This might make instinctive sense. After all, one could argue, aren’t adults better equipped to distinguish moral nuances than children? But careful consideration reveals some problems with this perspective. For example, does cognitive structuralism’s approach to moral development imply that organisms with higher reasoning skills are more capable of moral behavior than organisms with lower reasoning skills? Or to put it in more crass terms: Are smarter people more moral than their counterparts? Do humans behave more morally than jellyfish?

Gilligan (1977), among others, has presented a critique of this approach by contrasting Kohlberg’s idea of the moral subject as an individual who can think formally and act autonomously with a model of the moral subject as someone who thinks contextually and acts socially. Similarly, Hoffman (2002) tries to elucidate the difference between these two perspectives by contrasting morality as justice versus morality as caring. And Dreyfus (1990) argues that intellectualism is of little use to an ethical expert who responds “instinctively and appropriately to each ethical situation” (p. 11; more on this to follow).

In this paper, however, I want to present a different type of critique to the cognitive structuralist view of moral development by making two claims: 1) that Reason (as defined from a Western, Humanist perspective) actually impedes moral development, and 2) that this is so because morality is actually an emergent behavior-in other words, a behavior exhibited by organisms acting according to very simple rules requiring little reasoning, but behavior that results in a complex system, a system which is, in fact, the basis for the order of the Universe, and which is replicated even by organisms without brains… How’s that for outlandish claims?!

To begin, I would like to make it clear that my argument does not rely on a renunciation of reasoning or logic as the basis for morality. To the contrary. While it is a particular conceptualization of reasoning that is the focus of my critique (the Humanist, Individualistic definition of reasoning, or Reasoning), my entire argument rests on the foundation that morality is a form of logic. In this, I take a page directly out of Piaget, who produced one of the most elegant memes about the relationship between morality and logic that I have found, quoted below by Gibbs:

The intertwining of morality with logic is expressed in Piaget’s famous assertion: “Morality is the logic of action just as logic is the morality of thought.” In other words, the two intimately interrelate: Moral reciprocity is rational just as rationality is prescriptive. (Gibbs, p. 36)

Usually, Piaget’s statement is taken as a strong argument for the case that, as his next line suggests, “pure reason [is] the arbitrer both of theoretical reflection and daily practice” (quoted in Dreyfus, 1990). But I would like to take the liberty of using Piaget’s words against his own position by interpreting his statement to mean, simply, that moral reciprocity (”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) makes logical sense-it’s just how the Universe works. According to this interpretation of Piaget, logic is moral in that there are right and wrong answers (2+2=4, not 3 or 5). Likewise, moral action is logical in that moral reciprocity makes as much sense as 2+2=4, and moral irreciprocity makes as much sense as 2+2=5. But this has more to do with the way the Universe works than with the particular characteristics of ‘pure reason.’ The fact that moral reciprocity does not require pure reason has been exemplified, among other instances, by the Prisoners’ Dilemma competitions. In this tournament, simple software routines that learn to cooperate with each other do better than those that focus on competing with each other (for a recount of these tournaments, see for example Grossman, 2004). This kind of behavior is referred to as emergence.

But before I discuss how the logic of moral reciprocity is evident in the emergent behavior of organisms in the Universe, I would like to discuss what happens when this order is disrupted by Individualistic Reasoning. My thesis is that the Universe would work much better without this brand of ‘logic’ and that Individualistic Reasoning is in fact a deviation from the type of logic that actually promotes moral behavior.

If a scapegoat must be named, his name is René Descartes. The problem is that Descartes convinced himself that all we have access to in the world is our own private experience. Descartes, following on the footsteps of the Skeptics but armed with the new language of modern science, questioned the reality of perception. He did this on the grounds that our sensory organs, such as eyes, ears, skin, etc., are very imperfect transmitters of information to the brain, which is the only organ capable of interpreting and acting on that information. For example, it is the brain that activates signals of pain received by a particular part of the body, or creates an itch where an amputated limb used to be. It is also the brain that makes things seem real during dreaming, when in reality they don’t exist. So our access to reality is indirect, mediated by the imperfect senses and actualized only by the brain. This line of thinking lead Descartes to believe that the only thing we could be certain of was therefore the content of our brains, and everything in the outside world was consequently less real, or not real at all.

This Skeptical view was eventually contested (after three centuries!) by various schools, including the Pragmatics and the Existential Phenomenologists, who argued that there was no point in even asking how we perceive the ‘external’ world because we are embedded right into it, inseparable from it. As Heidegger argued, there is no such thing as a subject who is not being-in-the-world. “Taking the skeptic seriously and attempting to prove that there is an external world presupposes a separation of the mind from the world of things and other people that defies a phenomenological description of how human beings make sense of everyday things and of themselves” (Dreyfus, 2000, p. 53).

