The worldviews of Jean Genet, Marquis de Sade, and Anton LaVey are presented in this chapter. All of them accuse society of being morally hypocritical. Empirical research vis-à-vis hypocrisy in the psychology of morality is discussed. A moral-pluralistic approach is proposed in which different moral positions are prominent and can come into conflict with each other. In this context, Max Weber’s “ethic of responsibility” is discussed as relevant to political leadership. Then, the monopositionality of utopian visions, such as fascism, communism, religions, and neoliberalism, are criticized as being focused on one ideal end-position that does not allow counter-positions or alternative points of view As practical implications of this chapter, I offer three guidelines for dealing with hypocrisy: the role of self-awareness, perspective-taking, and the stimulation of moral multiplicity.

In many flexible word order languages, sentences with a transitive verb (V) in which the subject (S) precedes the object (O) (SO word order = SOV, SVO, VSO) are reported to be “preferred” over those in which the opposite occurs (OS word order= OSV, OVS, VOS). For example, SO sentences are easier to process and are produced more frequently than OS sentences in Finnish, Japanese, Sinhalese, and others. This empirical evidence of the preference for SO word order, however, is not conclusive, because it comes exclusively from SO languages (i.e., languages in which SO is the syntactically simplest word order). It is therefore necessary to study OS languages (i.e., languages in which OS is the syntactically simplest word order) to investigate whether the same preference holds. This book reports on several experiments we have conducted, to this end, on Kaqchikel (Mayan, Guatemala) and Seediq (Austronesian, Taiwan), whose syntactically basic word order is VOS.

Chapter 3 summarizes recent and current theories of how language and conversation may have evolved and the nature of language.Chapter 3 includes discussion of animal signaling and the role of complex social organization, collaboration, imitation, and play in language evolution.It summarizes and critiques the contributions of meme theory to the social evolution account of language development, and closes with a discussion of how language extends and contributes to individual and group homeostasis.

Social life demands complex strategies for coordinating and competing with others. In humans, these strategies are supported by rich cognitive mechanisms, such as theory of mind. Theory of mind (i.e., mental state attribution, mentalizing, or mindreading) is the ability to track the unobservable mental states, like desires and beliefs, that guide others’ actions. Deeply social animals, like most nonhuman primates, would surely benefit from the adept capacity to interpret and predict others’ behavior that theory of mind affords. Yet, after forty years of investigation, the extent to which nonhuman primates represent the minds of others remains a topic of contentious debate. In the present chapter, we review evidence consistent with the possibility that monkeys and apes are capable of inferring others’ goals, perceptions, and beliefs. We then evaluate the quality of that evidence and point to the most prominent alternative explanations to be addressed by future research. Finally, we take a more broadly phylogenetic perspective, to identify evolutionary modifications to social cognition that have emerged throughout primate evolutionary history and to consider the selective pressures that may have driven those modifications. Taken together, this approach sheds light on the complex mechanisms that define the social minds of humans and other primates.

Empathy, the capacity to share and understand others’ states, is crucial for facilitating enduring social relationships and managing ingroup and outgroup dynamics. Despite being at the center of much scrutiny and debate in human research, the evolutionary foundations of empathy remain relatively opaque. Moreover, inconsistencies remain regarding definitions and theoretical models, leading to discrepancies in how to systematically represent and address empathy and understand its evolutionary basis. As a complex, multidimensional phenomenon, certain components of empathy are likely to be evolutionarily ancient whereas others may be more derived. As our closest living relatives, nonhuman primates provide an opportunity to explore the evolutionary origins of empathy and its subcomponents. Due to the rich diversity of primate societies, we can comparatively study evidence of affective responding and empathic behavior within the context of different social dynamics and organization. Although studies have been conducted on individual primate species, especially the great apes, direct species comparisons are rare. Here we examine the literature investigating evidence for empathy among primates focusing on its underlying affective and cognitive components. In reviewing the literature, we also highlight species that need more coverage to enhance our overall understanding of how empathy has evolved within the primate order.

