How To Be An Agnostic
Kinder than we think
Science is being sourced as a moral fi xer in other ways too.
One area about which a lot is currently being written con-
cerns empathy – the capacity to feel another’s pleasure and
pain. Cultivated as sympathy, the hope again is for a scientifi -
cally grounded approach to our wellbeing. The moral element
becomes explicit when it’s stressed that the ability to sym-
pathise with others, to step into their shoes, is vital for the good
life and a kinder society. The claim is that we can genuinely feel
what others feel, rather than just guessing about their experi-
ence from our own, and that leads to the kind of sympathy for
others, which, when cultivated, is the basis for our wellbeing.
I asked Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor at University College
London, now working with the Interacting Minds project at the
University of Aarhus, Denmark, about this. A leading player in
the area, he confi rmed that when we see or know that someone
is in pain, the same brain areas are activated as when we are in
pain ourselves; similarly, when we see someone being touched –
although most of us are unaware of this and don’t consciously
feel that we are being touched. This capacity is a result of mirror
neurons – though strictly speaking they’ve so far only been
shown to play a role when we observe actions, like seeing others
being touched, not feelings, like seeing others in pain. But there
certainly seems to be a mirror system for emotions in the brain,
and hence perhaps a scientifi c basis for an ethics of empathy.
Except that it then gets more complicated. Frith believes there
are three levels of empathy. A fi rst is called emotional contagion.
It’s the most basic and is involuntary. Emotional contagion is
automatically detecting the emotion felt by someone else, and
while that may or may not fully reach the level of awareness, it
affects us. It’s the cause of the inchoate feelings that arise from
witnessing another’s exhilaration or distress. And it can lead to
action, though mostly in order to minimise the contagion: you
might fetch someone a plaster not so much because you care
about their pain, but because you can’t stand the sight of blood.