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Why Justice Entails Empathy
This post is a short response to the right wing mockery of empathy in judgment.
In order to judge matters correctly, a person must be capable of independence in judgment. What follows is a simple proof which demonstrates the necessity of empathy and the consequences of its absence.
(1) Independence of judgment presupposes freedom of thought.
(2) Freedom of thought presupposes the ability to shift perspectives.
(3) The ability to shift perspectives presupposes empathy.
Therefore, (4) Independence of judgment presupposes empathy.
(1a) The absence of empathy implies the inability to shift perspectives.
(2a) The inability to shift perspectives implies slavery of thought.
(3a) Slavery of thought implies co-dependent judgment.
Therefore, (4a) The absence of empathy implies co-dependent judgment.
(4) and (4a) have something counter-intuitive to say: only through empathy can one think freely, and so, only through empathy can one escape the prison of herd mentality. As the right wing makes fun of empathy in judgment, they implicitly champion co-dependent judgment.
In order to judge matters correctly, a person must be capable of independence in judgment. What follows is a simple proof which demonstrates the necessity of empathy and the consequences of its absence.
(1) Independence of judgment presupposes freedom of thought.
(2) Freedom of thought presupposes the ability to shift perspectives.
(3) The ability to shift perspectives presupposes empathy.
Therefore, (4) Independence of judgment presupposes empathy.
(1a) The absence of empathy implies the inability to shift perspectives.
(2a) The inability to shift perspectives implies slavery of thought.
(3a) Slavery of thought implies co-dependent judgment.
Therefore, (4a) The absence of empathy implies co-dependent judgment.
(4) and (4a) have something counter-intuitive to say: only through empathy can one think freely, and so, only through empathy can one escape the prison of herd mentality. As the right wing makes fun of empathy in judgment, they implicitly champion co-dependent judgment.
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I will buy it, I guess.
But those nuts that just kept goin on about the twin towers being destroyed by the repubs...
There was present some herd mentality there.
But repubs do not give a damn about their fellow man.
May 14, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or woman! ;)
May 14, 2009 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
HHAAHAHA i JUST GOT IT. HEHHEHHE. Yes, I think rush proves that every single day!!!
May 14, 2009 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dick, if you mean the folks who say "9/11 was an inside job," then I agree. That's nuts.
But, that doesn't detract from the document that was ignored. The one that said "Bin Laden set to fly planes into buildings" or whatever.
If the bush administration were a college football team, the NCAA would have put them on probation for "lack of institutional control."
May 14, 2009 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, yes, yes. MBH, I was just reading Aquinas again today. He talks about a man whose bull has a tendancy to butt things, hurt things and people.
If the bull owner is asleep at the switch and the bull hurts someone, well. According to Aquinas, the bull and the owner should be stoned. Both of them.
There is more than an argument that w's administration was a substantial contributing factor to the damage done on 9/11/01. Even though w did not exactly own the bull.
May 14, 2009 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, you're right. The analogy is not as simple. But the Carlyle Group did do business with the Bin Laden family. So while that's not owning the bull, it sure counts as feeding it.
May 14, 2009 11:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have done a superb job, MBH! And if anyone wonders why Obama wants a Supreme Court Justice with Empathy, you have the proof!
What a wonderful blog! :)
May 14, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you ma'am! That is exactly what I've tried to create. Not a talking point to defend against the charge of weakness, but one to take empathy on the offense!
May 14, 2009 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post! I get so fed up with sheep people (sheeple?) who don't think beyond their own two feet enough to put themselves in someone else's shoes even once, just once.
Once you do put yourself in another's shoes, you have no choice but to think outside of your own box, and the more you think outside of your own box, the more you can empathize and therefore gain new perspectives.
It's so easy, such a domino-effect, and it drives me up the wall that so few people are willing to try it.
*gets off soapbox*
May 14, 2009 11:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, oops! Did this have to do with the Supreme Court? I thought it was just "in general".
Sorry, my bad =D
May 14, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
HAHAHA! Yes! It's general and specific! I wanted to touch on both! No apologies!
May 14, 2009 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes! Empathy is so often branded as purely emotional, and unintellectual. That's so wrong! It's amazing to listen to the right dismiss empathy as mind blindness. They couldn't have it more backwards!
May 14, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Without empathy a person is barely human, no?
May 14, 2009 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bingo! The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that if we could see from the perspective of a rock flying across the room, we would notice that it thought, "I'm flying across the room."
Thinking about oneself is what a rock does. Shifting perspectives--the essence of empathy--is a basic human ability.
May 14, 2009 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I shouldn't say shifting perspectives is the essence of empathy. I don't think that's right. Feeling connected to other humans is the essence of empathy. Shifting perspectives is a by-product.
May 14, 2009 11:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent point. Maybe it was customer service training or just, no, I've always had it....this feeling of being upset over seeing someone else upset.
