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SUMMARY:What is empathy? A genealogical account - Riana Betzler (Departmen
 t of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20140516T110000Z
DTEND:20140516T120000Z
UID:TALK52640@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Toby Bryant
DESCRIPTION:What is empathy? There are so many accounts of empathy that ha
 ve been proposed by philosophers and psychologists\, it is hard to know wh
 ere to begin. In this paper\, my main goal is to show that neither a purel
 y empirical approach nor a purely conceptual analytic approach\, nor even 
 a union of the two\, has been particularly successful at the task of expli
 cating empathy.  I then suggest that a third approach—genealogy—may be
  illuminating.  Genealogical approaches\, which provide 'a narrative that 
 tries to explain a cultural phenomenon by describing a way in which it cam
 e about\, or could have come about\, or might be imagined to have come abo
 ut' (Williams\, 2002\, p. 29)\, have been effective in dealing with concep
 ts\, such as trust\, that are complex in ways similar to empathy.  As such
 \, they may be particularly well-suited to explaining what empathy is\, es
 pecially given what we know about empathy's own complicated genealogy.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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