This book analyzes the impact that large socio-economic inequalities have on how we relate to each other emotionally and intellectually. How, the question is, could these inequalities not influence the goods we aspire to or the content of what we imagine to be (or what could be) the case? How could they not influence our capacity to empathize with those who are either higher or lower on the socio-economic ladder? The book thus sets itself the task of proving that the (...) impact of inequality reaches far beyond measurable differences of income or capital. Inequalities have emotional impacts and influence our aspirational, imaginative, and empathic capacities. Further, the study suggests that feelings do not just passively register given inequalities but serve themselves as engines of social differentiation. This is particularly true of relative feelings such as envy, contempt, shame, or hatred that structure social relations and mark social distance and differentiation. The book sketches a relational theory of democracy that construes equality as a social relationship and thereby questions the strong focus most studies of inequality put on distributional questions. In a wide sense, questions of inequality should be tackled within a frame not just highlighting relative economic standing but also relative emotional standing. (shrink)

Can one have imaginative access to experiential perspectives vastly different from one’s own? Can one successfully imagine what it’s like to live a life very different from one’s own? These questions are particularly pressing in contemporary society as we try to bridge racial, ethnic, and gender divides. Yet philosophers have often expressed considerable pessimism in this regard. It is often thought that the gulf between vastly different experiential perspectives cannot be bridged. This chapter explores the case for this pessimism. Though (...) the case is often less implicit, the chapter identifies two different arguments that can be found in the literature: the Epistemic Arrogance argument and the Too Big a Gulf argument. Both arguments are found to be considerably weaker than is usually thought. But even if the case for pessimism is unsuccessful, discussion of that case suggests the importance of treading carefully in taking up imaginative explorations of different experiential perspectives. The chapter thus concludes with a cautionary note in this regard. (shrink)

Both Sartre and Kohut use the idea of conflict in a positive sense to explain how authentic relations and viable therapy are possible, although there are important differences between the two thinkers on this topic. For Kohut it will be shown that optimal frustration is conceived of as a mechanism through which the healthy child, or the well-managed patient, learns to react in a calming and loving way to internal drive demands. Concomitantly, this individual learns to cope with a world (...) that is obdurate, one that will thwart his desires. By contrast, in the authentic case the child for Sartre is taught to accept the gulf between him/herself and the adult. Positive conflict becomes something the child not only accepts but also enjoys as he/ she learns to cope enthusiastically in the face of his environment's inevitable obduracy. Sartre's sense of joy and volition will be shown to go beyond Kohut's more guarded optimism in the face of the challenge of contingency. The above ideas of both Sartre and Kohut will also be used to criticize views of therapy in which understanding and empathy on the part of the therapist are taken to be the sine qua non of the therapeutic process. (shrink)

In Search of Lost Culture: From Neuroimaging via Critical Neuroscience to Cultural Neuroscience – and back to Critique. The availability of new technologies for visualizing brain activity generated great expectations to identify the centers responsible for human action and behavior and to “reduce” all mental processes to neuronal states. Some scientists even called society to adapt to the new insights from brain research by giving up outdated concepts of autonomy and free will. This project spurred harsh critiques from philosophy, sociology, (...) and cultural studies, diagnosing the rise of a new phrenology. A critical neuroscience group took up these criticisms and pledged for a more nuanced reflection about the political, historical and ethical contexts and implications of current neuroscience and argued for an integration of societal concerns into the research agenda – rather similar to the agenda for responsible research of the EU. With the development of more sophisticated visualization strategies, new sub‐disciplines emerged, integrating sociocultural aspects into neuroimaging. Social and cultural neuroscience replaced overstated reductionist claims without leaving the overarching naturalist epistemology, but extending the ontological realm. New research objects such as empathy, religion or ‘Western’ vs. ‘East‐Asian’ attitudes of thinking started to populate the research domain. Especially cultural neuroscience was widely celebrated as new scientific bridge across the nature‐culture gulf. A closer look, however, reveals that this claim and the popular success of cultural neuroscience are based on a decisive lack of conceptual clarity. ‘Culture’ functions as fuzzy denominator for a broad range of social phenomena with unknown links to neurophysiological processes but visualized as brain states. Instead of implementing more reflexive forms of research, cultural neuroscience stabilizes problematic stereotypes and racist attitudes by an expansion of neuro‐culture. In light of this deflation of interdisciplinary cooperation a more radical critique of this ideology seems in place. (shrink)

