Zero degrees of empathy by Simon Baron-Cohen

 An explanation of human cruelty. That's something this book isn't. Which is massive disappointment since that's how it's billed from the very beginning. Baron-Cohen's thesis is actually very narrowly focussed on mental disorders that appear to have some underlying genetic component. The narrow focus is based on sound science and to that extent is accomplished science writing and I found the subject matter interesting, mildly provocative and somewhat infused with cultural zeitgeist.

I want to set aside discussion of the science, which itself is thorough and well presented, and instead focus more on two features of the book that actuate themselves as problematic both to Baron-Cohen's thesis (namely that cruelty can be explained by identifiable abnormalities in the "empathy circuit") but also to the context within which these arguments are articulated.

The philosophical underpinning of the argument can be summed up as follows;
1. Empathy is an internal quality that represents a socialised good. In other words, people with high empathy are highly unlikely to treat others cruelly.
2. Aggressive behaviour is exclusively explained by abnormalities in the brain.

Can you see where I'm going with this? I don't want to be too critical because Baron-Cohen has done a valuable service by raising this question and attempting to offer a narrative explanation. It's just that he doesn't succeed.

So let's demolish the arguments. Firstly, empathy as defined and understood by most people is the ability to understand what others might feel. Sympathy is being able to actually feel that too. The author suggests that there is no ability to understand and act in spite of or because of that understanding. For him all acts of cruelty originate from an inability to understand the impact one might be having on others.

Now it's a challenging proposition but his own examples of "evil" cannot be explained by his thesis. Indeed, beyond the narrow disorders he discusses it has no real explicative power.

A key example is a group of soldiers forcing a mother to kill her own child in a horrific fashion. The theory does not explain why they might do this only that they might. Except that to choose to make a mother kill her own child demonstrates an understanding both of cultural values and also that other people will be damaged in breaking them. This is not a lack of empathy. This is action via empathy to destroy others. Indeed without an explanation of why people can objectify others as an act of cruelty in and of itself, any explanation of evil is empty. The explanation resented here is entirely internal, it doesn't explain cultures that practice cannibalism, or scalping, or destroying whole populations by giving them virally infected gifts.

To explain cruelty one has to have a theory of societal minds not just internal minds. Without an understanding of what cruelty is normal people wouldn't be able to commit it. It's simply poor science to say that sometimes anyone can have a lack of empathy as if that explains everything for us normally functioning folk.

It seems much more likely that the causes of cruelty between people, of the normal banal kinds ranging from meanness on the subway to genocide involving millions of perpetrators finds it's genesis in a categorisation of the target as worth less than oneself whilst still being recognisably of the same substance as the agent. In order for this to happen to normal people they need socialising not in being nice but in attending to what their own aero Yale culture considers an ultimate good. Make no mistake, it is not empathy that leads to mob violence but a cultural theory of mind that captures the ability of ordinary people to classify others around then as Other and then treat them as aliens. The key difference here is that empathy is not absent but becomes a tool of the action, making it highly effective as a destructive reality. This kind of context is not available to Baron-Cohen because his thesis rests on the root of the problem being internal and not related to the web of relationships that constitute our embodied identities.

Part of his blindness comes from a cultural blindness that leads him to embody his definition of empathy with a moral framework - that aggression is always bad, that not being able to empathise is always bad and that an inability to empathise means you will necessarily be unable to function effectively in society. By this definition Soldiers and Doctors are deeply suspect characters, able as they are to cut up others in spite of any empathy they may feel. God help heir children...

These flaws are systematic in everything I read in this field and it is a subtle cultural imperialism to suggest that selecting for one gene is preferable to another (as he seems to suggest, unwittingly, when discussing Maoris). It's disappointing that he has so little multi-cultural awareness that he expresses western liberalism s an ultimate moral good.

I applaud his drive to explain cruelty, I think the science is excellent. I find serious fault with the interpretation of this science and the kinds of applications he thinks are only natural corollaries to his conclusions.

It is an enormously thoughtful book and it had me reflecting on my parenting style as well - so really it's a very mixed bag and I wish people would take more care to tread carefully especially when the narrative in their own heads seems compelling.