Article ID: CBB001251568

The Social Brain and the Myth of Empathy (2012)

unapi

Young, Allan (Author)


Science in Context
Volume: 25, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 401-424


Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of the special issue, “The Varieties of Empathy in Science, Art, and History”
Language: English

Neuroscience research has created multiple versions of the human brain. The social brain is one version and it is the subject of this paper. Most image-based research in the field of social neuroscience is task-driven: the brain is asked to respond to a cognitive (perceptual) stimulus. The tasks are derived from theories, operational models, and back-stories now circulating in social neuroscience. The social brain comes with a distinctive back-story, an evolutionary history organized around three, interconnected themes: mind-reading, empathy, and the emergence of self-consciousness. This paper focuses on how empathy has been incorporated into the social brain and redefined via parallel research streams, employing a shared, imaging technology. The concluding section describes how these developments can be understood as signaling the emergence of a new version of human nature and the unconscious. My argument is not that empathy in the social brain is a myth, but rather that it is served by a myth consonant with the canons of science.

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Article Lanzoni, Susan (2012) Introduction: Emotion and the Sciences: Varieties of Empathy in Science, Art, and History. Science in Context (pp. 287-300). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001251568/

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Authors & Contributors
Polger, Thomas W.
Leblanc, Richard
Tye, Michael
Salvat, Andrei
Biess, Frank
Winter, Alison
Concepts
Neurosciences
Philosophy of mind
Psychology
Consciousness
Emotions; passions
Empathy
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
17th century
Places
Germany
Americas
United States
Vienna (Austria)
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