During the last 42 years I have been a mediator in 48 countries, in some of them with success. One of the reasons for that success is that I have a certain skill: I've avoided any contact with journalists. For that reason it's with some trepidation that I enter this room and listen to the discussion today which was at such a high academic level and never touched reality.Let me start by posing some questions for you to consider. Are you (...) sure you know what Saddam Hussein stood for in the Gulf countries? I'm not thinking of anything we attribute to him but rather how he thought of it. Are you sure you know what the Serbian position was in the Yugoslavia conflict? Not the way others write it down but the way they thought it. Are you sure you know what Djakarta stood for in connection with East Timor? What were their goals? Do you know what is the meaning of N30 and A16? If you don't know what this N30 and A16 are, I don't think you live in this world. Do you know what it is and do you know what it means at the same time? There is absolutely no way reading the press for you to get behind any of the reasons why we have lousy media and that the media are major contributing factors to violence.So let me formulate it as a thesis: in a conflict you stand for something, you yearn for it but you have a feeling that there is something — whatever it may be — that makes it impossible for others to listen to it; you have a voice but they don't have an ear and whatever you say is twisted into unrecognition, and if you experience that over a period of let us say fifty years you may become tired and you may get the feeling that it doesn't matter the slightest, and you may just as well get violent because that seems to be the only language they understand. So I am saying that the major cause of violence is inattention to the subjective reality of the famous other. There is no other in the world. The construction of the other is: We are all human beings.We may not always like it but the Romans said it much more succinctly and much better than Habermas ever was able to say it: 'altera pars'. Listen to the other side. If you don't have that capacity you're lost. The psychological ability is called empathy. The people who know most about this are called actors, psychologists, sometimes religious people. It means the ability to get into the clothes of the other guy. You don't have to like him: empathy is not sympathy but you should understand his intellectual and emotional logic. (shrink)

The paper builds an argument about empathy, kinesthesia, choreography, and power as they were constituted in early eighteenth century France. It examines the conditions under which one body could claim to know what another body was feeling, using two sets of documents – philosophical examinations of perception and kinesthesia by Condillac and notations of dances published by Feuillet. Reading these documents intertextually, I postulate a kind of corporeal episteme that grounds how the body is constructed. And I endeavor to (...) situate this body within the colonial and expansionist politics of its historical moment. (shrink)

Eminent moral philosopher Michael Slote argues that care ethics presents an important challenge to other ethical traditions and that a philosophically developed care ethics should, and can, offer its own comprehensive view of the whole of morality. Taking inspiration from British moral sentimentalism and drawing on recent psychological literature on empathy, he shows that the use of that notion allows care ethics to develop its own sentimentalist account of respect, autonomy, social justice, and deontology. Furthermore, he argues that care (...) ethics gives a more persuasive account of these topics than theories offered by contemporary Kantian liberalism. The most philosophically rich and challenging exploration of the theory and practice of care to date, _The Ethics of Care and Empathy_ also shows the manifold connections that can be drawn between philosophical issues and leading ideas in the fields of psychology, education, and women's studies. (shrink)

The doctor-patient relationship is a crucial aspect of primary-care practice Research on associations between quality of care provision and burnout and empathy in a primary care setting could improve this relationship. Cross-sectional study of family physicians and nurses of twenty-two primary care centers in the health district of Lleida, Spain. Empathy and burnout were measured using the Jefferson Physician Empathy Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory, while quality of care delivery was evaluated using Quality Standard Indicator scores. (...) JPSE and MBI results were grouped into low, medium, and high scores to analyze associations with QSI scores and sociodemographic variables. The mean QSI score recorded for the family physicians and nurses was 665. Higher, albeit insignificant, QSI scores were observed for practitioners with high burnout. No differences were observed according to level of empathy. The differences with respect to sex, age, and area of practice were not significant. Practitioners with low empathy had higher QSI scores than those with high empathy while those with high burnout had higher scores than those with low burnout. Burnout and empathy did not significantly influence quality of care delivery scores in 22 primary care centers. More studies, however, are needed to investigate the unexpected trend observed that suggests that physicians and nurses with higher levels of burnout provide higher quality care. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 187-189, July 2022.

