Mental Models of Purpose of College
2 years ago
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Monday, March 30, 2009
Tomasello’s observation that infants do not likely associate intentionality with others until they experience it themselves makes sense to me. The necessity of personal experience in empathizing with others’ situation was brought up in the discussion this afternoon with potential future professor Clark who gave the example of Mary the color scientist who knew all possible information about color but only experienced a black and white world. The group concluded that despite her thorough understanding of the information about color she would not be able to differentiate between red and green just by sight. This conclusion perhaps lends support to the notion that understanding is good because the more experiences one has the more one can empathize and thus lead an emotionally fulfilling life.
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I find this very interesting as well. One argument that I will make is that maybe this is less about the experience the infant has but the biological development of the frontal lobe that is critical for human empathy. We chatted with Mr. Clark about how our frontal lobe isn't fully developed until the age of 25 and those that lack this development lack empathy. We also mentioned that thus that have frontal lobe damage later in life will understand the idea of empathy and know how to be empathetic but still will violate morality or do very un-empathetic acts because of this frontal lobe damage. These individuals have EXPERIENCED and know how to be empathetic but are not empathetic when it comes down to making the final decision.
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