Empathy

[tbieter]

"There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.”
.............

"People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.

The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opini ... .html?_r=1

Do you subscribe to a code of conduct? If so, identify the code. If you don't subscribe to any code, why is that the case?

[duszek]

In one of the Charlie Chaplin films there is a scene in which Charlie wants to eat his supper on the street but there is some other human being watching him with hungry eyes. Charlie cannot enjoy his meal until he shares his sandwich with this beggar.

I do not think that he acted out of a sense of duty.

[zinnat13]

This is interesting.

I gone through the article of Jesse Prinz with the help of link given in the post by tbieter. I do not see any merit in the arguments by Prinz.

The impression i got from his paper is that his whole arguments are based on simple and single theory that odds are in the favor of that all empathetic viewpoints are not converted into deeds or actions.This assumption of the Prinz is right to the some extent but he has taken this partial truth far too long. he has mistaken it with the complete truth that is why he derived the wrong conclusion.

i feel that Prinz has taken a very narrowed view of empathy. Empathy is one of the basics of human society. it is impossible to live together in groups for any intellectual living entities without having empathy. Empathy enables them to learn how to adjust with others.

Prinz cited a example in which he argued that if a person, sees someone in trouble at the other side of the road then, even having a empathetic(sympathetic) view of that second person, chances are in the favor of that he would not cross the road to help the troubled one so it is established that empathy does not cause moral set of actions for us.

But this conclusion does not provide us a complete understanding of empathy. I want to put the same imaginary situation forward with one change only that what if we replace the troubled person with a close friend or even with the son of the first person. Now what will be his reaction? Now he would surely cross the road to help his son and may be for his friend.

Now the question is that why this time empathy has been able to cause an action. Technically speaking, his friend and son are also a different entities like the first troubled one so the reaction of the seer should be the same but it is not the case.
so we see that empathy and its effects are relative. Effects derived from it differ from person to person like any other mental phenomena. Every one has his or her own benchmark and reacts accordingly.

So, in my opinion, Prinz has missed a basic point while postulation that every thing is relative in this world including human behavior. He tried to establish a general rule with the help of weak or extreme example. There are all types of humans in this world so it would not be proper to paint all of them with the same brush. It is very difficult to generalize as every one has its own version of empathy and a set of derived actions.

Hence, it is difficult to subscribe the view of Prinz.

with love to all,
sanjay

[info]

If you don't subscribe to any code, why is that the case?

I'm deeply into empathy these days. I see it as helping me to save my life. I was deeply frustrated with jugmentalness and expectations (codes). I have sometimes felt totally disconnected from people, hating them, feeling angry at others and at my self, feeling confused and jugmental. Repressed. Neurotic. No empathy means neurotically ill; it's not human to have no empathy, that means you've been bribed and tortured for so long all you can see are the instruments of torture and not the people behind it anymore. It's kinda like Plato's cave analogy. Let's stare into the Sun, the Sun is warm and light.

[keithprosser2]

Charlie cannot enjoy his meal until he shares his sandwich with this beggar.

It is hard to enjoy eating while looking at a starving man. But I think a lot of people would just move their chair so they can't see him.

[chaz wyman]

"There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.”
.............

"People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.

The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opini ... .html?_r=1

Do you subscribe to a code of conduct? If so, identify the code. If you don't subscribe to any code, why is that the case?

Such studies as these can only be flawed.
If empathy works at all, it is most likely at a subconscious level, not easily detectable by questionnaires. Empathy will also works at the structural level, by forming the codes at the agency level. Structural codes will chime with resonance empathic thoughts, rather than feelings, which have micro-structred each agent at the cerebral level.

We all subscribe to codes of conduct, but these are informal and it is not easy to separate our empathic response, nor our empathic level when we chose to adopt such codes.

Despite the enigmatic nature of empathy; if there were NO empathy at all, there would be no moral codes of conduct of any kind. We are led by our passions. They give us motivation to apply reason to our dilemmas. Passions get us out of bed in the morning.

[SpheresOfBalance]

I don't necessarily agree with the motivational aspect. I've always been compelled to abide by that of the golden rule, and similarly an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. While I believe that to turn the other cheek is the ultimate in giving and sacrifice, intellectually speaking. I find myself incapable of doing so. I prefer to mirror that which I receive. dealing in kind such that those that sacrifice for me receive my sacrifice and that those that would harm me experience harm. One must understand what it is that they wield for them to grow.

