Re: [TCS] What is empathy

Le 13/12/2012 08:59, Elliot Temple a écrit :
>
>
> On Aug 23, 2012, at 8:58 AM, Rami Rustom <[email protected] 
> <mailto:rombomb%40gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Rami Rustom <[email protected] 
> <mailto:rombomb%40gmail.com>> wrote:
> >> On Aug 20, 2012 3:07 AM, "a b" <[email protected] 
> <mailto:asbbih%40gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Rami Rustom <[email protected] 
> <mailto:rombomb%40gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> In these situations, the child might be very quiet about what the
> >>>> problem is. So an approach that works is to guess why he might be sad
> >>>> and form it into a question: "Are you sad about your mom not being
> >>>> here?" If the guess was wrong, he'll tell you "no". If it was right,
> >>>> he'll tell you "yes". And he may open up a lot more and tell you more
> >>>> details. If he does, then use those details to form more accurate
> >>>> guesses. Even if he doesn't say any more details, you can guess 
> again:
> >>>> "Are you sad because you won't be able to play with her anymore?" And
> >>>> continue the cycle. And some point he'll give you a detail that is a
> >>>> mistaken idea and you could help him by showing him that its a
> >>>> mistaken idea. He might say, "I don't want to lose you." So at this
> >>>> point you realize that the child is worried that he'll lose his only
> >>>> remaining parent because he has already lost one parent. So here the
> >>>> parent can say, "Oh.. well I'm very healthy, I'm probably not 
> going to
> >>>> die until I'm very old, like older than grandpa.. and by then you'll
> >>>> be old like me. Did you know that most people die when they are very
> >>>> old like older than grandpa?"
> >>>
> >>> I'd agree this last part would be the right kind of response, but what
> >>> are you really doing...correcting a mistaken idea, or recognizing an
> >>> emotional need (with your emotions) and providing reassurance? If the
> >>> second, then does it make what is happening between you and the child
> >>> more or less clear by using this other vocabularly?
> >
> > So about this empathy idea, I looked it up and there are many many
> > definitions of it. Here's my definition:
> >
> > Empathy: The ability to understand that someone else is (mentally) 
> hurting.
>
> Empathy is actually a concept in the service of conformity. It has to 
> do with respecting all emotions considered legitimate by social 
> authority, but not others.
>
> If you go find 20 examples of people actually using the concept, you 
> may see what I mean. If not, post your counter examples.
>
> > I noticed that TCS is big on empathy, even though the word empathy is
> > not used at all anywhere in TCS literature. TCS says that people
> > should not hurt each other. By hurt I mean mental/psychological hurt.
> > Mental hurt is an emotion.
> >
> > TCS explains that hurt is caused by doing something to someone that
> > they don't want done to them. Also someone can hurt themselves by
> > acting on a want while having a conflicting want, so part of him wants
> > to do X and part of him wants to do Y but X and Y are conflicting, so
> > acting on X means doing something when part of you didn't want to do
> > it.
> >
> > So if a parent makes his daughter do something she didn't want to do,
> > then he is hurting her. She has a negative emotion because she does
> > something she didn't want to do.
>
> To my knowledge, TCS does not assert that is a matter of emotions. I 
> think that is your idea, not TCS.
>
> I don't see the need for you to attribute your statements to TCS. I 
> think it'd work better if you just tried to say what you think is true 
> and don't attribute it to TCS (or other sources) without using quotes 
> from those sources.
>
> > This emotion is called coercion.
>
> TCS does not say coercion is an emotion. I think it isn't.
>
> > The child felt coerced. And the parent caused it.
> >
> > In these situations, sometimes the parent feels a negative emotion
> > *because* the child felt a negative emotion. The parent doesn't want
> > the child to hurt, but the child is hurting. So part of the him
> > doesn't want to hurt his daughter, but part of him wants his daughter
> > do this thing. So the parent is coerced too, i.e. he feels coercion.
> > In these situations, the parent is empathetic. So empathy alone didn't
> > solve the problem.
> >
