 While the egoism vs. altruism debate has historically been of great philosophical interest, the issue centrally concerns psychological questions about the nature of human motivation, so it’s not surprise that psychologists have done a great deal of empirical research aimed at determining which view is correct. Some of the most influential and philosophically sophisticated empirical work on this issue has been done by Daniel Batson and his associates. The conclusion Batson draws from this work is that people do sometimes behave altruistically, and that the emotion of empathy plays an important role in generating altruistic motivation.  [17]  Others are not convinced. For a discussion of Batson’s experiments, the conclusion he draws from them, and some reasons for skepticism about that conclusion, see sections 5 and 6 of the entry “Empirical Approaches to Altruism” in this encyclopedia. In this section, we’ll focus on some of the philosophical spadework that is necessary before plunging into the empirical literature.