I always feel humbled by your videos realizing all that I thought I understood is merely a scratching of the surface of understanding.

I love the challenge you pose to STEM and the cognitive sciences to value more highly than they do the philosophic traditions like phenomenology. Indeed your entire project on the Overthink is so invaluable in this sense.

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

Thank you!!

Edith Stein's dissertation on Empathy/Enfühlung included a section on ethics - which she, due to lack of financial resources, excluded from the published version. Anyway, she also wrote - perhaps it was in her «Contributions to Psychology and Humaniora as sciences» or may be even in her «A Research [Untersuchung] Concerning the State» - that even the dictator (or psychopath) needs the skill of empathy, in order to really screw his/her subjects. Anyway a big ♥️ for lifting up Stein. And I really hope you publish your own contribution to the topic of empathy! 🙏

Luv the inclusion of noting your value in word origins and consistently demonstrating how that comprehension helps form your phenomenology. Thanks for sharing.

I always enjoy your videos. You are so eloquent and clear!

Ellie Anderson, Your videos are pure gold, the perfect balance between precision and clarity. I subscribed to the channel and will follow you. enlightening that empathy is an aesthetic matter .... thank you❤

WOW! Brilliant discussion, Thank You Dr. Ellie Anderson for your careful examination. I must admit I will need to watch again and allow some time between points to best benefit from this video. I only took one introductory philosophy course in college, and I Loved it dearly but my major teachings on empathy came through my psychology courses. I love how you point how the different ideas of the roles of, Imagination versus intellectual cognition, in different theories. I, "Imagine" that when I, "Imagine" how another may feel or think about something, that I am, at least attempting, to go past or beyond, maybe even disregard, what I may expect or have been taught to expect ... about the information I'm being presented to work with and am instead .... hum ... "Allowing"? ... something not overly tainted with my own expectations??? .... I wonder IF we can ever Not be overly tainted with our own expectations of how we "Think" another is feeling? Versus using what I have been taught, (all those statistical averages I learned in college, oh my!) as well as what have experienced from my real 64 years of interacting with not just others But Clients who paid me to dig deep into what they were really thinking and feeling. What I tend to think, at this point, is ... perhaps, Perhaps, I use both imagination and cognition ... and. I hope I I do a good job of helping, another, get across ... what I need to know to help them (as an LMHC) ... when not dealing with a client ... I still only know this ... I do my best to try to understand another person ... even those who seem hard to understand ... well I should not say, "understand" in this comment because we are speaking of empathizing ... which shows I lean toward feeling we best understand when we can empathize ... and I feel this is important to helping each other fit into what can seem like a place were many people feel left out. .....I best stop now before I go too deep. Love & Peace to All

Thank you for this video. As a psychotherapist and social worker, I'm fascinated by phenomenological understandings of empathy and embodied experience and what they have to teach us.

Great overview! Thank you!

This was a brilliant mini lecture!

Great work, keep it up!

Great lectures🦋💕

Love this video. Thank you!!

When the philosopher ( or writer ) cited here has the dates attached it helps one understand a proper context. Great work. EMPATHY IS AESTHETIC well said ! Hallelujah.

Three questions -- • Isn't the ego-self to some extent a protracted empathetic projection based on our own interoceptive sense of our bodies combined with our immediate access to the inner conversation of our thoughts? • If this is the case, does the experience of empathy involve not a separation of my ego and the other's, but rather an immediate (though temporary) substitution of my sense of their's for my sense of my own(both being fallible, in their own way). • If I am experiencing intense self-contempt, what does the person empathizing with me experience?

@weareasone7409

Жыл бұрын

Excellent questions ... I hope someone with more philosophical knowledge address them ... But, I would also be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on these questions.

I thought this was a great, nuanced vid! I think empathy is moral because it requires effort, and is not always beneficial for the individual. I would define it as love regardless of circumstance or situation, and that it is diametrically separate from 'simulating emotional states'. I mean that in respect, because I have not gone through the reading, though I will check out Edith Stein. Thank you for the interesting analysis!

your lectures are gold even that its a little bit hard for me i enjoy learning from it, i wish if you would make some lectures for beginners 😇🙏🏻

