5 ms·

> "This viewing experience finally undid for me what I have long suspected to be a meaningless platitude: the idea that art promotes empathy." I don't mean to

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> "This viewing experience finally undid for me what I have long suspected to be a meaningless platitude: the idea that art promotes empathy." I don't mean to be rude, but why on Earth would someone start out from a baseless conclusion or platitude like that? Art by its very nature is incredibly subjective, differs in meaning and scope for every person, and in some senses is literally defined by having a property that escapes classification into previously existing taxonomies (such as, "things that elicit empathy"). Each of "art elicits empathy", "art does not elicit empathy" and "art elicits sadism" are frankly just very stupid things to say or believe. Some art can be argued for some observers to do one or the other or a mix of them. Why is this worth writing about? I'm asking sincerely. Let alone in connection with Bandersnatch, which was mediocre at best.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rimliu 8y ago
IIRC there was a study how reading fiction corelates with more emphaty.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Does that mean anyone would conclude that all fiction elicits empathy? Or that fiction never elicits empathy? Or any other similar extreme conclusion? Wouldn't we obviously say that there exist types of (fictional work, reader) pairings that yield sympathetic outcomes and other (fictional work, reader) pairings that yield sadistic / non-empathic outcomes? In other words, from what source does there drive any kind of authoritative argument that generic reading of fiction either always or generally leads to increases in measures of empathy? A study that measures fiction reading would surely not be adequate, unless it controlled for all possible sources of variation between dispositions of people and dispositions of fictional works, which is ludicrous in principle.
- mcguire 8y ago
  * Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-reading-literary-fiction-improves-empathy/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-rea...) * The Relationship Between Empathy and Reading Fiction: Separate Roles for Cognitive and Affective Components (https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/10.5334/jeps.ca/print/ https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/10.5334/jeps.ca/print/) * How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559433/) * Can fiction stories make us more empathetic? (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811151632.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811151632.h...) * Exploring the link between reading fictionand empathy: Ruling out individual differencesand examining outcomes (https://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20fiction%20and%20empathy.pdf https://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20fict...) But see * Reading Literature Won’t Give You Superpowers: Psychologists have failed to replicate a famous study suggesting that short fiction improves readers’ abilities to read the emotional states of others. (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/should-psychologists-study-fiction/509405/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/should-p...)
davidb_ 8y ago
This article feels like a direct response to the ideas of Stephen Pinker, summed up by this quote: > one of the greatest epiphanies of the Enlightenment: that people are equipped with a capacity for sympathetic imagination, which allows them to appreciate the suffering of sentient beings unlike them and, in the context of: > Even the aspect of identity politics with a grain of justification—that a man cannot truly experience what it is like to be a woman, or a white person an African American—can subvert the cause of equality and harmony if it is taken too far, because it undermines one of the greatest epiphanies of the Enlightenment: that people are equipped with a capacity for sympathetic imagination, which allows them to appreciate the suffering of sentient beings unlike them. In this regard nothing could be more asinine than outrage against “cultural appropriation”—as if it’s a bad thing, rather than a good thing, for a white writer to try to convey the experiences of a black person, or vice versa. > > To be sure, empathy is not enough. But another Enlightenment principle is that people can appreciate principles of universal rights that can bridge even the gaps that empathy cannot span. Any hopes for human improvement are better served by encouraging a recognition of universal human interests than by pitting group against group in zero-sum competition.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but I'm baffled by the extended quote you pasted. It reads like a rhetoric 101 essay of a college freshman, deeply contrived and not hitting at any real point. Just meandering under the pretense that this is Serious Discourse.
  - davidb_ 8y ago
    The quote was taken from: https://www.weeklystandard.com/adam-rubenstein/steven-pinker-identity-politics-is-an-enemy-of-reason-and-enlightenment-values https://www.weeklystandard.com/adam-rubenstein/steven-pinker... I posted it to give context to the "debate" Pinker was engaged in. I don't have much of an opinion on whether or not it is "Serious Discourse."
  - jerf 8y ago
    That's a summary statement. If you're interested in more details, Stephen Pinker elaborates more in his books. On the flip side, there are some people who would still accuse him of being glib. On the flip flip side, though, the numbers often support Pinker. Some of the people complaining have serious academic issues. But some people complaining are simply people who have incorporated some degree of doom-saying or even outright misanthropy into their core identity and find it offensive when someone makes an at-least-semi-decent argument against everything being inevitably doomed. Separating the two can be a challenge because there is a lot of overlap between the two sets.
asark 8y ago
> Let alone in connection with Bandersnatch, which was mediocre at best. Yeah, that one was an odd connection for me. Interactivity does change the experience of narrative media, as has been obvious to anyone playing video games for a good long while now, but it's a weird way to work one's way up to where the article takes it. To the extent that one's empathy wanes in Bandersnatch I think it's mostly down to (1) seeing the scaffolding behind the scenes and wanting to explore, at which point the narrative loses its power and it becomes more about poking around the various branching paths, and (2) the limitation of choice itself as meta-level control of the viewer—those "oh god I don't want to do either thing to this person" choices are the part where the episode actually has something to say. Maybe not anything new or profound (done to death in video games, which have mined the meta-territory of player choice in narrative for years) but at least something. To me this is the part—the "wait can I do neither? Oh. I'm under control too." that elevates the episode to Black Mirror level rather than just being an interesting tech experiment. The little "ah ha". The second part is why it's pretty easy to get into the groove of just poking around without feeling anything for the characters. It's the limitation of your choices and the high visibility of the system behind them that kills the empathy. Again, territory video games have played around in for a good long while. It's a hell of a lot harder for me to play the "bad" route(s) in some video games than others, depending on how they're structured and how good the narrative and characters are. Often I can't do it and still enjoy myself. What's interesting here is why Bandersnatch in particular isn't great at maintaining viewer/player empathy—which is likely, at least in part, intentional.
mcguire 8y ago
Googling for "art elicits empathy" produces, for me: * Pictures of pain: their contribution to the neuroscience of empathy: G. D. Schott (https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/3/812/336766 https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/3/812/336766) * Art Education and the Encouragement of Affectiveand Cognitive Empathy in Early Childhood (https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4193&context=etd https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...) * Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323429/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323429/) * Using the Arts to Build Empathy, the Ultimate 21st Century Skill (https://charterforcompassion.org/using-the-arts-to-build-empathy-the-ultimate-21st-century-skill https://charterforcompassion.org/using-the-arts-to-build-emp...) The idea that "art" (literature as well as other "fine arts") increase "empathy" (for some definition) in general is a well-developed and reasonably common notion.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  In what way does your final paragraph follow from anything you wrote before? You assert that the art -> empathy connection exists, but literally provide no basis for this assertion. The idea that art generally does X is purely subjective, for all X, by the very nature of what art is.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rimliu 8y ago

IIRC there was a study how reading fiction corelates with more emphaty.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Does that mean anyone would conclude that all fiction elicits empathy? Or that fiction never elicits empathy? Or any other similar extreme conclusion? Wouldn't we obviously say that there exist types of (fictional work, reader) pairings that yield sympathetic outcomes and other (fictional work, reader) pairings that yield sadistic / non-empathic outcomes? In other words, from what source does there drive any kind of authoritative argument that generic reading of fiction either always or generally leads to increases in measures of empathy? A study that measures fiction reading would surely not be adequate, unless it controlled for all possible sources of variation between dispositions of people and dispositions of fictional works, which is ludicrous in principle.
mcguire 8y ago
* Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-reading-literary-fiction-improves-empathy/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-rea...) * The Relationship Between Empathy and Reading Fiction: Separate Roles for Cognitive and Affective Components (https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/10.5334/jeps.ca/print/ https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/10.5334/jeps.ca/print/) * How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559433/) * Can fiction stories make us more empathetic? (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811151632.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811151632.h...) * Exploring the link between reading fictionand empathy: Ruling out individual differencesand examining outcomes (https://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20fiction%20and%20empathy.pdf https://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20fict...) But see * Reading Literature Won’t Give You Superpowers: Psychologists have failed to replicate a famous study suggesting that short fiction improves readers’ abilities to read the emotional states of others. (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/should-psychologists-study-fiction/509405/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/should-p...)

davidb_ 8y ago

This article feels like a direct response to the ideas of Stephen Pinker, summed up by this quote: > one of the greatest epiphanies of the Enlightenment: that people are equipped with a capacity for sympathetic imagination, which allows them to appreciate the suffering of sentient beings unlike them and, in the context of: > Even the aspect of identity politics with a grain of justification—that a man cannot truly experience what it is like to be a woman, or a white person an African American—can subvert the cause of equality and harmony if it is taken too far, because it undermines one of the greatest epiphanies of the Enlightenment: that people are equipped with a capacity for sympathetic imagination, which allows them to appreciate the suffering of sentient beings unlike them. In this regard nothing could be more asinine than outrage against “cultural appropriation”—as if it’s a bad thing, rather than a good thing, for a white writer to try to convey the experiences of a black person, or vice versa. > > To be sure, empathy is not enough. But another Enlightenment principle is that people can appreciate principles of universal rights that can bridge even the gaps that empathy cannot span. Any hopes for human improvement are better served by encouraging a recognition of universal human interests than by pitting group against group in zero-sum competition.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I'm sorry, but I'm baffled by the extended quote you pasted. It reads like a rhetoric 101 essay of a college freshman, deeply contrived and not hitting at any real point. Just meandering under the pretense that this is Serious Discourse.
- davidb_ 8y ago
  The quote was taken from: https://www.weeklystandard.com/adam-rubenstein/steven-pinker-identity-politics-is-an-enemy-of-reason-and-enlightenment-values https://www.weeklystandard.com/adam-rubenstein/steven-pinker... I posted it to give context to the "debate" Pinker was engaged in. I don't have much of an opinion on whether or not it is "Serious Discourse."
- jerf 8y ago
  That's a summary statement. If you're interested in more details, Stephen Pinker elaborates more in his books. On the flip side, there are some people who would still accuse him of being glib. On the flip flip side, though, the numbers often support Pinker. Some of the people complaining have serious academic issues. But some people complaining are simply people who have incorporated some degree of doom-saying or even outright misanthropy into their core identity and find it offensive when someone makes an at-least-semi-decent argument against everything being inevitably doomed. Separating the two can be a challenge because there is a lot of overlap between the two sets.

asark 8y ago

> Let alone in connection with Bandersnatch, which was mediocre at best. Yeah, that one was an odd connection for me. Interactivity does change the experience of narrative media, as has been obvious to anyone playing video games for a good long while now, but it's a weird way to work one's way up to where the article takes it. To the extent that one's empathy wanes in Bandersnatch I think it's mostly down to (1) seeing the scaffolding behind the scenes and wanting to explore, at which point the narrative loses its power and it becomes more about poking around the various branching paths, and (2) the limitation of choice itself as meta-level control of the viewer—those "oh god I don't want to do either thing to this person" choices are the part where the episode actually has something to say. Maybe not anything new or profound (done to death in video games, which have mined the meta-territory of player choice in narrative for years) but at least something. To me this is the part—the "wait can I do neither? Oh. I'm under control too." that elevates the episode to Black Mirror level rather than just being an interesting tech experiment. The little "ah ha". The second part is why it's pretty easy to get into the groove of just poking around without feeling anything for the characters. It's the limitation of your choices and the high visibility of the system behind them that kills the empathy. Again, territory video games have played around in for a good long while. It's a hell of a lot harder for me to play the "bad" route(s) in some video games than others, depending on how they're structured and how good the narrative and characters are. Often I can't do it and still enjoy myself. What's interesting here is why Bandersnatch in particular isn't great at maintaining viewer/player empathy—which is likely, at least in part, intentional.

mcguire 8y ago

Googling for "art elicits empathy" produces, for me: * Pictures of pain: their contribution to the neuroscience of empathy: G. D. Schott (https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/3/812/336766 https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/3/812/336766) * Art Education and the Encouragement of Affectiveand Cognitive Empathy in Early Childhood (https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4193&context=etd https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...) * Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323429/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323429/) * Using the Arts to Build Empathy, the Ultimate 21st Century Skill (https://charterforcompassion.org/using-the-arts-to-build-empathy-the-ultimate-21st-century-skill https://charterforcompassion.org/using-the-arts-to-build-emp...) The idea that "art" (literature as well as other "fine arts") increase "empathy" (for some definition) in general is a well-developed and reasonably common notion.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
In what way does your final paragraph follow from anything you wrote before? You assert that the art -> empathy connection exists, but literally provide no basis for this assertion. The idea that art generally does X is purely subjective, for all X, by the very nature of what art is.