Comments on: Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky’s Intellectual Progeny

By: rick robens

rick robens — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:18:59 +0000

A dispute arose over the meaning of empathy and the ability to empathize. As a mere Health teacher situated in an office of English teachers, it was difficult to defend my stance among individuals that are more knowledgeable in language and literature than I. Their literal interpretation of empathy includes the necessity “to empathize one has to have been in the same or similar situation as the individual they empathize with”. I have read countless definitions and vehemnently argued that the term defined does not include “the need to have been in a similar or same situation” as a prerequisite to having the ability to empathize with an individual. All individuals that have a legitiamate understanding of the term are welcome to provide their input. Thank You in advance for addressing this matter.

By: james Cornelio

james Cornelio — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:05:46 +0000

My God (if you’ll pardon the expression), such fuss and bother over something so simple. Philosophy 101 paired with a moderate level of wakefulness has taught me that man’s nature, and the natural world we inhabit, is dualistic. So, BOTH love and hate, good and evil, pleasure and pain—and everything in between—are essential components of who we are and what we are meant to experience. Why obsess so over whether “absence” or presence proves that the heart, ultimately, shall grow fonder? And when will those in a thrall to their 21st century slide rules wake to the endemic cynicism born of the myopia caused thereby? In lieu of all the folderol of “neuroscientific empathy experiments” and the la-di-da of the “highly sophisticated thought controls” of capitalist democracies”, far greater prophets and sages than those speaking or spoken about above have already said it all in the simple, timeless and profound words, of “love thy neighbor as thyself”. With that, who doubts we become more perfect, more whole and, yes, more divine?

By: Christopher Rothlind

Christopher Rothlind — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:48:01 +0000

