Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
How important is our brain’s empathy circuit and what happens to society when it doesn’t work properly? We’ll find out this hour with University of Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. His new book is “The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty” (Basic Books, 2011).
Listen to the interview on THINK.
Tags: NPR, Simon Baron-Cohen, THINK, autism, bad, books, empathy, ethics, evil, good, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard W. Symonds on -
This sounds very much like Professor Marc Hauser's forthcoming book "Evilicious : Why We Evolved A Taste For Being Bad" (Viking Penguin), who has already written Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and W....
My own view, for anyone interested, is similar to that of the moral philosopher CEM (Cyril) Joad : a traditional Christian view of 'fallen' human nature and original sin, but I don't expect to get any 'brownie points' for saying that here !
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