The structure of empathy

Journal of Moral Philosophy

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 99-116

  Deonna, Julien A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

Emotion; Empathy; Philosophy; Psychology; Simulation

Indexed keywords

EID: 64249102562     PISSN: 17404681     EISSN: 17455243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1740468107077385     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. For the notion of 'direction of fit', see Elizabeth M. Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), sections 2 and 32
2. and John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 7
3. For an account of empathy in which this feature figures centrally, see Elliot Sober and David S. Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution of Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 234
4. It should be made clear in particular that empathy as construed here has nothing to do with a connotation that the term has in its more ordinary usage. People sometimes say that they empathize with A, meaning that they understand the emotional situation in which A finds herself and feel sorry for A. I follow here the common trend in the technical discussions on the phenomenon of empathy which ignores the 'compassion' connotation that the term has, and which is ordinarily associated with the phenomenon of sympathy. See, for example, Peter Goldie, 'Understanding Other People's Emotions', Mind and Language 14.4 (1999), pp. 394-423
5. Goldie, 'Understanding Other People's Emotions', pp. 408ff, explicitly defends this model of empathy
6. Richard Wollheim, Painting as Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), pp. 100ff
7. Kendal Walton, Mimesis and Make-believe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 300ff
8. and Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 150ff, appear to use this model to describe identification, although it is not clear to me how they distinguish the latter phenomenon from empathy
9. In fact, distinguishing between target, cause, formal object and aspect of the emotions when examining their objects is only a first step in the possible relevant distinctions that might be brought to bear on the discussion. One can distinguish between the proximal target and the distal target, between the illusory target and the real target, etc. See Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), ch. 5, for a full layout of the complexities associated with the objects of the emotions
10. The early and best-known formulators and advocates of simulation theory are Robert M. Gordon, e.g., 'Folk Psychology as Simulation', Mind and Language 1 (1986), pp. 158-71
11. '"Radical" Simulationism', in P. Carruthers and P.K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 11-21
12. 'Simulation and the Explanation of Action', in H. Kölger and K. Stueber (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences (Boulder: Westview, 2000), pp. 62-82
13. Alvin A. Goldman, e.g., 'Interpretation Psychologized', Mind and Language 4 (1989), pp. 161-85
14. 'In Defense of the Simulation Theory', Mind and Language 7 (1992), pp. 104-19
15. Jane B. Heal, e.g., 'Replication and Functionalism', in J. Butterfield (ed.), Language, Mind and Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 135-50
16. 'Co-cognition and Off-line Simulation: Two Ways of Understanding the Simulation Approach', Mind and Language 13 (1998), pp. 477-98
17. 'Other Minds, Rationality and Analogy', Aristotelian Society Supplement 74 (2000), pp. 1-19
18. and Gregory Currie, e.g., 'Imagination and Simulation', in M. Davies and T. Stone (eds.), Mental Simulation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), pp. 151-69
19. Goldie in his 'Understanding Other People's Emotions', pp. 404-408, makes the same point, although our accounts of identification differ
20. See also Frederic Adams, 'Empathy, Neural Imaging and the Theory versus Simulation Debate', Mind and Language 16 (2001), pp. 368-92
21. who takes issue with Ian Ravenscroft on whether what I call emotional contagion should count as a form of empathy (Ian Ravenscroft, 'What it is Like to be Someone Else? Simulation and Empathy', Ratio 11 [1998], pp. 170-85)
22. See Adam Morton, The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology as Ethics (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 162-64, for excellent examples of ordinary cases of perceptions of emotions where it makes sense to say that the emotion perceived is 'in the air', rather than belonging to anyone in particular
23. Here is how Bill Brewer, drawing on the literature on shared attention and imitation (see, e.g., Andrew Meltzoff and M.K. Moore, 'Infants' Understanding of People and Things: Form Body Imitation to Folk Psychology', in J.L. Bermúdez, A. Marcel and N. Eilan [eds.], The Body and the Self [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], pp. 43-69), describes this process of triangulation: '...the child learns simultaneously to categorize behaviour of just this type, thought while performing some appropriate exemplar, and to recognize various items as eliciting behaviour of that type in him. Thus, as his response develops into one of genuinely feeling afraid of the relevant worldly phenomena, say, he also acquires a determinate identification of his, now expressive, behaviour in terms of which the feeling is itself to be individuated'
24. Cf. Bill Brewer, 'Emotions and Other Minds', in P. Goldie (ed.), Understanding Emotions: Mind and Morals (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), p. 30, original emphasis