She focuses on prudence and due care and argues that these traits dispose their possessor to be sensitive to certain features of situations and to respond to those features specifically. Feldman argues that in a negligence action, the jury performs the function of a thought-experimenter, seeking to ascertain how a reasonable person possessed of prudence and due care would act in the situation that confronted the actual defendant. The result of the jury s experiment constitutes a normative expectation, offering guidance to those confronting similar situations. This demonstrates that a virtue-based standard can yield particular prescriptions for conduct. She claims that democratic principles justify the jury s normative authority in the tort context and argues that we have no noncircular reason to care if juries strike a balance between freedom and action that does not maximize social utility.
Empathic mechanisms bring about emotional convergence between models and observers.
Such convergence is valuable not merely for motivating prosocial behavior, but also as a tool for evaluative inquiry. Recent scholarship on emotions has emphasized their role in revealing or constituting various realms of value. In light of such suggestions, this Article explores the mechanisms and consequences of empathy. It is argued that, by allowing one to try on new emotional takes on the world, empathy can expand a person s evaluative perspective in important ways. This can render an agent susceptible to forms of evaluative experience and ultimately evaluative knowledge that might otherwise be unavailable to her.