Beyond the Code: Phenomenology and Legal Status of Algorithmic Empathy between Neuroscience and Law

Abstract

The code — we know, or pretend to know — is never neutral. But what happens, exactly, when it even stops being cold?
The assumption from which this work is based (which has its roots in the framework of Algorithmic Empathy, already outlined in Iura and Legal System, Vol. 12-3, 2025) deliberately shifts the center of gravity: the contemporary algorithm does not limit itself to computation; it simulates or, in a much more subtle way, induces an emotional resonance. The intent here is to attempt a break — methodological, even before merit — by forcing the psychological clinic to sit at the same table as the norm.
Because if psychological observation certifies, data in hand, the existence of a digital mirroring — the human user who projects, without filters, affections and fragility on synthetic architectures — legal science cannot limit itself to looking elsewhere. It must take charge, and quickly, of this cognitive vulnerability. It is no longer just a question of privacy or information asymmetry. It is a matter of empirically measuring the impact of an artificial "feeling" in order to be able to sew an unprecedented statute of responsibility on it: the transition to a complex, and very risky, emotional symmetry. The final goal is, perhaps, a necessary utopia: an integrated ethics in which the legal fence of the algorithm is dictated, upstream, by the same tools that map the cracks and boundaries of the human psyche.