiences for the volume, from students of philosophy to psychologists working in cognition, social and personality psychology, developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Robyn Langdon is an Associate Professor of the Macquarie Centre of Cognitive Science and a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Cognition and Its Disorders. Her research interests lies within the field of cognitive neuropsychiatry; she uses this approach to better understand the disturbances of normal information processing which associate with specific psychiatric symptoms, such as poor social functioning in schizophrenia and other psychopathologies. In her current research, she is extending her investigations into the relations between poor social cognition and poor social functioning to better understand violent tendencies in people with schizophrenia and amoral behavior in psychopathically inclined individuals. She has been a guest editor of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, and regularly publishes in journals such as the Annual Review of Psychology, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Psychological Medicine and Cognitive Neuropsychiatry.

Catriona Mackenzie is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Research Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her areas of research specialization include ethics, philosophical moral psychology, social and political philosophy, and applied ethics. She is co-editor of Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self (Oxford University Press, 2000), and Practical Identity and Narrative Agency (Routledge, 2008). Mackenzie has published articles in journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Hypatia, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Philosophical Papers, and Philosophical Explorations, as well as book chapters in numerous edited volumes. She was awarded the 2007 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Research in Ethics.