What interests me here is the particular anti-social way in which Reasoning was defined by Descartes and adopted by Western Humanism. Under this rubric, logic (including moral logic) has been defined in the West as something the individual does in isolation, not as part of a system. Norbert Elias describes the antisocial consequences of Descartes’ philosophy as follows:

Descartes’ Cogito ["I think therefore I am"], with its accent on the I, was also a sign of this change in the position of the individual person in his society… The isolated thinker perceived himself-or more precisely, his own thought, his ‘reason’-as the only real, indubitable thing. All else might possibly be an illusion conjured up by the Devil, but not this, not his own existence as thinker. This form of I-identity, the perception of one’s own person as a we-less I, has spread wide and deep since then. (Elias, 1998, p. 231-232)

Individual Reasoning subverts morality by disassociating the acts of the individual from the emergent acts of the ecosystem, of the we. Humanism, in its rush to liberate humankind from “illogical” (read: religiously imposed) morals, made it practically impossible to act in accordance with the logic of the Universe, a logic that Humanist Science itself claims to try to understand! In order to substantiate this claim before I am labeled an obscurantist, I need to finally turn to my statement that morality is an emergent phenomenon. What is emergence?

Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts. It’s what happens when you have a system of relatively simple-minded component parts-often there are thousands or millions of them-and they interact in relatively simple ways. And yet somehow out of all this interaction some higher level structure or intelligence appears, usually without any master planner calling the shots. These kinds of systems tend to evolve from the ground up. (Steven Johnson, in an interview with Sims & Dornfest, 2002)

Johnson argues that emergent systems

solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively stupid elements, rather than a single, intelligent “executive branch.” They are bottom up systems, not top-down. They get their smarts from below… In these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies one scale above them: ants create colonies; urbanites create neighborhoods; simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recommend new books. The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication is what we call emergence. (2002, p. 18)

Johnson indicates that “[e]mergent behaviors… are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts” (2002, p. 181).

How does morality fit into this model? Well, the simple rule is moral reciprocity. The “stupid” agents are all living things (regardless of their level of reasoning). The complex emergent behavior, the sum greater than the parts, is Universal Order. One of the things that makes emergent systems durable and easy to propagate is that they are adaptive. Moral reciprocity is universal because there is no “executive branch” that needs to tell everything in the Universe how to behave; rather, the ‘DNA’ of the behavior is widely spread, and organisms-from simple jellyfish to complex humans-can adapt the rules and work out contextually what the logical/morally-right thing to do is.

This does not mean, obviously, that humans have as easy of a time as jellyfish in applying moral reciprocity. Humans are complex organisms living in complex social settings. However, as Dreyfus (1990) argues, the idea that therefore an intellectual approach to moral reasoning is bound to be superior than an intuitive approach might have more to do with our Cartesian biases than with the way things actually work. Dreyfus puts forth a model of moral development that resembles more the process of gaining mastery in driving a vehicle or playing chess than the process of philosophizing: expertise does not constitute deep pondering and analyzing of each move, but comes intuitively:

The intellectualist account of self-sufficient cognition fails to distinguish the involved deliberation of an intuitive expert facing a familiar but problematic situation from the detached deliberation of an expert facing a novel situation in which he has no intuition and can best resort to abstract principles… [I]n familiar but problematic situations, rather than standing back and applying abstract principles, the expert deliberates about the appropriateness of his intuitions. (p. 13)

This constitutes, in effect, a reversal of the “Western and male belief in the maturity and superiority of critical detachment” (p. 23). Instead of the ideal of a detached, uninvolved brain making sense of suspect sensory signals, “[t]he highest form of ethical comportment is seen to consist in being able to stay involved [in the world] and to refine one’s intuitions” (p. 23). I interpret this to mean that, unlike jellyfish, we constantly create and encounter new moral dilemmas, and thus have to “reason” our way back to emergent moral reciprocity-to the logic of the Universe-not by applying abstract principles, but by contextualizing our intuitions. Only in situations that are completely alien to us, argues Dreyfus, do we fall back on abstract moral rules, but “it should be no surprise if falling back on them produces inferior responses. The resulting decisions are necessarily crude since they have not been refined by the experience of the results of a variety of intuitive responses to emotion-laden situations and the learning that comes from subsequent satisfaction and regret” (p. 13).

In short, when individuals apply Individualistic Reasoning to define morals (in an attempt to become the “executive branch” of morality), they stop being part of the emergent system, of the universal order. Individualistic Reasoning presupposes that morality is a function of the rational elite, those organisms with advanced reasoning skills (who for some strange reason are mostly white adult males). Emergent moral reasoning, on the other hand, presupposes that moral reciprocity is a function of the Universe. Everything and everyone acts morally in the sense that their interactions are part of the logic of the Universe, the logic of moral reciprocity. Moral reciprocity just makes logical sense, like 2+2=4; it just happens. It is encoded into everything in the Universe.

