Commentary: Primary Emotional Systems and Personality: An Evolutionary Perspective

Frontiers in Psychology

Simone Pollo¹ 

关键词: personality;    character;    evolution;    ethics;    sentimentalism;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02143

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In Primary emotional systems and personality Christian Montag and Jaak Panksepp analyze how emotional systems are involved into the development of basic personality into an evolutionary framework. They also stress the importance of such investigation for the promotion of human welfare in the context of psychiatric research and practice (Montag and Panksepp, 2017). Nonetheless, this field of study is of great relevance also for other disciplines and topics. Among these, philosophical ethics analyses can benefit from scientific explorations of human and non-human emotions and personality. Within the domain of philosophical ethics, in particular the perspective of moral sentimentalism can set a fruitful dialogue with those researches. From a methodological standpoint, moral sentimentalism (dating back to philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith) is the ethical perspective more apt to fit into the framework of evolutionary biology (Kauppinen, 2017). As a matter of fact, Hume's philosophy anticipated some findings of Charles Darwin (and it is almost sure that the Devil's Chaplain has been a reader of le bon David: Huntley, 1972). Furthermore, methodology of sentimentalism is empirical and bottom-up like the the methods of Darwinian biology (Hume's aim in the Treatise was to build a “science of human nature”: Hume, 2000). From a more substantive point of view, sentiments, and character are central notions for moral sentimentalism and they are the very core of sentimentalist subjectivity and agency. For this reason in this brief commentary I will sketch three possible research lines that could be developed along the path traced by Montag and Panksepp in order to set a dialogue between their research and philosophical analysis of moral sentimentalism.

【 授权许可】

CC BY