By Peter Lawler, The Big Think An excerpt: So we've basically completed our two-year series of conferences, publications, and such at Berry College funded by a grant from the Science of Virtues project at the University of Chicago. My concluding presentation—following directions—is about saying what...

By Jerome Groopman "Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art. After she and her mother moved to the United States, in 1981, her uncle, who had immigrated some years earlier, pressed her to concentrate on computers. As a graduate student...

By Oliver Putz Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality, suggesting that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. Read the article . Image from Flickr...

Abstract: In this paper, we will examine and untangle a conflict mainly between a developmental psychologist, Martin Hoffman and a social psychologist, Daniel Batson. According to Hoffman, empathic distress, a vicarious feeling through empathy, is transformed into an altruistic motivation. Batson and...

By Richard Miller Principal Investigator : Virtuous Empathy: Scientific and Humanistic Investigations Inquiry into matters of empathy and virtue must proceed today on polemical note. What should prompt disquiet is the fact that recent discussions of empathy romanticize the concept and thus contribute...