Against Empathy?

[hct13345]

http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy

 

Thoughts?

[dsayers]

What are YOUR thoughts? You shared it without providing any reason as to why somebody should take a look at it.

 

I started reading with high hopes since the author was being rather meticulous with his defining his terms. Then I got to this part:

 

 

 

I have argued elsewhere that certain features of empathy make it a poor guide to social policy.

 

Followed by:

 

 

 

our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside. Our policies are improved when we appreciate that a hundred deaths are worse than one, even if we know the name of the one

 

He's essentially asking the wrong question. He's starting from the false assumption that people commanding others without their consent (the State) is righteous/valid/normal. He's trying to figure out how to better command others without their consent, which isn't empathetic at all.

 

In as much of it as I read, he's talking about sympathy, not empathy. To that end, he's right that many people allow it to cloud their judgement. In the abstract, people talk about helping the poor, but they never talk about WHY they're poor. Or providing healthcare (by way of force) to people who only need so much of it due to their poor life choices under the assumption that the effects of those poor choices would be subsidized.

 

But WHY do these people hold such buzzwords over rational thought?

[MMX2010]

My initial reaction based on the first two paragraphs is this: (1) Philosophy is difficult; platitudes are easy.  (2) Acknowledging the validity of uncomfortable scientific research is difficult; denial is easy.  (3) I've heard, more times than I can count, the notion that "Empathy is the core of morality."  And I think it's bullshit, because Psychopaths have exceptionally high empathy, but they're exceptionally immoral.  (4) Whenever I point this out, very few people are interested in a deep discussion of what empathy is and whether what-psychopaths-do qualifies.  Instead, they either fall silent or get angry.  So I think it's awesome that this dude is againat empathy. 

 

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Continuing....

 

I loved the definitional distinction between "cognitive empathy" and "emotional empathy", and feel that it's very important. 

 

The argument, "Empathy is the core of morality." goes something like this, "If I, personally, show that I get extremely uncomfortable when I notice someone experiencing great pain, then that clearly signals that I would never inflict great pain upon someone else, because I know what that feels like."  There are two obvious flaws in this argument: (1) If I hate your guts, particularly when I feel like my hatred is justified, then I can use my emotional empathy to hurt you where it hurts deepest.  And if my hatred is not justified, then I've behaved immorally.  (2) If I'm personally uncomfortable with inflicting great pain, that doesn't mean I'm uncomfortable either getting someone else to do it for me, ("Just wait till your father gets home!"), or looking the other way when you happen to suffer pain. 

 

Another flaw is that there's no rational reason to say "Emotional empathy is the core of morality, but cognitive empathy isn't good enough."  Ironically, the same two flaws that I described above are often used to criticize cognitive empathy.  As in, "Just because you intellectually understand how much this hurts, doesn't mean you'll refrain from hurting someone."  Or, "Because your empathy is cognitively based, it's much easier for you to find irrational reasons to justify when you hurt others." 

 

Not surprisingly, I think this is an off-shoot of feminism / gender politics.  "Emotional empathy" is feminine, so it's automatically praised as good.  Whereas "cognitive empathy" is masculine, so it's automatically demonized. 

 

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Continuing....

 

I also loved the paragraphs explaining how statistical data is better than empathetic attachment to the one.  I feel vindicated reading this article. 

 

I'm also reminded of a quote by Dr. Gregory House, "I take risks, and sometimes people die. But when I don't take risks, more people die. So I guess my biggest problem is that I'm cursed with the ability to do math."

 

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It is no accident that Baron-Cohen chose a woman as his example. In a series of empirical and theoretical articles, psychologists Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz have explored why women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. Their results suggest that this divergence is explained in part by a sex difference in the propensity for “unmitigated communion,” defined as “an excessive concern with others and placing others’ needs before one’s own.” Helgeson and Fritz developed a simple nine-item questionnaire, which asks respondents to indicate whether they agree with statements such as, “For me to be happy, I need others to be happy,” “I can’t say no when someone asks me for help,” and “I often worry about others’ problems.” Women typically score higher than men on this scale; Hannah would, I bet, score high indeed.

 

Strong inclination toward empathy comes with costs. Individuals scoring high in unmitigated communion report asymmetrical relationships, where they support others but don’t get support themselves. They also are more prone to suffer depression and anxiety. Working from a different literature on “pathological altruism,” Barbara Oakley notes in Cold-Blooded Kindness (2011), “It’s surprising how many diseases and syndromes commonly seen in women seem to be related to women’s generally stronger empathy for and focus on others.”

 

Loved this part, too. 

 

I've been reading a lot of conservative blogs lately, as well as the work of AnonymousConservative which focuses on amygdala size. 

 

A large amount of those blogs suggests that there are two conflicting reasons to help someone: (1) Because you genuinely understand their situation, and want to uplift them.  (2) Because you're extremely discomforted by their suffering, and want them to get better so that you'll no longer feel uncomfortable.  Hannah probably experiences the second motivation, and the chief negative consequence of this is that you dwell upon solutions to these problems while your brain is exhausted, anxious, and unfocused.  So most of your proposed solutions don't really work, and worse....you don't really care.  Because he proposed solution was designed to alleviate your anxiety, the failure of that solution can be dismissed / ignored by scapegoating someone else....whether the people you're trying to help ("blaming the victim") or the perceived oppressors of the people you're trying to help (patriarchy, Whites, wealthy, government, and so on). 

 

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Continuing....

 

 

 

This brings us to the targets of empathy. As I write this, an older relative of mine who has cancer is going back and forth to hospitals and rehabilitation centers. I’ve watched him interact with doctors and learned what he thinks of them. He values doctors who take the time to listen to him and develop an understanding of his situation; he benefits from this sort of cognitive empathy. But emotional empathy is more complicated. He gets the most from doctors who don’t feel as he does, who are calm when he is anxious, confident when he is uncertain. And he particularly appreciates certain virtues that have little directly to do with empathy, virtues such as competence, honesty, professionalism, and respect.

 

This description reinforces what I said earlier about gender politics.  The older relative is describing old-school masculinity, a type of stoicism in the face of suffering and death which allows you to behave better. 

 

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Thanks for posting this.  I enjoyed it, and felt vindicated. 

[J. D. Stembal]

I admit I skimmed the article a bit.

 

Empathy is crucial for people understand why they shouldn't violate the non-aggression principle. It is not a good guide for determining who you should help, so I agree that empathy based altruism in a concept that we should be careful throwing around simply because you can't universalize a commandment to be altruistic. That desire has to come from the true self, so selfishness breeds true altruism. Empathy, which is often characterized as "sympathy for victim classes" in the media and politics, is masquerading as virtue a lot these days. This is false or dishonest altruism.