According to Google dictionary, religion is defined as the “belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power”. In almost every part of the world, a religion of some type, exists. Within the United States alone there are about 313 religions (ProCon). The most prominent of these religions are Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.   Each religion has a different set of beliefs and history, but all have a huge impact on human life. Consider how many violent acts have stemmed from a difference in religious beliefs. Terrorism, for instance, has dominated the headlines in our recent history. One topic often alluded to in these religions is empathy. I would like to examine each religion’s interpretation and practice of empathy in order to determine how each religion’s concept of empathy affects the practitioners’ behavior. The question I want to investigate is: Does the practice of a specific religion impact certain measures of empathy such as charity or altruism or measures of lack of empathy such as violence. This review on religion could put into perspective its influence on empathy in society and its effect on maintaining civility.

Work cited:

ProCon.org. “All Religions and Denominations in the US.” ProCon.org. 24 Oct. 2008, 9:00 a.m., undergod.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000068

Possible works to use:

Idinopulos, Thomas A., and Brian C. Wilson. What is Religion?: Origins, Definitions, and Explanations. vol. 81.;81;, Brill, Boston;Leiden;, 1998

Spae, Joseph J. Buddhist-Christian Empathy. Chicago Institute of Theology and Culture, Tokyo;Chicago;, 1980.

Allen, Roger, and Shawkat M. Toorawa. Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith. William B. Eerdmans Pub, Grand Rapids, Mich, 2011.

Buehrens, John A., and F. F. Church. A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism. Beacon Press, Boston, 1998

Traditionally, the experience of empathy is viewed as a positive one— one person is able to place him or herself in another’s shoes, feeling the other’s emotions and momentarily living their experience. This transformative emotion is meant to foster personal growth and social change, as empathy can have such an intense effect on an individual that it moves him or her to action. However, is the experience of empathy always a good thing? The exploitation of empathy in the public sphere is used to foster positive change— positive change in the eyes of the beholder. Media sources that lean toward a certain political ideology exploit empathy in their reporting in order to sway their audience to their side. Headlines, diction, tone, and other aspects of reporting can all be manipulated to exploit empathy in a way that furthers the media’s political agenda. Likewise, politicians exploit empathy to attract voters to their side, or to keep support so that they remain in power. Both of these examples can be viewed as a malpractice— as a use of empathy for personal gains rather than the genuine good of others. However, a third form of empathy exploitation is that of a certain group (for example, an NGO) in order to force the public to pay attention to a certain important issue. It can be argued that this third type of empathy exploitation is morally-acceptable, as it is for the genuine greater good. Is this really the case? When is the exploitation of empathy in the public sphere morally acceptable and why? This question is relevant to this course because it considers the ethics of empathy exploitation— when can it be considered ethical, if ever? Answering this question will entail analyzing how our brains react to media coverage and the neural process of empathy, finding examples of empathy exploitation in all three areas mentioned above, and concluding what our reaction to these examples means for the public sphere and politics.

Possible Sources:

Bloom, Paul. “Empathy and Its Discontents.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 21, No. 1, Elsevier Ltd, January 2017.

Chiang, Chun-Fang. “Media Bias and Influence: Evidence from Newspaper Endorsements.” The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 78, No.3, Oxford University Press, July 2011.

French, Richard D. “How Do We Judge Policies?” The Political Quarterly,Vol. 85, No. 1, Political Quarterly Publishing Co, January-March 2014.

Lynch, Mona. “Crack Pipes and Policing: A Case Study of Institutional Racism and Remedial Action in Cleveland.” Law and Policy, Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2011.

Roy, Sudeshna. “Culturally unconscious: Intercultural implications of The New York Times representation of the Israel–Palestine conflict in 2009 and 2011.” International Communication Gazette, 2012.

Our brains have the power to do more than we may ever truly discover. Of the many things our brains can do, empathy is one of the most interesting. We know that empathy plays a major role in our lives and connects to the fields on business, science, law, writing, and so much more. What most people don’t understand is the neural mechanisms behind it. Scientists believe that they have begun to comprehend the processes of empathy from our brain’s perspective. This is ground breaking because if we are able to uncover how our brain accomplishes empathy, we can use that to expand all the industries that use empathy. My question is; how does a child’s brain produce empathy and how does it compare to an adult’s brain producing empathy? Along the way I plan to address gender differences and investigate if they’re different from birth or if we mature into one gender’s preference over another. If we can produce a fluid continuum of empathy’s development in humans then we can start to understand empathy how we know it, and then expand on what we already know with a scientific backing.

