Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
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Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
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Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#2[deleted]
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#3Very interesting. Perhaps the empathetic and analytic systems are parallel to Kahneman's systems 1 and 2? (1 for thinking "fast" and 2 for "slow," to oversimplify an Nobel laureate's life's work.)
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#4Interesting but don't really see how this addresses the explanatory gap problem.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#5Very interesting. Perhaps the empathetic and analytic systems are parallel to Kahneman's systems 1 and 2? (1 for thinking "fast" and 2 for "slow," to oversimplify an Nobel laureate's life's work.)
I think sub-cortical (limbic) and cortical are probably better analogues for system 1 and 2 than empathetic/analytic (intutive system 1 thought isn't necesarily empathetic, and can certainly be 'analytic'. The difference vs. system 2 is the presence of reflective consciousness.)
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#6I misread the title as empathy encourages analytical thought, which would make sense, because in order to empathize one has to have enough analytic ability to see how another person is thinking, if that makes sense.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#7I suppose this explains why successful marketing often involves telling a good story.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#8I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering?
I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions."
Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make people safer, make them healthier, etc. The bottom line is that good intentions have no influence on the consequences of actions. To determine what the consequences will be and whether a course of action is likely to help or hurt, we might have to abandon empathy during the discussion. Of course, we shouldn't ignore empathy when considering whether we want the consequences or not.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#9I misread the title as empathy encourages analytical thought, which would make sense, because in order to empathize one has to have enough analytic ability to see how another person is thinking, if that makes sense.
You are correct, that analytical thought is necessary to have a shot at seeing how another person is thinking... but to believe that you have seen how another person is thinking requires only intuition.
It's wrong, of course, wrong in drastic, often tragic, degrees as often as it is right (performs no better than random chance). This has been known for a long time in behavioral neuroscience. How we respond to another persons face when they are feeling different emotions is extremely inaccurate and quite useless, but we are all weak to believing that our conclusions are valid. This is why polygraphs do not work. They rely on the intuition of the examiner rather than science. So, they perform the same as random guessing. In addition to just being wrong half the time, such intuitions are easily manipulated by some people (either trained or an ability they just develop naturally).
The human mind has a great many very reliable flaws. They were probably useful for survival at some point as they seem endemic to the structure of the brain itself (and we learn more all the time about their neurophysiological origin) but almost certainly useless at best and dangerous at worst today. We certainly don't live in anything that resembles the environment our brains evolved to survive in for thousands of years. (In small extremely intimate groups on the savannah with rare intense bursts of life-or-death stress but life mostly consisting of eating, having sex, and sleeping.)
Long experienced cops believe they can tell when people are lying. When tested, they perform the same as random chance. Average people believe they can tell what someone is feeling by looking at their face. When tested, they perform the same as random chance. It's hard for many to accept that their ability to read other people is only as accurate as flipping a coin, but that's what we've got evidence for. In some ways, this is odd, since we have mirror neurons that specifically make us unconsciously mimic other people when physically close to them, and I would think this would lead to being able to understand them better, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
Re: Empathy represses analytic thought and vice versa
#10I would think this leads quickly to another question people might not want to answer... Does empathy increase the probability that the actions you decide to take will reduce or increase suffering? I am a fan of an old German saying: "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions." Every tragedy in human history that I know of was born from good intentions. Make society stronger, make the majority happier, make peo…
We use emotions to help us pick the ends to which logical effort should be directed. Try as you might, you will not be able to logically select the axioms by which you reason.