19 - Care of the soul: empathy in dualistic worldview

Summary

One particularly fascinating (for me, anyway) realization that has come from the cognitive sciences is that we have not necessarily evolved to have an accurate understanding of the way other people think. We have not even evolved to have an accurate understanding of the way we think. The question of which came first — our misunderstanding of ourselves or our misunderstanding of others — is kind of a “chicken and egg” question, but this chapter is going to come down on the side of the former. Leslie Orgel's second law is “evolution is smarter than you”. The truth about the brain is complicated and rather frightening to a lot of people. If human beings came with the innate desire to know and capacity to easily understand the way our brains actually work, it is not likely that we would have survived very long (not even to address the question of what would have naturally selected such an ability into existence in the first place). When you think about it, Mother Nature was pretty smart not to burden us with that knowledge.

Some propositions:

1. The cognitive sciences reveal truths about human thought and behaviour which are massively counterintuitive, contrary to “common-sense” thinking.

2. Theory of mind (ToM) is a “common-sense” capacity. It does not necessarily lead us to accurate conclusions about the thinking of others, or even ourselves. […]