MLA Formatted List of Potential Sources

Decety, Jean. “The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans.” Developmental neuroscience 32.4 (2010): 257-267.

Mason, Peggy. “With a little help from our friends: How the brain processes empathy.” Cerebrum: the Dana forum on brain science. Vol. 2014. Dana Foundation, 2014.

Schulte-Rüther, Martin, et al. “Gender differences in brain networks supporting empathy.” Neuroimage 42.1 (2008): 393-403.

Tousignant, Béatrice, Fanny Eugène, and Philip L. Jackson. “A developmental perspective on the neural bases of human empathy.” Infant Behavior and Development 48 (2017): 5-12.

Tusche, Anita, et al. “Decoding the charitable brain: empathy, perspective taking, and attention shifts differentially predict altruistic giving.” Journal of Neuroscience 36.17 (2016): 4719-4732.

Elephants are magnificent creatures that have ancestors dating back to before human existence. The elephant is ranked among the best in animal intelligence. It’s massive size and valuable tusks make it seem extremely dangerous and aggressive, however elephants are some of the only animals known to grieve. Perhaps the most unique part of these animals is their brain. Along with its massive size in comparison to humans, the elephant brain is qiute similar to the human brain in structure and function.

Throughout the class we have analyzed empathy in many contexts. From social media and justice to disease and the mentally ill, we have discussed quite a bit. What I bring forth is another topic of discussion, empathy in animals. This is not exclusive to only domesticated animals like dogs, my goal is to relate human empathy to that of the elephant. Empathy in a dog that has been long domesticated and has large amounts of human exposure each day is easier to connect and understand. However in a wild, typically undomesticated animal, empathy may find its own roots in the brain and may even shape social interactions and cultural norms of the animal herd. I aim to answer the question: What are the similarities between the human and elephant brain that tie them together? Based on the similarities, are elephants capable of the human empathy we exercise daily?  And if not, do elephants practice their own form of empathic emotion that simply may not fit the human definition?

Answering this question will require using sources from many different perspectives. The neurological point of view will be necessary to identifying the structures and pathways within the brain that make the elephant brain resemble the human brain. For example, a source located on the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience peer reviewed webpage suggests an evolutionary similarity in one of the specific neurons in the human brain and the mammalian brain. Other sources with a similar focus will be used as well. Once, that background has been established, I must turn my focus towards a scientific perspective to be able to fully define empathy in order to determine, through experiments, if elephants meet the criteria. Experiments such as those discussed in the scholarly articles, “Self Recognition in an Asian Elephant” and “Phylogenomic analyses reveal convergent patterns of adaptive evolution in elephant and human ancestries” have been run and approved by the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America. The articles identify the traits experimentally discovered in elephants that are necessary to establish and practice empathy. Also, “Elephant Cognition: A Review of Recent Experiments” by Moti Nissani will add to the depth of information in regards to neurological research about the elephant brain. Finally, I must utilize a significant amount of research on the social constructs that make up elephant herd culture. This way, if I discover that elephants do not exercise the human form of empathy, I will be able to identify how elephants may practice their own form of empathic emotion. This research may include ecological sources as well as recent observational experiments done on elephants to analyze the way they live, interact with their environment and one another, as well as the way they die and the toll that such an event can take on the group. In my preliminary research I have found many sources to supplement this portion of the question at issue. For example, “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” by Carl Safina gives many examples elephant culture through observational analysis. In addition, “Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family” by Cynthia Moss will lend a great deal of information about the close bonds among an elephant family.

Altogether this cluster of source will allow me to develop a well researched thesis in response to the question at issue.

Works Cited

Cauda F, Geminiani GC and Vercelli A. “Evolutionary appearance of von Economo’s neurons in the mammalian cerebral cortex.” Front. Hum. Neurosci. Web. 8 Nov. 2017. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00104

Plotnik, Joshua M., Frans B. M. de Waal, and Diana Reiss. “Self-Recognition in an Asian Elephant.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2006) Web. 8 Nov. 2017.

