Which empathy? Limitations in the mirrored "understanding" of emotion (original) (raw)
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Mirror neuron: a neurological approach to empathy
Neurobiology of human values, 2005
Humans are an exquisitely social species. Our survival and success depend critically on our ability to thrive in complex social situations. But how do we understand others? Which are the mechanisms underlying this capacity?
Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy
Consciousness and Cognition, 2013
The current renewal of interest in empathy is closely connected to the recent neurobiological discovery of mirror neurons. Although the concept of empathy has been widely deployed, we shall focus upon one main psychological function it serves: enabling us to understand other peoples' intentions. In this essay we will draw on neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical literature in order to investigate the relationships between mirror neurons and empathy as to intention understanding. Firstly, it will be explored whether mirror neurons are the neural basis of our empathic capacities: a vast array of empirical results appears to confirm this hypothesis. Secondly, the higher level capacity of reenactive empathy will be examined and the question will be addressed whether philosophical analysis alone is able to provide a foundation for this more abstract level of empathy. The conclusion will be drawn that both empirical evidence and philosophical analysis can jointly contribute to the clarification of the concept of empathy.
Philosophy and Neuroscience: Relation between Mirror Neurons and Empathy
Revista Metafísica y Persona, 2018
Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues from the University of Parma identified, through brain imaging studies, the existence of mirror neurons in the human brain. The fundamental implication is the direct relationship between action and perception, which allows us to understand, for example, the phenomenon of empathy. Now, can we argue that empathy is only an epiphenomenon of the functioning of mirror neurons? This article confronts scientific discoveries on empathy with the philosophical thought of Theodor Lipps and Edith Stein, as well as with the contributions, that border between neuroscience and philosophy, of Vittorio Gallese. The article defends that, although empathy has an imitative basis that can be understood by the action of mirror neurons, it is not sensible to identify them absolutely: empathy, even if its biological basis is accepted, is a broader phenomenon not reducible to neuronal activity.
The role of shared neural activations, mirror neurons, and morality in empathy – A critical comment
Neuroscience Research, 2015
In the last decade, the phenomenon of empathy has received widespread attention by the field of social neuroscience. This has provided fresh insights for theoretical models of empathy, and substantially influenced the academic and public conceptions about this complex social skill. The present paper highlights three key issues which are often linked to empathy, but which at the same time might obscure our understanding of it. These issues are: (1) shared neural activations and whether these can be interpreted as evidence for simulation accounts of empathy; (2) the causal link of empathy to our presumed mirror neuron system; and (3) the question whether increasing empathy will result in better moral decisions and behaviors. The aim of our review is to provide the basis for critically evaluating our current understanding of empathy, and its public reception, and to inspire new research directions.
Starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will propose that our capacity to understand others as intentional agents, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, be deeply grounded in the relational nature of our interactions with the world. According to this hypothesis, an implicit, prereflexive form of understanding of other individuals is based on the strong sense of identity binding us to them. We share with our conspecifics a multiplicity of states that include actions, sensations and emotions. A new conceptual tool able to capture the richness of the experiences we share with others will be introduced: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. I will posit that it is through this shared manifold that it is possible for us to recognize other human beings as similar to us. It is just because of this shared manifold that intersubjective communication and ascription of intentionality become possible. It will be argued that the same neural structures that are involved in processing and controlling executed actions, felt sensations and emotions are also active when the same actions, sensations and emotions are to be detected in others. It therefore appears that a whole range of different 'mirror matching mechanisms' may be present in our brain. This matching mechanism, constituted by mirror neurons originally discovered and described in the domain of action, could well be a basic organizational feature of our brain, enabling our rich and diversified intersubjective experiences. This perspective is in a position to offer a global approach to the understanding of the vulnerability to major psychoses such as schizophrenia.
Mirror Neurons, Psychoanalysis, and the Age of Empathy
A number of psychoanalysts have become excited about mirror neurons, as they are called by neuroscientists. Mirror neurons have the remarkable property of responding identically to an action I intend as well as an action you intend. The argument of some psychoanalysts is that mirror neurons open a new pathway to understanding the intentions of others. They make possible a new type of empathy, more direct and less mediated by the typical defenses. One result of such a perspective on psychoanalysis is the virtual death of the countertransference. If one has direct empathic contact with another mind, then countertransferential experience is only a barrier, not a guide. The essay not only looks at the evidence for mirror neurons, which is ambiguous, but also at what need they might be filling in our contemporary culture.
A social-neuroscience perspective on empathy
2006
Abstract In recent years, abundant evidence from behavioral and cognitive studies and functional-imaging experiments has indicated that individuals come to understand the emotional and affective states expressed by others with the help of the neural architecture that produces such states in themselves. Such a mechanism gives rise to shared representations, which constitutes one important aspect of empathy, although not the sole one.
The many faces of empathy, between phenomenology and neuroscience
Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 2013
The definition of empathy differs among the domains which deal with it. Introduced in medicine and psychology in the late 19th-early 20th century, it received contrasting definitions from philosophers and psychopathologists. The neuroscience paradigm of empathy for pain allowed us to identify two components of empathy, one automatic, bottom-up, and one cognitive, top-down. The role of mirror neurons in this context appears to be central. Empathy is influenced by perception of other, closeness, belonging to a social group, and gender, with women empathizing more than men. The areas involved are the self-other distinction areas (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction), the anterior insula, and the anterior cingulate. The activations identified in the brain allow for better understanding the phenomenon, but not to draw a consensus definition. Rather than providing responses, the neurosciences send back to philosophy new, formidable questions to be asked.
The Evolving Empathy : Hardwired Bases of Human and Non-Human Primate Empathy
2014
Empathy has always been hard to operationalize. A communication gap between psychologists and neurobiologists delayed the study of empathic processes for long, but in recent years, with the discovery of mirror neurons, with the finally found neurological substrate of the much discussed “embodiment of observed behaviours”, envisaged by psychophysiologists, a revolution is in the way we understand emotion. Neuroscientists are coming ever closer to social psychologists in finding the substrate for the proposed relations between gender, mimicry, emotional contagion and empathy. Furthermore, they are stumping on evidence of empathy in non-human animals. In this paper we describe different types and components of empathy, with a particular emphasis on the Perception-Action Model (Preston and de Waal, 2002), and overview the discovery of the mirror neurons and its implication to empathy and its biological evolution.