Individualistic Reasoning, which assumes that higher reasoning results in higher morality, disrupts this balance by trying to make the system top-down, not bottom-up. In other words, Humanism has placed rational humans as the source of morality. Morality is what highly rational humans say it is, not what the rest of the Universe is telling us it is. Thus, Individual Reasoning-even if it spouses the highest ideals-ends up disturbing the logic of moral action by limiting the domain and practice of morality to the actions of “mature” rational beings.

Some might wonder: if moral reciprocity was really the order of the Universe, how come there is evil in the world? How come killer whales kill senselessly, cats torture mice, and humans commit the most atrocious acts against each other-all of which make it hard to believe that moral reciprocity rules the Universe? The answer to this question is that immorality, in the form of moral irreciprocity, is also part of the emergent system. In fact, it actually serves a very important pedagogical function. It ensures that moral reciprocity spreads virally, in the sense that by suffering or observing moral irreciprocity, everything in the Universe learns-using the most basic reasoning skills, if not mere instincts-that moral reciprocity is the only strategy that guarantees survival. Even the Prisoners’ Dilemma software can figure that out quickly. If we didn’t have deviations (in the form of moral irreciprocity), we would not be aware that moral reciprocity makes logical sense. The exception proves the rule.

Of course, chaos is part of an emergent system, which means that moral reciprocity and moral irreciprocity are not in perfect balance at all times and in all places. In fact, because moral irreciprocity channeled through Individualistic Reasoning-although illogical-satisfies the needs of the individual, and because we live at a time in which Humanism has made the Individual the center of the Universe, we are currently experiencing a larger proportion of moral irreciprocity (ironically, under the guise of Humanism). However, as this places an inordinate stress in the emergent system, we can expect the laws of chaos to eventually enact an adjustment. It’s just our job to help it along the way by surrendering ourselves to emergent moral reasoning, by letting go of our egocentric
belief in ourselves as superior moral beings

References

Dreyfus, H. (1990). What is moral maturity? A phenomenological account of the development of ethical expertise. Retrieved on December 17, 2004 from http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/rtf/Moral_Maturity_8_90.rtf

Dreyfus, H. (2000). Telepistemology: Descartes’ last stand. In K. Goldberg (Ed.), The Robot in the Garden (pp. 48-63). Massachusetts: MIT Press

Elias, N. (1998). The Norbert Elias reader: a biographical selection. (J. Goudsblom, Ed.), Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers

Gibbs, J.C. (2003). Moral development and reality: beyond the theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE

Gilligan, C. (1977). In a different voice: Women’s conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard Educational Review, 47, 481-517.

Grossman, W. (2004). New tack wins prisoner’s dilemma. Retrieved on December 17, 2004 from http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65317,00.html

Hoffman, M.L. (2002). Empathy and moral development: implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Johnson, S. (2002). Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. 1st Touchstone ed. New York: Simon & Schuster

Sims, D., & Dornfest, R. (2002). Steven Johnson on “Emergence.” Retrieved on December 16, 2004 from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/22/johnson.html

[Note: Originally submitted as a term paper for a Moral Development class]

Will the internet play an increasing role in shifting the source of moral standards from face-to-face communities to online networks? Gergen (1999), for example, argues that 20th century technologies of social connection undermine traditional face-to-face communities as the generative site for moral action. According to this kind of perspective, technologies such as the internet erode our ability to act in concert with locally defined moral standards. Instead, by connecting people across space, the dispersed network becomes the generative site for moral standards. Gergen seems to suggest that this is something we should lament. But if instead of acting in concert with what my next door neighbor thinks is right, I act in concert with what my online community thinks is morally appropriate, is this all bad? What if my next door neighbor is a deplorable character? It is true that non-geographically bound communities (such as online communities) have probably replaced the traditional community in more ways than one. But do these communities, and online communities in particular, simply give voice to the collective moral standards of their members, or are the moral standards of their members being shaped by the experience of being part of such a community? Furthermore, given the fragmentary nature of online communities, will the internet promote relativistic notions of morality, or contribute to the development of universally shared models of morality?

Morality is a set of social standards, developing and reproducing themselves through social transactions. Thus, it is not unreasonable to expect that a highly social medium like the internet replicates some of those transactions, albeit in new forms and subject to new dynamics. The internet is a socio-technical system, conformed of “hardware, software, physical surroundings, people, procedures, laws and regulations, and data and data structures” (ComputingCases.org, nd). How the combination of these elements shapes the development of morality is an issue mostly unexplored. In this paper, I will sketch briefly two possible research avenues towards this endeavor. My intention is not to suggest that just because these affordances exist, that they will somehow automatically emerge. To the contrary, if an affordance is a three-way interaction between the environment, the activity, and the actor (Dourish, 2003), then we need to make sure the environments and the activities are designed for actors to be able to take advantage of the internet to further their moral development. As with any other endeavor, technology can simply provide new means, but the end by necessity requires human agency.

