[lbo-talk] Mirror neurons

[Miles Jackson]

J. Tyler wrote:
> Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
>> Let's be clear here: Empathy is not a behavior.  Empathy is a
>> psychological state of understanding the psychological experience of
>> another entity.  The problem here with all the examples you provide is
>> that you're not directly observing "empathy"; you're observing
>> behaviors that you then freely interpret as being motivated by the
>> psychological state of empathy.  I have a hard time believing this is
>> something more than anthropomorphization, but I'm quite willing to
>> change my view on this, given some compelling data.
> 
> Do you then maintain agnosticism with respect to empathy on the part of 
> other humans since you have no direct evidence of their psychological 
> states?  You have the same evidence to judge other humans as you do animals, 
> do you not?  That is, behavior that you freely interpret as being motivated 
> by the psychological state of empathy.  Sure, you know *you* experience 
> empathy, and I suppose you can extrapolate that to the rest of your species, 
> but on the criterion you cite as the basis for suspending judgment, it 
> doesn't hold.  If you are in a state of distress, and I do something nice 
> for you, you don't know if it's because I empathized with you or because I 
> expect something nice in return, perhaps at some later date or even by other 
> people when I'm in a similar predicament. 

The way that most psychologists finesse this is by assuming that 
people can accurately report their psychological states.  In empathy 
studies with children, researchers show them a scenario and ask them 
what the person in the scenario is feeling or experiencing.  If the 
child provides a meaningful report ("someone said something mean to 
her, so she's sad"), then most psychologists will say the child has 
empathy.

Now, this is all predicated on the assumption that language reports 
are a valid and reliable indicator of psychological states.  I agree 
this is dodgy, but there it is.

Miles