Recent studies in environmental psychology have shown how acts of perspective-taking can increase empathy in participants, leading to a ‘green nudge’ effect in relation to climate change. Similar proposals recur in ecocritical approaches to climate change fiction, influenced by long-standing arguments on fiction’s capacity to improve ‘theory of mind’. To further understand, but also to problematise and thus develop, these discussions of perspective-taking, I identify the parallels between these claims and those concerning virtual reality (VR) as an ‘empathy machine’, as well as those counter-claims regarding VR as an ‘appropriation machine’ that commodifies the experience of others. Jorie Graham’s poetry collection Fast (2017) explores the possibilities and difficulties of generating environmental empathy via material and simulated means, the latter inclusive of both textual and digital forms. In my analysis, I show how Graham generates a deliberately unstable and unreliable perspective-taking process with regard to human and non-human others. Consequently, I argue that her poems contribute a crucial interpretation of perspective-taking as a provisional act that at once reveals our strong human desire to connect with others, as well as our (potentially inevitable) inability to do so.

This chapter completes the account begun in Chapter 4 of why psychopaths are unable to see other people as sources of value. I argue that as well as, and partly because of, their emotional deficiencies, psychopaths suffer a severe deficit of empathy, either from birth or brought on by abuse or neglect in childhood. Based on evidence from developmental psychology, I argue that empathy plays a central role in the way we come to ascribe value to entities other than ourselves. Lacking this crucial developmental stage, psychopaths reach adulthood without the capacity to see others as valuable. Because they lack this capacity due to factors which they cannot be expected to change, they are not morally responsible for lacking it. They are therefore not morally responsible for the failure to respond to certain reasons which stems from this lack. Finally, I consider other disorders of low empathy, specifically autism spectrum disorder and borderline personality disorder, and give an account of why these conditions do not apparently lead to the same outcomes in respect of the ability to value others.

Chapter 2 develops the theory of moral psychology that is used in later chapters to explain the evolution of the laws of war. It begins by briefly explaining why it is necessary to develop a theory of moral pscyhology to account for the evolution of international norms. It argues that existing theories have difficulty explaining why some norms repeatedly emerge in human societies. It then outlines a theory of moral psychology that holds that some norms are based on evolved cognitive heuristics and emotions. It argues that empathy and perspective-taking encourage prosocial behavior and that when these emotional capacities are engaged, they lead people to create norms that protect civilians from deliberate killing. However, it also shows that moral thinking is governed by subtle asymmetries in the way that people evaluate intentional action: intended harms are judged as morally worse than unintended harms. The rest of the book shows that this "intention/side-effect distinction" underlies the key principles of the civilian protection regime. Finally, the chapter develops a methodology for examining how moral intuitions shape international norms.

This chapter returns to the three main features of deduction defined in Chapter 1 from a cognitive, empirically informed perspective: necessary truth-preservation, perspicuity, and belief-bracketing. It discusses experimental findings that lend support to the dialogical conceptualization of these three features presented in Chapter 4. It also discusses the notion of internalization as formulated by Lev Vygotsky, which allows for an explanation of how deductive practices can also take place in purely mono-agent situations: as an intrapersonal enactment of interpersonal dialogues. The upshot is that framing deductive practices dialogically provides cognitive scaffolding that facilitates the ontogenetic development of deductive reasoning in an individual.

Resentment has a bad, but undeserved rap, in both political theory and popular culture today. But this book has shown that liberal political theorists were not always so dismissed of resentment as a moral motive because of its psychological features, most importantly, its basis in equal recognition. But I have also demonstrated the limitations of sympathetic resentment throughout the book. In this conclusion, I consider how commercial institutions like competition and free exchange might ameliorate our prospects for spectatorial resentment, as well as what the empirical research on resentment, empathy, and perspective-taking might teach us about how to improve sympathetic resentment. Finally, I reflect on what persistent injustice in liberal societies might suggest about the value of the theory of sympathetic resentment I have offered in this book.

The second step to unblocking our advance as negotiators is to gain the relevant know-how. Here we explore specific and practical techniques recommended by researchers as effective, such as deliberate practice and memorizing techniques.