Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor
and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard
University. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for
publications such as the New York Times, Time and The New Republic, and is
the author of eight books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind
Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, and most
recently The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
Steven Pinker on Empathy
"The third historical force has been called the expanding circle, this
is a concept that was named by Peter Singer and first endorsed by
Charles Darwin more than a century before. The idea is that evolution
bequeathed us with a sense of empathy. Unfortunately, by default we
apply it only to a narrow circle of family. Over the course of history
you can see the circle of empathy expanding..."
2011-09-30 -
The Limits of Empathy By David
Brooks - New York Times
As Steven Pinker writes in his mind-altering new book, “The Better
Angels of Our Nature,” we are living in the middle of an “empathy
craze.” There are shelf loads of books about it: “The Age of Empathy,”
“The Empathy Gap,” “The Empathic Civilization,” “Teaching Empathy.”
There’s even a brain theory that we have mirror neurons in our heads
that enable us to feel what’s in other people’s heads and that these
neurons lead to sympathetic care and moral action.
2013-05-20
- The Baby in the Well, The case against empathy.
By Paul Bloom
- New Yorker “The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of
empathy,” the psychologist Steven Pinker has written, “but it also
owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness,
self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights.” A
reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and
likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than
the gut wrench of empathy.
Steven
Pinker
-
He identifies five “inner demons”—sadism, revenge, dominance,
violence in pursuit of a practical benefit, violence in pursuit of an
ideology—that struggle with four “better angels”: self-control, empathy,
morality, and reason.
you talked about empathy and how it plays a
role in expansion of the moral circle.
Your actually skeptical about empathy and so am
I.
It's not comfortable being against empathy,
it's like being against love...
But empathy can only go so far.
Adam Smith example - the limit's of empathy and
moral problem.
many people die in China, wouldn't affect you
much
vr, your hand got amputated, you wouldn't get
it out of your mind.
choose between your finger or 1 million
people dying
power of reason
impartial spectator
Reason gives a little person in our head
judging consequences from an objective point of view.
42:50 - Empathy won't get you there. Another
limitation of empathy is it does moral response at the expense
of others
Dan Batson has experiment - organ transplant,
move person up on the line to get transplant.. that's wrong.
Your being biased towards one person over another.
[Example: Not fighting Global Warming
Caused by Empathy]
for statistical used - i.e. global warming -
empathy fails us. - yes that's true
a carbon tax will put a poor guy out of a job
I can't resonate with the future consequences
of global warming
It's easier to empathize with the guy next
door in coal mine versus the Bangladeshi n the future who's
land will be under water.
44:00 - [Example: World Wide Corruption Caused by
Empathy]
World Wide Corruption is being empathic to your
friends and relatives
We now use reason to give out jobs
it leads to more efficiency
it means turning off your empathy or
forcing people to turn off their empathy.
45:00 - [Example: Selective
Care for only caring about Some Animals caused by empathy]
Another case brings us back to animals.
Dog elicit empathy chickens don't
We can be brutal to some animals and not others
An empathy only morality is skewed up
[the empathy deficit is the fault of empathy]
45:35 Moral psychology in general which you've
contributed a lot to
normative consequences - can our work tell us
what's right and wrong?
not mechanically - but can be relevant
like when do you discount quirks of our moral
psychology but should not be given moral weight.
intuitions sacrificing in moral dilemmas -
case of warped
disgust an unreliable moral guide
dignity
an unreliable moral guide
52:00 Steven: To
hell with dignity!
Reason for less violence.
enlightenment -books
- more knowledge
- books lead to empathy -
Causes of less violence
rights revolutions
Inclinations for
violence
vr. What are our better angles?
Self control - anticipate consequences
Empathy - feel others pain
moral sense - family of intuitions -
drive for fairness