Is morality qua empathy “rooted” in biology? Is there a human behavior that is not rooted in biology? If biology is the account we give of the life-forms of Organism as well as those process “themselves,” then obviously all behavior is so rooted. Is the vault of a cathedral “rooted” in physics? What are we trying to explain? It’s a question of what facts your theory is selecting for and what phenomena are commensurate with your explanation.
Evolutionary explanations (weaker than a prognostication) of human behavior have a limited function, they say: traits get transmitted. We have to be careful that we don’t ascribe some sort of sapiential agency to the circumstance that some human behaviors get people killed-off while others don’t. The very term ‘natural selection’ is unfortunately anthropomorphic and quasi-final. There is no selecting going on, strictly speaking, there is a non-occurance of individual extinction-before-propagation, or–survival. Or have I completely misunderstood?
Natural selection is chance transmittal, but show me natural selection working in humans in the absence of human agency! A crucial factor in the equations of genetic explanations of behavior (for what else is all the talk about the natural selection of morality?), namely our environment, has been mediated by cultural institutions (language) for thousands of years, in which time morality as we understand it (in our post Axial-period perspective), has come into being.
If all we are talking about is what tends to keep members of a species propagating before extinction (i.e., survival), it should not be forgotten that infanticide was also a survival (by and for the fit)-strategy. Being able to recognize your enemies and kill them would probably rate pretty high on the list of traits-conducive-to-not-dying-off. Maybe someday we’ll discover the biological hard-wiring for that too…
What is the relation between empathy and ‘morality?’ Is morality the ideal of altruism tout court? or is it just the state of social consciousness, the ethos of social justice, in any given period? If the latter, then polygamy, male and female circumcision, capital punishment etc., are also forms of social conscience or morality.
Empathy is experienced by all “higher” mammalian life-forms (Elephants, horses, dolphins, primates, etc.). It is, after all, just a form of emotional perception. I can feel empathy with someone I am about to feed to the lions. There is a hiatus between empathic perception and moral behavior. Otherwise cruelty (the enjoyment of another’s suffering) would follow as arbitrarily (pre-morally) as any act of solicitude. Morality would be a matter of chance or instinct, which contradicts our understanding of it. In fact, a mammal who instinctively protects or nurtures could not be called moral at all in our sense of the term. Something to remember lest we rush unthinkingly into noble-savage territory. Even an embryo is in ‘sympathy’ with the physiology of its mother (see Hegel’s Anthroplogy). All sentient beings are influenced by intangible vibes and cosmic-waves. Not our attunement or empathic affiliation needs to be ‘explained’ by biological determinants, but rather our ability to disassociate ourselves from our own clans/families.
The larger issue here is agency vs. instinct. What is the biological correlate in mammalian behavior if not instinct–pre-reflexive, automatic behavior? The interesting question is: is empathy a reflex of the same order as fight-or-flight? Once you introduce reflection and the higher forms of institutionally mediated self-consciousness, biological accounts have very little to contribute beyond he positing of a vague correlationalism that explains everything and nothing.
Why doesn’t our “deep-seated moral intuition produce” (my emphasis) world peace? Olson asks. There are so many things wrong with this question I don’t know where to begin. For one, the instinct to kill one’s enemies is no more or less “deep-seated” or “hard-wired” than the “automatic neurobiological trait” of empathy. It’s only our infantilising egalitarianism and belief in some ideal state-of-nature that deludes us about that. Goodall discovered empathy in chimps? well, she also discovered polygamy, rape, infanticide and clan-warfare. But that’s probably just some “overriding” elitist-capitalistic belief-system alienating the chimps from their true chimp-natures. Trying to answer a political questions with neurophysiological facts is what happens when positivists start opining about politics.
World peace is elusive because enough human beings are rapacious, murderous and shameless–what used to be called evil–to occasion endless conflict. Human history is not on some biologically determined trajectory to eliminate scarcity and war, “artificial” or otherwise. Where does this naive optimism about man’s self-perfectibility come from? Surely not the study of human history.
Capitalism doesn’t benefit everyone equally; it’s a tool some wield successfully and others not so much. Culture (as a cursory glance at Egyptian, Mayan, Mesopotamian, Hellenistic civilizations etc., will attest) depends on wealth, which depends on the right to acquire property. The Soviet experiment should have taught beyond any doubt that state-imposed material equality (after a period of property confiscation) has a demoralizing effect on the entrepreneurial spirit. No state should be the business of imposing equality of conditions and reapportioning wealth legally acquired by individual initiative. That would be a very strange form of justice indeed. Men are equal before the law, but there is no mandate in the constitutioN obligating the state to bring about conditions of equality. It says men are equal under the laws such as they are, not the laws as they would be under ideal conditions (if philosopher-kings ruled!).
If the upshot of Gary Olson’s gospel of equal portions for all God’s rainbow colored children is that it is better to be than to have because being alienated is worse than feeling gratified and taken care-of–then count me in. But we don’t need to subscribe to some vast socialist conspiracy theory about world-history to arrive at that, do we? Capitalism, as all who are not blinded by communist conspiracy theories will appreciate, is also about reciprocity. One man’s ‘exploitation’ is another man’s opportunity.
Christ’s admonition to love your neighbor as yourself, Fromm be damned, is not especially defeated by any capitalist forces in the modern world but by the forces of terrestrial being-in-the-world per se. If capitalist forces (whatever they may be) necessarily “estrange” us from ourselves then how does one explain all the well-adjusted capitalists past and present? Granted, accruing capital and consumerism don’t make everyone equally happy and may even alienate some people (the have-nots), the forces of capitalist society are no more incompatible with love than the forces of parchee-see are. Capitalism is not pathological narcissism!
It’s a competitive world out there, guys! But that doesn’t excuse you from generating as much wealth as you can–a duty, as any observant Hindu will corroborate, that’s just part of life’s four stages. A duty to one’s family.
Solvei? if your still reading, “reactionary” would be any criticism of communist ideology, which is as far left as you can get. “So fifty-years ago” implies that ideologies come in and out of fashion like hair-styles, but a bad argument is a bad argument regardless of when it was made. Of course, we all know that communism is immune to criticism–which is why it is more like a faith than a theory and why enlightened minds of the last century (Bertrand Russell, Karl Jaspers, Barzun, Karl Löwith, Eric Voegelin, etc.) rejected it. Show me one communist regime that hasn’t led to totalitarianism and mass-murder. Apologists for communism are no better than fascists who say Hitler’s racism was a perversion of the glorious revolution still to come. Talk about massive belief systems “overriding neurobiological traits!”
Thank God they do over-ride them! Buddhism, Vedanta, Christianity, Greek Philosophy to name a few did just that with their gospels of enlightenment, compassion, grace, pacifism, virtue, etc. But such systems never do anything in abstraction from their individual carriers, with all their short-comings, regardless of how they are ‘wired.’ Belief systems filter our perceptions of reality, to that extent they change it. They exert influence, not some billiard-ball style causality. Human behavior is not inevitable and a theory of politics (let alone a biological theory of human motivation) is not politics as we are obliged to practice in media res.

