ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a conceptual landscape regarding the notion of altruism. It draws several important distinctions, most importantly between psychological, behavioral, and biological altruism. The chapter introduces two kinds of explanations of the relation between empathy and altruism: descriptive theories and normative theories. Descriptive theories aim to explain empathy's causal contribution to altruism, either in individual instantiations of altruistic motivation or in developmental terms, regarding the maturation of an altruistic disposition as an aspect of the personality of a person. This is mainly the perspective of psychologists. Normative theories of altruism, which are discussed in philosophy, are usually laid out in terms of a theory of practical reason. The chapter examines some objections to linking empathy and altruism. Many of these objections are based on particular conceptions of the relevant terms, which are only of limited interest to the psychological account of the capacity for altruism.