Persuasive social robots can influence human behavior through giving advice. The current study investigates whether references to prior discourse and signals of empathy make an advice-giving robot an even more effective persuader and whether participants follow the robot’s advice and drink even more water when the robot additionally uses these strategies. We recruited students and university staff for a lab-study in which three different robot personalities on the same robot type presented health-related information. In one condition, the robot gave (...) advice and referred to something mentioned earlier in the conversation (i.e., to dialog history), in another condition, the robot gave advice and used empathic signals, and in the third condition, the robot gave advice only. Our results show that participants drank significantly more when the advice-giving robot also used the persuasive strategies of empathy and references to dialog history than when the robot only gave advice. This study shows that both strategies increase the persuasiveness of the robot and makes it more influential. (shrink)

Empathy plays a central role in the history and contemporary study of ethics, interpersonal understanding, and the emotions, yet until now has been relatively underexplored. _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy_ is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting field and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the _Handbook_ is divided into six parts: Core issues History of empathy (...) class='Hi'>Empathy and understanding Empathy and morals Empathy in art and aesthetics Empathy and individual differences. Within these sections central topics and problems are examined, including: empathy and imagination; neuroscience; David Hume and Adam Smith; understanding; evolution; altruism; moral responsibility; art, aesthetics, and literature; gender; empathy and related disciplines such as anthropology. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, particularly ethics and philosophy of mind and psychology, the _Handbook_ will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as anthropology and social psychology. (shrink)

We discuss the social-epistemic aspects of Catherine Elgin’s theory of reflective equilibrium and understanding and argue that it yields an argument for the view that a crucial social-epistemic function of epistemic authorities is to foster understanding in their communities. We explore the competences that enable epistemic authorities to fulfil this role and argue that among them is an epistemic virtue we call “epistemic empathy”.

An under-examined aspect of human–robot interaction that warrants further exploration is whether robots should be permitted to influence a user’s behavior for that person’s own good. Yet an even more controversial practice could be on the horizon, which is allowing a robot to “nudge” a user’s behavior for the good of society. In this article, we examine the feasibility of creating companion robots that would seek to nurture a user’s empathy toward other human beings. As more and more computing (...) devices subtly and overtly influence human behavior, it is important to draw attention to whether it would be ethically appropriate for roboticists to pursue this type of design pathway. Our primary focus is on whether a companion robot could encourage humans to perform charitable acts; this design possibility illustrates the range of socially just actions that a robot could potentially elicit from a user and what the associated ethical concerns may be. (shrink)

This is a reply to Jesse Prinz and Paul Bloom’s skepticism about the moral importance of empathy. It concedes that empathy is spontaneously biased to individuals who are spatio-temporally close, as well as discriminatory in other ways, and incapable of accommodating large numbers of individuals. But it is argued that we could partly correct these shortcomings of empathy by a guidance of reason because empathy for others consists in imagining what they feel, and, importantly, such acts (...) of imagination can be voluntary – and, thus, under the influence of reflection – as well as automatic. Since empathizing with others motivates concern for their welfare, a reflectively justified empathy will lead to a likewise justified altruistic concern. In addition, we argue that such concern supports another central moral attitude, namely a sense of justice or fairness. (shrink)

The results of an exploratory study examining the role of trust in stakeholder satisfaction are reported. Customers, stockholders, and employees of financial institutions were surveyed to identify management behaviors that lead to stakeholder satisfaction. The factors critical to satisfaction across stakeholder groups are the timeliness of communication, the honesty and completeness of the information and the empathy and equity of treatment by management.

