Goodall explains what she thinks is wrong with too much science — a deficiency of empathy — in this video for the Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers.
I think she’s right — if you’re an ethologist or psychologist or sociologist or anyone who studies behavior. But a lot of scientists aren’t doing those sorts of things: if you’re a cardiac physiologist, for instance, empathizing with the whole animal can distract you from the task at hand; William Harvey did not puzzle out the flow of blood through the circulatory system by hugging a dog and empathizing with its heart. There is a necessary distancing from the subject, and sometimes you’re dealing with phenomena that don’t warrant empathy — do we really have to feel for goosecoid expression to understand early axis formation in vertebrate embryos? Isn’t there a danger of anthropomorphizing phenomena that really don’t have a human analog?
On the other hand, though, there is also the peril of extending that distancing too far. The example she gave, of giving chimpanzees numbers instead of names, is a good example of trying to oversimplify and reduce complex organisms to interchangeable units. It doesn’t work. It gives an illusion of objectivity to a process that is all about trying to understand very subjective behaviors.
Also, William Harvey did some dreadfully painful experiments on dogs, and could have benefitted from a little more empathy for his experimental subjects.
“do we really have to feel for goosecoid expression to understand early axis formation in vertebrate embryos”
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Well I do, but that’s just me… ( :
It’s very uncharitable to interpret her as saying that all science has gone wrong like this. She does not think you can (much less should) empathize with inanimate objects. So there’s really not that much that you could disagree with.
There is, either way. If there’s an analog of sorts, you’d be able to empathize with the chimp (for example). If there’s not, you might still empathize, but what difference does that actually make? Empathy shouldn’t be driving all of your conclusions anyway. And you can still wonder whether it’s misapplied, just as I routinely wonder whether I’m really empathizing with other human beings, or whether they actually experience things very differently than me.
On top of that, isn’t there a danger of pretending to be “objective” when you really aren’t? How exactly are you supposed to make yourself not feel something anyway? I’m not a scientist, so I really don’t get your methods sometimes… Do you do some kind of Jedi mind trick, or use your special Vulcan training or something like that?
This is my concern as well. Emphathizing can fall over into projection awfully easily. Consider animal rights activists’ insistence that lab mice want freedom. Humans want freedom, but do lab mice care, as long as they’ve got company, a comfortable place to live, food, freedom from predators, and experiments that aren’t too painful or distressing?
Actually, yes. Sort of, anyway. I’ve learned to deliberately NOT emphathize much with patients when I’m performing procedures on them. The reason is that if I think too much about the pain that they’re in and the distress it may be causing them I’ll do a bad job on the procedure and make their suffering worse or, even worse, useless because the procedure fails. So I deliberately distance myself and don’t empathize with them at that time. I do, however, keep my Vulcan eyes and ears open for signs of excessive distress that would mean the need to abort the procedure (first and foremost of which is the patient saying “stop!”)
Seconding dianne. I don’t actually work with live animals, but I have taught both human and comparative vertebrate anatomy courses, which are based on dissection. Many students initially have trouble cutting into a human body (or a cat–though there is much less trouble with sharks or lampreys), even though the subject is dead and clearly won’t feel any pain. A few students even pass out on their first day in the anatomy lab. But they quickly learn to dissociate somewhat from the subject, and to focus on the task at hand–“okay, where’s the radial nerve?”, etc.
I sometimes wonder if my ability to dissociate when necessary is an indicator that I border on sociopathy. I mean, I feel empathy a lot of the time, but I can effectively flip a switch and dissociate. I make a point of monitoring myself for any signs that the latter type of thinking is taking over, but so far that doesn’t seem to be a problem.
I’m pretty sure that’s normal. I don’t know whether it’s healthy, given that this ability is what allows people to do things like pilot drones or not worry about whether they’re doing excessively painful things to experimental animals, but I don’t see any reason to believe that you’ve got a particular problem.
More empathy sounds good to me – but let’s start where the problem is biggest .
If you worry about being a sociopath, you probably aren’t.
I am a physicist. I don’t have to worry about empathizing with the particles and microcircuits that I study. Where physicists can fall short is in becoming so intrigued by the subject matter we are studying that we don’t consider the social implications thereof. We cannot look at a phenomenon from multiple perspectives at the same time, because we have only one consciousness. We can first look at our research and conceptualize it in the most socially responsible manner possible, then focus on doing our research as conscientiously as possible and then step back and consider the implications of what we have learned for our fellow creatures.
I can’t say I empathise with particles as such, but I do find some of them have charm.
Chris Lawson, and a certain truth and beauty as well, though perhaps strange.
It would seem that the commenters at 9 and 10 are in a race to the bottom.
Good thing #11 isn’t trying to show anyone up.
Look at that, Blobulon is trying to top us!
About that Jedi mind trick – yes, I would say there’s a certain kind of purposeful dissociation that happens. I use it at work, too, otherwise I’d be utterly in despair over the state of the human race. And I don’t even work with live people.
(I first noticed this ability during my bachelor’s thesis – during the work, it was routine, easy, a bit disgusting, but not emotionally distressing – it was work. A few years later I was going through stuff and found my archive of photographs of the project, was disgusted out of my mind, and I remember thinking, ‘Who the hell would do something so revolting?’ So… yes, it’s a state of mind that needs to be learned, and held in check, too.)
Oh, I think you could put a better spin on that.
This conversation has it’s ups and downs.
I find even calling animals – individuals with personalities, beings – organisms squicks me out a bit. Yes, we’re all complex organisms, but do humans get called that?
/total nonscientist
dianne and a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
Yeah, I don’t actually think I’m a sociopath–after all, I do feel empathy at times. But, like I said, my ability to easily dissociate seems like something worth paying attention to (and of course, I realize that dissociating from cadavers is far different than dissociating from living people or animals). It’s simply something that I pay attention to, so that I don’t end up crossing any ethical lines. It also seemed relevant to mention, given conciousness razor’s question.