By: Jonathan von Ranson

Jonathan von Ranson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:16:26 +0000

I sense a tender wishfulness in the article, as in most of the commentaries on it (and, indeed, behind the thought system — science — from which all of it springs) that speaks of our collective desire to rise above and see, and by seeing, somehow achieve wholeness with what is. I say tender, because it’s the Earth-creature spirit in us motivating all the conceptual effort; it somehow gives off that longing vibe to me. Perhaps all this effort at personally merging with the truth — conceptually — which I, too, habitually engage in — is the unfortunate consequence of being part of the pillar of exploitation of what-is, called civilization. Could this be non-adaptive behavior on our part? Leaping to solutions, I doubt there’s any organization imaginable, beyond a time-tested, truly indiginous tribe, that does live in a fully participatory, reciprocal (to use a key term in Olson’s touching discussion) relationship with all that is. If I’m right, and our reductions and abstractions are an effort to recover that powerful membership, there may be a more direct way than through increasingly complex thought and study.

By: Roy Niles

Roy Niles — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:27:37 +0000

I agree with Pinker’s analysis 100% (or maybe 99% would be more prudent).
Certainly empathy facilitates cooperative efforts, and while it doesn’t equate with love in my view, it is clearly an impediment to hatred.

By: Solvei Blue

Solvei Blue — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:54:06 +0000

You have a good point, Roy Niles. Just because you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes doesn’t mean you’re going to walk a mile carrying that person’s backpack.

I’m still fascinated by that next-to-last paragraph, though. It seems to me that wartime censorship exists primarily to remove opportunities for empathy (both for the in-group and the out-group) from our daily political discourse. Cases in point: the ban on coffin photos, the imprisonment without charges of Pulitzer-prize winning AP photographer Bilal Hussein.

Steven Pinker posits a decline in violence over the history of humankind, both in the long and short run. Go to http://www.ted.com, check out the video, and see for yourself before you draw a conclusion. Agree or disagree, he present his case well.

By: Roy Niles

Roy Niles — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:29:56 +0000

OK, here’s what really bothers me about this piece – its effectiveness rests on the clearly stated premise that empathy is somehow the equivalent of love. And somehow that translates into empathy as a moral value, or as the beginning of moral sensibility in some fashion.
At the risk of repeating earlier comments, it needs to be emphasized that empathy is not the equivalent of either love or morality. It may facilitate the application of an innate sense of justice, and the development of that sense, but by itself it is neither moral nor just. Nor is its lack, in my view, the precursor of immorality or injustice.
Lions who share in the zebra kill will appear to have minimal empathy for the zebra – or for the hungry hyena – or for the pride of lions that missed out on that kill. But it has been argued that they do in some sense feel the pain of the zebra during the kill, which might affect the act or method of killing, but more because of the shared sensations than the triggering of any innate sense of justice.
And yet empathy may be the path designed in part for the application of such innate rules for mutual survival – to be used if the lion and zebra shared a common enemy perhaps – such as man. Yet lions and zebras won’t likely find what we would call love in the process.
A path does not necessarily have but one purpose for existence and but one use or user once it does exist. And the path itself should not be confused with the goal anticipated by its users, even though its value will be measured by whatever bounty it gives us passage to.
So it seems fair to say we have love in part because we have empathy. But because we have empathy, we don’t automatically have the love that it clearly helps to facilitate.
To quote some sentences lifted from Wikipedia on this subject: “Empathy certainly does not guarantee benevolence. The same ability may underlie schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the pain of another entity) and sadism (being sexually gratified through the infliction of pain or humiliation on another person).”
More reason to suspect that lions take additional pleasure in seeking out the company of zebras. But the type of love involved may not be mutual.

By: Roy Niles

Roy Niles — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:18:36 +0000

Excellent commentary by Solvei, whose ending analogy would be apt if Dr. Olson had not referred to empathy as having a potentially subversive power. It was a poor choice of a phrase perhaps, but to use it to make a final point makes the choice seem even poorer.

“Subversive powers” are more likely to come from the predatory aspects of nature that empathy was designed (by evolution rather than intent) to protect most developing organisms against. It allows organisms, both individually and collectively, to form bonds when and where danger to one can be felt by others and thus recognized as danger to all in that same grouping.