Rethinking Feminist Ethics bridges the gap between women theorists disenchanted with aspects of traditional theories that insist upon the need for some ethical principles. The book raises the question of whether the female conception of ethics based on care, trust and empathy can provide a realistic alternative to the male ethics based on duty and rule bound conception of ethics developed from Kant, Mill and Rawls. Koehn concludes that it cannot, showing how problems for respect of the individual arise (...) also in female ethics because it privileges the caregiver over the cared for. Drawing on Socrates' Crito , she shows how an ethic of dialogue can instill a critical respect for the view of the other and the ethical principles absent from the female ethic. (shrink)

In this article, I examine stigmatizing and especially patronizing attitudes towards others’ depression that people who are well-intentioned produce. The strategy of the article is to consider the social experience of depression through two separate subfields of philosophy: epistemic injustice and phenomenology. The solution that I propose is a phenomenological account of empathy. The empathetic attitude that I argue for involves actively listening to the depressed individual and taking their depression testimony as direct evidence. The article has been written (...) both for those who seek to better support neurodiverse people in their lives and for depressives (and other neurodivergents) themselves in order to provide them with a better account for advocating for themselves against social stigma. (shrink)

. The human brain combines empathy and imagination via the old brain which sets our destiny in the evolutionary scheme of things. This new understanding of cognition is an emergent phenomenon—basically an expressive ordering of reality as part of “a single natural system.” The holographic and subsymbolic paradigms suggest that we live in a contextual universe, one which we create and yet one in which we are required to adapt. The inadequacy of the new brain—specially the left hemisphere's rational (...) view of destiny—is replaced by a view of a new relatedness in reality in which human destiny comes from and depends upon the mutual interchange between the new brain and the old brain for the survival of what is significant to the whole systemic context in which we live. (shrink)

When Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, and other ethicists of caring draw the contrast between supposedly masculine and supposedly feminine moral thinking, they put such things as justice, autonomy, and rights together under the first rubric and such things as caring, responsibility for others, and connection together under the second. This division naturally leaves caring ethicists with the issue of how to deal with topics such as justice, autonomy, and rights, but it also leaves defenders of more traditional moral theories with (...) the problem of how to treat the sorts of issues that ethicists of caring raise. (shrink)

Most moral philosophers who have recently expressed sympathy with feminist or ‘care-based’ perspectives on ethical theory have thought that such perspectives can make valuable contributions to more comprehensive ethical theories. Few have thought that an ethics of care can offer a complete normative theory. However, Michael Slote is one of the ambitious few. In his recent book, The Ethics of Care and Empathy, he seeks to show that a care-based perspective can do a lot of service in first-order moral (...) and political theory as well as in metaethics. Here is a quick overview of the book's content: In Chapter 1, Slote explicates the notion of empathy that is central in his ethics of care, which he locates within the sentimentalist paradigm, stemming from philosophers such as Hume and Hutcheson. Slote's account of empathy and moral development draws substantially on work by the psychologist Martin Hoffman. Chapter 2 discusses care ethics and our obligation to help others, including both the near and the distant needy. Chapter 3 aims to show how the notion of empathy can further the case for deontology in ethics. Chapters 4 through 6 discuss the relation of care ethics to pivotal issues in political philosophy, such as autonomy, liberalism, social justice and rights. Slote maintains that autonomy …. (shrink)

Empathy is thought to play a key role in motivating prosocial behavior, guiding our preferences and behavioral responses, and providing the affective and motivational base for moral development. While these abilities have traditionally been examined using behavioral methods, recent work in evolutionary biology, developmental and cognitive neuroscience has begun to shed light on the neural circuitry that instantiate them. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the current knowledge in the field of affective neuroscience and provide an (...) integrative and comprehensive view of the computational mechanisms that underlie empathy. This framework is of general interest and relevance for theory as well as for assisting future research in the domains of affective developmental neuroscience and psychopathology. (shrink)

Apologies have long been considered an important social action in many languages for dealing with frictions of everyday interaction and restoring interpersonal harmony in response to an offense. Although there has been an increasing amount of research on apologies in non-Western languages, little research involves children. Japan is an interesting case in which to examine apologies. In particular, Japan has been called a “culture of apology“ in the sense that speakers often `apologize' (ayamaru) in a wide range of communicative contexts. (...) This article examines children's socialization to a culture of apology as evidenced by a large corpus of audiovisual recordings made over the last decade in households, playgrounds, and a preschool in Japan. In particular, it examines ways Japanese caregivers (e.g. parents, preschool teachers) use the expressions Gomen ne and Gomen-nasai ([I'm/We're] sorry) when addressing third parties, including not only other people (e.g. children's peers) but also a range of entities in the surround (e.g. animals, supernatural objects, objects in the environment such as a stone), and ways they prompt children to say these expressions to such third parties. This analysis suggests that apology situations are an important site through which children are socialized to empathy and relationships in the social world. It also examines ways children use these expressions when addressing peers and inanimate objects, and ways they prompt others including peers and even on occasion adults to say them. These findings suggest that while children deploy strategies in ways that reflect the socialization process, they also deploy them in ways that construct this process in creative ways. (shrink)