The internet as an instrument of moral modelling

Albert Bandura’s work on social cognition suggests that moral development occurs as human observe others in a social context. Thus, Bandura believes that individuals’ moral development can be viewed as a

gradually expanding repertoire of moral values and moral actions by means of both observing others as models and trying the actions themselves and… using information from the observed and directly experienced consequences to guide future decisions about whether one sort of moral behavior will be better than another in fulfilling one’s needs and obtaining rewards. (Thomas, 1997, p. 86)

Bandura refers to this phenomenon as modelling, and argues that human beings are quite sophisticated at it:

When exposed to diverse models, observers rarely pattern their behavior exclusively after a single source, nor do they adopt all the attributes even of preferred models. Rather, observers combine aspects of various models into new amalgams that differ from the individual sources… Different observers adopt different combinations of characteristics. (quoted in Thomas, 1997, p. 72)

The kind of observation and modelling alluded to in Bandura’s theory is probably imagined to unfold in face-to-face interactions. But there is nothing to suggest that similar outcomes cannot be achieved through mediated experiences, such as those afforded by the internet.

For example, members of an online community can observe how pro-social and anti-social online behavior is rewarded or castigated, and decide to conduct themselves in a particular way based on their observations and conclusions. Of course, the fact that online behavior [I am using the distinction between online and offline settings
throughout merely to differentiate between the location of acts within
the same reality, not because I believe these labels correspond to two
parallel realities] is perceived as having less real consequences than offline behavior (due largely to the ease with which anonymity and identity transmutation is afforded) might have led some people to assume that they could get away more easily with anti-social and immoral behavior. However, research (see for example Turkle, 1995) seems to suggest that people’s emotions are as implicated in online acts as they are in offline acts, and people might begin to model behaviors that recognize that anti-social behavior is just as consequential online as it is offline.

Another advantage of modelling in online environments is that it increases exposure to models of behavior that the individual would not encounter normally. This can result in a more firmly established system of moral values, as the individual is able to put together more sophisticated amalgams based on diverse sources to accommodate his or her individual needs. At the same time, this same exposure to diverse models of behavior can result in more widely shared moral codes across society, as the pool of sources becomes widely known and distributed (even if individuals adopt these sources in different combinations). As Bandura suggests: “A shared morality… is vital to the humane functioning of any society… Societal codes and sanctions articulate collective moral imperatives as well as influence social conduct” (Bandura, 1991, p. 46). In our highly interconnected world, demands are increasing for a shared morality, as I will discuss next. In sum, modelling of behavior based on online interactions can promote individual moral codes that are stronger through diversity and at the same time more resistant to ethnocentric interests.

The internet as an instrument of social perspective taking

The second application of the internet to moral development that I wish to explore concerns the emergence of empathy in an online environment. Empathy is “the glue that makes social life possible… a biologically and affectively based, cognitively mediated and socialized predisposition to connect emotionally with others” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 79). Empathy promotes moral behavior by allowing an individual to identify with another’s situation, instead of his or her own. Empathic individuals are those who are able to put themselves in other’s people shoes, and act based on the kind of behavior they would like to see reciprocated by others. Empathy is primarily a social phenomenon, and so again it is not unreasonable to expect that it can be displayed in a techno-social system like the internet. Moreover, my thesis is that the internet can actively promote empathy in new ways by increasing opportunities for social perspective taking.

How does social perspective taking contribute to the development of empathy? The premise (based on Piaget’s theories and advanced by Hoffman) is that as children mature, they become able to focus on moral encounters not only from the superficial perspective of satisfying their individual needs, but from the perspective of others. Thus, they are able to act morally, in accordance to what is best for society as a whole, not just for themselves. They are able to achieve this decentration by engaging in social perspective taking, which as Gibbs (2003) suggests, “means not simply taking another’s perspective but taking into account another’s beliefs, preferences, and other attitudes” (p. 3, emphasis in original). Gibbs continues:

Also relevant is Hoffman’s (2000) suggestion that mature social perspective taking involves attention to both how the other person is feeling and how one would feel in the other’s place. Piaget’s (1932/1965) term for the Golden Rule (or do-as-you-would-be-done-by perspective taking) was ideal moral reciprocity… The common adoption in dialogue of the moral point of view and ideal moral reciprocity… amounts to mutual respect. (2003, p. 3, emphasis in original)

Of course, there are obstacles on the road to social perspective taking and empathy. Individuals or groups can act unempathically when their propensity to feel empathy is being curtailed by what Hoffman describes as empathic biases. Two of these biases, the here-and-now bias and the similarity bias, drive individuals to focus their empathy on what is immediately present and/or what is familiar to them, to the exclusion of the distant and/or the unfamiliar. This makes perfect sense as a way to guarantee the survival of one’s group. If a decision has to be made about who will one help during a crisis, most people will focus first on their own kin. If sides need to be taken, most people will align themselves with their own communities. However, while the application of these biases used to be relatively straight forward, modern technologies are changing the politics of empathy to the extent that they are changing the nature of communities and inter-communal relations.