Just thoughts as they come to me: The empathy that’s been popularized has come to be, from my perspective, pathological empathy in many cases. Where one, to their own detriment, puts themselves in the same or similar condition as the one for which Empathy is offered, thereby on the one hand creating a social dynamic of shared suffering, but on the other hand, multiplying the number of cases for which help is needed. I’m not saying all people who practice Empathy as described, do this. But some do. I recall in nursing school, for example, in a class, that adolescent girls with anorexia were NOT to be together because the anorexia would spread. It was something like that. If that was Empathy, or some kind of group-think phenomenon, as when a crowd riots, then it seems to me to be pathological, because the number of people harmed is increased. I could be wrong though. Perhaps I misunderstood that class all those years ago. It’s just that this talk reminded me of it. But I think the general point is that Empathy can be seen as that which helps with social bonds and bonding. As when male soldiers won’t leave a buddy behind who had been wounded, and can no longer move under their own power due to injury. The able bodied soldier puts himself in harm’s way to save the life of another, showing that the other is valued to the point of risking lives for. Obviously, if we go to far, everyone dies, or ends up injured. Moreover, doing this has its time and place. You wouldn’t go and risk your life when it’s not necessary as there are other ways to show camaraderie. And this shared sufferage has a Christian spin where people who suffer the chastisement of being Christian suffer together with Christ. And so, I’ve seen some Christian, purposefully get into situations so that they can say, as a badge of honor and pride, I suffered for his name sake. It’s kind of moral grand standing if you ask me, which is ironically immoral by many. The left do it too, this moral grand standing. And it has the effect of solidifying which group you stand with and what one is for or against. But maybe I’ve stretched the meaning of Empathy that deviates from this post. Husserl is just describing what’s happening as phenomenology is descriptive in its method, and so not explanatory as science attempts to be. So, to be clear on what Empathy is, are you saying that it’s that structure that allows for one ego, x, to grasp, sense or detect , as an inner horizon, the 1st person perspective of another ego, y? That is, if y is the appearing noema, then Empathy is the ability to sense or detect the inner horizon of that presenting profile? Does that make sense? I’m new to phenomenology, and am going through Don Idhe’s intro to phenomenology for reference.

This helps explain a paper from my Planning Theory course titled “Kindness in Planning” by John Forester. Empathy is the feeling that generates an intentional Compassion towards suffering, but the moral character of compassion is only made real through the symbolic act of kindness taken effectively.

Concise - nice! I’m wondering if dualism’s ghost is hiding in lots of nooks & crannies🤔 Seems empathy isn’t needed to behave ethically at all, and I know first hand how it can lead me astray. I think of stories and vicarious experiences. Ken Burns’ PBS series on The Civil War comes to mind, and using the same techniques can generate empathy for any side in any conflict - lonely letters home, loved ones dying, soldiers and civilians being injured, etc.

Great video - interesting channel. I may experience another as in sharing a smile as a sense of unity with the other where the smile arises naturally and without thought. It is the pleasure of connection, a sense of an immediate knowing of the other - often a stranger in a chance meeting. I would say in this case there is the consciousness that we are bound to and to which we both belong and the smile is a moment of recognition. So, here, I would not say it is empathetic as empathy is about the other whereas what I am alluding to is where there is no other.

What about John Rawls' A Theory of Justice veil of ignorance thought experiment ? According to him empathy does help in creating a more just society for everyone I was hoping to know your opinion on that

So glad the KZread lords sent yr channel my way. Excited to dive in.

@olddecimal2736

6 ай бұрын

Immediately found yr delivery accessible and energetic. Thank you

I was a bit lost in the podcast episode, I believe this lecture has some great points, so thank you.. Empathy at its best (according to prof Bloom)really shows us that "we are not special". However proponents of some noble cause might use it to show that their cause is actually quite special and they might do so in quite graphic ways. So that we want to make a contribution for it to end... I think people against empathy really have a problem with this manipulation. Husserl's claim really summarizes the point... "empathy" is actually a cognitive faculty so why people against empathy would have a problem with that to go on to distinguish emotional and cognitive empathy? Prof Bloom I think emphasizes people's capacity and role in the turn of events. People of different intellectual background and financial capacity really should provide genuine approach to attack a problem rather than gather around images and stories tapping into our common feelings. Turning to phenomenology to question empathy's roots is quite a swift move, again great lecture.

Love the video! But I am curious about the term "sympathy" that is used, for example, by Adam Smith in A Theory of Moral Sentiments. It seems to me the term empathy is related to that term. So couldn't the term be a little older? And how does it relate to that tradition? Just curious.