By: Solvei Blue

Solvei Blue — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:35:54 +0000

Well, fascinating. An electrifying read, in many respects. It resonates on several levels:

1. That the expression of reciprocal service, known as love, is “life’s most rewarding experience” and “the only satisfying answer to the question of human existence.”

2. That the commodification of experience that is encouraged, no, demanded by the current capitalist organization of society is at odds with that human desire to be rewarded, fulfilled, loved, loving… happy.

Here I must take issue with Christopher Rothlind. He says: “When you hear the word ‘capitalism’ the first thing that should come to mind is ‘opportunity,’ not predation/exploitation. Wealth, not suppression/manipulation.”

I saw a clever bumper sticker once. It said, “Free enterprise will destroy capitalism.” Free enterprise being those lovely ideas of opportunity and wealth for all. Capitalism being the system that muzzles the natural impulse towards those things (in certain peoples, in certain geographic areas) and instead encourages people to sell their labor to maquiladoras. You say, “That kind of party-talk discredits the very idea of critical autonomy in a thinker.” First, you should be able to judge for yourself whether Olsen has the capacity for independent critical thinking, regardless of whether he references Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Second, I noticed that you made no mention of the critique of structural inequity that is the hallmark of Marxist criticism. Thus, it seems to me that your objection to Olsen’s use of Marxist critique is based more on a fear of social or political ostracism than anything else.

Reactionary anti-communism is, like, so 50 years ago.

3. The seeming paradox of Olsen’s next-to-last paragraph. Think of it this way: repressive, patriarchal cultures expend tremendous amounts of energy in controlling and suppressing women’s desires. Take the work expended in these efforts as a testament to the energy and power of women’s desires, as well as to the potentially destabilizing effect that loosing the controls on women would have on such a patriarchal society. The absence of women acting in accordance with their desires is not evidence of the absence of women’s desires. I think the parallel is clear.

…Please. It’s an analogy. Though I’m drawing parallels here, I’m not an eco-feminist; i.e., one who thinks that women are more naturally inclined towards wise environmental stewardship than men.

–Solvei

By: Roy Niles

Roy Niles — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:57:40 +0000

Dr. Olson says: “I would argue that the tremendous amount of deception and fraud expended on behalf of overriding empathy is a cause for hope and cautious optimism. Paradoxically, the relative absence of widespread empathic behavior is in fact a searing tribute to its potentially subversive power.”

He seems to have it backwards – empathy is more likely an organism’s cooperative defense or deterrence to fraud and deception rather than a subversive reaction to some natural or inherent viciousness.

By: Christopher Rothlind

Christopher Rothlind — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:11:11 +0000

I had high hopes for Dr. Olson’s synopsis of neurologically based empathy research’s implications for humanities. Then came: “…exposure to certain new truths about empathy–hard evidence about our innate moral nature–poses a direct threat to elite interests…the capitalist machine…elitist manipulation…” etc.

I was surprised that no one has challenged Olsen’s Marxist ideologizing about “Capitalism” and “exploitation.” That kind of party-talk discredits the very idea of critical autonomy in a thinker. When you hear the word ‘capitalism’ the first thing that should come to mind is ‘opportunity,’ not predation/exploitation. Wealth, not suppression/manipulation. The only ghost in a machine here is the spectre of Marx’s ideology rattling around in Dr. Olson’s creed-infested neuro-sphere. Unfortunately, it appears to be part of his “hard-wiring” and over-rides both empathy with non-infested mass-market-machine-minds and his own potential for critical reflection.

People who talk about “genetic hard-wiring” of human beings don’t have a clue about what genes can or can not be said to “determine” about the behavior of that class of over-determined agents of action we call human beings. Why? Because giving reasons for something/anything, let alone the behaviors/choices of free agents, is not a form of causal explanation or prognostication (explanation in the natural-scientific sense). That was Immanuel Kant’s great discovery.

Anyone can adopt scientific ideas and construct sentences with them, but to really appreciate the limitations of natural science, limitations which make it the effective and useful tool that it is in its own realm, requires some meta-scientific (is this not the meaning of Aristotle’s “metaphysics?”) theoretical orientation. Philosophy, in short. And Marx was the ultimate (and willful) non-philosopher.