According to Norbert Elias (1998), technological development in the last century initiated a process of global integration that has had important consequences to how we allocate empathy. Although Elias focuses on the example of the airplane in the following passage, it is not inconceivable to apply his arguments to other technologies, such as the internet:

The triumphant advance of the aeroplane, as a medium for global traffic in peace and war, has decisively contributed to the growing interdependence of all states on the globe and, at the same time, is also its product. It has enormous civilizing influence, by bringing people from all regions closer to each other. This is particularly, though not solely, because it aids peoples of all colours to begin to get used to the fact that they have to live with one another, however different their patterns of self-regulation may be. Growing interdependencies, however, are accompanied with great regularity by specific tensions and conflicts. No group of people is pleased when it realizes that it is now more dependent on others than before. I have called such tensions ‘integration and disintegration tensions’ (1998, p. 225).

The ‘civilizing influence’ that Elias alludes to can be interpreted as an ability to overcome similarity and here-and-now biases in order to empathize with people who are different and distant from us. However, Elias is aware of the resistance to these processes. In the face of the growing pressure towards integration of institutions and regulations, Elias notes that:

People’s self-regulation is (in accordance with their origin and therefore, understandably) geared to the identification with small sub-units of humankind, tribes or states. Compared with the emotional importance of one’s own tribe, one’s own folk, one’s own nation, the concept of humankind is an empty word. It is indeed to a large extent, but not solely, because of technological developments that people now find themselves in the position of having to be prepared in the long run either to live in peace with one another or to perish in wars with one another. (ibid, p. 226)

So while we might be conditioned to empathize with small sub-units of humankind-those similar to us-modern transportation and communication technologies are putting us in contact (and conflict) with people different from us. This is creating pressure on us to feel empathy towards the Other as a way to guarantee the survival of the species, and to not succumb to destruction by warfare. And so the same technologies are being used to bridge differences through empathy. Thus, these technologies can be seen as both promoting globalization and as the product of it. Next, I will explore some of the empathy-building affordances of the internet.

In order to understand how a technology that introduces more layers of mediation between two people can increase empathy, we need to refer to Hoffman’s notion of mediated association. Mediated association is a mature form of empathic arousal that takes place through the cognitive medium of language. “For example, one may read a letter describing another’s situation and affective state. Emphatic responding through language-mediated association entails the mental effort of semantic processing and decoding” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 83). In other words, Hoffman is arguing that to respond to empathic distress does not require the victim to be present, and that we can feel empathy towards subjects who are not near us. Communication technologies are capable of facilitating empathic arousal by allowing one individual to experience the affective state of another who might not be physically present. This is possible through telepresence, the technologically-mediated illusion of being somewhere where our bodies are not.

Through new forms of synchronous and asynchronous telepresence, the internet has increased the availability of opportunities for empathic arousal not only between people who know each other, but between complete strangers from different groups as well. In theory, the internet could usher in a new era of social perspective taking, as individuals are able (with increasing quality and diminishing cost) to engage affectively with members of other social groups. This increased exposure can advance the project of integration. If it manages to remain mindful of the richness that diversity provides, this integration can result in a shared consciousness of how we need each other to survive. An interconnected world in which social groups can negotiate the meaning of values with each other is a world in which integration makes possible the emergence of some basic, universally shared moral values.

However, there are at least three obstacles that work against the application of the internet for the development of social perspective taking.

First, some of us might react with discomfort to the increased proximity of the Other fostered upon us by the internet. As Norbert Elias would argue, the pressure towards integration generates tensions which might resolve themselves through antisocial impulses. The internet is as much a space for affective connections and the building of better understandings as it is a space for harassment and vituperation.

Second, while the internet might increase our affective connection with the far through telepresence, it might do so at the expense of our affective connection with the near (as I have argued elsewhere, cf. Mejias, 2004a). As Hoffman argues, some degree of the here-and-now and similarity biases are necessary to guarantee the survival of one’s group. However, the internet disrupts these biases by making what is near to us less relevant than what is distant from us. Disintegration, instead of integration, ensues as telepresence makes it possible for us to neglect our surroundings. This phenomenon can be observed in cases where people (affluent enough to afford constant internet access) opt to build affective bonds with others across the globe with whom they have more interests in common. This is then used as an excuse to disassociate themselves from people in their immediate surrounding who are of different social or ethnic backgrounds. In this case, the overall effect is one of a decrease in integration and the ability to empathize with the Other. Let’s not forget, for example, that modern cities are some of the best laboratories for social perspective taking and the negotiation of difference. Unbridled telepresence can undermine some of the benefits of localized diversity.

