title: Neural reality and social convention: do they overlap?
abstract: Neural reality is part of nature, independent of our cultural agreements. Social conventions are part of culture and fictions created and sustained by our accords. The classical Greeks had already established a difference between phýsis (nature, reality) and nómos (norm, law). Pain, pleasure, emotion, and compassion belong to the first realm. Rights, duties, guilt, responsibility, and dignity are in the second. Do they overlap anywhere? Perhaps around the emotion of compassion, which is morally relevant but also neurologically real. We briefly consider the relation of compassion to mirror neurons and neuromodulators in the brain. When jumping from neurons to norms, we must beware of the naturalistic fallacy and the moralistic fallacy.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Philosophy, CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Jesús
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mosterín
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D012919:Social Behavior; D012941:Social Responsibility
keywords: compassion; fallacies; free will; neural reality; social conventions