I Feel Your Pain : Mirror Neurons , Empathy , and Moral Motivation

Mirror neurons are brain systems found in monkeys and humans that respond similarly to actions and to the perception of actions of others. This paper explores the implications of mirror neurons for several important philosophical problems, including knowledge of other minds, the nature of empathy, and moral motivation. It argues that mirror neurons provide a direct route to other minds, empathy, and moral motivation that complements the more familiar route based on conscious, verbal inference. INTRODUCTION The discovery of mirror neurons has been hailed as one of the major recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, with possible implications for the explanation of many important cognitive functions, including action understanding, imitation, language, and empathy. Mirror neurons were first identified in the 1990s by Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004). They found that monkey prefrontal cortex contains a particular class of neurons that discharge both when the monkey does a particular action and when it observes another individual doing a particular action. Similar classes of neurons have been found in humans, capable of mirroring not only physical actions but also pain and disgust. This paper is an exploration of the epistemological and ethical significance of mirror neuron mechanisms. After briefly reviewing the recent neuroscience literature on