The extent to which individuals with a variety of cultural backgrounds differ in empathic responsiveness is unknown. This article describes the differences in trait empathy in one independent and one interdependent society (i.e., the US and Iran, respectively). The analysis of data collected from self-reported questionnaires answered by 326 adults indicated a significant difference in the cognitive component of empathy concerning participants’ affiliation to either egocentric or socio-centric society: Iranian participants with interdependent cultural norms, reported higher cognitive (...) class='Hi'>empathy compared to American participants who share independent cultural norms. In line with previous studies, gender differences were observed in all subscales of questionnaires, except the Empathy Quotient (EQ). Female participants demonstrated more empathy than males in both samples. Implications for understanding the cross-cultural differences of various components of empathy are discussed. (shrink)

It is clear a relational approach to the study of empathy is gaining traction across multiple disciplines. Both commentaries on “A Relational Framework for Integrating the Study of Empathy in Child...

In the past few decades, a growth in ethical consumerism has led brands to increasingly develop conscientiousness and depict ethical image at a corporate level. However, most of the research studying business ethics in the field of corporate brand management is either conceptual or has been empirically conducted in relation to goods/products contexts. This is surprising because corporate brands are more relevant in services contexts, because of the distinct nature of services and the key role that employees have in the (...) services sector. Accordingly, this article aims at empirically examining the effects of customer perceived ethicality in the context of corporate services brands. Based on data collected for eight service categories using a panel of 2179 customers, the hypothesized structural model is tested using path analysis. The results show that, in addition to a direct effect, customer perceived ethicality has a positive and indirect effect on customer loyalty, through the mediators of customer affective commitment and customer perceived quality. Further, employee empathy positively influences the impact of customer perceived ethicality on customer affective commitment, and customer loyalty positively impacts customer positive word-of-mouth. The first implication of these results is that corporate brand strategy needs to be aligned with human resources policies and practices if brands want to turn ethical strategies into employee behavior. Second, corporate brands should build more authentic communications grounded in their ethical beliefs and supported by evidence from actual employees. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze Alessandro Salice and Joona Taipale’s account of ‘group-directed empathy.’ I am highly sympathetic to Salice and Taipale’s account and intend this paper to be an endorsement of their project. However, I will argue that a more fine-grained account of group-directed empathy can be offered, and I seek to contribute to this discussion by outlining at least one way in which different types of group-directed empathy may be identified. I argue that while Salice (...) and Taipale are right to claim that an account of group-directed empathy requires a corresponding account of ‘collective bodiliness,’ there is an important form of collective bodiliness that their account does not fully incorporate, namely embodied interaction between others. I argue that a closer look at the perceivability of interactions between others offers a richer and more complete account of how we can empathetically perceive shared emotions between groups of people. (shrink)

Intelligent humanoid robots (IHRs) are becoming likely to be integrated into nursing practice. However, a proper integration of IHRs requires a detailed description and explanation of their essential capabilities, particularly regarding their competencies in replicating and portraying emotive functions such as empathy. Existing humanoid robots can exhibit rudimentary forms of empathy; as these machines slowly become commonplace in healthcare settings, they will be expected to express empathy as a natural function, rather than merely to portray artificial (...) class='Hi'>empathy as a replication of human empathy. This article works with a twofold purpose: firstly, to consider the impact of artificial empathy in nursing and, secondly, to describe the influence of Affective Developmental Robotics (ADR) in anticipation of the empathic behaviour presented by artificial humanoid robots. The ADR has demonstrated that it can be one means by which humanoid nurse robots can achieve expressions of more relatable artificial empathy. This will be one of the vital models for intelligent humanoid robots currently in nurse robot development for the healthcare industry. A discussion of IHRs demonstrating artificial empathy is critical to nursing practice today, particularly in healthcare settings dense with technology. (shrink)