Third, social perspective taking on the internet can degenerate into self-focused perspective taking due to the egocentric affordances of the medium. As Gergen (1999) points out, in online encounters, “[r]ather than encountering others in the flesh-for who they really are-people project onto others their own desires. They imagine the others according to personal wishes… “the other is not really other, but it is actually a moment in my own self-becoming”" (1999, 20th page in chapter 8). The implications of this for social perspective taking can be surmised by quoting the following passage from Gibbs:

Hoffman (2000) suggested that perspective taking can be either self-focused (imagining how one would feel in the other’s situation) or other focused (imagining how the other person feels or how most people would feel in that situation). Although other-focused perspective taking is more readily sustained, self-focused perspective taking tends to be more intense, probably because “it activates one’s own personal need system” (p. 56). This activation, however, renders self-focused perspective taking vulnerable to what Hoffman calls “egoistic drift,” in which the observer “becomes lost in egoistic concerns and the image of the victim that initiated the role-taking process skips out of focus and fades away” (p.56) (Gibbs, 2003, p. 83-84)

Empathic online encounters can remain at a superficial level when they trigger egoistic concerns. The simulated nature of these telepresence encounters makes it difficult for authentic empathy to develop, as I have argued elsewhere:

Telepresence is entirely egocentric, in that it allows us to be selective about whom to engage and when according to our own interests… making it technologically possible to reduce interaction with the external world to mediated representations through which I can focus not on the emotions of others, but on my own reaction to the emotions of others. Importance is transferred to how *I* feel about the plight of others, represented through layers of mediation. Action (no longer classifiable as moral) becomes centered on how I can alleviate my own distress, not the distress of others, which results in further egocentrism (Mejias, 2004b).

It remains to be seen whether we can design effective online environments and activities that will allow individuals to escape the trap of superficial, egocentric perspective taking, that will help reintegrate them to their immediate surroundings, and that will encourage them to be prosocial participants in the project of integration. Until we do so, the potential of the internet to contribute to moral development will remain unfulfilled.

References

ComputingCases.org (nd). Why a Socio-Technical System? Retrieved November 22, 2004 from http://www.computingcases.org/general_tools/sia/socio_tech_system.html

Dourish, P. (2001). Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

Elias, N. (1998). The Norbert Elias reader: a biographical selection. (J. Goudsblom, Ed.), Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers

Gergen, K.J. (1999). An invitation to social construction. London: Sage

Gibbs, J.C. (2003). Moral development and reality: beyond the theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage

Hoffman, M.L. (2002). Empathy and moral development: implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Mejias, U. (2004a). Re-approaching nearness: Online communication and its place in praxis. Retrieved November 22, 2004 from http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2004/08/reapproaching_n.html

Mejias, U. (2004b). Un-empathic nation? Retrieved November 22, 2004 from http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2004/11/unempathic_nati.html

Thomas, R. M. (1997). Moral development theories-secular and religious: A comparative study. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen. New York, NY: Touchstone Books.

[Note: Originally submitted as term paper for a Moral Development class]

But does the rest of the world see the U.S. as a moral nation? Responses to a recent survey by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC, 2003) show that 50% of participants from 10 countries described the U.S. as a religious country (compared to 34% who described it as a non-religious country). This would suggest, assuming that most people associate religion with positive moral values, that half of those interviewed probably see the U.S. as a nation of solid moral principles. However, 65% of the same respondents also described the U.S. as an arrogant nation (compared to 15% who described it as a humble nation). And when all was said and done, six out of the ten countries participating in the survey disagreed with the statement “America is a force of good in the world.” According to the survey, 79% of Americans, however, whole heartedly agreed with that statement.

At the risk of making a generalization, I would argue that the U.S. is not as moral a nation as it would like to think it is. World opinion seems, by and large, to corroborate this perception. My thesis is that the reason Americans are  seen in this light is because, in general, they are becoming increasingly unable to demonstrate empathy—both towards the rest of the world, and towards each other. My goal, however, is not merely to bash the United States. I want to look at the problem of empathic deficiency in the U.S., its  causes, and consider some solutions. I will suggest ways in which empathy can be cultivated and moral development nurtured amongst the people of the U.S., not because they are the only ones in need of doing so, but because I believe an un-emphatic disposition, combined with nearly absolute economic and military power at a global scale, is a recipe for catastrophic disaster. If the U.S. sees itself as a moral nation, but the rest of the world sees Abu Ghraib, there is reason to doubt a peaceful coexistence.

What is the relationship between acting morally and the ability to feel empathy? Empathy, as defined by Hoffman, is the ability to experience “an affective response appropriate to someone else’s situation rather than one’s own” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 79). Empathic arousal triggers emotions and behaviors intended to align the subject with the victim’s plight. From an anthropological perspective, empathy has played an important role in the survival of our species; empathy promotes pro-social behaviors, which guarantee the strength and prosperity of groups. It is “the glue that makes social life possible… a biologically and affectively based, cognitively mediated and socialized predisposition to connect emotionally with others” (ibid). So empathy functions as the basic mechanism that impels subjects to behave morally, which in this context means that someone who observes the suffering of others feels compelled to help them as opposed to ignoring them, thus ensuring the survival of the group as a whole.