@Magihyun

Жыл бұрын

empathy is natural for people who have moral values, you just feel bad when someone (close to you) does. Sympathy is fake, you feel sympathy for someone, but you don't FEEL the feeling, you just kinda understand their pain.

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

"Sympathy" has been around since the Renaissance, and the etymology is 'to feel with.' Empathy, as noted in the video, is coined in 1909 as a translation of Einfühlung and the etymology is 'to feel into.'

It creates a double empathy gap because while people can empathise in one group they struggle to empathise and understand other groups or people that are different to them. They mistakenly think that everyone is like them when they aren’t

I wrote my phil dissertation on empathy, the brain, and aesthetics :)

@bobbyrobles358

8 ай бұрын

Wait seriously?? That’s so cool! I’m currently writing my masters thesis on a phenomenological framework for neuroaesthetics and plan on writing a chapter on empathy

I'd love it if you did a video on Henry. His "primacy of life" approach I think brings interesting thoughts to the table on an issue like this. He underscores affectivity ("life feeling itself") rather than cogniton which, as a means of access to the Other, seems to solve the problem of having to read minds.

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

Could be fun! Both Dr. Anderson and Peña-Guzmán have written or spoken about Henry in scholarly contexts

@fede2

Жыл бұрын

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy I had an inkling. Lol. Since they both center on phenomenology.

This is really interesting when I saw the tittle I first thought of Adam smiths theory of moral sentiment. In that book he centers morality around sympathy. It’s very interesting to learn that the word empathy didn’t exist in his day because the way he uses sympathy more closely aligns with the way we use empathy today. The process of this video seems to kinda build up to the conclusion that smith takes as his starting assumption. For him empathy simply exists out of the social nature of humans and lays the foundation for morality through our ability to perceive others. Our moral feelings come from and ability to empathize with ourselves as if we were another person.

Ex machina is an interesting example. Disturbing movie from a number of prospective. The main theme is the Turing Test, to see if a robot can fake being human. I would think, more specifically, if it could invoke empathy in a human maybe. But this seems to go to the German interpretation of empathy relating to "object". I just wonder how movies/stories stand up to the Turing Test. It is a lie, or rather a subjective object of the artist, it is that image on the cave wall at best, maybe best defined as object. It seems a test by the object to gauge emotions of the subject. Is lack of empathy one of the main definitions of a psychopath? Looking forward to reading Stein's book.

I find this “direct perception” theory of empathy (such as Edith Stein’s views on empathy) in contrast to both ‘simulation-theory’ and ‘theory-theory’ incredibly fascinating. However, are there any good philosophical reasons or scientific evidence to accept it?

Is there a clear line between dealing with inanimate matter in physics and empathising with the animate?

13:04 this is super interesting because i have a lot to do with people on the autism spectrum and know some of them are very empathetic to their plants or stuffies, so far that they need to know they feel loved and cared for or otherwise they are in emotional distress. Maybe this is different for neurotypical vs neurodiverse people, i would love to actually see this perspective in a philosophicaö context.

If we perceive someone else experiencing an emotion (they’re upset or happy or something) as their own experience doesn’t that presuppose a theory of empathy? Is that what gussets was saying?

very interesting that we didn't have the word empathy in european societies until the late 1800s / early 1900s, interested to hear if/how we thought of the concept before that time! it's so difficult to imagine a world without the term 'empathy', feels like we must've just used other words for it, even if it was something as simple as quoting leviticus 19:18 'love your neighbour as yourself' or matthew 7:12 'treat others as you want them to treat you ' or something like that. but perhaps those ideas don't translate onto our modern concept of empathy, i haven't thought too much about it

Körper is dominant in contemporary German, leaving Leib mostly to literature or figures of speech, such as "Leib und Seele" or "am eigenen Leib spüren". I guess this reflects the cultural dominance of science or the scientistic point of view. The media always refers to the body objectively. Perhaps it's also because Germans nowadays take their cue from the Anglophone world, but that's another story...

Love this argument as it accounts for the new ways that our embodied conscious is interacting with and frequently becoming data. Deprioritizing a recognition of other consciousness means that subjects on screen are viewed as ostensibly human (not me with my anime pfp :p) which I think is profoundly useful in interrogating the effect that TV social media and other screen based content can have on the health of the body both as an organism as a site of consciousness (for better and for worse!) excellent video imo

I think empathy would work in situations where you know a person very well for example your best friend, you already know what she's thinking or how she may react. In case of strangers it's hard unless you talk to them for some time for example a homeless person in downtown LA if you see them on the street you can hardly tell..

