Coplan on Empathy

2023-2 Metaphysics of the Self Segment 2 ( A. Coplan, "Understanding Empathy")

 

Q) According to Coplan, there are three essential features of empathy. What are these? Describe each one.

According to Coplan, the three essential feature of empathy are:

(1)   Affective matching: affective matching occurs only if an observer’s affective states are qualitatively identical to a target’s, though they may vary in degree.

(2)   Other-oriented perspective taking: Other-oriented perspective-taking is oriented toward the other. In other-oriented perspective-taking, I imagine being the target undergoing the target’s experiences rather than imagining being myself undergoing the target’s experiences. It therefore avoids false consensus effects, personal distress, and prediction errors based on egocentric biases.

(3)   Self-other differentiation: Self–other differentiation is to hold the boundaries between the self and others. One can successfully represent a target’s situation and experiences and have the same affects as the target while failing to preserve a separate sense of self. The observer recognizes that the other is a different person and successfully adopts the other’s perspective but ends up experiencing the other’s perspective as his own. The lack of clear self–other differentiation might result in a kind of fusion or enmeshment.

 

Q) What do you take to be the biggest challenge to Coplan's account of empathy?

Coplan's account presupposes the objective affective matching between the observer and the target. However, one might argue that we cannot confirm whether the matching is well established because of the nature of own's feeling; it is essentially subjective and private.