Abstract
The concept of empathy has received much attention from philosophers and also from both cognitive and social psychologists. It has, however, been given widely conflicting definitions, with some taking it primarily as an epistemological notion and others as a social one. Recently, empathy has been closely associated with the simulationist approach to social cognition and, as such, it might be thought that the concept’s utility stands or falls with that of simulation itself. I suggest that this is a mistake. Approaching the question of what empathy is via the question of what it is for, I claim that empathy plays a distinctive epistemological role: it alone allows us to know how others feel. This is independent of the plausibility of simulationism more generally. With this in view I propose an inclusive definition of empathy, one likely consequence of which is that empathy is not a natural kind. It follows that, pace a number of empathy researchers, certain experimental paradigms tell us not about the nature of empathy but about certain ways in which empathy can be achieved. I end by briefly speculating that empathy, so conceived, may also play a distinctive social role, enabling what I term ‘transparent fellow-feeling’.
Highlights
It is a commonplace to point out that while research on empathy is burgeoning, there is little agreement amongst empathy researchers about what it is (Batson 2009; Goldman 2011)
I hope, to offer an account that combines the merits of being reasonably close to common usage of the term, of making explicit a good deal of what various theorists have wanted to say about empathy and its role in our lives, and of resisting the temptation to suppose that the term just picks out a number of phenomena whose sole uniting principle is the fact that they have been dubbed ‘empathy’
That is, ‘empathy’ ought to pick out some phenomenon not picked out by some other well-understood term. This in turn suggests a method: an account of empathy will ideally be one that shows it to make a distinctive contribution to our lives
Summary
It is a commonplace to point out that while research on empathy is burgeoning, there is little agreement amongst empathy researchers about what it is (Batson 2009; Goldman 2011). I hope, to offer an account that combines the merits of being reasonably close to common usage of the term, of making explicit a good deal of what various theorists have wanted to say about empathy and its role in our lives, and of resisting the temptation to suppose that the term just picks out a number of phenomena whose sole uniting principle is the fact that they have been dubbed ‘empathy’ Such a broad position would deprive the notion of empathy of much of its value. This evolutionary question will not be my focus since, with respect to empathy, it is far from clear that there is currently evidence sufficient to support one hypothesis over Another (De Vignemont and Singer 2006) and, perhaps more importantly, as I will argue, there is reason to suppose that empathy is an epistemic rather than a psychological phenomenon and so not straightforwardly open to evolutionary explanation. I end, in Sect. 4, with the suggestion that empathy’s distinctive epistemological achievement may serve a broader social purpose, enabling what I term ‘transparent fellow feeling’
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