STREAMS

The conference will be structured around the following subthemes:

1. Empathy, Ethics, Morality (Convenors: Markus Wild)
   Possible themes:
   - Empathy as the foundation of ethics and morality
   - The “Against Empathy” movement
   - Cruelty and pleasure in being anti-empathetic
   - Political dimensions of empathy
   ​
2. Empathy, Narrative, Imagination (Convenors: Franziska Gygax and Susanne Schmetkamp)
   - Empathy as the precondition of fiction and imagination
   - Strategies of prompting and/or preventing empathy
   - Structures of empathy in sound and image
   - Evolution of empathy and historical perspectives on empathy
   
   
3. Empathy and the Nonhuman (Convenors: Manuela Rossini and Jakob Zinsstag)
   - Future developments in robotics and AI, including humanoid robots and robot assistants
   - Responsibility and legal and moral aspects of new technologies
   - Cyber wars
   - Animals and plants
   
   
4. Collective Empathy (Convenors: Chris Mueller)
   - Cultural differences and cultural politics of empathy
   - Empathy as a phenomenon of mediation
   - Communication and quantum physics
   - Collective feelings and affects
   - Empathy, populism and political activism