But what is it that prevents humans from forming such an emotional connection? Unfamiliarity and distance can play a part (Gibbs, 2003), but here I will focus on three specific biases that have, in my opinion, atrophied the ability of the U.S. to display empathy (these biases have atrophied all of humanity’s ability to feel empathy, but for the reasons outlined above having to do with the balance of power in the world, I am selectively focusing on the U.S.). The three biases are: the disproportionate egocentric bias, the bias towards mediated experience, and the bias against diversity. Next, I will examine each one of these biases individually, and later I will discuss some strategies for how they can be collectively contested in the context of the United States.

Let’s begin with an analysis of the disproportionate egocentric bias. To an extent, egocentrism can function as a survival mechanism intended to preserve the self. However, excessive or disproportionate egocentrism has anti-social consequences: a society in which people are concerned with satisfying only their personal desires is a society destined to collapse unto itself. Unfortunately, that seems to describe in many ways the postmodern condition. A detailed analysis of what Marcuse calls the “transplantation of social into individual needs” (1964, p. is beyond the scope of this limited essay. Suffice it to summarize this transplantation by quoting Norbet Elias:

Whereas previously people had belonged, whether from birth or from a certain point in their lives, to a certain group for ever, so that their I-identity was permanently bound to their we-identity and often overshadowed by it, in the course of time the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme. The we-identity of people, though it certainly always remained present, was now often overshadowed or concealed in consciousness by their I-identity (1998, p. 213).

The United States is recognized, without doubt, for its cult of individualism, so it can be argued that the disproportionate egocentric bias finds its epitome here. The culture revolves around the freedom to choose how to satisfy one’s own needs, which while having a positive effect on the human spirit can also promote an anti-social attitude of competition and isolation instead of collaboration. Of what consequence is this bias to the development of empathy? According to a cognitive-developmental approach to morality, such as that espoused by Piaget and Kohlberg, morality develops from early stages of superficiality and self-centration to higher stages of decentration and eventually moral reciprocity (Gibbs, 2002, p. 17). This means that it is expected that young children will focus on situations only egocentrically or superficially (i.e., by paying attention only to the salient aspects of a situation, those that appeal to the self), and that they will find it hard to empathize with others or be able to assume their plight because they are exclusively centered on, or preoccupied with, themselves. This is a natural reaction to the world for a child, and it might even be essential for the survival of the adult individual. However, it is expected that adults, unlike children, will be able to engage more fully in decentration, or adopting the perspective of others as a way to empathize with them. In other words, adults can be expected to interpret a situation not only from the perspective of their own needs, but from the perspective of others. The disproportionate egocentric bias works against this process by making it culturally permissible to indulge in an un-empathic behavior at the expense of pro-social behavior.

The second bias, the bias towards mediated experience, explains the technological mechanisms that facilitate the first bias (the bias towards disproportionate egocentrism). Modern communication technologies and media facilitate telepresence, or the experience of being somewhere without having to be physically there. This mediated interaction with the external world can be accomplished from the safety of our rooms. While it increases our access to people and places beyond the limits of our physical reach, it also reduces the richness of that communicative experience to whatever is allowed by bandwidth (telepresence can also, in theory, increase the reach of our empathy by enabling decentration, but that’s a separate discussion). The external world accessed through telepresence, therefore, becomes a simulacrum—something contrived and artificial. Emotional indicators are reduced to abstract signs (smileys, for example), in contrast to the hundreds of small body gestures that our senses are able to decipher. This technological mediation, I hypothesize, along with the disproportionate egocentric bias, leads us to make superficial emotional connections with a focus towards satisfying our individual needs. Telepresence is entirely egocentric, in that it allows us to be selective about whom to engage and when according to our own interests (That we can train those interests to be more empathically and morally oriented is a pedagogical issue that I will not address here. Suffice it to say for the moment that even more ‘immersive’ technologies will not result in an increase in empathy without conscious efforts to reconceptualize telepresence).

If the egocentric bias makes it culturally permissible to focus on our needs at the expense of the needs of others, the bias towards mediated experience further justifies this shift. It accomplishes this by making it technologically possible to reduce interaction with the external world to mediated representations through which I can focus not on the emotions of others, but on my own reaction to the emotions of others. Importance is transferred to how *I* feel about the plight of others, represented through layers of mediation. Action (no longer classifiable as moral) becomes centered on how I can alleviate my own distress, not the distress of others, which results in further egocentrism. The last bias to be discussed here, the bias against diversity, explains the natural outcome of this process, and closes the loop.