The story of Turandot originated in the East. It was later transformed into the tale of a merciless princess, and adapted onto the stage. Puccini‟s Turandot has been one of the most frequently restaged operas in the West, but Turandot‟s unreasonable cruelty and abrupt change of character have raised a lot of questions. Since quite a few contemporary playwrights and directors try to interpret Turandot with elements of empathy, this paper analyse the versions of Turandot in the Eastern world (...) in discussion with the Western versions. (shrink)

In modern economics, the use of sympathy and empathy shows significant ambiguity. Sympathy has been used in two different senses. First, it refers to cases where the concern for others directly affects an individual's own welfare . Second, the term has served the purposes of welfare economics, where it is associated with interpersonal comparisons of the extended sympathy type, that is, comparisons between one's own situation in a social state and someone else's in a different social state . On (...) the other hand, empathy has been used interchangeably with sympathy either to render the idea of interdependent utility functions , or to convey the imaginative process of imagining oneself in someone else's place. (shrink)

The article develops an internalist justification of welfare ethics based on empathy. It takes up Hume’s and Schopenhauer’s internalistic (but not consistently developed) justification approach via empathy, but tries to solve three of their problems: 1. the varying strength of empathy depending on the proximity to the object of empathy, 2. the unclear metaethical foundation, 3. the absence of a quantitative model of empathy strength. 1. As a solution to the first problem, the article proposes (...) to limit the foundation of welfare ethics to certain types of empathy. 2. In response to the second problem, an internalistic metaethical conception of the justification of moral principles is outlined, the result of which is: The moral value of the well-being of persons is identical to the expected extent of (positive and negative) empathy arising from this well-being. 3. The contribution to the solution of the third problem and focus of the article is an empirical model of the (subject’s) expected extent of empathy depending on (an object’s) well-being. According to this model, the extent of empathy is not proportional to the expected empathy, but follows a concave function and is therefore prioritarian. Accordingly, the article provides a sketch of an internalist justification of prioritarianism. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s concepts shed light on the phenomenon of schizophrenia in at least three different ways: with a view to empathy, scientific explanation, or philosophical clarification. I consider two different “positive” wittgensteinian accounts―Campbell’s idea that delusions involve a mechanism of which different framework propositions are parts, Sass’ proposal that the schizophrenic patient can be described as a solipsist, and a Rhodes’ and Gipp’s account, where epistemic aspects of schizophrenia are explained as failures in the ordinary background of certainties. I argue (...) that none of them amounts to empathic-phenomenological understanding, but they provide examples of how philosophical concepts can contribute to scientific explanation, and to philosophical clarification respectively. (shrink)

This chapter is about issues in ethics and moral psychology that have been little explored by contemporary philosophers, ones that concern the advantages and disadvantages of two different kinds of empathy. Roughly, first type is what is sometimes called “other-focused” empathy, in which one reconstructs the thoughts and feelings that someone else has or would have. The second type, “self-focused” empathy, is the sort of emotional attitude someone adopts when she imagines how she would think or feel (...) were she in the other person’s place. Both are variants of empathy, for both have to do with having thoughts and feelings that are more apt, in the relevant senses, for someone else’s circumstances than one’s own. But they differ with respect to how much one makes substantial reference to oneself in order to elicit those thoughts and feelings. Some influential philosophers and psychologists have taken note of the distinction, but none have engaged the issues as thoroughly as did Zhu Xi and his students in twelfth century, largely in a series of commentaries and conversations that have yet to be translated into Western languages. The aim of this chapter is to explicate Zhu’s view about self- and other-focused empathy as he characterized them, reconstruct his arguments for his view, and then discuss some of the implications for ethics and moral psychology more generally. Zhu’s position in brief is that self-focused empathy is—for flawed moral agents like ourselves—a necessary and useful means by which we can better understand and care for others, but that ultimately it is the ladder we must kick away in favor of purely other-focused empathy. (shrink)