1st Edition

Empathy And Agency The Problem Of Understanding In The Human Sciences

    328 Pages
    by Routledge

    332 Pages
    by Routledge

    A crucial debate currently raging in the fields of cognitive and social science centers around general and specific approaches to understanding the actions of others. When we understand the actions of another person, do we do so on the basis of a general theory of psychology, or on the basis of an effort to place ourselves in the particular position of that specific person? Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten R. Stueber's Empathy and Agency addresses this other issues vital to current social science in an advanced and diverse analysis of the foundations of social-scientific methodology based on recent cognitive psychology. The book serves as both an introduction to the debate for non-academic audiences and as a catalyst for further discussion for serious theorists. Empathy and Agency provides a solid foundation of the fundamental issues in social and cognitive science, but also presents the most influential paradigms in the field at this time.

    Preface -- Introduction: Empathy, Simulation, and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Social Science -- Simulation and the Explanation of Action -- The Theory of Holistic Simulation: Beyond Interpretivism and Postempiricism -- Imitation or the Internalization of Norms: Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based on the Wrong Choice? -- Simulation and Epistemic Competence -- Understanding Other Minds and the Problem of Rationality -- Simulation Theory and the Verstehen School: A Wittgensteinian Approach -- From Simulation to Structural Transposition: A Diltheyan Critique of Empathy and Defense of Verstehen -- Empathy, Dialogical Self, and Reflexive Interpretation: The Symbolic Source of Simulation -- The Importance of the Second Person: Interpretation, Practical Knowledge, and Normative Attitudes -- The Object of Understanding -- Reenactment as Critique of Logical Analysis: Wittgensteinian Themes in Collingwood

    Biography

    Hans Herbert Kogler