Wanting to help, to understand their upset and somehow fix it. Used to drive friends and family nuts cuz I'd get them in predicaments sometimes. "Oh, we can't let that person just sit there like, that, let's go and help fix their tire" or "Hey, that lady looks like she doesn't want that man bothering her, let's go sit next to her", or whatever.
Too many people just drive past, walk past, look away, stare straight ahead, ignore....
Call me stupid, but I can't.
May 15, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's very human of you.
May 15, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
LOL, very humane of me. Didn't Dickday just teach us only yesterday about the difference between being human and humane?
;)
Okay, I'll shut up now and let you intelligent people discuss this further, LOL...
May 15, 2009 12:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hahah! Apparently I missed the lesson.
May 15, 2009 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I really want to recommend this, however I question #3. Call me a bone-headed rationalist, but I think one can shift perspectives, and support ideas opposing those originally subscribed to with intellect alone.
May 14, 2009 11:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that's a reasonable objection. But, I don't think that supporting an opposed idea entails shifting perspectives. For instance, I believe that 2 + 2 = 4, and I can imagine that 2 + 2 = 5 (if we're talking about a rope with 2 knots being knotted to another rope with two knots, then we've got 5 knots total). But that's shifting *reference* not perspective.
May 15, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, #3 is not at all obvious. A person can consider multiple hypotheticals without feeling any of them much less feeling what some other person is feeling. It's one thing to try on someone else's shoes, another to walk their mile in them ...
The ability to shift perspectives at will might be directly opposed to empathy. It could be an empathy avoidance function.
May 15, 2009 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. I might argue that the ability to shift perspectives presupposes the ability to grasp the merits of an opposing argument. I'm not sure that requires an emotional component.
Seems to me that a prerequisite of sound judgment is wisdom, and wisdom presupposes empathy among other things.
A final point: doesn't empathy presuppose spatial and/or temporal proximity? This may suggest one reason it is anathema to strict constructionists. Along with the fear that liberal empathy puts judges on the wrong side of too many conservative arguments.
May 15, 2009 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Proximity? You mean as in space-time locality or in the sense of having a similar enough biology and culture etc. to be a peer (like "a jury of one's peers")?
I think you are trying to make the argument for a Hispanic woman appointee for SCOTUS! :-)
May 15, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
eds, I think that's fair. It's not obvious. But what I'm claiming is: considering hypotheticals is not a shift in perspective. It's a shift in *reference*. No perspective is just a still vision or an idea/set of words. Perspective entails *movement*.
Shifting perspective could be a way to avoid an empathic experience. But in some sense, it still relies on the empathic experience--that which provided the ability to shift perspective.
If mirror neurons are activated because, for instance, I feel your pain. Then if I try to avoid feeling someone else's pain, my brain is still following neural pathways laid down by my experience of your pain. So while it may be an avoidance of empathy in one sense, the act of avoidance is only possible because of previous empathic routes.
May 15, 2009 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't get the significant difference between 'a frame of reference' and 'a perspective' here.
One can have a perspective or point of view within a frame of reference, and that can shift. But how is that key here?
I think you're trying to hard to rescue something with the rest of your reply. It's not that I am arguing that empathy has no role in good judgment or in justice, it's that your "proof" fails as I read it, so I suggest you approach it differently.
(I don't believe justice generally requires empathy, but I might agree that some forms of justice do involve empathy somewhat).
May 15, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey eds, blue, and miguel. Two months later! Sorry I never responded, but at the time I felt the pull of you all's argument and didn't feel up to defending my own. After a couple beers, I'd love to engage in a dialectic.
(3) The ability to shift perspectives presupposes empathy... is the premise in question (by you, blue, and miguel). The objection boils down to whether or not there's a significant difference between a 'frame of reference' and a 'perspective'.
I think that what these words mean overlap in several ways. But I think it's an overstatement to consider the difference purely--or mostly, for that matter--terminological.
When we talk about a 'frame of reference', we usually mean something like a particular context. When we talk about a 'perspective', we usually mean something like what it feels like in another person's skin. The difference is not semantics.
Shifting contexts is something a sociopath could easily do. Shifting perspectives is not.
July 30, 2009 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for writing this post.
It is clear to me that having empathy in conjunction with other skills in making judgement would bring a larger wholeness or context to any decision.
It's like 'considering the situation on the ground'for the military, to consider the realities of the complexities of human beings and life. It is clearly essential.
It seems that the republicans just don't really understand what empathy is and they are equating it with the word 'sympathy'.
May 15, 2009 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's imagine a hypothetical case of abortion that comes up to Supreme Court for review.
Let's imagine a SC judge feeling a lot of empathy to the child in the mother's womb who will be killed in the name of her rights.
The SC judge finds in favor of limiting abortion. Empathy (towards the unborn) is what has guided this judge.
What then?
May 15, 2009 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is a possibility.
However the situation as you describe it is a picture of selective empathy and not the skill of being empathetic to all of the persons, circumstances, and conditions involved.
