vintageanchorbooks:

“But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.”

- from “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe

Left work to attend lab meeting that ended right before I go back to work. Later I might work. It sure will be nice to work when work is work.

My Case Against Einfühlung 

First, I’m with thoughtfulcynic. I’m not a fan of dichotomy when speaking about emotions/behaviors that pepper an entire spectrum. I suppose we can talk about social reluctance to do this another time, but investigating empathy, like other spectrumocities, (n. the state of being on a spectrum. K, I’m making up words, but I think I’ve earned that..I …I just think I’ve earned that.)

…LIKE other spectrumocities, our understanding of it may suffer if not investigated in a manner that allows us to look at multiple facetes under appropriate conditions. I can talk about this now since I’ve changed labs and not longer working under ridiculous oppressive secrecy… but how often are we hearing about the two types of empathy? Or potential 7 models of them? Not enough which leads most to think you have it or you don’t…so thoughtfulcynic hits the nail when she mentions critical thinking. What we have are cognitive and affective empathy or the capacity to perceive others’ thoughts and/or feelings, respectively. I always maintained these are 2 separately dynamic, systems that run via feedback from each other since neurally - they are independent but mutually supportive. As such, what we can have is a full matrix of varying degrees of the total possible experience of empathy at any given time. I never got to test it, but that’s my stamp. Anyhoo, and as a result, what’s driven my work for a while now is what Bloom refers to “being pulled in the wrong direction by empathy”:

This dynamic regularly plays out in the realm of criminal justice. In 1987, Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who had been released on furlough from the Northeastern Correctional Center, in Massachusetts, raped a woman after beating and tying up her fiancé. The furlough program came to be seen as a humiliating mistake on the part of Governor Michael Dukakis, and was used against him by his opponents during his run for President, the following year. Yet the program may have reduced the likelihood of such incidents. In fact, a 1987 report found that the recidivism rate in Massachusetts dropped in the eleven years after the program was introduced, and that convicts who were furloughed before being released were less likely to go on to commit a crime than those who were not. [via]

Obviously, not an isolated event. Altruistic punishment and manipulated empathy over data, tell me how that feels.

H/T@ thoughtfulcynic

Justice for Psychopaths -  by Neil Levy

Interpret any significant triple interaction by examining the change in the strongest two-way interaction as it changes over levels of the third overall main effect. Then scotch.

What We Owe the Psychopath: A Neuroethical Analysis

Psychopaths are often regarded as a scourge of contemporary society and, as such, are the focus of much public vilification and outrage. But, arguably, psychopaths are both sinned against as well as sinners. If that is true, then their status as the victims of abusive subcultures partially mitigates their moral responsibility for the harms they cause. We argue, from the neuroethics of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), that communities have a moral obligation to psychopaths as well as a case against them. A reflection on the genesis and developmental epidemiology of psychopathy reveals an individualist, attribution-type error evident in much Western psychological and legal thinking—an error that obscures important moral truths about psychopaths. The resulting analysis makes us reconsider the distinction between disorders and moral failings and the ethical significance of the biological or neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning psychopathy. We claim that casting aside the deficit model (based on the presupposition that psychopaths are intrinsically unlike the rest of us) in favor of a relational and holistic view of personality potentiates a more informed and inclusive set of ethical, forensic, and therapeutic attitudes.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.

Oh hello DLs. Missed you.

Adrian Raine on Neurocriminology for the WSJ

The field of neurocriminology—using neuroscience to understand and prevent crime—is revolutionizing our understanding of what drives “bad” behavior.

If early biological and genetic factors beyond the individual’s control make some people more likely to become violent offenders than others, are these individuals fully blameworthy? And if they are not, how should they be punished?

A more profound understanding of the early biological causes of violence can help us take a more empathetic, understanding and merciful approach toward both the victims of violence and the prisoners themselves. It would be a step forward in a process that should express the highest values of our civilization.

Bonus video of Dr. Raine explaining the fMRI images above. Really glad to see his work out there.