Nissani, Moti. “Elephant cognition: A Review of Recent Experiments.” Gajah 28 Goodman, Morris, et al. (2004) Web. 8 Nov. 2017.

“Phylogenomic analyses reveal convergent patterns of adaptive evolution in elephant and human ancestries.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2009) Web. 8 Nov. 2017.

Safina, Carl. “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” 1st ed. Henry Holt and Company, 2015.

Moss, Cynthia J.. “Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family” University of Chicago Press, 2000.

This class’ overarching theme has been empathy, how one would define empathy, how one should balance empathy and objectivity, and what is needed to have empathy for other people. All of these sub topics of empathy covered, for the most part, speak of empathy in a philosophical and psychological manner, but they do not touch on the physiology behind empathy. They do not touch on the physical aspects of empathy; what biological processes in the brain make empathy possible. I believe that in order for this class’ context to be complete that it is necessary to understand all aspects of empathy including the physical biological processes that make empathy possible for the human mind. I also believe that the biological aspects most likely play a large role in how much empathy one person is able to express compared to that of another. In order to study this, I have come up with the critical question:

What are the biological processes/ physiological pathways which allow empathy to occur within the human mind? With the understanding of these pathways and through manipulation of them is it possible to induce empathy for people who do not express it and may be a danger to society? This begs the question, is it ethical to do so if possible?

In answering this critical question, one will be able to develop a greater understanding of how empathy works in the brain and what things can alter empathy medically. One will also be introduced to the debate of altering someone’s feelings through medical manipulation with hopes of making them more beneficial to society through the discussion of the ethics behind altering someone who is a possible danger to society.

Cheng, Yawei, et al. “How Situational Context Impacts Empathic Responses and  Brain Activation Patterns.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 11, Apr. 2017, doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00165.

Grimm, Simone, et al. “The interaction of corticotropin-Releasing hormone receptor gene and early life stress on emotional empathy.” Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 329, 2017, pp. 180–185., doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2017.04.047.

Sedgwick, Ottilie, et al. “Neuropsychology and emotion processing in violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder or schizophrenia: The same or different? A systematic review and meta-Analysis.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Sept. 2017, p. 000486741773152., doi:10.1177/0004867417731525.

Grice-Jackson, Thomas, et al. “Consciously Feeling the Pain of Others Reflects Atypical Functional Connectivity between the Pain Matrix and Frontal-Parietal Regions.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 11, 2017, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00507.

Waal, Frans B. M. De, and Stephanie D. Preston. “Mammalian empathy: behavioural manifestations and neural basis.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 18, no. 8, 2017, pp. 498–509., doi:10.1038/nrn.2017.72.

To what extent are emotions the key catalysts to problems?

In Thomas Osborne’s artile “What is a Problem,” he argues where the problems stem from and their importance. He does this by comparing two philosophers, Bergson and Canguilhem. Canguilhem that problems arise from error.  Canguilherm believes that life is set up in a way that an organism responds to its environment. When the environment changes, a problem arises. While Bergenson also believes that problems arise from the environment. He does not believe there are evolutionary properties, where solutions help organisms evolve. With Canguilherms theory, all problems must be solved as a response to the environment in order to better the environment. Bergenson however, believes that not all problems need a solution. That logical thought is connected in order to determine the importance of solving a problem. Overall, however, Osborne finds that a problem is a response to life and environment.

In the research article “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intranational Differences,” the researchers determine what emotions are held constant within different cultures and which are not.  They do this by separating the different cultures based on an individualism scale and giving them a questionnaire pertaining to their emotions. The researchers then analyzed the data by comparing the people within the cultures they studied and then between the different cultures. They found that within the cultures there is variability, although there are obvious trends based on culture, there is still a mixture of different views on emotions within one culture. They also found that there is more variation between different cultures perspective on negative emotions but less so on positive emotions.

