BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }
Gene, list - very interesting -
I wonder if there are multiple issues here about the 'decline of
empathy'.
One reason might be the postmodern method of raising children which,
in a sense, isolates the child from any effect of his behaviour. That
is - no matter what he/she does, he is praised as 'that's great'. If
the child acts out, then, he is assumed to be a victim of some
aggression that is, in a mechanical sense, causing him to release
that aggression on someone else. He is not nurtured to be himself
causal and responsible. The focus is on 'building self-esteem'. Some
schools do not give marks to prevent 'loss of self-esteem'. This
building up of a sense of inviolate righteousness is one possible
cause of the decline of empathy, since the focus, as noted, is on the
Self and not on the Self-and-Others.
The interesting thing is that along with this isolation of the Self
from the effects of how one directly acts towards others - and I
think the increase in bullying is one result, but- we see an increase
in what I call Seminar Room interaction with Others. That is, the
individual interacts with others indirectly, by joining abstract
group causes: peace, climate change, earth day ....where what one
does as an individual is indirect and actually, has little to no
effect.
But there is another issue - and that is the increase of tribalism
in our societies. By tribalism I mean 'identity politics' which
rejects a common humanity that is shared by all, and rejects
individualism within this commonality and instead herds people into
homogeneous groups with unique characteristics - and considers them
isolate from, different from - other groups. Tribalism by definition
views other tribes as adversarial. Therefore the people in other
tribes are 'dehumanized'. We see this in wars - where both sides view
each other as non-human.
But your other issue - the importance of facial expression - is also
important. I can see the argument with regard to Botox, but this
argument is also valid with regard to cultural veils which hide the
face to non-members of the tribe and thus reject outside involvement;
and to cultural values which reject expression of emotions [stiff
upper lip] and, effectively, also result in the non-involvement of
others.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 11:08 AM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu
sent:
Dear Gary F, Here is a link to the Sarah Konrath et al. study on
the decline of empathy among American college students:
http://faculty.chicagobooth. [1]edu/eob/edobrien_empathyPSPR.pdf
And a brief Scientific American article on it:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/ [2]
You state: "I think Peirce would say that these attributions of
empathy (or consciousness) to others are perceptual judgments — not
percepts, but quite beyond (or beneath) any conscious control, and .
We feel it rather than reading it from external indications."
This seems to me to miss the point that it is possible to
disable the feeling of empathy. Clinical narcissistic disturbance,
for example, substitutes idealization for perceptual feeling, so that
what is perceived can be idealized rather than felt.
Extrapolate that to a society that substitutes on mass scales
idealization for felt experience, and you can have societally reduced
empathy. Unempathic parenting is an excellent way to produce the
social media-addicted janissary offspring.
The human face is a subtle neuromuscular organ of attunement,
which has the capacity to read another's mind through mirror
micro-mimicry of the other's facial gestures, completely
subconsciously. These are "external indications" mirrored by one.
One study showed that botox treatments, in paralyzing facial
muscles, reduce the micro-mimicry of empathic attunement to the other
face in an interaction. The botox recipient is not only impaired in
exhibiting her or his own emotional facial micro-muscular movements,
but also is impaired in subconsciously micro-mimicking that of the
other, thus reducing the embodied feel of the other’s
emotional-gestural state (Neal and Chartrand, 2011). Empathy is
reduced through the disabling of the facial muscles.
Vittorio Gallese, one of the neuroscientists who discovered
mirror neutons, has discussed "embodied simulation" through "shared
neural underpinnings." He states: “…social cognition is not only
explicitly reasoning about the contents of someone else’s mind. Our
brains, and those of other primates, appear to have developed a basic
functional mechanism, embodied simulation, which gives us an
experiential insight of other minds. The shareability of the
phenomenal content of the intentional relations of others, by means
of the shared neural underpinnings, produces intentional attunement.
Intentional attunement, in turn, by collapsing the others’
intentions into the observer’s ones, produces the peculiar quality
of familiarity we entertain with other individuals. This is what
“being empathic” is about. By means of a shared neural state
realized in two different bodies that nevertheless obey to the same
morpho-functional rules, the “objectual other” becomes “another
self”. Vittorio Gallese, “Intentional Attunement. The Mirror
Neuron System and Its Role in Interpersonal Relations,” 15 November
2004 Interdisciplines, http://www.interdisciplines.
[3]org/mirror/papers/1
Gene Halton
On Jun 20, 2017 7:00 PM, wrote:
List,
Gene’s post in this thread had much to say about “empathy” —
considered as something that can be measured and quantified for
populations of students, so that comments about trends in
“empathy” among them can be taken as meaningful and important.
I wonder about that.
My wondering was given more definite shape just now when I came
across this passage in a recent book about consciousness by Evan
Thompson:
[[ In practice and in everyday life … we don’t infer the inner
presence of consciousness on the basis of outer criteria. Instead,
prior to any kind of reflection or deliberation, we already
implicitly recognize each other as conscious on the basis of empathy.
Empathy, as philosophers in the phenomenological tradition have shown,
is the direct perception of another being’s actions and gestures as
expressive embodiments of consciousness. We don’t see facial
expressions, for example, as outer signs of an inner consciousness,
as we might see an EEG pattern; we see joy directly in the smiling
face or sadness in the tearful eyes. Moreover, even in difficult or
problematic cases where we’re forced to consider outer criteria,
their meaningfulness as indicators of consciousness ultimately
depends depends on and presupposes our prior empathetic grasp of
consciousness. ]]
—Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness
in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Kindle Locations
2362-2370). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.
If we don’t “infer the inner presence of consciousness on the
basis of outer criteria,” but perceive it directly on the basis of
empathy, how do we infer the inner presence (or absence) of empathy
itself? In the same way, i.e. by direct perception, according to
Thompson. I think Peirce would say that these attributions of empathy
(or consciousness) to others are perceptual judgments — not
percepts, but quite beyond (or beneath) any conscious control, and .
We feel it rather than reading it from external indications. To use
Thompson’s example, we can measure the temperature by reading a
thermometer, using a scale designed for that purpose. But we can’t
measure the feeling of warmth as experienced by the one who feels it.
Now, the statistics cited by Gene may indeed indicate something
important, just as measures of global temperature may indicate
something important. But what it does indicate, and what significance
that has, depends on the nature of the devices used to generate those
statistics. And I can’t help feeling that empathy is more
important than anything measurable by those means.
(I won’t go further into the semiotic nature of perceptual
judgments here, but I have in Turning Signs:
http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/blr.htm#Perce [5].)
Gary f.
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY
ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
peirce-L@list.iupui.edu [6] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to
PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu [7] with the line "UNSubscribe
PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce [8]-l/peirce-l.htm .
Links:
------
[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/eob/edobrien_empathyPSPR.pdf
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/
[3] http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1
[4]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'g...@gnusystems.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[5] http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/blr.htm#Perce
[6]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'peirce-L@list.iupui.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[7]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'l...@list.iupui.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[8] http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
