We have a lot of talk about empathy here and indeed a lot of threads concerning empathy, but are we all talking about the same thing here? What is empathy? I'm hearing about putting yourself in some else's shoes and understanding how they feel. Ok, so we have cognitive and affective empathy. I certainly understand cognitive empathy, so is that enough? How can any one really know how another person feels? We can only simulate or estimate or approximate. Supposedly affective empathy is actually feeling what the other person is feeling. I've read a lot of stuff regarding this and I can not find a definite definition. It always goes back and forth, cognitive and affective can it be just one of them?