I'm not biased toward any particular philosophy or religion. Instead my lessons are that of all of humanity. We are the life, an integral part of this symbiosis that is planet Earth. We all suffer.

With respect to empathy I've been able to almost absorb the pain of others such that it manifests itself physically; psychosomatically. I believe my caring comes from the fact that I know pain all to well and I probably see their pain through my pains eyes. While I don't have much resource other than my experience's during my extensive travels around the globe seeing people actually dying in the streets and children playing in cesspools, I give all that I can, which is usually only that of ear, wisdom, tear, heart, and a more positive perspective. And sometimes I'm cruel to be kind with my brutal honesty.

I have found that lately I've grown tired as nothing seems new any longer and actually seems like there's nothing left. Since I've made no great marks as of yet, I find myself wanting to do something for mankind, which is actually somewhat selfish because it's more about my continued living in peoples minds after I'm gone, and not solely for them. I've even wondered what I'll actually be effectual in giving in my current state.

No, for me it has nothing to do with groupism, or cronyism, etc., but rather miracle of life-ism in an infinite universe.

[keithprosser2]

Passions get us out of bed in the morning.

And into bed at at other times!

I think empathy is real in the sense that we can and do feel our selves to be in the situation others find themselves. We blokes always laugh when someone get hit in the - our delicate regions - but we wince first!

Like most things that (presumably) evolved, empathy might not be strictly necessary (there might be otherways to make a obligatory social animal function), but evolution achieved that end by giving us empathy.

I think one reason for that is that it does not rely on a high level of cognition. An empathetic species can achieve a level of mutual assistance and co-operation without having to be able to work out why mutual assistance is a good thing. I think pain and pleasure also derive from the way that pain and pleasure avoid having to evolve cognitive notions of what if good and bad for you.

In humans the cognitive powers of the brain are of course highly-developed. I think much of our brain-mass might be there to enable us to override more primitive 'automatic' mental processes. It also means that we over-rationalise. There may be no good reason for empathy (or pain and pleasure) - they're essentially accidents of evolution, and the 'why' is just that once such things had evolved they 'worked' so they stayed.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Presumption can be a fools game!

Yet I presume to know your pain.

I believe that empathy serves a valuable function. Caring for our fellow humans is closely associated with our understanding of our similarities. Everyone experiences emotional stress at one time or another and unfortunately this is where our neuroses and psychoses are born. Without our abilities to empathize and thus ease a sufferers pain a lot of unconscious conflict would manifest itself as debilitating physical and mental disturbances.

Without our ability to empathize with those in mental anguish the human population would grow colder, more distant. More hate crimes would flourish, eventually giving way to wide spread chaos and anarchy. Hitlers agenda as well as all other would be oppressors, lacked empathy for their victims which is why they were so easily treated as so much meat. Empathy is part of the glue that keeps us from killing one another.

[Walgekaaren]

"There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.”
.............

"People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.

The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opini ... .html?_r=1

Do you subscribe to a code of conduct? If so, identify the code. If you don't subscribe to any code, why is that the case?

You seem to make a very common mistake by assuming "empathy" is omnipotent and the same to all people in all worlds... I read the link you distributed, and taken out some quotes, what I am to address.

"We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place. Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one another and feel each other’s pain."

What does it mean, if people say "better" ? This tipe of frases use the logic: Man - sees object performing action - contemplates object and action - acts upon contemplation, but that doesnt nessessarily include an "empathic" action or thought like Pilat was annoyed of Jesus reply: "The rightfull who know the Truth shall know what I am!" answering: "What is the truth?" He didnt share it with "the other guy", he was talking with.

For instance if I see a cockroach in my kitchen, I'm complied to crush him, though if I where a budist or there to be viewed by a budist, this would be "murder"

"The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action."

What is the "right action"? Also the nazis did "empathic" actions derived from their politics and philosophy we now claim to be inhuman. But for them it was like treating cockroaches or like the Rwanda incident when one community tried to whipe out another because of religious and political intolerance... Only those who tried to live in both worlds wept for they actions. But many changed theyr viewes in order to be better social people. And they didnt give a thought or regret to it. Because it was ok in the nazi world. If the world changed, they acted upon the self-preservation code and claimed to be "the small stone" in an landslide of big boulders.

"People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes."

"And who is my next man?" If to answer with a pharisees question to Jesus. - Answer in the parable of the good Samaritan - I'll translate it to todays language in order to be understood like the Jews of that time understood it...

