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WILL THE REAL EMPATHY PLEASE STAND UP? A CASE FOR A NARROW CONCEPTUALIZATION
Author(s) -
COPLAN AMY
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2011.00056.x
Subject(s) - empathy , conceptualization , normative , psychology , perspective (graphical) , situated , imitation , simulation theory of empathy , cognitive psychology , epistemology , process (computing) , perspective taking , social psychology , cognitive science , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , operating system
abstract A longstanding problem with the study of empathy is the lack of a clear and agreed upon definition. A trend in the recent literature is to respond to this problem by advancing a broad and all‐encompassing view of empathy that applies to myriad processes ranging from mimicry and imitation to high‐level perspective taking. I argue that this response takes us in the wrong direction and that what we need in order to better understand empathy is a narrower conceptualization, not a broader one. I propose that empathy be conceptualized as a complex, imaginative process through which an observer simulates another person's situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other differentiation. I defend my view through an examination of three processes: emotional contagion, a process of self‐oriented perspective taking that I call “pseudo‐empathy,” and empathy proper. Drawing on recent findings in social neuroscience, I highlight the differences among these processes and discuss conceptual, empirical, and normative reasons for keeping them theoretically and conceptually distinct.