Morality Beyond Social Preferences: Smithian Sympathy, Social Neuroscience and the Nature of Social Consciousness

Abstract

The theory of social preferences expanded the definition of the utility function in order to reproduce the pro-social behavior observed in experiments. Does this then mean that this is the route towards a positive theory of morality in economics? We do not think so. Our claim is that there is an epistemic contradiction between methodological individualism which assumes that the economic agent’s rationality is autonomous from society, and the nature of social consciousness. Therefore, we argue that a positive theory of morality should rely on social mechanisms that could not fit in this framework. We give two examples of lines of research that go in this direction. The first one is drawn from 18th century moral philosophy, this is the approach adopted by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The other one is drawn from a very recent domain of research, that of social neuroscience. We show how, in both cases, the objective is not only to understand how moral judgements shape behavior but also to get an understanding of how people form these moral judgements. Smith’s thought and recent developments in social neuroscience seem to be mutually illuminating on this second aspect. Smith’s model is an essential model of a moral agent embedded in society. The sympathy operator and the impartial spectator find an echo in the way in which social neuroscience tries to understand how emotional and cognitive empathy intermesh. Furthermore, social neuroscience attempts to go further in the understanding of the complex empathy mechanism, by considering it as a learning process.