Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences

641 Pages·1999·2.09 MB·English

by  Hans Herbert Kögler (ed.)

Empathy and Agency
The Problem of Understanding in the Human
Sciences
edited by Hans Herbert Kögler University of North Florida Karsten R. Stueber
College of the Holy Cross
WESTVIEW PRESS A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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Copyright © 2000 by Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in 2000 in the United States of America by Westview Press, 5500
Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kingdom by
Westview Press, 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ
Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com Library of
Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Empathy and agency: the problem of
understanding in the human sciences / edited by Hans Herbert Kögler and
Karsten R. Stueber.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-9120-2 (hc). -- ISBN 0-8133-9119-9 (pb) 1. Psychology --
Philosophy. 2. Science and psychology. 3. Empathy. I. Kögler, Hans Herbert,
1960- . II. Stueber, Karsten R. BF64.E67 2000 128'.4 -- dc21 99-35722
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials
Z39.48-1984.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: Empathy, Simulation, and
Interpretation in the Philosophy of Social
1
Science,
Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten R. Stueber
1 Simulation and the Explanation of Action,
62
Robert M. Gordon
2 The Theory of Holistic Simulation:
Beyond Interpretivism and Postempiricism, 83
Georg Vielmetter
3 Imitation or the Internalization of Norms:
Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based
103
on the Wrong Choice?
Stephen Turner
4 Simulation and Epistemic Competence,
119
David Henderson and Terence Horgan
5 Understanding Other Minds and the
Problem of Rationality, 144
Karsten R. Stueber
6 Simulation Theory and the Verstehen
School:
163
A Wittgensteinian Approach,
Theodore R. Schatzki
7 From Simulation to Structural
Transposition:
A Diltheyan Critique of Empathy and Defense 181
of Verstehen,
Rudolf A. Makkreel
8 Empathy, Dialogical Self, and Reflexive
Interpretation: 194
The Symbolic Source of Simulation,
Hans Herbert Kögler
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9 The Importance of the Second
Person:
Interpretation, Practical Knowledge, 222
and Normative Attitudes,
James Bohman
10 The Object of Understanding,
243
Paul A. Roth
11 Reenactment as Critique of Logical
Analysis:
Wittgensteinian Themes in 270
Collingwood,
Simon Blackburn
References 289
About the Editors and Contributors 303
Index 305
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Preface
In philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, we have recently witnessed a
revived interest in empathy, or simulation, as a cognitive tool for understanding
others. By focusing on the question of how we gain knowledge of other minds,
and whether we use simulation/empathy or theory as a means for this task,
philosophy is rediscovering a topic that has been at the center of controversy in
the philosophy of social science. "Simulation," as presented in recent cognitive
psychology and philosophy of mind, is a challenge to the established orthodoxy
that the understanding of others is based on theory or rationality. Evidence about
the cognitive development of young children suggests that instead of using a
"theory" to predict and understand others, we rather imaginatively put ourselves
into the other's situation. In this vein, the role of emotions and motivations for
making sense of others is emphasized. Understanding human agency is thus not
the same as explaining how something in the material world occurs. This idea
dovetails well with the conception of empathic understanding, or Nacberleben
(reliving), of some paradigms in the philosophy of social science. In early
hermeneutic thought, "empathy" was construed as a special method of access to
historical and cultural phenomena due to the psychological similarity between
interpreter and interpretee. It has been taken to break the monopoly of
explanatory methods established by the natural sciences. Instead of just
explaining and constructing external phenomena, interpreters in the human and
social sciences "understand" the social or cultural world, that is, they relive and
reexperience its meaning.
Yet in light of the cognitive revolution, linguistic turn, and what we might call
"the unchallenged orthodoxy of the interpretive turn," philosophers of social
science from almost all traditions tend nowadays to be skeptical and negligent
about the role of empathy for understanding human agency. We believe that the
new and overwhelming evidence from cognitive psychology and the philosophy
of mind challenges the methodological status quo in the human and social
sciences. We have conceived this anthology in the belief that the contemporary
discussion justifies a renewed investigation of empathy within the realm of
philosophy of social science by taking into account the current arguments for
empathy/simulation in cognitive psychology and the philosophy of mind. At
stake are issues like the relation
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between everyday and social-scientific interpretation, the role of empathy or
simulation in understanding human agency, the scope and adequacy of
attributing theoretical or rational assumptions in the course of interpretation, and
the nature of rational and/or causal explanations in the human and social
sciences.
This anthology is intended to be accessible to a broad audience. In order to
facilitate this goal, the introduction outlines the main features of both the current
debate and the traditional debate about empathy's role for understanding human
agency. Our introduction will serve two purposes in particular. First, it will
provide a systematic survey of the most important debates that have shaped the
contemporary field of the philosophy of social science. We are focusing on the
debate among Collingwood, Dray, and Hempel about the function of laws in
social-scientific explanation, the controversy about rationality and relativism
triggered by Winch and MacIntyre, the debate between Schleiermacher, Dilthey,
and Gadamer on the empathetic or dialogical nature of hermeneutics, and on the
Erklären/ Verstehen debate in the social sciences. Second, the introduction will
clarify the importance of the simulation debate for the methodological problems
in the social sciences. We will point out many connections that exist between
earlier models of empathy and recent simulation theory, and discuss those
correspondences in light of their relevance for a methodology concerned with
understanding human agency.
The various contributions presented here will explore the role of empathy for
understanding agency from different perspectives. It is the editors' hope that such
"cooperation" among various philosophical traditions is beneficial to both the
philosophy of mind and the philosophy of social science, and that it will allow us
to get a precise understanding of our epistemic relation to other minds and
agents. The chapters in this book also show that the shared interest in simulation
(or empathy) as a method for interpretation has organically produced a
convergence of philosophical interest of formerly rather separated philosophical
fields. The methodological paradigms presented here include the philosophy of
mind, simulation theory, social theory, naturalized epistemology, Davidsonian
theory of meaning, Wittgensteinian, Diltheyan, and critical-hermeneutic
approaches to understanding, and normative-pragmatic and antirealist positions.
They thus encompass a wide range of methodological perspectives that are
relevant for the disciplines of cognitive psychology and cognitive science, for
sociology, anthropology, and history, and, of course, for all interested in the
philosophy of the human and social sciences.
Philosophical writing in general tends to be the result of intellectual cooperation
and conversation. This is even truer for Empathy and Agency: The Problem of
Understanding in the Human Sciences, which approaches contemporary
simulation theory from a variety of different perspectives in
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