tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post5904191504715133043..comments2024-03-29T04:06:37.402-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Less Empathy, PleaseStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-40807036943296750302015-06-10T09:04:48.345-07:002015-06-10T09:04:48.345-07:00But there is a paradox because without empathy the...But there is a paradox because without empathy there is no inter-subjective agreement. When we listen to others and respect their experience as different from our own, we treat them as fellow-subjects, and at least attempt to approximate understanding of their unique experience. How is this not an expression of empathy?<br /><br />Stewart equivocates when discussing empathy, e.g., since empathy is used to justify bullying behavior, then empathy is bad, not the bullying behavior. If the bully had greater empathy for self and others she could not justify her bullying by calling it an effort to teach others empathy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-59483718557251813992015-06-10T06:09:44.496-07:002015-06-10T06:09:44.496-07:00re: ...we should base our policy decisions on fact...re: ...we should base our policy decisions on facts, not ideals, on an objective appraisal of the present situation and on the record of what has succeeded of failed in the past.<br /><br />It seems like its easy to get confused what we're talking about. Specifically here it would seem we're talking empathy vs facts, or feelings vs facts, but what are facts? What are objective facts? How do we know what we know when confirmation bias means a large majority of the time we're filtering out information that contradicts what we expect to see, so as you say "ideals" are the problem, but how do you fight against seeing what you expect to see? How do turn off that part of your brain that anticipates reality and doesn't bother to check if reality followed through with what you assumed you just observed?<br /><br />So Iain McGilchrist's presentation, like this abbreviated version suggest something of this dilemma as our "divided brain".<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI<br /><br />So he says our more left brain is where we create abstraction, where we can replace reality with a model of it, which is perhaps what "idealism" is about, and that allows us a necessary distance from our perceptions to be aware of wider perspectives that what is immediately in front of us, but it also allows us to narrow our attention, filter what we see. And he says language itself is an abstraction that allows us to deceive ourselves that we understand something, while the right brain is not verbal in the same way, and can't compete against rationalizations that are logically consistent, but only because they've eliminated everything that is alive and never fully known from awareness.<br /><br />So I think he'd say our left brain makes Empathy, cognitive empathy I suppose I mean, and as your blog reminds us, it is wrong more than right, so we are better off asking people than assuming, which no one would disagree, but perhaps we should do both.<br /><br />Cognitive Empathy allows us to imagine ourselves in someone else's place, and that helps us guess what might be going on inside of them, and the problem is if we assume we know, we'll likely be wrong, yet if we just ask people, they may be caught up in their own "hall of mirrors" of their left brain and totally missing what is obvious to you observing them from the outside, like when you ask if someone is angry and they respond angrily "No!"<br /><br />If we're social beings, and half of the way we know ourselves is through how others see us, then we have to allow them to see us from the outside, and use their cognitive empathy to imagine how we might feel from the inside, and express those observations and guesses to us for contrast to our own self-perceptions. And that might help bridge us out of our own blind-spots of things we don't want to look at.<br /><br />Finally I think of like the Golden Rule in relation to Empathy. The Golden rule says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." So its not as simple as you'd like since we're all different, and then you might conclude "I should always ask before I do anything that affects others", and then you get the extremes "yes means yes" where you have to verbalize every action in an intimate encounter and gain affirmation that that action is okay, and that's no fun. But then you can go to the opposite pole that says we're all adults and we're all responsible to say no to anything we don't like, and let the buyer beware. Did the woman want to have sex after she accepted her 6th drink? And even if the answer is "Yes", is she an integrated personality with a single point of view?<br /><br />So I guess this all means ideals of content or ideals of libertarian maturity don't let anyone off the hook from responsibility. But if you have some cognitive empathy and perspective taking, perhaps you have more ability to avoid morally ambiguous situations?Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-75914673564214997802015-06-09T14:35:56.567-07:002015-06-09T14:35:56.567-07:00In Erich Maria Remarque's great but neglected ...In Erich Maria Remarque's great but neglected novel The Road Back, the narrator (Ernst) reflects on his feelings at the end of the Great War, observing that his own happiness at going home is not destroyed by the misery of those wounded so badly that they will not make it, and asks himself:<br /><br />"Because none can ever wholly feel what another suffers--is that the reason why wars perpetually recur?"<br /><br />It seemed to me when I first read the passage that Ernst's hypothesis was an incomplete explanation, and I still think that. The causes of wars *include* empathy, specifically, for members of one's own nation and/or other people on whose behalf the war is (at least purportedly) being fought.David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-75226031593795498442015-06-09T11:05:24.747-07:002015-06-09T11:05:24.747-07:00There are some ideas in this video that cause me p...There are some ideas in this video that cause me pain. So I don't agree with all of it. However, in this 2 hour video Sam Vaknin (a self-described narcissist) accurately describes, in a systematic way, how my mind and emotions actually work. He discusses the meaning of empathy as a projection of one's own experience onto others (38 minutes to 49 minutes into the video):<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWT22Ow_B04<br /><br />In the absence of empathy no inter-subjective agreement would be possible. A high capacity for empathy means a high capacity to have many personal experiences, such as Jesus story about the Rich Man and Lazarus (in this world the Rich Man ignores the suffering of the poor and in the next world he cannot rejoice with Lazarus and thus overcome his own torment). In short the Rich Man lacks empathy in this world and the next.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com