Why should we say that someone has “information empathy” instead of saying they possess a “theory of mind”?
Possible reasons: “theory of mind” is an unwieldy term, it might be useful to distinguish in fewer words a theory of mind with respect to beliefs from a theory of mind with respect to preferences, you want to emphasise a connection between empathy and information empathy.
I think if there’s established terminology for something we’re interesting in discussing, there should be a pretty compelling reason why it doesn’t suffice for us.
The context I see this being used in is when you need to accuse somebody of not exhibiting it. It seems like it would usually be too broad to say that somebody is acting as though other minds don’t exist; I think this narrower term is more likely to come in handy (your first reason).
I strongly recommend against making up new terms for cases where you intend to accuse someone of it. Those are exactly the times when a distraction about terminology will derail the actual information content.
I see your point. I forgot to say that I think this term would also be useful for explaining to others what fallacy a third party has committed, which would not suffer from this issue, but that’s stopped being relevant as I think I’ve become convinced that Theory of Mind means the same thing after all.
My impression is that Theory of Mind, as a technical term, means exactly the thing you’ve defined. I was about to comment saying the existing term, to me, is fine (and is perhaps better).
Yeah, I’ve just read the Wikipedia page again, and I think you (and elephantiskon) are right. I’m going to edit the post to redirect others to this conclusion.
Why should we say that someone has “information empathy” instead of saying they possess a “theory of mind”?
Possible reasons: “theory of mind” is an unwieldy term, it might be useful to distinguish in fewer words a theory of mind with respect to beliefs from a theory of mind with respect to preferences, you want to emphasise a connection between empathy and information empathy.
I think if there’s established terminology for something we’re interesting in discussing, there should be a pretty compelling reason why it doesn’t suffice for us.
The context I see this being used in is when you need to accuse somebody of not exhibiting it. It seems like it would usually be too broad to say that somebody is acting as though other minds don’t exist; I think this narrower term is more likely to come in handy (your first reason).
I strongly recommend against making up new terms for cases where you intend to accuse someone of it. Those are exactly the times when a distraction about terminology will derail the actual information content.
I see your point. I forgot to say that I think this term would also be useful for explaining to others what fallacy a third party has committed, which would not suffer from this issue, but that’s stopped being relevant as I think I’ve become convinced that Theory of Mind means the same thing after all.
My impression is that Theory of Mind, as a technical term, means exactly the thing you’ve defined. I was about to comment saying the existing term, to me, is fine (and is perhaps better).
Yeah, I’ve just read the Wikipedia page again, and I think you (and elephantiskon) are right. I’m going to edit the post to redirect others to this conclusion.