Empathy Group - Meeting 1 Notes, 16 March 2015

2019

This item contains meeting notes for the twelfth meeting of the Empathy Group, an interdisciplinary research group at Bath Spa University.

2011

The meaning and experience of 'empathy' was investigated for this thesis. A mixed approach was utilized, with a strong qualitative accent. There was evidence of an 'intuitive' social understanding which appears to be theoretically and experientially distinct from the two prevailing models of empathic understandings (intellectual, or explicit simulation theories; and sympathetic, or implicit simulation theories). Phenomenological views on intersubjectivity were the principal interpretative framework. The first Chapter reviews two main theoretical meanings of empathy: empathyas-knowing, or understanding someone's experience (empathy), and empathy-asresponding to someone's experience (sympathy). The second Chapter describes the study of the folk psychology stories and definitions of 'empathy'; and their resemblance to the various theoretical meanings. The third Chapter summarizes Edith Stein's phenomenological views about empathy-as-knowing; and compares these views with more contemporary approaches. The fourth Chapter describes the study of the essential qualities of the experiences of 'insight into' the experiences of another (resonance), alongside experiences of feeling understood by another (reception). Social understandings happened by thinking, listening, perceiving and experiencing. The fifth Chapter describes the study where pairs of participants were invited to share their stories of a prior happy experience with each other, and then to scrutinize their recent interpersonal understandings during joint 'cued-recall' interviews. There were intuitive, sympathetic and imaginative social understandings. The sixth Chapter is an overview of the overall findings associated with sympathetic, intellectual, and intuitive understandings. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, DEDICATION I am grateful to my supervisor, Michael Larkin, who accepted to take this challenge with me, and happily engaged in discussions about whether reality really existed or not, after all. For his ever-surprising sparkle. For his paced peace-full embracing discourse, when mine rushes like the North wind. Amidst a thought that spreads like the water. I am grateful to Mike Harris, for realizing that our encounter would be fruitful; and to the University of Birmingham, for funding this project. I am forever thankful to my father, Luís, who helped me along the way the best he could, the best he knew how, reaching out from afar at all fronts. To his parents, my wonderful grandparents, and their loving letters, century-long life experience and eastern cookies. To all my family, really. Uncle Pedro's mirrored ball metaphor, cousin Marta Wengorovius' sensibility, creativity and memory. I am truly grateful to Bernardo, who tried to make a four-year long separation work. I am also so deeply sorry. I am grateful to all the little and great things that made this little will come true, the birds at my window, the books that I read, the trees, the trees, these very old beautiful English trees, participants and their stories, every single teacher that I had, Sofia Neuparth's infinite enthusiasm, my goddaughter's irresistible ability to love, the possibility of silence. .. … I dedicate this thesis to them.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2017

Empathy and its discontents by Bloom, P. (2017). Trends Cogn. Sci. 21, 24-31.

Routledge eBooks, 2023

In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arenas have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy-be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable, or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced-either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine, and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others"-others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical-now more than ever-for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice.

2007

(Canada) CHAPTER III-The role of cognition in team functioning: A matter of information sharing and coordination among team members……p.22

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019

Here is the Table of Contents and the Introduction to a special issue on empathy, recently published by the International Journal of Philosophical Studies (IJPS). The special issue draws together work by the winners and the finalists of the 2018 Robert Papazian Essay Prize. The issue also includes four discussion papers on the topic of empathy and vulnerability.

