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koganbotIn a New York Times Op-Ed ("Compassion Made Easy"), social psychologist David DeSteno describes experiments designed to test whether "empathy with the suffering of others is... a special virtue that has the power to change the world." The results are interesting, but I have one little pissy point to make.
The relevant definition of "empathy" (definition 2) in my American Heritage Dictionary says, "Understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one are readily comprehended by another." Now, that's a pretty high bar for empathy. The social psych experiments were designed to explore the impact not of such wholesale, overall empathy but rather of people's localized empathetic understanding of another person in a particular predicament. That's fine with me, and worth exploring, and I can be on board with that. But nonetheless, even with this reduced standard for empathy, there's still the one eeny teeny tiny pissy little quibble I have with the piece, which is that the experimental subjects show absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the people towards whom they feel compassion or "empathy" or "commonality." None. Whatsoever. The people they are feeling compassion towards are acting, faking, lying; are confederates, stooges; and the experimental subjects don't know this.
You could say that the experiments actually explore the effects of compassion, whether the compassion is warranted or not, and of feelings of commonality, whether warranted or not. But not of actual empathy. "Empathy" that is not actual understanding of someone else (not just a feeling of understanding, based on what you think someone else is also feeling, but rather understanding what someone else actually is feeling, and thinking, and attempting) is not empathy. Empathy requires knowledge.
Interesting question, though: can one feel empathy towards, say, a character in Dickens; that is, a fictional character? I'd say "yes," even though this weakens my point above. But the basic point is that if "empathy" isn't allied with a search for truth, it can quite well be something other than empathy. I mean, one can feel empathy towards all those unfortunate elderly people who will be the victims of death panels under Obamacare, except that — I've read, without having researched the matter myself — such people won't exist, since there will be no death panels. In any event, this isn't empathy.
The relevant definition of "empathy" (definition 2) in my American Heritage Dictionary says, "Understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one are readily comprehended by another." Now, that's a pretty high bar for empathy. The social psych experiments were designed to explore the impact not of such wholesale, overall empathy but rather of people's localized empathetic understanding of another person in a particular predicament. That's fine with me, and worth exploring, and I can be on board with that. But nonetheless, even with this reduced standard for empathy, there's still the one eeny teeny tiny pissy little quibble I have with the piece, which is that the experimental subjects show absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the people towards whom they feel compassion or "empathy" or "commonality." None. Whatsoever. The people they are feeling compassion towards are acting, faking, lying; are confederates, stooges; and the experimental subjects don't know this.
You could say that the experiments actually explore the effects of compassion, whether the compassion is warranted or not, and of feelings of commonality, whether warranted or not. But not of actual empathy. "Empathy" that is not actual understanding of someone else (not just a feeling of understanding, based on what you think someone else is also feeling, but rather understanding what someone else actually is feeling, and thinking, and attempting) is not empathy. Empathy requires knowledge.
Interesting question, though: can one feel empathy towards, say, a character in Dickens; that is, a fictional character? I'd say "yes," even though this weakens my point above. But the basic point is that if "empathy" isn't allied with a search for truth, it can quite well be something other than empathy. I mean, one can feel empathy towards all those unfortunate elderly people who will be the victims of death panels under Obamacare, except that — I've read, without having researched the matter myself — such people won't exist, since there will be no death panels. In any event, this isn't empathy.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-16 06:32 pm (UTC)