Abstract
In this commentary on Michael Slote’s paper “The Many Faces of Empathy,” I assess the ways in which his theory of empathy aligns with simulation theory, as well as the problems that he needs to address because of this. Overall, I present three problems that need to be addressed: (1) How do we know that we have caught the other’s emotion and not merely reacted on our own; (2) What exactly is it about the other’s emotion or attitude that I am mimicking and catching; and (3) Does empathy provide us with objective or subjective ethical knowledge?
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Notes
The simulation-and-projection involved in ST is not meant to be a conscious inference or analogy, but rather a subconscious process that occurs automatically when we perceive others.
In fact, this is also why some philosophers have argued that the simulation-and-projection view of empathy is not really empathy at all, but rather emotional contagion. The term “empathy” should be reserved for the genuine experience of the other as another subject. This, however, is a much longer discussion to be had elsewhere. For now, it is not worth entering into an argument over terms, so contagion empathy can be seen as synonymous with empathy.
There are a number of critiques raised against simulation-and-projection approaches, both historically and contemporarily. Scheler argues that empathy is “true emotional identification,” while ST approaches—such as the one presented by Theodore Lipps—are merely explanations of emotional contagion (Scheler 1954). Edith Stein accused ST approaches as having a discrepancy between “the phenomenon to be explained and that actually explained” (Stein 1989, 23). Contemporary philosophers Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have also pointed out several objections that can be raised against ST approaches, both together (2012), and separately (Gallagher 2012, 370; Zahavi 2014, 106–107).
This makes sense, since we can never have a first-person experience of the other’s experiences without being the other. All we directly experience of the other is the other’s body.
It is worth noting that Slote does claim that contagion empathy “puts us in touch with what people believe and know about the world” (Slote 8). This makes it seem as if empathy does allow us to understand the mental states of the other. If this is his view, then he will need to answer the problems that arise for ST as a theory of understanding other minds.
Perhaps Slote could argue that the moral attitude is necessarily connected to the intentionality of an action, such that the simulation of the intention necessarily leads one to the same moral attitude. If this were the case, then simulating the intentional action of giving to the poor would necessarily make one feel warmhearted about giving to the poor. This seems to be supported when Slote says, “It is at the very least a priori and necessary that moral goodness consists of being generally warmhearted, or, as we may prefer to say, caring, toward other people (or sentient beings generally)” (Slote 7). However, this view would still require a lot of additional support and leads to another problem concerning whether moral attitudes and moral judgments are objective in this way, which is addressed in the following section.
Slote also refers to what we learn about the world through empathizing with others as “facts about the world that… lie beyond and are independent of the other minds we empathize with” (Slote 2). This seems to imply that the information gained through empathy is objective.
References
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Hardy, C. Three Problems for Contagion Empathy. Philosophia 45, 895–901 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9716-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9716-9