ABSTRACT
The question of how interpersonal empathy and mutual understanding may be achieved on a preverbal level has dominated the debates in social cognition, social neuroscience and social philosophy for over two decades. The prevailing view still rests on the assumption that other minds are, in principle, hidden to us; hence, possible routes towards understanding can only take the detour of relying on internal cognitive mechanisms such as a ‘theory of mind’, ‘mentalizing’ or ‘mindreading’, which allow to infer others’ states of mind. Regardless of whether these mechanisms are described as akin to a scientific ‘theory’ or rather as a mental ‘simulation’ routine (Stich and Nichols 1992; Baron-Cohen 1995; Carruthers and Smith 1996), the general framework has mostly remained true to its origins in classical cognitivism and representationalism. Empathy is considered either as mind-reading or as simulating others’ mental states inside oneself. This paradigm is typically applied to emotions in general: They are not regarded as embodied responses to meaningful situations, thus being perceivable in the bodily expression and conduct of another person, but rather as internal cognitive appraisals of environmental stimuli.
