And now, another paper has found another emotional and personality-based driver of environmental attitudes: namely, a heightened sensitivity to the suffering of other people.
That's interesting, I think this driver applies to me. I cannot bear the thought that someone suffers because of my lifestyle. [...]
Very interesting finding!
But methinks it is less about empathy and more about right-left brain hemisphere balance: Empathy sits in the right hemisphere, the one more directly connected to the outside world.
Cold blooded calculation and abstraction sits in the left hemisphere, a "hall of mirrors" (McGilchrist) in which we got increasingly trapped during recent cultural evolution of brain useage. "Earth's silence" (Heidegger) methinks is a symptom of a gradual shift of balance towards the left hemisphere.
I wish I had read Ian McGilchrist's highly recommended and widely acclaimed book while discussing with JimD in this thread (1-2 pages back).
- Ian McGilchrist: The Master and his Emissary - The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press 2009
McGilchrist speaks my mind, so to say, except that methinks the left-shift was already decisive during the axial age (ca. 500BC) and not only in Europe, and methinks is most paradigmatic in religion (which is usually attributed to the right hemisphere). The paradigmatic declaration of victory of the left hemisphere is perhaps found in the christian new testament:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. --John 1:1
Or, the Logos, or, the Numbers, or some other reified left-hemisphere abstraction...
That's perhaps why climate denialists characteristically vacillate between demanding exact numbers and doubting numbers, while a more sane and balanced brain (empathy being an indicator for such) would find:
Climate science is settled enough to provide the policy guidance that matters most, namely that there is an urgent need for halting, and eventually reversing, the worldwide growth in carbon dioxide emissions. At a time when essentially nothing effective is being done, it is pointless to fret, as Koonin (*) does, about exactly how much reduction is optimal—the clear answer from climate science is: “The more the better, the sooner the better, and whatever we actually do is apt to be less than what is really needed, though worth doing nonetheless.”
-- Ray Pierrehumbert
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/the_wall_street_journal_and_steve_koonin_the_new_face_of_climate_change.2.html
((+) Steven Koonin is a classic example of denialist eminent nuclear physicist hopelessly trapped in his left hall of mirrors, not shying away from grotesque public Dunning-Krüger stunts to defend his world detached castle.)
There is a diagram in an elderly famous book by Popper and Eccles, "The Self and its Brain" (1980ies. Not mentioned by McGilchrist) where the left hemisphere is sub-titled "dominant". So, here we are. There's our problem.
In sane reality, both hemisphere's work together, and neither has the last word. Contrary to common perception, science also needs a balance of both hemispheres. First time I got aware of this was a book by eminent Russian differential geometers, where the first section is titled "Algebra and Geometry - the Duality of the Intellect" where algebra is attributed to the left, and geometry attributed to the right brain hemisphere. And pure mathematics progresses when both sides interact. Like the electric and the magnetic fields are seperately static, but when interacting they form a dynamic electromagnetic wave.
Arctic sea ice (gasp) is perhaps a very obvious example where right brain activity is very important for science. No wonder it took a Neven to start the ASI blog
(Here we come back to empathy: I recall it took Neven some effort to let go of the poor helpless loonies at the WUWT blog, to forget about showing them the light, and better roll his own blog.)