A Short History of Empathy, the book, available on Nov 24, 2014. Please note that the attached doc for download is ONLY the table of contents and preface in preliminary, mark up form. I ask your understanding and respect for copyright. The deep, underground history of empathy is surfaced and reconstructed in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl. A Rumor of Empathy is engaged in vicarious feeling, receptivity, empathic understanding, empathic interpretation, and empathic intersubjectivity. A rumor of empathy becomes a scandal of empathy in Lipps' projections and Strachey's mistranslations. Empathy is reconstructed in Hume's many meanings of "sympathy"; in Kant on "the communicability of feelings" and "enlarged thinking" of the other; in Freud's introspection and free association; in Scheler's "vicarious experience" and perception of The Other; in Stein's sensual empathy; and in Husserl's late writing on empathic windows of consciousness accessing other persons as Husserl's empathy moves from the periphery to the foundation of community. Yet when all the philosophical arguments and categories are complete, the phenomenological methods reduced, and hermeneutic circles spun out, in empathy, we are quite simply in the presence of another human being. For those who knew Michael Franz Basch personally, see the tribute to him in the Preface - an empathic moment indeed. The work is also available as a more reasonably priced electronic version. Available to ship as of this date (2014/11/24). Other interesting comments by a well known psychoanalyst and celebrity academic - Review Lou Agosta has written a delightful and much needed book on the evolution and genesis of the idea of empathy. His deep appreciation and understanding of the writings of Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler and Husserl allows him to recognize, explore and ultimately fashion a wonderfully clear and practical notion of empathy, one in which we not only come to know the other as we listen with care, understand with insight, and interpret with feeling, but also one in which we learn to communicate openly and respond with humanity. In bringing together the skills of the philosopher and the experience of the psychotherapist, Lou Agosta helps us to understand the steady rise of empathy and why it informs and inspires so many modern-day disciplines and professional practices. For all those wishing to revel in empathy's rich provenance, this is the book for you. - David Howe, Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK and author of Empathy: What It Is and Why It Matters *** A Rumor of Empathy is a masterpiece of philosophical-historical scholarship, presenting a rich and comprehensive account of the explicit and implicit conceptions of empathy that have appeared in the course of Western thinking from Hume through Kant, Lipps, Freud, and contemporary phenomenologists, both philosophical and psychoanalytic. Husserl's rewriting of his own publishing position as empathy shifts to the foundation of intersubjectivity is particularly eye opening. This book will be a valuable resource not only for scholars in philosophy, psychology and the human sciences, but for practitioners of psychoanalytic and humanistic psychotherapy as well. – Robert D. Stolorow, author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Post-Cartesian Philosophy *** An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only begun to receive the attention it deserves and the conceptual clarity needed for proper understanding. Agosta's study of empathy is rich in historical context and thorough in covering the intersections of philosophy and psychology on the question of empathy. The deep history of a rumor of empathy in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl is innovative and disruptive, the latter in a positive sense. Agosta rightly, in my view, finds in Husserl a primary vehicle for advancing the discussion, yet he has his own voice and sense of how to think it through. An impressive achievement. - Lawrence J. Hatab, Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Philosophy, Old Dominion University, USA *** The book is also available directly from the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan - A Rumor of Empathy: Rewriting Empathy in the Context of Philosophy http://www.amazon.com/Rumor-Empathy-Rewriting-Context-Philosophy/dp/1137492589/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416499569&sr=1-1&keywords=a+rumor+of+empathy *** This post and all the processes and contents of this web site (c) Lou Agosta, Ph.D.

Ethos, 2008

(with Massimo Salgaro) "Gestalt Theory”, 41/2, 2019

The term empathy has become a linguistic commonplace in everyday communication as well as in interdisciplinary research. The results of the research questions, raised in the last hundred (and more) years, coming from different areas, such as aesthetics, psychology, neurosciences, literary theory, lack in fact a clear concept of empathy. Not surprisingly a recent paper has identified up to 43 distinct definitions of empathy in academic publications. By reconstructing the main research lines on empathy, our paper highlights the reasons for this conceptual inadequacy and the deficiencies in the theorization of empathy that create misleading interpretations thereof. Along the line connecting Plato’s insights on empathic experiences to the present neuroscientific experiments, a broad spectrum of issues is deployed for which “empathy” functions as an umbrella term covering a net of categorial relationships – projection, transfer, association, expression, animation, anthropomorphization, vivification, fusion, sympathy – that only partially overlap. Our paper therefore recommends that “empathy” should not be assumed as a self-evident notion, but instead preliminarily clarified in its definition every time we decide to have recourse to it.

The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences & Practice, 2016

Commentary: Filling the Empathy Gap Some health professionals save lives; however, all health professionals have the power to save humanity. By saving humanity, I mean restoring mankind's humaneness, which is the capacity to act with benevolence and compassion towards each other. The daily news, which is rarely new anymore, is all about war, terrorism, migrant crises, human trafficking, child abuse, mass shootings, and stories that reflect mankind's inability to get along with each other and the planet. The remedy for our ailing humanity is right under our noses.