Based on the text “God That was Awesome” by Jon Ronson, our group discussed the role of social media, public shaming, and mob mentality and their impact on each other. In “God That Was Awesome’, Justine Sacco, a PR chief, finds her life turned upside down after one fatal tweet. Through Ronson, we were shown the background to this tweet, and the way one badly worded joke on social media was able to effectively ruin a woman’s career. In our search for a question to research, we probed into different aspects of each major theme, until we settled on the question of whether public shaming should or should not be regulated on social media, and if so, how the regulation would be done. To begin answering our question, we picked out two scholarly articles to help flush out our arguments and provide further information on our topic: Kristine L. Gallardo’s “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act,” and Emily B. Laidlaw’s “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy,”

Our first article, “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act,” delves into a legal aspect of the social media shaming cases we have seen (Justine Sacco’s included). Gallardo starts off with a history of public shaming in the United States, laying groundwork to what we see on social media today.  She speaks of the conditions of social media which allows such breeding of public shaming and mob mentality: the ease of making online commentary. The rest of her piece focusses on the legal aspect of social media public shaming, providing us with examples of situations where the Communications Decency Act came into play in situations involving social media and the amount of protection it supported the social media platform and the posters with, compared to what legal justice the victims were able to receive. Overall, Gallardo gives us a legal backdrop to mob mentality on online shaming in social media.

In our second article by Emily Laidlaw, we look into the issue of our right to privacy on the internet by examining online public shaming and the lack of legal protection online shaming victims receive. “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy” adds on to the foundations provided by Gallardo on the inadequacies of our legal systems in social media by explaining why they need to change and where their shortcomings are. Laidlaw makes a clear distinction between “humbling”, and “humiliation”, an important distinction which will help us in our responses to our questions.

Between these two pieces, we have a solid background to start building our arguments on whether or not public shaming on social media should be regulated, and if it should, how we may come about it.

Works Cited

Kristine Gallardo, “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act.” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Tech. L, Vol. 19, 2017, 721-746. (2017).

Laidlaw, Emily. “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy.” Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, 2017.

Ronson, Jon. “So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.” Riverhead Books, 2015.

The podcast, “The Problem with the Solution,” explains the issue of men always having had been looking for problems to solve within their communities and among themselves. From trying to solve issues that were as simple as fixing clogged up drains to mental illnesses of fellow beings, people always used each other’s knowledge and intelligence to make oneself comfortable and their surroundings, expedient. Ellen Baxter explains her journey of finding the truth in problem-solving. Baxter wanted to know the goodness of mental hospitals and how she could make the system better for the recovery of the patients. During her research, she discovered a place in Belgium, Geel. In Geel, a system of foster care is present to host “boarders,” strangers who are or were diagnosed with a mental illness throughout their lifetime. Boarders were placed in homes and they were left to do anything they wished to do, anything that their brains signaled them to do. This tradition of hosting boarders have given less stress to the host and the mental patients because the problem was not addressed and there was no form of normality to being a human.
A question, “To what extent are emotions the key catalysts to problems?” was derived from this reading. In order to support the answers to this question, two readings were found: “What is a Problem?” and “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intranational Differences.”
Thomas Osborne describes the possible origins of a problem in his article, “What is a Problem?”. Osborne explains Bergson’s theory of problems, which state that the problems occur the same path as science. Problems were caused by the priorities that humans made for what was visible to them in certain situations that had not occurred before. Evolution happened due to organisms being involved in the necessity to solve problems, which made humans want to fix some things that went against science and nature. According to Osborne’s summary of Bergson, local solutions to an issue was given and history had to repeat itself in order for other generations to solve similar problems. It was certain types of “humanism” because animals doubted themselves to form new ways of living. However, Canguilhem, in contrast, believed that when disorders were analyzed, there were no problems to be found. There was no disorder in general. Problems led to being philosophical, phenomena, but proved to be nothing but concepts. To him, normality was having an “open end” for solutions to adapt, an “ethical injunction, not an outlook.” A solution is an “ethical injunction” because without, freedom has a possibility to lead to corruption, thus becoming anything authority demands. Freedom was made to keep an order, which is for the people to decide from science, ethics, and morals, which are flowing the same direction. Enlightenment led to a belief in liberalism, which states that endless work of freedom should be favored instead of assimilation.
Eid and Diener explain the cultural norms of those that follow the “cultural syndrome,” which states that individuals “[share the same sets of beliefs], attitudes, norms, values, and behavior organized around a central theme and found among speakers of one language, in one time period, and in one geographic region.” An experiment was done to find the social norms and expectations that could affect a long/ short term goals of individuals and how their emotions related to each other. Independent cultures tend to focus on their self-emotions and did not react to their surroundings very well. However, interdependent cultures depended on each other to feel emotions, for example, in events. An individual does not feel the positivity of the event, it is the positive evaluation of their surroundings that allows them to feel certain emotions. The participants’ cell signals were measured and pride was the most relevant source of being in a group though it was the most undesirable component of emotion as a whole. Emotions were different based on different cultures and traditions, which meant that some were more conforming/ individual than the other. People distinguished between “undesirable” and “inappropriate.” In China, guilt was almost 1, while it varied in other regions of the world. Normality in different regions showed the importance of communication.

