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Empathy and Compassion (Empirical claims (What are the limitations of…

- - - - cognitive empathy
        
        is theory of mind at work: it is understanding
        what someone is feeling without experiencing it
        for oneself
      - emotional contagion
        
        is empathy that spreads through crowds;
        it is feeling anxious when everyone else
        is feeling anxious, or joy when everyone
        is feeling joyful
      - emotional empathy
        
        is when one mirrors the inferred feelings of others
      - compassion
        
        is positive affect from the well-being
        of others
    - - Experience sharing
        
        affective empathy
        
        shared self-other representations
        
        emotional contagion
      - Mentalizing
        
        cognitive empathy
        
        perspective taking
        
        theory of mind
      - Prosocial concern
        
        empathic motivation
        
        sympathy
        
        empathic concern
  - - - "Consider also the experiments of Singer and her colleagues in which people were give neither empathy training (instructions to try to feel what others were feeling) or compassion training (in which the goal is to feel positive and warm thoughts toward others without vicariously experiencing their suffering). There was a neural difference, with different brain areas becoming active during the two sorts of training."
        (Bloom, 2016)
      - Factor analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)
        and of the Empathy Index (EI) suggests at least three clusters
        of behaviour regarding empathic questions. (Jordan et al, 2016)
        
        Some examples of the questions
        which appear in both scales
        
        If I see a video of a baby smiling, I find myself smiling. (Behavioral Contagion)
        
        If I see someone fidgeting, I’ll start feeling anxious too. (Empathy)
        
        In emergency situations, I feel apprehensive and ill-at-ease. (Personal Distress)
        
        When I see someone being treated unfairly, I sometimes don’t feel very much pity for them. (Empathic Concern)
        
        When I watch a good movie, I can very easily put myself in the place of a leading character. (Fantasy)
        
        Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place. (Perspective Taking)
        
        I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the “other guy’s” point of view. (Perspective Taking)
        
        x-axis: Contagion factor loading (0.0 to 1.0)
        y-axis: Other-regarding factor loading (0.0 to 1.0)
        
        Cluster # 1 (0, 0.7)
        Perspective Taking, Concern
        
        Cluster # 2 (0.4, 0.4)
        Fantasy
        
        Cluster # 3 (0, 0.7)
        Empathy, Behavioural Contagion, Personal Distress
      - Brain regions activated by empathic tasks (Zaki & Ochsner, 2012)
        
        first-person experience (self condition)
        
        tempoparietal junction
        
        temporal ole
        
        precuneus
        
        medial prefrontal cortex
        
        third-person experience (other condition)
        
        (omitted in paper)
        
        neural resonance (both self and other conditions)
        
        inferior parietal lobule
        
        premotor cortex
        
        posterior superior temporal sulcus
        
        anterior cingulate cortex
  - - - "Notably, models that focus on single empathic subprocesses while remaining agnostic about the role of others or excluding them altogether run the risk of reflecting historical quirks in the field’s choice of methods instead of deeper insights about the structure of empathy. This is because until a few years ago neuroscientific studies of empathy almost always used highly simplified cues and tasks designed to isolate one type of empathic subprocess and its associated neural systems."
        (Zaki & Ochsner, 2012)
        
        In other words, empathic responses are
        established in isolated, bite-sized pieces
        in the literature, but how we behave when
        those pieces are put together is less clear.
    - - We have not done the legwork to
        connect psychology to neuroscience.
        Why does the activation of Brain Region X
        show Psychological Construct Y?
    - - That is, you can't combine activations in
        Brain Regions X, Y, Z to produce a
        complex behavior. The brain is difficult
        to reduce to components.
    - - E.g. stimuli used in studies could be
        sensorimotor or social cues. Is the resulting
        difference in neural activation due to different
        kinds of empathy at play or due to the difference
        in stimuli used?
- - - - Objections to effective altruism as a normative claim
        
        "How can I do the most good, given what others are likely to do?"
        
        There seem to be many cases in which, even if we each do the most good we can individually, we do less good than we collectively could have done. Well-known coordination problems can give rise to such cases
        (Gibbard 1965).
        
        One might object to effective altruism on epistemic grounds, claiming that we are utterly clueless about what activities will, in the indefinitely long run, do the most good.
        (Lenman,2000)
        
        Agent - Centered Restrictions
        
        One might claim that we are morally obligated not to always try to promote as much good as possible.
        
        Agent-Centered Options
        
        It might be objected that it is morally permissible not to always try to promote as much good as possible
      - Virtue Ethics
      - "We should do the most good we can"
        
        Impartiality
        
        Cost Effectiveness
        
        Cause Prioritization
    - - Using the knowledge gained from empathy
        
        "How the person ought to handle information gained from empathic understanding of other individuals is. Once we've approved of their state and undergone our own “transformative” experience of the other, we are left with information that to some may seem morally difficult to handle. We are not always moral.The problem with empathy is the feeling of immediacy that sometimes accompanies it".
        (Hrincu,2017)
      - Being the prima facie of a target's emotions.
        *Prima facie -based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise
        
        "During the initial process of empathy, where the person empathizing finds the state of the target intelligible. One can understand why the other feels, acts, or reacts as they do. Intelligibility means one approves of or accepts the other’s emotions prima facie"
        (Oxley,2011)