Adam Smith's System: Sympathy not Self-Interest

Lamb, Robert

doi:10.2307/2709093

Cited by 46 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…The 18th century British philosophers, Adam Smith and David Hume suggested that our behaviour is guided by intuitive “moral sentiments” which express our moral approval or disapproval (Lamb, 1974). Here, we focus on moral sentiments related to violation of values that are of particular relevance for the understanding of common psychiatric disorders such as major depression (Berrios et al, 1992; O’Connor et al, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective functional integration between anterior temporal and distinct fronto-mesolimbic regions during guilt and indignation

et al. 2010

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It has been hypothesized that the experience of different moral sentiments such as guilt and indignation is underpinned by activation in temporal and fronto-mesolimbic regions and that functional integration between these regions is necessary for the differentiated experience of these moral sentiments. A recent fMRI study revealed that the right superior anterior temporal lobe (ATL) was activated irrespective of the context of moral feelings (guilt or indignation). This region has been associated with context-independent conceptual social knowledge which allows us to make finegrained differentiations between qualities of social behaviours (e.g. "critical" and "faultfinding"). This knowledge is required to make emotional evaluations of social behaviour. In contrast to the context-independent activation of the ATL, there were context-dependent activations within different fronto-mesolimbic regions for guilt and indignation. However, it is unknown whether functional integration occurs between these regions and whether regional patterns of integration are distinctive for the experience of different moral sentiments. Here, we used fMRI and psychophysiological interaction analysis, an established measure of functional integration to investigate this issue. We found selective functional integration between the right superior ATL and a subgenual cingulate region during the experience of guilt and between the right superior ATL and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex for indignation. Our data provide the first evidence for functional integration of conceptual social knowledge representations in the right superior ATL with representations of different feeling contexts in fronto-mesolimbic regions. We speculate that this functional architecture allows for the conceptually differentiated experience of moral sentiments in healthy individuals.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective functional integration between anterior temporal and distinct fronto-mesolimbic regions during guilt and indignation

et al. 2010

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“…114-15) has developed this line of inquiry, but criticizing Morrow's approach. Lamb (1974) explicitly tackles the relationship between the individual and society in Smith. Dupuy (1987, p. 329) also sees that in The Theory of Moral Sentiments ''Smith apparaît beaucoup plus en effet comme le précurseur du Durkheim,'' as society determines human behavior.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example Schumpeter thought that ''both the Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations are blocks cut out from a larger systematic whole'' (1994, p. 141). Macfie in his ''Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments as Foundation for his Wealth of Nations'' (1967) and Lamb (1974) also persuasively defended the consistency of both works. One exception, to my knowledge, is Anspach (1972), who thought, as did Viner, that ''the controversy aroused by the two conflicting images of Smith has however been by no means resolved'' (p. 176).…”

Section: A Review and Assessment Of The Current Debatementioning

confidence: 96%

Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins, the Stages of the Current Debate, and One Implication for Our Understanding of Sympathy

Montes

2003

J Hist Econ Thought

125

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Scholars have long been interested in the apparent dichotomy between sympathy and self-interest in Smith. The question of the consistency between The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (WN)—the famous Das Adam Smith Problem—is definitely still relevant for anyone attracted to Smith scholarship. Although there is some agreement that the two works are consistent and, furthermore, parts of an incomplete system, it seems that the Problem continues to attract interest, not only for its historical and philosophical appeal, but also perhaps for its implications for the current economics-and-ethics debate.

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“…See also Raphael and Macfi e 1976, 20;Winch 1978, 10;andHaakonssen 1981, 197 n. 19, quoted in Montes 2003, 78-79. 3. For even more on das Adam Smith Problem, see Brown 1994, Dickey 1986, Griswold 1999, Khalil 1990, Lamb 1974, Levy 2001, Morrow [1923] 1969, Nieli 1986, Pack 1991, Sen 1987, Teichgraeber 1981, and Young 1997 tions of this earlier discipline from which it emerged. 2 Smith's ideological opponents, however, insist that Smith did separate political economy from moral philosophy as a discrete fi eld of study, divorcing ethics from economics and implicitly sanctioning an amoral commercial realm where almost anything goes.…”

Section: Originally Sinful: Das Adam Smith Problemmentioning

confidence: 98%

Das Adam Smith Problemand Faculty Psychology in the Antebellum North

Davenport¹

2008

History of Political Economy

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This essay addresses the question of what happened when the Adam Smith problem of industrializing Europe met the faculty psychology of antebellum America. Although it was not called the Adam Smith problem until the late nineteenth century, the fact that Smith wrote two books instead of one has always posed difficulties for those seeking integrity between the ethical and the economical. For two groups of antebellum Protestants—the “clerical economists” and the “pastoral moralists”—this is where faculty psychology came in. Employing the tripartite scheme of conscience, self-interest, and passions, both of these groups nevertheless sought a moral order that was binary. In other words, they wanted to understand the world in terms of good and evil—of what kind of commercial behavior was permissible and what was not. The difference, unsurprisingly, was over what each group thought about self-interest, the faculty that occupied the middle position. For their part, the clerical economists lumped self-interest in with conscience as partners in the noble republican struggle to keep the passions of individuals in check. The two were not the same, but they were close enough to serve this same utilitarian purpose. The pastoral moralists, on the other hand, wanted to divide faculty psychology's tripartite scheme in half. In their collective understanding, self-interest could go in either direction. The pastoral moralists therefore sought the point at which an individual's healthy and natural self-interest crossed the line and, as one of them put it, passed “without heeding it, the boundary which separates virtue from vice.”

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Adam Smith's System: Sympathy not Self-Interest

Cited by 46 publications

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Selective functional integration between anterior temporal and distinct fronto-mesolimbic regions during guilt and indignation

Selective functional integration between anterior temporal and distinct fronto-mesolimbic regions during guilt and indignation

Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins, the Stages of the Current Debate, and One Implication for Our Understanding of Sympathy

Das Adam Smith Problemand Faculty Psychology in the Antebellum North

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