Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-29T06:08:45.318Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Paradox of Empathy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

L.A. Paul
L.A. Paul*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
*
Email: laurie.paul@yale.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A commitment to truth requires that you are open to receiving new evidence, even if that evidence contradicts your current beliefs. You should be open to changing your mind. However, this truism gives rise to the paradox of empathy. The paradox arises with the possibility of mental corruption through transformative change, and has consequences for how we should understand tolerance, disagreement, and the ability to have an open mind. I close with a discussion of how understanding this paradox provides a new explanation for a certain kind of standoff between the believer and the skeptic with regard to religious belief.

Keywords

Transformative experienceempathyreligious conversionreligious disagreementevidencetestimonyepistemologybelief in Godlived experiencephenomenal hypothesesdirect acquaintance
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 18 , Special Issue 3: Episteme Conference Special Issue , September 2021 , pp. 347 - 366
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloom, P. (2016). Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. New York, NY: Ecco.Google Scholar
Betzler, M. and Keller, S. (Forthcoming). ‘Shared Belief and the Limits of Empathy.’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.Google Scholar
Callard, A. (2018). Aspiration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian Religion. Trans. Battles, F.L.. London: S.C.M. Press.Google Scholar
Cath, Y. (2019). ‘Knowing What It Is Like and Testimony.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97, 105–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crane, T. (2014). ‘Subjective Facts.’ In Crane, T. (ed.), Aspects of Psychologism, pp. 281–97. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crockett, M., Kurth-Nelson, Z., Siegel, J., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R. (2014). ‘Harm to Others Outweighs Harm to Self in Moral Decision Making.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111(48), 17320–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elster, J. (1985). Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Enoch, D. (2014). ‘A Defense of Moral Deference.’ Journal of Philosophy 111(5), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendler, T.S. (2000). ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance.’ Journal of Philosophy 2, 55–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendler, T.S. (2006). ‘Imaginative Resistance Revised.’ In Nichols, S. (ed.), The Architecture of Imagination, pp. 149–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harsanyi, J.C. (1977). ‘Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior.’ Social Research 44, 623–56.Google Scholar
Helm, P. (1998). ‘John Calvin, the ‘Sensus Divinitatis’, and the Noetic Effects of Sin.’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43, 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hills, A. (2009). ‘Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology.’ Ethics 120(1), 94–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holton, R. (1994). Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72, 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homer (1919). Book XII, Odyssey. Trans. Murray, A.T.. Revised by Dimock, George E.. Loeb Classical Library 104. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, F. (1986). ‘What Mary Didn't Know.' Journal of Philosophy 83(5), 291–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W. (1902). Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, K. (1999). ‘Second-Hand Moral Knowledge.’ Journal of Philosophy 96, 55–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kind, A. (2020). ‘What Imagination Teaches.’ In Schwenkler, J. and Lambert, E. (eds), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, pp. 133–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lackey, J. (2008). Learning from Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langton, R. (2019). ‘Empathy and First-Personal Imagining.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119, 77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1990). ‘What Experience Teaches.' In Lycan, W. (ed.), Mind and Cognition: A Reader, pp. 499–519. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Maibom, H. (2009. ‘Feeling for Others: Empathy, Sympathy, and Morality.’ Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52, 483–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCoy, J., Ullman, T. and Paul, L.A. (2019). ‘Modal Prospection.’ In Goldman, A. and McLaughlin, B. (eds), Metaphysics and Cognitive Science, pp. 235–67. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medina, J. (2013). The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moulaki, S., Chen, S., Urminsky, O. and Bartels, D. (2020). ‘How Personal Theories of the Self Shape Beliefs about Personal Continuity and Transformative Expereince.' In Schwenkler, J. and Lambert, E. (eds), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, pp. 52–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paul, L.A. (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, L.A. (2015). ‘Transformative Choice: Discussion and Replies.’ Res Philosophica 92, 473–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, L.A. (2018). ‘De Se Preferences and Empathy for Future Selves.’ In Hawthorne, J. and Turner, J. (eds), Philosophical Perspectives: Philosophy of Mind, pp. 7–39. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Paul, L.A. (2020). ‘Who Will I Become?’ In Schwenkler, J. and Lambert, E. (eds), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prinz, J.J. (2011). ‘Is Empathy Necessary for Morality.’ In Coplan, A. and Goldie, P. (eds), Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, pp. 211–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, P. (2017). ‘Moral Learning: Conceptual Foundations and Normative Relevance.’ Cognition 167, 172–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice, §64, p. 366 (Revised edition, 1999). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Riggle, N. (2020) ‘Transformative Expression.’ In Schwenkler, J. and Lambert, E. (eds), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, pp. 162–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosati, C.S. (1995). ‘Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of Good.’ Ethics 105, 296–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxe, R. (2005). ‘Against Simulation: The Argument From Error.’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(4), 174–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sidgwick, H. (1874). The Methods of Ethics. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sobel, D. (1994). ‘Full Information Accounts of Well-Being.’ Ethics 104, 784–810.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strohminger, N. and Nichols, S. (2014). ‘The Essential Moral Self.' Cognition 131(1), 159–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stump, E. (2014) ‘Faith, Wisdom, and the Transmission of Knowledge through Testimony.’ In Callahan, L.F. and O'Connor, T. (eds), Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue, pp. 1–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stump, E. (2018). Atonement. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Velleman, J.D. (2005). Self to Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velleman, J.D. (2008). ‘Persons in Prospect.’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 36, 221–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, T. (2016). ‘Knowing and Imagining.’ In Kind, A. and Kung, P. (eds), Knowledge Through Imagination, pp. 113–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar