4 ms·
I don't think he means empathy as in "well, guess we can't fault them for their behaviour, so let's let them go" but rather that they got a bad roll of the dice
by ekanes 16y ago
I don't think he means empathy as in "well, guess we can't fault them for their behaviour, so let's let them go" but rather that they got a bad roll of the dice, and that sucks, (but we have to lock them up or control them anyhow...)
A different but illustrative analogy is a dog who's been abused, or chained in a small yard, and that dog attacks a small child. I will have empathy towards that dog, and I'll still want it destroyed.
Empathy and societal self-preservation can both exist simultaneously.
- pyre 16y agoWhen I read it, it came across to me as scare-mongering that we'll be "letting all of these murderers and rapists loose" because the court won't hold them accountable due to neuroscience, which seemed to come out of no where at the end of the article. That's why I found it to be so out of place.
- GFischer 16y agoMaybe it was editorialized into the article? It doesn't seem to be a quote from Fallon himself, but more an outlook by the article's author (Barbara Bradley Hagerty). A Google search of her finds some very negative detractors: http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley-hagerty.htm http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley... Though it's mostly ad-hominem, it does quote a verifiable lapse of journalistic ethic: "a report on the Christian Science Church, in which she did not disclose that she was herself a former member of the Church"