Hillary has a point: In defense of empathy and justice
By John C. Gibbs and Martin L. Hoffman

"Yale psychologist Paul Bloom objected that we can’t actually do that (at least not as well as we think we can), especially when our neighbor is someone in a quite different situation or condition—say, a stressed-out single parent, a traumatically scarred war veteran, or an autistic child. Besides, declared Bloom, even if we could fully and accurately feel and see from another’s perspective, empathy is often too narrow and parochial to serve as a moral guide. Far less limited, Bloom asserts, is reason: specifically, the impartial principles and procedures of justice. We should “step back” from empathy and “apply an objective and fair morality,” a “dispassionate analysis” of distressing situations. Bloom has even declared that “empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to survive.” "

Notes

• Addresses Paul Blooms criticisms of empathy

• “Though we could not possibly be the horse we are whipping, or the trapped and starved animal whose fur we are wearing, we can imagine such things well enough for moral purposes.”  Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit

• "Morality is most objective and compelling when justice and empathy align"

• "Empathy and justice have a deep partnership."

• We have long been concerned with empathy’s limitations.

  • "narrow and parochial empathy can be." [The is the problem with being narrow and parochial, not a problem with empathy. Reason can be narrow and parochial.]

  • [They say students become overwhelmed and withdrew.  This is not a problem with empathy but with overwhelm and withdrawal. A problem with students not being able to stay present with empathy.]

  
   

Selected Publications

Hoffman, M.L. (In Press). How automatic and representational is empathy and why? Brain and Behavioral Sciences.
"The claim that empathy is both automatic and representational is criticized as follows:

• (a) five empathy-arousing processes ranging from conditioning and mimicry to prospective-taking show that empathy can be either automatic or representational, and only under certain circumstances, both;

• (b) although automaticity decreases, empathy increases with age and cognitive development;

•  (c) observers' causal attributions can shift rapidly and produce more complex empathic responses than the theory allows."