Ted (Spoiler) wins on the basis of self-awareness and "capacity for empathy," both of which have been demonstrated in chimps.
The performances were stunning -- not only because of their high level of craft, but because of the capacity for empathy that allowed the students to inhabit the characters they played.
Meanwhile, a writer's true success — in the sense of her ability to write something original and meaningful — also depends upon the range of her imagination, the precision of her critical faculties, and, crucially, the extent of her capacity for empathy.
But there is no getting around the fact that the movie misses almost entirely the psychological complexity of its source, Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," one of his most tantalizing explorations of the human capacity for empathy.
Evolutionary biologists say that we yawn when we see someone else doing so because of our capacity for empathy.
Most doctors chose their profession because of their capacity for empathy.
The Catholic Church, in particular, Jesuits, have leveraged this feature of youth capacity for empathy with impressive results.
"Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship," he writes.
These include impaired non-verbal language skills in which they do not look at the eyes of others, cannot read body language, do not have the sense of others as being separate from themselves, and do not have the internal neural mirror capacity for empathy to the point of having no concept of the needs of others or knowing when another is in distress.
If every amateur social justice warrior on the Internet were held to the journalistic standards that Shirky espouses, we might see a great deal more of Mainwaring's idea of the human "innate capacity for empathy".
My imagination, my capacity for empathy, my sense of curiosity and my awareness that, while I was unique, I wasn't alone: others felt the same fears and feelings as me.
