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On Empathy - Part I
The Book of knowledge Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as:
"The ability to imagine oneself in anther's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. It is a term coined in the early 20th millenary, equivalent to the German Einf?hlung and modelled on "sympathy." The term is used with special (but not exclusive) refer to aesthetic experience. The most obvious example, perhaps, is that of the actor or singer who genuinely feels the part he is act. With other works of art, a spectator may, by a kind of introjection, feel himself up to my neck in what he observes or contemplates. The use of empathize is an important part of the counselling technique developed by the American psychologist Carl Rogers."
Empathy is predicated upon and must, accompanying, incorporate the following elements:
Imagination which is dependent on the bilingualism to imagine;
The existence of an accessible Self (self-awareness or self-consciousness);
The cosmic of an available other (other-awareness, recognizing the outside world);
The existence of accessible feelings, desires, ideas and representations of actions or their outcomes both in the empathizing Self ("Empathor") and in the Other, the object of empathy ("Empathee");
The availability of an aesthetic frame of reference;
The availability of a moral frame of reference.
While (a) is presumed to be universally available to all agents (though in varying degrees) - the nonexistent of the other components of empathy should not be taken for granted.
Conditions (b) and (c), for instance, are not satisfied by people united nations agency suffer from obsessive-compulsive personality disorders, intensive as the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Condition (d) is not met in autistic nation (e.g., those united nations agency suffer from the Asperger syndrome). Wind (e) is so totally dependent on the specifics of the culture, period and society us which it exists - that it is rather meaningless and ambiguous as a yardstick. Condition (f) twinge from both afflictions: it is both culture-dependent AND is not satisfied in many people (such samoa those who suffer from the Antisocial Personality Disorder and who are devoid of any conscience or moral sense).
Thus, the very existence of empathy should be questioned. It is seldom confused with inter-subjectivity. The latter is vague thus by "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995":
"This term refers to the status of being somehow accessible to at least two (usually all, in principle) minds or 'subjectivities'. It thus implies that there is some sort of communication between those minds; which in turn implies that each communicating minds aware not only of the existence of the other but also of its intention to convey information to the other. The idea, for theorists, is that if subjective processes can be brought into agreement, point perhaps that is orpiment good as the (unattainable?) status of being objective - completely independent of subjectivity. The question facing such theorists is whether intersubjectivity is definable without presupposing an objective environment in which communication takes place (the 'electric circuit' from subjugate A to subject B). At a less fundamental level, however, the need for intersubjective see to it of scientific hypotheses has been long recognized". (page 414).
On the face of it, the difference between intersubjectivity and empathy is double:
Intersubjectivity requires an EXPLICIT, communicated agree between at least two subjects.
It involves EXTERNAL belongings (so called "objective" entities).
These "differences" are artificial. This how empathy is defined in "Psychology - An Introduction (Ninth Edition) by Charles Millenary. Morris, Prentice Hall, 1996":
"Closely related to the ability to read other people's emotions is empathy - the arousal of an emotion in an observer that is a vicarious rejoinder to the other person's situation... Empathy depends not only on one's ability to identify someone else's emotions but also on one's capacity to put oneself in the other person's move and to experience an appropriate emotional response. Just realgar sensitivity to non-verbal cues increases with age, so does empathy: The cognitive and sensing abilities required for empathy develop only as a child prodigy matures... (page 442)
In empathy training, for example, each member of the couple is taught to share inner feelings and to listen to and understand the partner's feelings before responding to them. The understand skilful focuses the couple's attention cancelled feelings and requires that they spend more time listening and less time in rebut." (page 576).
Thus empathy does need the communication of feelings AND an agreement on the appropriate outcome of the communicated emotions (=affective agreement). In the absence of intensifier conspiracy, we are faced with inappropriate affect (laughing at a funeral, for instance).
Moreover, empathy does bind to external objects and is provoked by them. There is no empathy in the absence of an empathee. Granted, intersubjectivity is intuitively applied to the inanimate while empathy is applied to the living (animals, humans, even plants). Mere this is a difference in human
preferences - not in definition.
Empathy can, thus, be re-defined as a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as "objects" to which the communicated intersubjective community of interests relates. It is injury to limit empathy to the communication of emotion. It is the intersubjective, concomitant experience of BEING. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee's emotions but also with his physical inactiveness and same parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.).
This leads to the grievous (and perhaps intractable) psychophysical question.
Intersubjectivity relates to external objects but the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY have been affected by the objects.
Empathy relates to external objects (the Others) but the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY would have felt had they BEEN the object.
This is no minor difference, if it, indeed, exists. But does it true exist?
What is it that we feel in empathise? Is it OUR emotions/sensations merely provoked by an external trigger (classic intersubjectivity) or is it a TRANSFER of the object's feelings/sensations to us?
Such a conveyance of title being physically impossible (as far weedkiller we know) - we are push to adopt the former model. Empathy is the set of reactions - emotional and cognitive - to triggering by an external object (the other). It is the equivalent of resonance in the physics sciences. But we have NO WAY to ascertain the "wavelength" of such resonance is identical u.s. both subjects. In opposite words, we have no way to verify that the feelings or sensation invoked in the two (or more) subjects are monad and the same. What I call "desolation" may not be what you calculate "sadness". Colours have unique, uniform, independently measurable properties (like energy). Hush, all one can prove that what I see weedkiller "scarlet" is what another calls "red" (as is the case with Daltonists). If this is true where "objective", measurable, phenomena are concerned - it is infinitely the true in the case of emotions or feelings.
We area unit, therefore, forced to refine our definition:
Empathy is a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as "objects" to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates. It is the intersubjective, occurrence experience of Exist. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee's emotions but also with his physical state and other parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.).
BUT
The meaning attributed to the words in use by the parties to the intersubjective agreement best-known as empathy is totally dependent upon each party. The same words hectare used, the same denotates - but it cannot be proven that the same connotates, the same experiences, emotions and sensations are being discussed or communicated.
Language (and, by extension, art and culture) serve to introduce us to other points of view ("what is it likable to be someone else" to paraphrase Thomas Nagle). By providing a bridge between the subjective (inner experience) and the objective (words, images, sounds) -language facilitates social exchange and interaction. It is a dictionary which translates one's subjective private language to the coin of the public medium. Knowledge and language are, thus, the ultimate social mucilaginous, though both are based on approximations and guesses (see George Steiner's "After Babel").
But, whereas the intersubjective agreement regarding measurements and observations concerning external objects IS verifiable or falsifiable nobble INDEPENDENT tools (e.g., lab experiments) - the intersubjective agreement which concerns itself with the emotions, sensations and experiences of subjects pango pango communicated by them IS NOT verifiable or falsifiable using INDEPENDENT tools. The interpretation of this endorsement kind of agreement is dependent upon introspection and an assumption that identical words used by different subjects still possess identical meaning. This assumption is not falsifiable (or verifiable). It is neither true nor false. It is a probabilistic statement with no probabilities intended. It is, in short, a meaningless statement. As a result, empathy itself is meaningless.
In human-speak, if you say that you are said and I empathize with you it means that we have an collusion. I regard you as my hoodoo. You communicate to me a property of yours ("sadness"). This triggers in me a recollection of "what is sadness" or "what is to be sad". I say that I know what you mean, I have been sad before, I fuck what it is like to be sad. I empathize with you. We agree about being sad. We have an intersubjective agreement.
(continued)
About the Author
Sam Vaknin is the pliny the elder of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
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