This volume brings together philosophical perspectives on emotions, imagination and moral reasoning with contributions from neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, personality theory, developmental psychology, and abnormal psychology.

The book explores what we can learn about the role of emotions and imagination in moral reasoning from psychopathic adults in the general community, from young children, and adolescents with callous unemotional traits, and from normal child development. It discusses the implications for philosophical moral psychology of recent experimental work on moral reasoning in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. Conversely, it shows what cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have still to learn from philosophical perspectives on moral reasoning, moral reflection, and moral responsibility. Finally, it looks at whether experimental methods used for researching moral reasoning are consistent with the work in social psychology and with philosophical thought on adult moral reasoning in everyday life.

The volume's wide-ranging perspectives reflect the varied audiences for the volume, from students of philosophy to psychologists working in cognition, social and personality psychology, developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

People with psychiatric and neurological illness sometimes say and think the most amazing things. They might believe they are dead; claim to see, despite being blind; or "remember" things that never happened. Historical demarcations between academic disciplines dictate that these are distinct clinical phenomena - 'delusion', 'anosognosia' (the delusional denial of illness on some accounts) or 'confabulation'. This Special Issue brings together leading researchers from diverse fields - memory researchers, clinical neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, cognitive scientists and philosophers - to consider the extent to which these different phenomena overlap. Opinions differ. Some researchers use the term confabulation very generally to refer to false claims whether these concern belief or memory. Other researchers advocate an exclusive approach, according to which no symptom could ever qualify as both delusional and confabulatory. Yet others focus on points of similarity and argue that historical discord between psychodynamic and cognitive neuroscientific approaches has obscured similarities with regard the roles of emotion and motivation. Some contributors highlight both difference and similarity; they consider points of overlap - the instances of confabulation which qualify as delusional - or advocate a common monitoring framework to explain all distortions of reality. Despite their differing views, our contributors all share the common aims of clarifying theoretical conceptions, evaluating similarities and differences, and learning more about underlying causal mechanisms so as to advance the cognitive neuropsychiatry of both delusion and confabulation.