Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

[Derek Melser <derek.melser@gmail.com>]

Martin, Steve:

This is a big issue. I have written a bit about it. Chapter 11 ('Our
knowledge of actions') in *The Act of Thinking* is about it. And so are the
last three paragraphs of the essay at
http://www.derekmelser.org/essays/essayverbal.html

The primary interpersonal attitude is the side-by-side one, the attitude of
fellow-participants in some shared activity. Our perception of others'
actions occurs under the aegis of this fellow-participant (or would-be
fellow-participant, empathic) attitude; it is the light in which we see
actions. Now and then we defect into an objective (distancing, reifying,
alienating) attitude towards others. Rigorously maintained, this objective
attitude reduces a person to a biological phenomenon. But biological
phenomena don't perform *actions*, they merely exhibit derivative biological
phenomena.

Science is the rigorous maintenance of objective attitudes and observation
methods. My paradigm examples of 'science' are the physical sciences:
chemistry, physics, biology... There are disciplined academic studies – of
history, law, fine arts, literature, education – in which the topic is
people's actions and in which objectivity and empathy alternate, in roughly
equal measure. But these disciplined academic studies are not normally
thought of as sciences. The thing about sciences is that they stick
rigorously to objective methods. Why would you want to put psychology
alongside biology, rather than alongside, say, history or education? Of
course, you could call any disciplined academic investigation a 'science'.

Anyway, it is impossible to write briefly on such a large topic without
pontificating, so I'll stop here.

Derek

*http://www.derekmelser.org*




2009/1/16 Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>

> Derek, I have been wanting to ask you about your thoughts about how aspects
> of human behavior that can only be comprehended through empathy are
> therefore inaccessible to science.  Assuming, for the sake of discussion,
> that you are right, that empathy is a necessary component of accurate
> observation and understanding, why does employing empathy exclude doing
> science?  Marx said (something like) "nothing human is alien to me."  That
> attitude isn't "empathy," strictly speaking, but it is certainly on the way.
>  Not that it is an easy or automatic thing to do, but why do you seem to
> feel that we **can't** learn how to use our powers of empathy in social
> science?
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> On Jan 15, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>
>  Derek,
>>
>> It depends of course on what one means by empathy. I've been arguing for
>> years that all the social sciences draw implicitly on our human capacity
>> for
>> *understanding* the actions of others (Einfühlung?), and that our
>> investigations can and should be interpretive, hermeneutic. Of course many
>> others have made similar points. To say that genuine science is not
>> interpretive would be in my mind simply a false claim.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On 1/14/09 4:20 PM, "Derek Melser" <derek.melser@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, if mind/consciousness/thinking is
>>> an
>>> action, then, because our perception of others' actions always requires
>>> empathy, and because empathy is not an acceptable observation method in
>>> the
>>> sciences, there will never be a genuine science of
>>> mind/consciousness/thinking. But at least we'll no longer be bamboozled
>>> by
>>> the mind/body problem...
>>>
>>
>>
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