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The Direct-Perception Model of Empathy: a Critique

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Abstract

This paper assesses the so-called “direct-perception” model of empathy. This model draws much of its inspiration from the Phenomenological tradition: it is offered as an account free from the assumption that most, if not all, of another’s psychological states and experiences are unobservable and that one’s understanding of another’s psychological states and experiences are based on inferential processes. Advocates of this model also reject the simulation-based approach to empathy. I first argue that most of their criticisms miss their target because they are directed against the simulation-based approach to mindreading. Advocates of this model further subscribe to an expressivist conception of human behavior and assume that some of an individual’s psychological states (e.g. her goals and emotions, not her beliefs) can be directly perceived in the individual’s expressive behavior. I argue that advocates of the direct-perception model face the following dilemma: either they embrace behaviorism or else they must recognize that one could not understand another’s goal or emotion from her behavior alone without making contextual assumptions. Finally, advocates of the direct-perception model endorse the narrative competency hypothesis, according to which the ability to ascribe beliefs to another is grounded in the ability to understand narratives. I argue that this hypothesis is hard to reconcile with recent results in developmental psychology showing that preverbal human infants seem able to ascribe false beliefs to others.

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Notes

  1. For the historical background, cf. Stueber (2008).

  2. What I call “the direct-perception model of empathy” combines assumptions, some of which are held by Gallagher (2008a) and others by Zahavi (2007, 2008).

  3. Cf. Gallagher (2001, 2004, 2008a, b).

  4. Whereas Zahavi (2001, 2007, 2008) seems to subscribe to the direct-perception model of both primary intersubjectivity in the broad sense and empathy, Gallagher (2001, 2004, 2007, 2008a, b) seems to subscribe only to the direct-perception model of primary intersubjectivity in the broad sense. Both stress the fact that primary intersubjectivity in the broad sense underlies social understanding based on everyday encounters (or interactions) with others.

  5. Acceptance of assumption (3) is characteristic of the direct-perception model of empathy. Acceptance of assumption (3) depends in part on the terminological decision to identify empathetic understanding with understanding generated by basic intersubjectivity. As I mentioned above, Zahavi (2007, 2008) explicitly endorses assumption (3). Deprived of assumption (3), the direct-perception model applies to basic intersubjectivity.

  6. For further evidence about modulation of empathetic responses, cf. Decety et al. 2011; Lamm et al. 2007, 2009.

  7. In order to meet the five conditions above, de Vignemont and Jacob (submitted) endorse an E-imagination based account of empathetic pain, which contrasts with both mirroring-based and hybrid accounts.

  8. Furthermore, on the pretense-theoretic version of the simulation account of the prediction of another’s decision, a mindreader uses her own decision-mechanism to run the simulation routine by giving it pretend inputs (i.e. representations of the other’s beliefs, desires and intentions). As a result, the mindreader’s decision mechanism generates a pretend output (i.e. a pretend decision). But if the problem of the pretend inputs can be solved, then why is the simulation routine needed after all?

  9. Although I do not agree either with his defense of Goldman’s simulation-based approach to mindreading or with each of his criticisms of Gallagher’s arguments against simulation-based approaches to mindreading, I have learnt a great deal from Barlassina’s (2010) paper presented at Institut Jean Nicod in the Spring of 2010 and subsequent discussions.

  10. For further discussion, see Jacob (2008b).

  11. Bogdan (1997: 104), whom Hutto credits for coining the expression, defines the “spectatorial” stance as portraying “the subject as a remote object of observation and prediction.”

  12. It may look awkward that a phenomenological approach to understanding others is open to the charge of behaviorism. But it is.

  13. Arguably, there are some differences between an agent’s goal-directed and an agent’s expressive behavior. But the argument could easily be run in terms of an agent’s expressive behavior.

  14. Fogassi et al. (2005) recorded the activity of single cells in area IPL of macaque monkeys in both executive and observational tasks of grasping a target. Iacoboni et al. (2005) showed human participants video-clips of actions of grasping a cup either within or outside a context. Cattaneo et al. (2007) recorded and compared the electromyographic (EMG) activity respectively in typically developing children and in children with autism, in both executive and observational tasks of grasping a target.

  15. For a good instance of the oscillation between the weaker and the stronger version of the narrative competency hypothesis, cf. Hutto (2008b: 178), who argues that it is incompatible with either simulation-based or theory-theory approaches to mindreading and nonetheless recognizes that “narratives do crucially important but nonetheless limited work. They are not responsible for introducing an understanding of mental concepts, such as desire and belief for the first time, rather, being complex linguistic representations of particular events, they put on show how these attitudes can integrate with one another (and also how they fit with other mental states and stand with respect to other contextual factors) […] kids already have a practical grasp on what it is to have a desire or belief before learning how to integrate their discrete understanding of these concepts in making sense of actions in terms of reasons […] Through shared encounters with [FP] narratives children become familiar with the forms and norms of giving and asking for reasons, knowing how and when these apply. In this way they develop the capacity to give and receive reason explanations, as and when required.”

  16. Cf. Call and Tomasello (2008).

  17. Sometimes, as noted by Herschbach (2008), advocates of the narrative competency hypothesis seem to take the view that the assumption that an agent’s psychological state is “hidden” (an assumption jointly accepted by simulation-based and theory-theory based approaches to mindreading) is appropriate “in those rare cases when we encounter puzzling behavior” such as an agent’s action based on a false belief (cf. Gallagher 2007: 354 and Zahavi 2008: 515). But human actions based on false beliefs are far from unusual.

  18. For a recent extensive review, cf. Caron (2009).

  19. In another VOE study, Surian et al. (2007) reported that 13-month-olds looked longer when a caterpillar approached the true location of its preferred food, when the food has been hidden there in the absence of the caterpillar. In still another VOE study, He and Baillargeon (2010) report that 11-month-olds looked reliably longer when an agent, who had not seen the shortening of the length of a toy, retrieved the toy from the shorter of a pair of boxes when only the other box would have been large enough to contain the toy before it was shortened in the agent’s absence.

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  1. Institut Jean Nicod, ENS/EHESS/CNRS, Paris, France

    Pierre Jacob

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Correspondence to Pierre Jacob.

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I am grateful to Gyury Gergely for inviting me to the International Conference on Intersubjectivity and the Self, Marie Curie DISCOS Project, in Budapest (June 2010), where a version of this paper was presented. I am grateful to Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi for their oral and written responses to the paper and to Dan Hutto for inviting me to contribute a paper to the present special issue of RPP and for his own comments on the paper. Thanks also to Frédérique de Vignemont for numerous discussions on this topic. I gratefully acknowledge support of a grant from the French ministry of research (ANR-BLAN SOCODEV). I dedicate this paper to the memory of my friend Marc Jeannerod, who died on July 1st, 2011.

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Jacob, P. The Direct-Perception Model of Empathy: a Critique. Rev.Phil.Psych. 2, 519–540 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-011-0065-0

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