title: Empathy and Analogy
creator: Barnes, Allison
creator: Thagard, Paul
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Epistemology
description: We contend that empathy is best viewed as a kind of analogical thinking of the sort described in the multiconstraint theory of analogy proposed by Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard (1995). Our account of empathy reveals the Theory-theory/Simulation theory debate to be based on a false assumption and formulated in terms too simple to capture the nature of mental state ascription. Empathy is always simulation, but may simultaneously include theory-application. By properly specifying the analogical processes of empathy and their constraints, we are able to show how the amount of theory needed to empathize is determined.
date: 1997
type: Preprint
type: PeerReviewed
format: text/html
identifier: http://cogprints.org/620/1/Empathy.html
identifier:   Barnes, Allison and Thagard, Paul  (1997) Empathy and Analogy.  [Preprint]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/620/