Nature With An Empathetic Face

Undecided about whether this should really be included under the Thought or Technology sections, Nature will have to do, given its hilarious moralistic-biologistic determinism (maybe then, given its reductivist, reality-principle biopolitics, it should be in the Politics section) though, at least, the article in fairness does eventually tokenly concede to the role of the signifier - though no mention of the unconscious - as ineluctable cultural mediator. [On second alternative thoughts, I'd belatedly rather add a Cuban Hip Hop soundtrack and re-position it in the Music category].


Research on human nature is cause for optimism

''We have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort.''

GARY OLSON

The non-profit Edge Foundation recently asked some of the world's most eminent scientists, ''What are you optimistic about? Why?'' Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni cited the new experimental work into the neural mechanisms that reveal how humans are hard-wired for empathy.

Recall that empathy is more than compassion or sympathy with another's situation. Empathy requires being able to ''put oneself in another's shoes,'' make a distinction between self and other, and then act on that perception. Empathy recognizes the other's humanity.

We now know from brain imaging and psychological experiments that the same brain circuits are mobilized upon feeling one's own pain and the pain of others. We know that separate neural processing regions then free up the capacity for an appropriate response. And scientists at the National Institutes of Health have discovered that altruistic acts activate a primitive part of the brain, producing a pleasurable response. Morality appears to be hard-wired into our brains.

Overwhelming evidence also indicates that the roots of prosocial behavior, including moral sentiments like empathy, precede the evolution of culture. Some 40 years ago, the celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall wrote about chimpanzee emotions, social relations, and ''chimp culture,'' but experts remained skeptical. That's no longer the case. According to the famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal, ''You don't hear any debate now.'' The feelings of empathy identified in monkeys and apes are both the roots and counterpart to human morality, a natural inheritance from our closest evolutionary relatives.

And, following Darwin, sophisticated studies within biology suggest that large-scale cooperation within the human species, including with genetically unrelated individuals within a group, was favored by group selection. There were clear evolutionary benefits in coming to grips with others.

Because morality has biological roots and empathy is at its center, we have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort. Of course the most vexing problem that remains to be explained is why so little progress has been made in extending empathy to those outside certain in-groups. Given a global society rife with violence, why doesn't our moral intuition produce a more peaceful world?

Here I tend to agree with Iacaboni's suggestion that externally manipulated, massive belief systems, including political ideologies, tend to override the unconscious, pre-reflective, neurobiological traits that should bring us together. For example, the fear-mongering of artificially created global scarcity may attentuate our empathic response. Another is the military's refusal to allow putting a face on U.S. wounded and dead soldiers in Iraq. As Prof. Robert Jensen puts it, ''The way we are educated and entertained keep us from knowing about or understanding the pain of others.'' This all conspires to make it harder to get in touch with our moral faculties and benefit from some valuable insights flowing from the new research on empathy.

First, the insidiously effective scapegoating of human nature that claims we are only motivated by greedy, dog-eat-dog, individual self-interest is now scientifically undermined. This rationalization for predatory behavior is transparently false. Second, recent research indicates that economic inequality is linked to high rates of biodiversity loss. Scientists from McGill University suggest that economic reforms may be the prerequisite to saving the richness of the ecosystem and urge that ''If we can learn to share the economic resources with fellow members of our own species, it may help to share ecological resources with our fellow species.'' It's entirely consistent to draw more attention to the potential for inter-species empathy and indeed, eco-empathy.

Finally, as de Waal implores, ''If we could manage to see people on other continents as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would be building upon rather than going against our nature.'' An ethos of empathy is an essential part of what it means to be human. Is it too much to hope that we're now on the verge of discovering a scientifically based, Archimedian moral point from which to lever public discourse toward an appreciation of our real moral sentiments, which in turn might release powerful emancipatory forces?

Gary Olson, Ph.D., is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem. His e-mail address is olson@moravian.edu. A longer version of this article, including sources, appeared at http://www.zmag.org. Contact : olson@moravian.ed
 

zhao

there are no accidents
thanks for posting that.

First, the insidiously effective scapegoating of human nature that claims we are only motivated by greedy, dog-eat-dog, individual self-interest is now scientifically undermined. This rationalization for predatory behavior is transparently false.

i've been saying this for ages! that there is much more examples of symbiotic and cooperative systems in "nature" than competitive ones, and that capitalism and civilization itself paints us and our ancesters in a violent, competitive way for its own reasons.
 

swears

preppy-kei
zhao: I thought you believed there was no such thing as human nature in the first place, either altruistic or selfish?
 