For example having had an abortion myself and also having raised a child on my own and also having had sisters and other women in my life who have also dealt with these decisions from a variety of perspectives, I do have direct experience in dealing with the complexities involved with regard to deciding whether or not to the challenges in not getting pregnant (there is no perfect birth control, pills fail etc.)and whether to carry a pregnancy to term.
So this might give me some empathy for the persons and all complexities involved.
From my own personal experience I could never have another abortion. I was 18 at the time and it was as if I was directed by the adults in my life to go get my tooth pulled. The way it was handled was horrible and the after affects were horrible. However, I would never vote or elect to make such a complex choice for another person knowing what I know. There are far too many elements to carrying, giving birth, and raising a child. That is one of the most personal and complex decisions a woman can make.
If someone were to focus only on empathy for the fetus, that seems less like empathy and more like placing value and emotion according to personal belief or dogma.
May 15, 2009 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can relate to what you are describing very well, but I do think that your first and last sentence begins to define "empathy" in a much more precise way (i.e. empathy "for the fetus" being dogma, etc).
My view is that justice is supposed to be blind and impartial. I know it's hard to achieve but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
I also believe that empathy as described by Obama and just repeated by you should be practiced by lawmakers, not courts. That's the proper place for empathy. Lawmakers are supposed to pass (or repeal) laws to address specific issues of individuals or groups of individuals.
But of course it's more difficult to push through an agenda of any kind when you have more than one party in Congress. That's the only reason why everyone is focused on Courts - there are less hurdles to jump through.
In the end, having empathy of the kind you describe in courts will inevitably mean the liberal understanding of what it means.
It will mean that judges will make decisions based on "empathy" towards classes of people, without regard to differences in individual circumstances that you pointed to. That's why it will be impossible to prevent ideology from creeping into the decisions supposedly based on what law say.
May 15, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose that in some respects I agree with you except that I don't think of the Supreme Court as simply a court. Clearly their 'decisions' in interpretation of law and judegments have been then in a sense the context for laws going forward. The fact that they are the 'final' word gives them a context that is different than any other 'court' in our country.
May 15, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wanting pure justice is understandable. However courts are interpreting and applying and I don't think it should have it's eyes closed when doing so.
May 15, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an interesting opinion on empathy: Eric Liu, author, former Clinton White House adviser:
“As for the Supreme Court nomination and judicial decision making, I see why the right would fear that ‘empathy’ is code for all kinds of things they fear. In the logic of conservative critics, empathy = bias = injustice. But here’s the thing. A lack of empathy, a willful refusal to connect words with the reality of human experience, is its own form of bias and can work its own form of injustice.”
May 15, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
smart, thought provoking post, thanks MBH
May 15, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would you say that Alberto Gonzales had a little too much "empathy" for George Bush and that is why he did whatever he was told to do? (I have to admit that when I hear Gonzo saying that an empathetic judge is dangerous he is speaking from first-hand knowledge. Of course with empathy there also has to be knowledge of, and allegiance to the Rule of Law -- Gonzo never got that last bit)
May 15, 2009 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
What you are describing sounds more like unhealthy codenpendency rather than the skill of empathy or it would have applied beyond George Bush to congress, the american people...everyone involved.
Gonzo is more of a sociopath like his cohorts.
May 15, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm coming to this much too late, MBH. Great post. And interesting issue, as always with you! I don't know quite what to think regarding the empathy debate. I don't find it a particularly useful word in this context. I mean, of course, a SC judge should have a flexible mind capable of approaching issues from various angles or perspectives; of course she shouldn't be a sociopath devoid of fellow-feeling. But that's a pretty low bar there. Should she be particularly empathetic? So sensitive to other's state of feeling she shares their every twinge and tingle? Of course not. You can empathize too much with one or another of the parties to a dispute and come to a wrong decision. Empathy as such solves nothing. It's like saying a judge should think. Well, sure, you want her to think, but you want her to think WELL, giving weight to the right reasons, just as in empathy you want the judge to have as full an empathic understanding of the relevant perspectives on an issue.
Personally, I think the judge should be smart, empathic, liberal, and have an alternative socio-cultural background to the 'rich white dude' background currently prevalent. It's not so much an Ability to take a variety of perspectives that is important in the individual judges (though it's the minimal bar they must pass). You want a variety of perspectives BETWEEN THE JUDGES on the supreme court as they debate these issues. Otherwise you get ridiculous decisions like some recent race or gender-related ones.
May 15, 2009 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is an option for those who say the only criterion to be used is "what the framers meant" (which is what repubs say even though they don't mean it, and is silly on its face because of the changes in the world since the framers sat down). If complete objectivity is the goal (devoid of empathy and personal experience) I think it would be possible to write a computer program that would do it better than any "mere human."
Computers remember flawlessly; they are incapable of subjectivity and therefore empathy. I started this as a joke, but I'm thinking a computer program would be far superior to Scalia, Alito, Thomas & Roberts. Because a computer at least doesn't have NEGATIVE feelings.
May 16, 2009 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink