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1amtarth 's review for:
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
by Paul Bloom
A seemingly inflammatory title. It certainly argues against empathy as a moral guide. Expounds on the flaws of allowing empathy to dictate what is or isn't the "right" thing to do. The author explains that being compassionate isn't the same as feeling what someone else feels.
*Notes* *Spoilers*
Empathy is insufficient as a moral guide
Someone who didn't value their friends and family over strangers would have an evolutionary disadvantage compared with someone who did. Their genes would die out faster than the jeans of those who favor their own over strangers. This is why humans are not natural born egalitarians.
Empathy+reason is better than empathy alone.
Empathy is a spotlight, and its focus is narrow. What you see depends on where you choose to point the spotlight, so its focus is vulnerable to your biases.
You can only empathize with, at most, 2 or 3 points of view at a time.
Cognitive empathy (aka theory of mind): understanding the minds of people, what makes them tick, what they like and dislike. Author is pro this type of empathy. O'Brian torturing Wilson in 1984; cognitive empathy, in the wrong hands.
People with high levels of empathy can be incapacitated, having a hard time knowing how to act or what to do (policy-wise).
A named child is made sick by a vaccine; being more moved by that one child's plight than by the nameless children that would suffer or die without the vaccine.
Using brain imaging and self reporting, subjects considered the plight of individuals who were suffering from AIDS. They were told that one individual contacted AIDS through drug use, and another through a blood transfusion. Subjects felt less empathy for the individual who contacted the disease through drug use.
"We see how reactions to others, including our empathic reactions, reflect prior bias, preference and judgment. This shows that it can't be that empathy simply makes us moral. It has to be more complicated than that, because whether or not you feel empathy depends on prior decisions about who counts, who matters; and these are moral choices. Your empathy doesn't drive your moral evaluation of the drug user with AIDS, it's your moral evaluation of the person that determines whether or not you feel empathy."
Subjects were asked to donate money to another individual, indicated by a number the subject drew at random. Subjects could decide how much money to donate then draw a number, or draw a number and then decide how much to donate. Subjects donated significantly more money if they drew the number first. We are more likely to empathize with a specific individual than an abstract concept of a beneficiary, even when the only thing that makes that individual concrete is a faceless number. The "Identifiable victim effect."
We can become inured to problems that seem unrelenting: starvation, war, homelessness, mass shootings, etc.
Jonathan Haidt- humans possess a set of distinct moral foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals emphasize care and fairness over the others, while conservatives care about all these foundations more or less equally.
Dueling empathy: empathizing with the plight of minorities who suffer at the hands of the police, vs. empathizing with the police who face danger regularly or the business owners who have suffered loss of property due to riots protesting the police. The question is, who do you empathize with?
Unmitigated communion- an excessive concern for others, placing others' needs above one's own. Women typically score higher than men. Partially explains why women generally suffer more from anxiety and depression.
Compassion- more sustainable. Feeling for, but not feeling with, the sufferer.
People often use the term "empathy" to include all sorts of good things. It's only when we think about "empathy" in a more literal sense that we run into problems.
You don't have to feel what someone feels in other to be compassionate.
About a doctor who kept a reassuring distance and objectivity: "I didn't need him to be my mother, even for a day. I only need him to know what he was doing. His calmness didn't make me feel abandoned; it made me feel secure. I wanted to look at him and see the opposite of my fear, not its echo."
Telescopic philanthropy- caring (or affecting to care) about the plight of the less fortunate far away, but insensible (or insensitive) to the suffering of those close to us. Mrs. Jellyby, Bleak House.
"We are always going to have a world with violence. We have to grapple with the difficult question of how much, and what kind "
On dehumanization or objectification of others- calling someone an animal as an insult: not a failure to recognize their humanity; depends, for its humiliating quality, on its target's distinctively human desire to be recognized as human beings. Delight that might be taken in the degradation of individuals or groups: If you don't think of them as initially posessing dignity, where's the pleasure in degrading them?