Every advance in empirical data accumulation, sadly, does not bring with it a sharpening of conceptual distinctions, which only critical (skeptical) minds contribute to the discussion. But a partisan of an ideology–totalitarian or not–obviously does not fit that bill.

It’s time Dr. Olson liberate his mind from its oppression by Marxist ideology, however attentuated.

The greatest evils have been committed in the name of saving and/or making humanity better. The question is always, how many lives are worth sacrificing?

And let’s not forget: empathy can be suicide, given the right (the wrong!) circumstances.

By: wilfred knight

wilfred knight — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:56:04 +0000

Dr Olson claims using lots of big words that empathy, wired into our mammalian brains, is the pre-eminent force of life, just waiting for release from its suppression by capitalism, religion etc.
Well , humans are hard-wired with lots of other competing traits. Violent aggression against beasts and rival groups and sexual rivals,obviously played an enormous role in our evolutuionary survival. These traits lie untapped below the surface just waiting to blow with appropriate stimulation, commonlty seen in road rage etc.
Perhaps the 1% of psychopaths amongst us, are perpetuated because of evolutionary advantage.
Knights of yore, and leaders? Ghngis Khan, Stalin, Alexender etc were probable psychopaths. & perhaps leadership required such lack of empathy and conferred evolutionary advantage.both to the individual and society.
We humans are are complex of competing emotions.
Some feel that our very sense of self evolved from neural circuits mimicking others behavior, in order to predict it. This obviously has survival value, and gave rise to our growth of consciousness. Could empathy be just a recursive offshoot of these circuits ?

By: Pavel

Pavel — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:29:03 +0000

Ok, just as I’m getting comfortable with Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and Hauser’s “Universal Moral Grammar” by reading all these articles from the Scientific American, you’re telling me that, by and large, the jury is still out there?? Are you saying the following passage from the article in question is wrong? And if so, can anybody post a link to a credible paper discussing the current state of affairs on the topic. Thank you very much.

” As a recent editorial in the journal Nature (2007) put it, it’s now “unassailable fact” that human minds, including aspects of moral thought, are the product of evolution from earlier primates. According to de Waal, “You don’t hear any debate now.” In his more recent work, de Waal plausibly argues that human morality—including our capacity to empathize—is a natural outgrowth or inheritance of behavior from our closest evolutionary relatives”

By: hp

hp — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:54:25 +0000

Hell, just like more laws equals less justice, more words equals less truth.

By: Max Shields

Max Shields — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:15:17 +0000

Larry, I’m with you. Spezio is prone to grasp for the straw to make his point, and in doing so blowing out of proportion the whole point Korten makes.

He’s yet to provide evidence of Korten’s involvement in anything remotely resembling the CIA, and other outlandish pseudo-points. Instead it’s the old red herring trick.

For a little background on Korten: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/_media/article/pdf/381_Korten.pdf

I must say this is taking us far and yond from the post.

By: gerald spezio

gerald spezio — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:34:36 +0000

As far as anybody knows, there isn’t any connection between P. G. Davis’s book and Judaism.
Gambone, your so-called open mind may be so open that everything has fallen out of it.

By: Larry Gambone

Larry Gambone — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:30:59 +0000

Ha, The “Skepical” Inquirer. One may as well read Der Sturmer to understand Judeaism. The SI are not skeptics, they are dogmatic 18th Century Rationalists. I am a skeptic – which means keeping an open mind, not a closed one.

I have read this sort of criticism before, some of it has weight, a lot of it does not. All they do is crudely trash what they don’t like, just like any other bunch of fanatics.

By: gerald spezio

gerald spezio — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:55:35 +0000

Paisano Gambone, a good start unmasking Goddess claims is here;

http://www.debunker.com/texts/PGDavis2.html

By: Larry Gambone

Larry Gambone — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:49:00 +0000

Hey, Spitzio, maybe you should give some evidence for your claims about Olsen, Eisler, Gimbutas etc. Undoubtedly there are incorrect aspects to their theories, but using bar room language impresses no one. We see this all the time with far-right propagandists either of the neocon or old fashioned nazi variety, not to mention Maoist extremists of the left.

By: Dave Silver

Dave Silver — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:42:54 +0000

Brother Olson

If you agree with Chomsky that we arehard wired for mprality and other good things why do we have to “engage” it? Why does imperalism,
war crimes and genocide continue?
Wat would Marx think or say about this?

Dave Silver