As Gibbs points out, “difference impedes empathy” (2003, p. 11). We tend to feel empathy towards those who are similar to us, which makes sense in terms of guaranteeing the survival and prosperity of our social group. But what happens when the welfare of each group depends on the welfare of the others? What technology and progress have made possible—the interconnectedness of all human beings—we have not yet been able to support empathically. The United States is a case in point, although by no means the only one. Because of its history, the U.S. has always been a nation conformed of different peoples. But empathy has not emerged easily between the newer immigrant groups and the established groups and social classes. Tensions have not always been resolved in peaceful ways. The modern project of multiculturalism has attempted to create a positive discourse around difference, with various degrees of success. But despite the rhetoric, difference in the U.S. continues to be something that, at best, needs to be tolerated (like one tolerates a bad smell), and at worst, eliminated. Again, the bias towards mediated experience has exacerbated the problem by extending the formation of communities of interest and identity even when they are no longer spatially possible, so that confronting difference becomes even less of an eventuality. Egocentrism, reinforced through mediated experiences, results in a mistrust of anything different, which promotes un-empathic dispositions and in turn furthers egocentrism. It’s a vicious cycle.
Having analyzed these biases, I will now attempt to briefly propose strategies for breaking that cycle, and for nurturing empathy and morality in the U.S. These suggestions revolve around the recognition that decentration, or social perspective taking, promotes pro-social behavior (Gibbs, 2003, p. 3).

• Abandon discourse of national exceptionalism. While ethnocentrism is not an exclusive U.S. phenomenon, it has become particularly noxious when combined with national exceptionalism, or the belief that the U.S. is unique, omnipotent, and without par (summarized by the uniquely American sentiment: ‘U.S. # 1′). It’s almost as if internal differences can only be superceded when it comes to defending the role of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower. The average American’s dismal knowledge of the rest of the world (perpetuated by the educational system) mirrors an un-empathic disposition towards it: Why should I learn about something I don’t care about, and why should I care about something I don’t know anything about?  Empathy is also prevented from developing by a defense mechanism of victim blaming: If the rest of the world is a miserable place, it is because it is lazy. This defense mechanism also serves to hide the ways in which the U.S., as a superpower, is responsible for some of the misery in the world.

• Make inductions part of the public discourse. Inductions occur, according to Hoffman (2002, p. 143), when parents try to make the child aware of the perspective of the Other, pointing out the Other’s distress, and identifying how the child’s actions cause such distress. In other words, inductions force the subject to face the conflict between his or her own egoistic desires and the Other’s needs. Inductions are rehearsals for moral encounters (ibid, p. 144), and eventually they disappear as the subject becomes able to empathize without the need of the external induction. Public figures (from the political, religious, educational and entertainment spheres) could play a key role in making this process more culturally prevalent (provided they themselves are capable of empathy).

• Seek to balance mediated experiences with direct experiences. Metacognitive tools need to be developed for transforming mediated experiences into experiences of decentration that can result in empathy. Mediated experiences should be accorded their place in our networked societies, but they should be seen in the context of larger systems of action. In essence, this means finding ways for us to re-engage our immediate surroundings, with all their diversity: Instead of decentering ourselves to empathize with people far away (which, as I argued, ultimately leads to focusing on our own emotions), we need to decenter ourselves to empathize with the people around us. This kind of empathy has firmer foundations, which can then be exported in more sustainable ways to mediated experiences.

• Seek a balance between empathic emotions and reason as basis for morality. Part of the problem is that morality is seen as a set of absolute principles that can be applied to any situation. The rational aspect of morality is emphasized over its emotional aspects. And yet, it is the emotional aspects that allow us to apply morality in a contextualized way. Emotions respond to the specifics of a situation, whereas trying to approach a moral dilemma from an exclusively rational perspective will ignore the specifics. At the same time, focusing entirely on emotions can result in relativism. Recognizing the value of ‘rational emotions,’ or a balance between emotions and reason, is a step towards creating a more empathic society.

Having briefly enumerated these suggestions, I realize they must appear incredibly naïve and unrealistic. Perhaps so. Adapting them would mean undertaking the seemingly impossible task of changing the power relations that maintain things the way they are, at a time when the country seems more determined than ever to head in the direction that it is currently going. However, to continue down the path of devalued empathy is only to ensure our own demise, so we must try.
References

British Broadcasting Company. (2003, May/June). What the World thinks of America. Retrieved November 4, 2004 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/wtwta/poll/html/default.stm

Cable News Network. (2003, November 2). U.S. President / National / Exit Poll. Retrieved on November 4, 2004 from http://us.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/U.S./P/00/epolls.0.html

Elias, N. (1998).  The Norbert Elias reader: a biographical selection. (J. Goudsblom, Ed.), Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers

Gibbs, J.C. (2003).  Moral development and reality: beyond the theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman.  Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE

Hoffman, M.L. (2002).  Empathy and moral development: implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Marcuse, H. (2002).  One-dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. [New ed.]. Routledge classics. London: Routledge