Empathic Knowledge: The Import of Empathy’s Social Epistemology

Abstract

The epistemic and moral worth of empathy is deeply contested. Some doubt the possibility and sufficiency of empathic knowledge (can we mirror another’s subjective mental state?). Others question whether knowing how another feels is causally linked to moral actions (e.g. acts of beneficence or altruism). Though some have defended empathy as a form of knowing or an important epistemic endeavor, there is a gap in these responses that weakens their force against empathy’s skeptics. On the one hand, the epistemologists tend to focus on individuals (individual neurology, epistemic content, etc.). On the other hand, the moral theorists and moral-epistemologists tend to focus on the social (interpersonal harms, social benefit, etc.). Here, I contend that the first group could learn from the second and, together, form a stronger defense of empathy’s epistemic import. Namely, if, as epistemologists, we can begin from a conceptualization of empathy as a social epistemic practice within which knowledge is formed and confirmed with others, then we can better allow for (1) possibility in understanding how another feels, (2) reliability in empathic processes, and (3) appropriate sensitivity to variance and degrees of empathic knowing.