Eric

Mr Moraigero
Did I misunderstand or was the point of this article that monkeys/apes exhibit cooperative behavior, and so we should expect humans to do so too? I don't see that this is really a basis for morality. Does being moral equate to following some genetically programmed behaviorial template?

Because morality has biological roots and empathy is at its center, we have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort. Of course the most vexing problem that remains to be explained is why so little progress has been made in extending empathy to those outside certain in-groups. Given a global society rife with violence, why doesn't our moral intuition produce a more peaceful world?

Here I tend to agree with Iacaboni's suggestion that externally manipulated, massive belief systems, including political ideologies, tend to override the unconscious, pre-reflective, neurobiological traits that should bring us together. For example, the fear-mongering of artificially created global scarcity may attentuate our empathic response. Another is the military's refusal to allow putting a face on U.S. wounded and dead soldiers in Iraq. As Prof. Robert Jensen puts it, ''The way we are educated and entertained keep us from knowing about or understanding the pain of others.'' This all conspires to make it harder to get in touch with our moral faculties and benefit from some valuable insights flowing from the new research on empathy.


[\QUOTE]

And wouldn't this lack of extension be expected too? After all, monkeys/apes are cooperative within their `tribal' groups, but (as far as I know) not outside them. I saw recently on NHK a video of chimpanzees attacking the neighboring tribe (stealth attack), then butchering and eating the dead. Doesn't sound very cooperative to me, but it does sound something like what we see when we consider people dealing with outgroups. Should we take this also as a `marriage of science and morality'?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
I remember trying to post about mirror neurons on here and I can't remember if anyone got it. Funny how fast capitalism has wiped away millions of years of evolution in humans of these mirror neurons, when you think about 1 in 155 people being born with autism.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I remember the mirror neurons thing. Have there been any definitive studies into mirror neurons and autism then?

I'm quite interested in empathy. Fairly convinced that empathy itself becomes immoral in mediatized societies, a pathetically manipulable quality which results in moral weakness, in Geldofian pity-politics, charity-as-publicity, gross displays of competitive public piety etc etc... Basically the question is whether empathy remains a morally correct response to phenomena in scale and complexity greatly outside of the bio-socio-historical-linguistic conditions from which it originated? Take for example a charity-based situation. Televised media allow individuals in the UK or US say to view scenes of mass starvation in Africa. The empathetic response to seeing a starving person in the street might be to feel some pang of emotion as one imagines instinctively how the other feels. This is deemed perhaps to be morally useful as it motivates us to help this individual. But when faced with millions of individuals, is this response still appropriate, is this response still useful? If the scale of the problem becomes properly unimaginable in terms of empathy as usually construed and yet representable through images, what use does it have? We might desire then to assist that one individual, thinking that saving one life is better than saving none. But the problem comes in two forms. Firstly the attentiveness of empathy is reduced as our contact remains that of a mere viewer of media, cunningly relayed images and little more. Secondly the ability to communicate dire situations of grandiose scale and proportion implies the ability to present the entirety of their complexity, unfortunately this is obviously not the case. The desire for an immediate solution to problems without immediate solutions is the result. These factors conspire to create an effect of the eternal sticking plaster, rather than to allow genuine long term systemic fixes. The most moral attitude might then be to feel precisely nothing, to be motivated by something other than empathy entirely, some sense of cold rational justice. Rather than our world attenuating empathic response, it manipulates it, inculcates it for directed effect (in exactly the same manner as fear). And hence it could be argued that it is proper to resist.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
^ There are some interesting experiments in manipulating empathic responses. If I remember right, it's very easy to trigger empathic responses to inappropriate things - e.g. inanimate objects, with a minimal amount of animation.

I understand about mirror neurons... I just don't see what all the fuss is about. All this discussion about mirror neurons, and for instance, autism, is further attempts to push back the ontological basis for such differences to biology. Automatic eidetic assumption that autism is "caused" by faulty mirror neurons, rather than the other way around, or that the two things are mutually self supporting, coupled together.

Here's a couple of articles on autism/mirror neurons anyway:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/autism.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050411204511.htm

In the second one, they briefly mention Ramachandran's experiments with phantom limb pain and convincing patients that a reflection of their remaining limb is in fact the missing limb... which is linked to the experiments I mentioned earlier.
 
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