Cultural values that prize self control are good for society: Europe witnessed a 30-fold drop in homicide rate between the Medieval and Modern periods; correlates with a change from a culture of honor to a culture of dignity, which prizes restraint. Steven Pinker
*Notes* *Spoilers*
Empathy is insufficient as a moral guide
Someone who didn't value their friends and family over strangers would have an evolutionary disadvantage compared with someone who did. Their genes would die out faster than the jeans of those who favor their own over strangers. This is why humans are not natural born egalitarians.
Empathy+reason is better than empathy alone.
Empathy is a spotlight, and its focus is narrow. What you see depends on where you choose to point the spotlight, so its focus is vulnerable to your biases.
You can only empathize with, at most, 2 or 3 points of view at a time.
Cognitive empathy (aka theory of mind): understanding the minds of people, what makes them tick, what they like and dislike. Author is pro this type of empathy. O'Brian torturing Wilson in 1984; cognitive empathy, in the wrong hands.
People with high levels of empathy can be incapacitated, having a hard time knowing how to act or what to do (policy-wise).
A named child is made sick by a vaccine; being more moved by that one child's plight than by the nameless children that would suffer or die without the vaccine.
Using brain imaging and self reporting, subjects considered the plight of individuals who were suffering from AIDS. They were told that one individual contacted AIDS through drug use, and another through a blood transfusion. Subjects felt less empathy for the individual who contacted the disease through drug use.
"We see how reactions to others, including our empathic reactions, reflect prior bias, preference and judgment. This shows that it can't be that empathy simply makes us moral. It has to be more complicated than that, because whether or not you feel empathy depends on prior decisions about who counts, who matters; and these are moral choices. Your empathy doesn't drive your moral evaluation of the drug user with AIDS, it's your moral evaluation of the person that determines whether or not you feel empathy."
Subjects were asked to donate money to another individual, indicated by a number the subject drew at random. Subjects could decide how much money to donate then draw a number, or draw a number and then decide how much to donate. Subjects donated significantly more money if they drew the number first. We are more likely to empathize with a specific individual than an abstract concept of a beneficiary, even when the only thing that makes that individual concrete is a faceless number. The "Identifiable victim effect."
We can become inured to problems that seem unrelenting: starvation, war, homelessness, mass shootings, etc.
Jonathan Haidt- humans possess a set of distinct moral foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals emphasize care and fairness over the others, while conservatives care about all these foundations more or less equally.
Dueling empathy: empathizing with the plight of minorities who suffer at the hands of the police, vs. empathizing with the police who face danger regularly or the business owners who have suffered loss of property due to riots protesting the police. The question is, who do you empathize with?
Unmitigated communion- an excessive concern for others, placing others' needs above one's own. Women typically score higher than men. Partially explains why women generally suffer more from anxiety and depression.
Compassion- more sustainable. Feeling for, but not feeling with, the sufferer.
People often use the term "empathy" to include all sorts of good things. It's only when we think about "empathy" in a more literal sense that we run into problems.
You don't have to feel what someone feels in other to be compassionate.
About a doctor who kept a reassuring distance and objectivity: "I didn't need him to be my mother, even for a day. I only need him to know what he was doing. His calmness didn't make me feel abandoned; it made me feel secure. I wanted to look at him and see the opposite of my fear, not its echo."
Telescopic philanthropy- caring (or affecting to care) about the plight of the less fortunate far away, but insensible (or insensitive) to the suffering of those close to us. Mrs. Jellyby, Bleak House.
"We are always going to have a world with violence. We have to grapple with the difficult question of how much, and what kind "
On dehumanization or objectification of others- calling someone an animal as an insult: not a failure to recognize their humanity; depends, for its humiliating quality, on its target's distinctively human desire to be recognized as human beings. Delight that might be taken in the degradation of individuals or groups: If you don't think of them as initially posessing dignity, where's the pleasure in degrading them?
Cultural values that prize self control are good for society: Europe witnessed a 30-fold drop in homicide rate between the Medieval and Modern periods; correlates with a change from a culture of honor to a culture of dignity, which prizes restraint. Steven Pinker