@thoughtiana222

Жыл бұрын

I had an experience where I met someone who I later found out was a narcissist. In that first meeting, he seemed normal on the surface, and our exchanges were also seemingly normal, but I was extremely on edge, closed off, and even physically cold around him. I thought I was just anxious or something, but when I found out later that he was someone who lacked empathy, my overwhelming physical & mental responses all clicked. So in this way I think intuition and empathy are actually quite closely related, and if you’re in tune with yourself & your feelings (I was not at the time), you can read others accurately.

@syedaleemuddin6804

Жыл бұрын

@Tatiana Safarian yes to me a Narcissist is OK because I am not here to judge him. I would use him in the best way possible to get my things done and leave him alone. Who knows maybe a few years down the line he is no more that guy. I feel that people do change their lives as well as their characters. Some thing I already saw in my life happening to people..

Empathy can be seen as a perception or as an emotional response, that could be effortlessly or naturally done. However, it has limitations as a moral behavior. I prefer to think more of a Cognitive Empathy instead of only empathy. In terms of meaningful dialogue, Cognitive Empathy known as Alterity can improve de process of understanding the Other. I think in that sense CE could be realized as a moral behavior that is not merely a response but a meaningful way to actively achieve a more humane life.

Seems as many argue that empathy is some sort of interacting between the feeler of the empathy and the object of the empathy (the other). I perceive it as imaginative, and mostly about making other individuals everyday and moments more convenient, by lessening hurts and inconveniences, that i know would affect me negatively if i were to face by the same. So its an imaginative process within myself, based on my experience, in fact the object of the empathy will always be an experience of my consciousness. I will have to make assumptions, and i would not feel comfortable causing pain on another humans body or mind, even knowing that individual might not be able to detect the pain for some individual shortcoming in their consciousness or body. If the action is destructive or hurtful or damaging in my mind, that is sufficient. Therefore i also believe empathy is very connected to creativity and intellect. And people numb to themselves, will be numb to other. It is not a moral choice to me, since it is based in the involuntary mass of images and feelings that is my rich imagination. Edit: Interesting lecture, thank you for your hard work and precise explanations.

1) The fact that cognitive sciences are still completely based on a representational conception of experience is a testament to how ridiculously ideological can the academic world be in embracing (old*) "philosophy of mind", the analytic-friendly (= physicalism friendly) study of experience through the means of name-dropping ("theory theory"), naive representationalism and reducing every human experience to some propositional form in plain English; 2) Phenomenology is the only serious way to engage with the problems of experience; 3) Empathy is amoral like every other emotion; morality is either rational or it isn't, it's just preference, arbitrariness, caprice; and a rational morality is either deontological (Kantian) or it is hypothetical and if it is hypothetical it is heteronomous (it allows something else but the freedom of the moral agent to be the ground of the moral choice; it excludes the agency and hence the agent, and makes the moral act just compliance with some heterogeneous dispositions). *People in the field of Philosophy of mind, and cognitive sciences are experiencing a decade now of trasformative efforts which can basically be summarized as "slowly converting to phenomenology": 4E cognition is just Edmund Husserl but translated in English and expressed in a simpler language with a strong sympathy for Merleau-Ponty.

We mos-def need the empathy, dear Ellie! At least the empathy for oneself. The rest is immaterial anyway. ;)

Hey ,could you help me with the role of empathy in the origin of art its response and appreciation

I’m curious why Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit was named as such a century prior to the establishment of the field

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

Hegel used it in a different way, as a reference to the science of the experience of consciousness. Then "phenomenology" comes to have a technical meaning and specific methodologies with Husserl

We evolved empathy, therefore we need empathy.

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-naturalistic-fallacy/#:~:text=The%20naturalistic%20fallacy%20is%20an,done%20from%20what%20'is'.

I agree it's important for scientists to consider questions posed by philosophers as a starting motivation for a particular study to better explain seemingly contradictory phenomena in the world (e.g., there's a evolutionary basis to anxiety and even depression, strangely enough). However, I think a lot of scientists, physicians, and even statisticians would cringe in embarrassment when they hear philosophers treat even pretty basic STEM ideas (something as simple as "inference", e.g.). It makes me wish philosophy students would also be required to study the sciences and applied mathematics, bc the world and the reproducible analysis on it does NOT work the way these philosophers thought in their particular mind, given their particular experiences... The world is a lot weirder and more counterintuitive than even the smartest humans could have imagined with our monkey brains, and that's the beauty of the sciences.