Works Cited:

Diener, Ed, and Eid, Michael. “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intranational Differences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 81, Iss. 5, 2001, https://search.proquest.com/docview/614418486/fulltextPDF/1580EAAA36CD437FPQ/1?accountid=13567. Accessed 23 October 2017.

Osborne, Thomas. “What is a Problem?” Sage Journals, 2003, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0952695103164001. Accessed 23 October 2017.

Inspired by a podcast that introduces a revolutionary approach used in a town named Geel in Belgium, the question that leads this research paper is to what extent are emotions the key catalysts to problems? Initially, our question was related to how people are inclined to identify something as a problem when a certain situation does not fit his/her idea of normal? And, thus, whether normal is a universal definition or more of a personal definition. The two scholarly articles that will help answer this question are Thomas Osborne’s “What is a Problem?” and “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intra-national Differences” by Michael Eid and Ed Diener.

In the “What is a Problem?” Osborne introduces multiple French philosophers and their stance on the concept of problematology. One of the first philosophers Osborne discusses is Gilles Deleuze and his work in Difference and Repetition. In this book, Deleuze even defines stupidity as being able to construct false problems. This forces readers to question whether we should consider mental illness a problem in the first place. Perhaps, our inability to accept people who do not fit the definition of “normal” is what labels mental illness as a problem. The second philosopher Osborne brings up is Henry Canguilhem. His ideas on the definition of normality is influenced by the problems imposed by one’s surroundings. Hence, there is no universal definition of normality, but rather a personalized definition based on one’s life experiences. Similar to Canguilhem, Bergson associated life with the constant cycle of overcoming of obstacles. Bergson believes that some problems, however, are to be discarded in exchange for more productive problems. By examining the concepts brought by these three philosophers, we can define “problem” and then go forward and delve into the main question presented previously.

In the second article by Michael Eid and Ed Diener, the article discusses the significant role of culture on one’s emotions, which most definitely has an influence on locating a problem and solving it. The two authors conducted a cross-cultural study where they examined the different norms for experiencing certain emotions between the US and Australia (two individual-oriented countries) and China and Taiwan (two collective-oriented countries). The individualistic countries seemed more rigid when expressing emotions whereas the collectivist countries were more lenient. In relation to the podcast, this cultural expression and suppression of emotion may be a factor in the treatment of mentally ill patients. In Geel, Belgium the method in “treating” these patients is to not try to change them back, but rather to accept them into society. This ability to keep these people away from the outskirts of society may be fueled by the autonomous nature of emotions in that part of the country. On the other hand, the US continues to use medications and therapy in efforts to “improve” the conditions. However, there is no emotion involved in the process. Thus, the individualistic personality of the US may have suppressed emotion to such an extent that it is simply omitted when treating the mentally ill. Moreover, this article will help raise questions and clarify certain situations, and offer readers an elaborate understanding of treating people suffering from mental illnesses.

Works Cited

1. Eid, Michael. “Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter- and intranational differences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume           81, Issue 5, 2001.
2. Osborne, Thomas. “What is a Problem?” History of the Human Sciences, Volume 16, Issue 4, 2003.
3. Rosin, Hannah. “The Problem with the Solution.” Invisibilia, NPR, 2016.