In today’s New York Times, the ever-iconoclastic David Brooks weighs in on empathy. In “The Limits of Empathy,” Brooks has the gall to suggest that maybe empathy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Brooks acknowledges that empathy can be a good thing in a limited way. But “the empathy craze” falsely assumes that feelings of empathy for others will lead us to moral action:
People who are empathetic are more sensitive to the perspectives and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make compassionate moral judgments.
The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.
In particular, empathy is not able to overturn self-interest:
Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.
There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.” Other scholars have called empathy a “fragile flower,” easily crushed by self-concern.
So what does help us to act morally, if not empathy?
People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.
Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.
When I was a boy, I loved secret codes. I loved using my Cracker Jacks decoder ring to discover the meaning of the codes. But, unbeknownst to me, as I was playing around with secret codes, I was learning sacred codes: in my family, my community, and my church. These codes were reinforced by Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best, not to mention the Bible stories I learned in Sunday School.
What are today’s sacred codes? Are there sacred codes at all? What makes them sacred? How are they being passed on?
If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them? Really! No Joke.
“If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?” No, that’s not a joke or a trick question. It’s a serious question, seriously asked in a recent article in the New York Times. And it’s being asked by a serious thinker: Michael Marder, the Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz (Northern Spain). This article no doubt reflects some of his ideas in his forthcoming book: Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life.
Here are some choice excerpts from Marder’s opinion piece:
Imagine a being capable of processing, remembering and sharing information — a being with potentialities proper to it and inhabiting a world of its own. Given this brief description, most of us will think of a human person, some will associate it with an animal, and virtually no one’s imagination will conjure up a plant.
The research findings of the team at the Blaustein Institute form yet another building block in the growing fields of plant intelligence studies and neurobotany that, at the very least, ought to prompt us to rethink our relation to plants. Is it morally permissible to submit to total instrumentalization living beings that, though they do not have a central nervous system, are capable of basic learning and communication? Should their swift response to stress leave us coldly indifferent, while animal suffering provokes intense feelings of pity and compassion? . . .
When it comes to a plant, it turns out to be not only a what but also a who — an agent in its milieu, with its own intrinsic value or version of the good. Inquiring into justifications for consuming vegetal beings thus reconceived, we reach one of the final frontiers of dietary ethics. . . .
Recent findings in cellular and molecular botany mean that eating preferences, too, must practically differentiate between vegetal what-ness and who-ness, while striving to keep the latter intact. . . .
In other words, ethically inspired decisions cannot postulate the abstract conceptual unity of all plants; they must, rather, take into account the singularity of each species.
The emphasis on the unique qualities of each species means that ethical worries will not go away after normative philosophers and bioethicists have delineated their sets of definitive guidelines for human conduct. More specifically, concerns regarding the treatment of plants will come up again and again, every time we deal with a distinct species or communities of plants. [I added the bold highlights.]
As you can see, Marder is not playing around here. His argument is that if research into a certain kind of plant life (peas) discovers that plants have a sort of communication system, this requires new ways of thinking about the ethics of eating such plants.
Marder’s column will not be upsetting to those who find it morally permissible to eat meat (including fish). This practice involves the killing of something that is capable of basic learning and communication. But Marder’s argument will be deeply disturbing to vegetarians (including vegans) if they reject meat eating on the basis of cruelty to animals. If it turns out that vegetables have feelings too, then this creates a serious crisis for vegetarians, unless they too are willing to engage in egregious speciesism.
As a meat eater, I’m not particularly troubled by the possibility that the peas on my plate once sent signals to others peas. In fact, I only wish Marder had written his book about fifty years ago, because, as a child, I hated peas. Peas were probably my least favorite food, owing largely to their texture. How I wish I could have told my parents that I couldn’t eat peas because they have feelings! Then again, I’m not sure the feelings of my parents would have been especially moved by this argument.