creators_name: Barnes, Allison
creators_name: Thagard, Paul
type: preprint
datestamp: 1998-03-26
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:07
metadata_visibility: show
title: Empathy and Analogy
subjects: cog-psy
subjects: phil-epist
full_text_status: public
abstract: 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
date_type: published
refereed: TRUE
citation:   Barnes, Allison and Thagard, Paul  (1997) Empathy and Analogy.  [Preprint]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/620/1/Empathy.html