Why not mention the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy article as a reference? 🤔

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

a great resource as well!

@basemrajjoub7081

Жыл бұрын

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy 🤔

Shout out to UVU!

Peep Debt by Dave Graeber on the shelf! Fantastic author, anti-authoritarian / anarchist activist and anthropologist

I'll listen to this a second time, as it was quite interesting.

We do need empathy but I did always wonder if their was a genetic aspect to it. It's weird I have alot of empathy but have a lot of sociopaths in my family LOL

Publish your work, please.

We need some people to be empathic. Empathy as form of "identity reduction" isn't empathy, it's 21st Century solipsism. Regarding a neural basis, I'm not a neuroscientist but generally speaking, it seems a typical scientific turn, to say that psychological states are caused by the brain. The empathic act is what matters. The way we direct our bodies (ie, spending 12 hour shifts in the ICU nursing other humans, something nobody would do for a silicon based "intelligences" who had a virus.

🥰 lovely articulated perception.. 🤤

since we only can express thoughts via words it is always intriguing to know where those words actually originating from but also how words change meaning over time, in particular the Latin rooted words...

@cerdic6586

Жыл бұрын

You can also express thoughts through body language and through deeds.

With empathy being a perceptual issue, it tracks that we can manipulate and be manipulated through this channel.

we need empathy for sude

I love you

This made me think of how humans project an empathetic nature to God in Christianity. There is this need to believe you have unseen forces acting upon your life, empathizing with our suffering. Idk just a thought

@fr.hughmackenzie5900

7 ай бұрын

Who is the successful desert island scientist empathising with?

No empathy , no human success. It’s a simple as that.

@Magihyun

Жыл бұрын

the most successful leaders in the world are people without empathy

Yes we need empathy. Big time.

@axelborgvall1648

Жыл бұрын

I don't think It's a question If we need It or not. Empathy is a state humans can experience. We end up in different situations where empathy can be helpful and advantageous. At the same time empathy can sometimes make us take a standpoint or positioning were exclude other possibilities.

@javierrodriguez3098

Жыл бұрын

Empathy for who,to do what?

@ruskiny280

Жыл бұрын

@@javierrodriguez3098 Every one you meet, even a Trump supporter

@ruskiny280

Жыл бұрын

@@javierrodriguez3098 To understand them.

@doclime4792

Жыл бұрын

​@@ruskiny280 bro I eat Trump supporters for lunch. They're lost and so are you if you think they're doing anything besides falling for propaganda.

Empathy is a human trait. It is neither a philosophical discussion nor a social construct.

@fede2

Жыл бұрын

Just because...

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

The idea that philosophy shouldn't discuss human traits is an...interesting take

@teresagoncalves531

11 ай бұрын

Well it is all of that and maybe even more. And to state philosophy shouldn't discuss it is kinda weird.

Ellie I will give you a good pointer to upgrade your content and viewers. Bryan Magee had old interviews from 1970 to 1990 by top philosophy teachers, so you can use those as a reaction or explaining finer points. Hope it will help..

i love u

treat others as you would have them treat you. without empathy there is no morality. hence we have capitalism, the worst of all possible evils

@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy

Жыл бұрын

But the injunction to "treat others as you would have them treat you" doesn't necessarily bear any relation to empathy--this is part of what's interesting. The Golden Rule is not only distinct from an appeal to empathy, some would consider it incompatible with it. Would recommend watching the video if you haven't yet!

@NoPrivateProperty

Жыл бұрын

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy after listening more closely and reviewing the definitions, I have to agree, it's not empathy, but sympathy which is necessary for moral behavior. One must be sympathetic to other's best interests. emotional response is irrelevant.

hear dr. anderson’s words from 19:30 in the @closetjudas song “mælstrom.” i often incorporate quotes from philosophers and/or film into my non-monetized music, and happened upon this video when looking for something about empathy. “overthink” is now on my rotation of weekly podcasts. cheers from winnipeg, canada.

Edith Stein, (St) had a particular concept of empathy which did NOT include an internal sharing of the other's emotions, but rather an understanding of their separateness and also a self emptying, (attention) and openness to otherness, in God . This is perhaps the only proper or useful form of empathy, the only respectful one, the only one founded in reality . Stein was a phenomenologist and a Jewish, Catholic Saint who was murdered in a concentration camp .