ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews four general schools of thought regarding empathy in philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific literature and then offers a working definition of empathy. All four schools define empathy as an understanding of another’s mental states (how the other is thinking or feeling), though they differ in the type of understanding achieved and in how it is achieved. These four approaches to empathy are theory-theory, simulation theory, direct perception theory, and narrative theory. The chapter defines empathy as an experiential understanding of what another feels or thinks. Empathy is not just a propositional or theoretical understanding that the other feels or thinks a certain way, but offers a limited grasp of the felt characteristic of another person’s experience.
The chapter ends with an illustration of the type of understanding that empathy provides. This understanding proves an essential complement to cultural knowledge, as illustrated with shortfalls of American counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
