Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Being better at knowing oneself and others

Ophelia Deroy (SAS, London)

06 May 2015 | 17:00 | Seminari de Filosofia UB

This talk will focus on a specific kind of knowledge of others' mind - i.e.

the empathetic grasp of someone's emotions, usually referred to as

'empathy'. Most definitions of empathy converge in considering that having

empathy for someone’s emotional state E means being in an emotional state E*

which is (i) relevantly similar to E (ii) caused by the occurrence of E and

(iii) ascribed to the other (e.g. De Vignemont & Jacob, 2012; Goldman,

2013). The mechanisms behind the causation and ascription conditions might

still be controversial, but nobody doubts that they will be found by

studying cases which satisfy the similarity condition. In this talk, i will

argue that the insistence on similarity is misguided, and suggest a better

account based on the importance of individual differences observed in the

aptitude for empathy and the relation between being better at knowing

oneself and knowing others's emotions.

Background bibliography

De Vignemont, F., & Jacob, P. (2012). What Is It like to Feel Another’s

Pain?. Philosophy of science, 79(2), 295-316.

Goldman, A. (2013). Joint ventures. Oxford: OUP.