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Article ID: CBB596910880

Epistemological discipline in animal behavior studies: Konrad Lorenz and Daniel Lehrman on intuition and empathy (2023)

Vicedo, Marga (Author)

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Volume: 45
Issue: 1
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

DOI: 10.1007/s40656-023-00558-7

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-023-00558-7

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Methodology of science; scientific method Human-animal relationships Ethology Animal behavior Intuition Empathy 20th century Lehrman, Daniel Sanford Lorenz, Konrad

Can empathy be a tool for obtaining scientific knowledge or is it incompatible with the detached objectivity that is often seen as the ideal in scientific inquiry? This paper examines the views of Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz and American comparative psychologist Daniel Lehrman on the role of intuition and empathy in the study of animal behavior. It situates those views within the larger project of establishing ethology as an objective science. Lehrman challenged Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, the main founders of this field, to clarify their epistemological positions regarding how to deal with the subjectivity of the animals they studied as well as the scientist’s own subjectivity. I argue that there was a tension between their desire to eliminate the subjectivities of ethological researchers (and of their subjects) and the public perception that Lorenz had a remarkable ability to enter into the lives of the animals he studied. I explain why Lorenz rejected empathy as valid in scientific inquiry, showing that his epistemological position was grounded in his ideal of science and his proposed ontology for ethology. Yet, Lehrman insisted that full detachment was neither possible nor desirable.

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