A warjournalist goes to the Helmand province and is kidnapped. A boardmeating is assembled constituted by an american; an englishman; and a frenchman. Representing the Three powers of first world, to try and negotiate the reliese of that hostage. They agree upon 3 days of vigorous debate, that though it is bad that the hostage has to die, but because he was kidnapped by the wrong tribe of mujahedin warriors they can do nothing. The Jews already refuse in the newspapers of any reliese of captive terrorists for exchange or money what could be used for further terrorism. Meanwhile a guy from chechenia stumbles upon the hostige who is left on a field to die, because the terrorists found out, that he was collateral for the first world (only a 3rd-rank staff-employer, easy to exchange with other student to do his job) Now the chechen peasant helps that warjournalist and the guys parents get him back alive. That chechen goes even further and pays for the legal papers and stuff to make things go faster, by selling 200 sheep risking bankruptcy and future vengense.

Now the "board meating" hears of it and arrests the chechen peasant claiming he had worked together with the terrorists. He is brought into Quantanamo and interogated, there he finally after 3 months of torture addmits to be a terrorist of a 5 member cell... and soon dies in his box mysteriously... end of the story...

If you talk about empathy, you cannot neglect politics; social bonds etc. for nobody wants to be viewed as a non-sensing person what is the equivalent of being called a witch in Salem

It is good that you think of such topics and I dont make bad of writing books of this topic, but you havent really brought out anything new I couldnt read out from Taodeching or the Bible or other religious documents...

[saturnman]

"There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.”

I'm not exactly of the same view, but I wouldn't quite overly dismiss this point of view, either. It's hard to gauge the true extent to which people actually feel empathy for others, and subsequently to which extent this feeling guides their behaviors, but I think it'd be hard to overstate just how much peoples' actions are rooted simply in habit, simply due to all the observations they've made regarding how others have acted in those types of situations... These things come more automatically and might not have anything to do at all with genuine feelings of empathy.

[SpheresOfBalance]

I believe Empathy is a function of being hurt either physically or mentally. One can usually only experience it if they can identify with it. The pain in question doesn't necessarily have to be of the same type for you to recognize it, but something similar helps. It could be that the results the recent study that our thread starter cites, is a product of our current state of non corporal punishment and other social factors, population comes to mind as a potential factor, and is indicative of a more callous colder human race than of days of old when we seemed to help each other more.

The assertion that "some religious, military, social or philosophic code" has anything to do with it is a byproduct of their visiting pain on a regular basis. Those that have been isolated to varying degrees don't understand it's nature, thus those that visit it daily, know it, only all to well. So you have to have been behind the face of pain in some respect in order to recognize it's mirror image. Your willingness to act as it's savior speaks directly to your compassion and thus the compassion that you have been given.

One's personal experience of Life's suffering is the only code required to visit Empathy. And ones personal experience of compassion is the only code required to act and help those kindred spirits!

I assert that to diminish, in any way, anything, that plays any percentage of a positive role, in humanities cohesion, is a fools game,

[cindythompson]

Well, for me it is normal. I believed it actually reside in everybody’s heart and maybe just hindering by other emotions that make it imperceptible. Even the most ferocious criminal has this thing not as big as many have but it does really exist.

[saturnman]

It could be that the results the recent study that our thread starter cites, is a product of our current state of non corporal punishment and other social factors, population comes to mind as a potential factor, and is indicative of a more callous
colder human race than of days of old when we seemed to help each other more.

When were these days of old, though? I don't really understand the idea that things were better in the past and people were nicer to each other in the past... it just seems pretty unsubstantiated to me and counter-intuitive.

[chaz wyman]

I believe Empathy is a function of being hurt either physically or mentally. One can usually only experience it if they can identify with it. The pain in question doesn't necessarily have to be of the same type for you to recognize it, but something similar helps. It could be that the results the recent study that our thread starter cites, is a product of our current state of non corporal punishment and other social factors, population comes to mind as a potential factor, and is indicative of a more callous colder human race than of days of old when we seemed to help each other more.
,

Ah the good ol' days!! and other golden age fallacies.

If only we could go back to good old Victorian values; mudlarks; chimney sweeps; infantile pneumonia and other fatal childhood diseases; lack of sanitation; low life expectancy; wars and pillage! And let's not forget the class system which condemned the lower orders to a life of servitude.