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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Recruiting Smith as support for a broad, non-affective conception of empathy misreads a thinker who consistently anchors the concept in passions and sentiments.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Smith's sympathy requires imaginative distance and judgment to align our sentiments with others', involving cognitive mediation beyond mere passion.
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    • 2.The impartial spectator, central to Smith's ethics, is a rational construct for evaluating propriety, not a purely sentimental mechanism.
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    • 3.Contemporary scholarship distinguishes affective and cognitive components within Smith's account itself, rather than treating sentiment as exclusive.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments explicitly grounds empathy (sympathy) in the capacity to share feelings, not abstract cognitive understanding.
      ?

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    • 2.Smith repeatedly emphasizes imagination of emotional states, not rational principles, as the mechanism by which we understand others' experiences.
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    • 3.Modern non-affective readings abstract empathy into perspective-taking or cognitive simulation, categories absent from Smith's 18th-century framework.
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