The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk
(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Pierre Jacob (Institut Jean Nicod)
on
Can one share another's pain?

Tuesday, 30 March, 2010, 4.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412


ABSTRACT

The goal of this paper is to sketch an account of empathetic pain.
The experience of empathetic pain is a species of vicarious experiences of pain. Empathetic responses to another's affective state of kind S are vicarious experiences of affective states of kind S. There are presently two prevalent approaches to empathetic experiences in both cognitive science and philosophy: a mimicry approach (based on the discovery of mirror neurons) and the direct perception approach. Both approaches face insuperable objections. I argue instead for an imagination-based account of vicarious pain and turn to some neuroscientific findings in order to try and account for the distinction between two kinds of vicarious experiences of pain: contagious experiences and empathetic experiences.



Kriszta Biber
Department Coordinator
Philosophy Department
Tel: 36-1-327-3806
Fax: 36-1-327-3072
E-mail: biberk@ceu.hu