Paul Bloom: The Levels Of Empathy, By Paul Bloom

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Picture this: One of your relatives or friends is going through a very rough patch in their lives. They may have lost a job, gotten divorced, or has lost a loved one. It is clear that he or she needs the comfort and support of others. You know you have at least a small duty as a friend or relative to help this person. However, the dilemma is how to help. Should you attempt to grasp how this person truly feels and what he or she is going through and then help? Or should you give the assistance that the person needs without much emotion or thought about what the person is going through? In other words, you have to decide how much empathy you will give to the person in need. In his essay, “Against Empathy,” Paul Bloom argues that certain levels of empathy are bred within every person and that people are empathetically biased towards those whom they are more attracted to, in terms of …show more content…

Basically, he is saying emotional empathy is feeling another’s pain. Another form of empathy that he introduces is cognitive empathy, which he describes as a “…coldblooded process of assessing what other people are thinking, their motivations, their plans, [and] what they believe” (Bloom). Cognitive empathy, in other words, is more of an unemotional and detached approach of understanding and having relationships with others. Although Bloom’s definitions may be generally accepted by many people, his position on the differences between cognitive and emotional empathy are less convincing because he fails to realize that both types of empathy and compassion are intertwined and need one

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