Here's an interesting neurological
study in psychologist Dr. Jeremy Dean's excellent blog to which I'm
subscribed, showing that although the brain is well equipped to be both
empathetic and logical, it may find it difficult to manage both of those
qualities simultaneously. Brain scans revealed that activation in the
analytical neuronal network suppresses some of the empathetic neuronal network,
and activation in the empathetic neuronal network suppresses some of the
analytical neuronal network.
As you may know, I'm a
firm believer (with
good evidence as backup) that when it comes to objective facts there are no
rational disagreements if truth-seeking is pursued with honesty and rigour, and
that it is only because of flawed reasoning skills, misinformation, sensory
faults, biases and incomplete knowledge that there is so much disagreement in
the world.
In addition to that,
according to Jeremy Dean's article it would seem that the brain's difficulty in
being both simultaneously empathetic and logical is a further barrier to people
agreeing on things more freely. If you're empathetic you are likely to be much
more empathetic to people who already share your beliefs, which militates
against your employing the necessary logical steps to see whatever weight is behind arguments from
your opponents. And if you're logical you are likely to be short on empathy
regarding your opponents' position.
Consequently, if all these
things are stacked against us, it is little wonder that there is so much
disagreement out there, and that when two people are having a debate, they are
probably going to be hamstrung by being not empathetic enough or not logical
enough.
Still, no need to be a
Cassandra-esque purveyor of doom on this one; I believe that the brain can be
trained to overcome this problem. Once we become aware that when we are being
logical we may have to work that bit harder to be empathetic, and vice-versa,
we should be able to surmount what is stacked against us and master an adept
balance of logical output and careful empathetic considerations of the
alternative propositions.
