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Author reply: Empathy Versus Narrative: What Exactly is the Debate About? Response to my Critics
Karsten R. Stueber
Emotion Review 2012 4: 68
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421395
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EMRXXX10.1177/1754073911421395 StueberEmotion Review

Author Reply

Empathy Versus Narrative: What Exactly is the Debate

About? Response to my Critics

Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 6869
The Author(s) 2012
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421395
er.sagepub.com

Karsten R. Stueber

Department of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, USA

Abstract
In response to my critics, I highlight areas of agreement and disagreement.
I also argue that my view is better suited than narrativism to account for
the difficulties that we encounter in trying to understand other agents.
Moreover, the points brought up by Gallagher and Hutto do not succeed in
showing that our understanding of an agents reasons for acting proceeds
independently from reenactive empathy.

Keywords
empathy, narrativism, rational agency, simulation/reenactment

Let me start by thanking Shaun Gallagher and Daniel Hutto for

taking the time to engage with my favorite narrative of how we
understand each other as rational agents in the folk psychological realm. I very much appreciate our ongoing conversation. In
response to Shaun Gallaghers (2012) worries about how to
define the concept of empathy, I ultimately think that the correct
way of defining the term empathy does not exist. I only claim
that my manner of understanding it is a reasonable one in light
of the philosophical and psychological discussion about the
empathy-related phenomena. In the end, the central question is
whether empathy, however defined, does the work it is supposed to do in illuminating the phenomenon of social cognition.
It is in this respect that Shaun Gallagher disagrees with me.
Yet there are important areas of agreement. I agree with
Gallagher (2012) that empathy is certainly not all there is to
social cognition. This fact has probably been underemphasized
in the original context of the debate between theory theorists
and simulation theorists. In arguing against theory theorists,
simulation theorists were emphasizing the centrality of the simulation phase, rather than issues related to what I call the matching phase or what Gallagher calls the starting problem. Yet the
central issue is not whether we need propositional knowledge to
get a simulation started, but whether that information makes the
simulation phase superfluous. Gallagher is inclined to think so,
but one of the main reasons for our disagreement has to do with
differences of opinion about how important it is to understand

rational agents in their individuality. I will discuss this issue

further in my response to Daniel Hutto.
Gallagher (2012) also brings up the important diversity
problem and claims that narrativists can provide a better account
of how we are able to understand persons from different and
diverse backgrounds and cultures. However, one has to be careful of how one conceives of the diversity problem. A theory of
understanding not only has to explain how understanding of
persons from very different backgrounds is possible, but it also
has to account for the difficulties that we encounter in trying to
gain such understanding. And it is exactly in this context that I
see the great advantages of my view according to which such
understanding essentially involves reenactive empathy. As I
have extensively argued (Stueber, 2006, Chapter 6, 2011), the
difficulties have to do with difficulties in retooling our own
cognitive system in order to take the perspective of another
person. This not only requires feeding our own cognitive system
with pretend-beliefs and desires, to use cognitive science
language, but also requires quarantining our beliefs, desires,
and values, which we know are not shared by the other person,
from the simulation procedure. If, however, as narrativists
claim, understanding of narratives proceeds completely independent of simulation or reenactment, then it is not clear to me
why we should encounter these difficulties or why we are
prone to experience something like imaginative resistance. The
understanding of all narratives should be on par, regardless of
how far removed they are from my familiar way of thinking
about the world.
Let me therefore turn to Daniel Huttos (2012) comments.
First, a clarification: While Hutto is absolutely right to point out
that I regard the considerations for the essential involvement to
be a priori considerations, I regard them to be a priori in a low
grade sense of the term, having nothing to do with good oldfashioned conceptual analysis. While they involve reflections
from the philosophical armchair, they make full use of the
established scientific knowledge about the domain of investigation. In particular, they articulate the implications of the
so-called frame-problem in cognitive science and artificial

Corresponding author: Karsten Stueber, Department of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01566, USA. Email: kstueber@holycross.edu

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Stueber Empathy Versus Narrative 69

intelligence for our understanding of rational agency. My argument for the essential involvement of reenactment for rational
agents, who act for a reason, can be seen as a generalization of
the argument that Jane Heal has given for co-cognition. Since
Hutto does accept the necessity of co-cognition, I am a bit puzzled
why he does not recognize that the argument can be generalized.
He is also right to point out that a great deal of the debate
depends on what it means to understand reasons (see Stueber,
2011, in press). Understanding reasons for acting, however, cannot mean that we merely understand how beliefs and desires as
inner states somehow causally interact in the agent to produce a
certain behavior. Rather, in citing certain beliefs and desires in
folk psychological explanations, we do point to considerations
that count, from the perspective of the agent, in favor of his
action and constitute in a specific situation his reasons for acting.
And in order to understand thathaving a mere desire is normally even from the perspective of the agent not a good enough
reason for actingwe have to understand how those cited
beliefs and desires fit in with an agents other beliefs, desires,
plans of actions, values and rules of conduct to which the agent
is committed. It is exactly in this context that the frame-problem
raises its ugly head, which leads me to conclude that we need
reenactive empathy in order to understand an agents potential
reasons for acting. Understanding a persons action in narratives, in my view, not only requires such reenactment and
perspective taking; narratives also encourage it by providing
us (if they are good) with the necessary information to take up
the perspective of the other person. Hutto seems to indirectly

confirm my position by saying that we learn about a persons

reasons if we, for example, learn about an important religious
ritual for X, since this allows us to see a link between this
sort of activity and activities that play, or could have played,
a similar role in our lives [my emphasis] (Hutto, 2012,
p. 67). To me, this sounds very much like a position I have
always argued for, that is, we understand another persons reasons by understanding through imaginative perspective taking
how they could be my reasons for acting. Now maybe I have
misunderstood the narrativist position in this regard. However,
if that is so, it would be good to be told a bit more about how
narrativists conceive of the structure of a narrative and how
exactly they conceive of the mechanisms involved in narrative understanding.

References
Gallagher, S. (2012). Three questions for Stueber. Emotion Review, 4,
6465.
Hutto, D. D. (2012). Understanding reasons without reenactment: Comment on Stueber. Emotion Review, 4, 6667.
Stueber, K. (2006). Rediscovering empathy: Agency, folk psychology, and
the human sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stueber, K. (2011). Imagination, empathy, and moral deliberation: The case
of imaginative resistance [Spindel supplement on empathy and ethics].
Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49, 156180.
Stueber, K. (in press). Explaining human agency: Reasons, causes and
the first person perspective. In G. DOro (Ed.), Reasons and causes:
Causalism and non-causalism in the philosophy of action. Palgrave
Macmillan.

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