(Excerpted from the recently released, The Character Gap: How Good Are We?) Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged if, like me, you read a lot of psychological studies about how people behave when faced with moral choices. In some studies we find the majority of participants not helping even with simple tasks. Examples include carrying some papers down a hall, or letting Continue Reading …
Lessons on Social Justice from an Unexpected Source
What the Left—and Everyone Else—Can Learn from the Public Pedagogy of Jordan Peterson A professor who instructs people to clean their rooms in lieu of protesting emerged in the fall of 2016 as an unlikely hero among many millennials—especially among young adult males who like YouTube. Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, became a Continue Reading …
Episode 175: Blade Runner: Androids and Humanity (Part One)
On Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1967) and the films Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Blade Runner (1982). What makes us human? Dick's novel about androids emphasized their lack of empathy, while the movie adaptations portrayed the "replicants" as plenty capable of emotion, but unjustly treated as servants or targets. Attention: The second half of Continue Reading …
Ep. 175: Blade Runner: Androids and Humanity (Citizen Edition)
On Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1967) and the films Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Blade Runner (1982). What makes us human? Dick's story about androids emphasized their lack of empathy, while the movie adaptations portrayed the "replicants" as plenty capable of emotion, but unjustly treated as servants or targets. All of these works are about a Continue Reading …
Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Moral Sentiment
[DISCLAIMER: Although I am using a conceptual distinction I got from the embedded Simon Baron-Cohen TEDx talk (where ever he got it from), I am not taking a position on his stance on Autism or Psychopathy. I have no point of view about Autism and have reflected on empathy and psychopathy in this blog before, here and here. I'm interested in the constituent parts of empathy Continue Reading …
Psychopathy and Empathy
Last year I posted on psychopathy and moral sentiment. This week Cosmos magazine reports that researchers from the Netherlands have determined that psychopaths can 'turn on' empathy on demand. In short, a study was structured that measured psychopath's empathy for others (not explained how) and then the subjects were told that the study was designed to measure empathy. After Continue Reading …