Another study bringing evidence for hardwired responses from children, of the empathetic sort, towards other people. I already brought up the studies with adults dropping objects and babies trying to help pick them up (before they’re really taught anything) this is a study showing how children experience the same neural correlates when watching other people suffer in circumstances, as happens in the adult brain.
I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see if this translated into people cross-culturally having similiar brain activation as children, watching other people suffer, whether or not parents taught empathy as important or their social world.
the amount of evidence acumulating daily for the idea that morality is to some extent hardwired and biological is massive, saying otherwise is being part of a doomed crew, in an already long ago sunk ship.
Just one question about this article - how do they know for sure those reactions were hard-wired and not learned? Kids ages 7-12 should have learned a little about empathy and fairness, don’t you think? I don’t know about other parents, but I know I’ve said things to my kids like “How would you feel if that happened to you?” if they hit or kick or whatever. It seems to me they would be learning that from a pretty young age, before 7 for sure.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of empathy being innate. And I do think children have an especially keen sense of fairness. I’m just wondering how the authors of the study know those reactions weren’t a result of being taught to be empathetic?
Don’t get me wrong its certainly possible that children learn empathy and that this rewires their brains in the same way as adults. (just very unlikely)
But similiar brain responses in the same way, again and again in the same circumstances* would imply specialized adaptation, especially when this translates into specific neuro-activity, in different people, again and again and again.
On top of that they show signs of empathy before they are able to be taught anything, before they are able to speak. Its *evidence which reinforces the view, which is only so powerful because its reinforced by so many different pieces of evidence.
I don’t mean to say that this is the core bit that the arguement rests on, just that its evidence which supports an already very supported view.
This would appear to be the caveat that while a reaction to pain may be “hardwired”, that the areas of the brain that are sensitized through nurture are involved.
There is a difference between empathy and morality. You are missing a verifiable connect between the two. Morality may indeed involve empathy, but what is morality is a social construct. Nurture can take advantage of empathy and create morality, but empathy by itself has nothing to do with what is considered “moral”.
Okay, that makes sense when you point out there are other studies (which you actually mentioned in the OP). I wish the article would’ve done a better job addressing that point, though. I love sciencedaily.com, it’s written in such a way that non-scientists like myself can comprehend, but sometimes I think they could go a little more in-depth.
The same can be said for irrational/nonrational ‘views/beliefs’.
Oh my goodness! What nonsense! You certainly make the ‘broad jump’ from “to some extent” to your ‘sentimental’ conclusion! One needs not “say otherwise” as the evidence includes “otherwise”. I must be ‘hardwire damaged’, then, as I seem to be without ‘morality’, amoral, as are many others. Pffft!
Actually what your sentence says is that to disagree that “morality is (as massively evidenced)to some extent hardwired…” relegates one to being part of a “doomed crew, in an already long ago sunk ship”.
In that context (which I surmise you didn’t really mean) I could agree.
‘Morality’ is an act of ego, pride, judgement from a ‘higher’ (isolated) position, whereas ‘empathy’ is a disolution of individual ego ‘arising’ an experience of Oneness, a union, trans-ego, actually ‘being’ the ‘other’ and ‘self’ as One Self.
‘Empathy’ and ‘morality’ seem diametrically opposed; the more of one, the less of the other.