> > Sometimes (or some parents?) doesn't feel a negative emotion about
> > coercing his child. In which case the parent isn't coerced, i.e. he
> > doesn't feel coercion. This is not empathetic.
> >
> >
> > So whats the solution? TCS explains that we should not coerce our
> > children (nor ourselves or anyone else either). But how do we get
> > things done? One alternative to coercion is persuasion, which works
> > well for children that can speak. Although the technique for
> > younger-than-speaking-age children is the same for older children and
> > even for adults, which is to be creative in providing alternate ideas
> > for things to do until one is found to be something that everyone
> > wants, so no one is coerced.
> >
> > So here's an example. Your 4 year old is bored at home cause there
> > aren't any kids to play with
>
> That is a bad explanation. No one is bored for that reason alone. 
> There are things to do in life other than play with kids.
>
> > so he decides that he wants to go to
> > school with the other kids. Before school starts, we have to have a
> > dental checkup.
>
> You don't have to. Part of being a good parent is questioning what one 
> has to do to one's children.
>
> > The night before the dental appointment, parent says
> > to child, "oh btw, tomorrow morning we have a dental appointment." Kid
> > says (with a frown), "no I don't want to go to the dentist." Parent
> > says, "oh if we don't do the dentist appointment then they won't let
> > you in school."
>
> I am skeptical of this claim.
>
> > Kid says (with a smile), "oh" and then goes about his
> > business ending the discussion. The next day he wakes up mentally
> > ready to go to the dentist.
>
> Why did kid accept doing something he didn't want to without any good 
> arguments or explanations?
>
> It sounds like he trusts his parent even to the point of sacrifice. 
> That's not good. Parent should be emphasizing more that he's wrong a 
> lot. Parent shouldn't have let the topic go at this. If child wasn't 
> interested parent could research it on his own.
>
> Why isn't parent saying something like this? "Because you don't want 
> to go, i will try to find out if there's any other options. you can 
> help if you want, or i can show you how i do it, but either way i'll 
> try to get you out of it". Why is child satisfied even though parent 
> didn't say anything like that?
>
> >
> > Now many people believe that kids aren't rational enough to be
> > persuaded. This is false.
>
> I take it you intend the above as an example of rational persuasion of 
> a child. But that's not a good argument because the parent just 
> asserted something and the child never questioned it or learned about 
> if/why it's true. And it's a poor argument because the above is just a 
> hypothetical example (right?), so that doesn't prove it would happen 
> in real life.
>
> > What is true is that sometimes parents are
> > not rational enough to create persuasive enough arguments. Sometimes
> > rational discussion is prevented when either of the two people are
> > using knowledge that they don't share.
>
> No.
>
> That claim implies rational discussion is always impossible, because 
> no two people ever share exactly identical relevant knowledge. But 
> rational discussion is possible, so the claim must be false.
>
> > So the parent should hone the
> > skill of refining his explanations using only the knowledge that they
> > both share. Another preventer of rational discussion is that parents
> > have bad habits of using facial expressions (e.g. frowns) that explain
> > to the child that the parent is angry or annoyed,
>
> A frown is not an explanation.
>
> It communicates, it does not explain.
>
> Do you not know what an explanation is, even vaguely? Or did you not 
> think about what one is before writing about them? I don't understand 
> but I suspect there's an important misconception revealed here.
>
> > So what do you think of my definition of empathy?
> >
> > Which parts of my explanation do you disagree with?
>
> It's an ivory tower philosopher-intellectual type of definition, 
> rather than something connected to reality. It's important to pay some 
> attention to the world we live in if one wishes to comment well on it.
>
> -- Elliot Temple
> http://beginningofinfinity.com/
>

empathy is a matter of mirror neurons (see Giacomo Rizzolatti and/or 
Vilayanur Ramachandran)
>
>
> 



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