A Theory of Mind? Or A Theory of War....

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In "The Science of Evil", SBC does write that Autistic people have zero positive empathy (verbatim) which he presents as a definitive feature, asserting a number of times that zero empathy is the common factor between three groups, psychopaths, the mentally ill and autism (though not all to the same degree).

There are many depictions and notions of evil - criminal law, philosophy, religious concepts and so on. SBC has made it absolutely clear in his own words that as far as he is concerned, and convinced, evil can be and should be reduced solely to a lack of empathy. He explains that as a small Jewish child his father told him about what the Nazis did to Jews, and so he wanted to find out why they did those terrible things, and is on record as stating this as his original motivation and starting point for the TOM research later on. That he doesn't consider other factors is a stark example of classic reductionism.

Political scientists, as we know, have very different answers, and apparently even Hitler had empathy for animals and those close associates he most favoured, though the idea that empathy is influenced by personal, political, and situational factors is overlooked by SBC.

1. it's a personally beneficial strategy

and 2. it requires a lack of empathy in order for someone to engage in it.

it's anything where you act to get what you want regardless of how it impacts others.

Falsely declaring logical fallacies does not constitute an argument

it constitutes being a contrarian prick. ... Also, it's possible to have an opinion without being a prick about it.

Many people in the online autistic community have argued that autistics express empathy differently than NTs and that how they express it is often misinterpreted. See, for example, “Homonyms” in #Asperger Behaviour, part 1.

If that's the case, then the standard SBC proposes (in the bits I bolded) wouldn't work because, unless those "independent sources" are familiar with how autistics express empathy, all they could report is that the autistic person didn't express empathy the way they are used to seeing it. Many "independent sources" will then draw the incorrect inference that the autistic person doesn't show empathy and conclude that's because they don't have empathy.

It's the same problem as the "reading emotion in the eyes" test pointed out earlier in this thread. Empathy is defined as being valid only if it's expressed in the way that most people in the locality express it. I don't think this standard would work even with NTs, since how empathy and other emotions are expressed is strongly mediated by culture, with some cultures valuing reserve and self control while others prefer much greater demonstrativeness.

B19 said that SBC said zero empathy was a defining characteristic of autism. I quoted SBC direct to show that was not true.

According to the Guardian article cited earlier in this thread, he did say that at one point. The article specifies and defines zero positive empathy as a lack of cognitive and affective empathy. Perhaps he has changed his views to reflect lo empathy versus his concept from the Zero Degrees of Empathy book.

I don't see how this negates empathy — but then I am on the spectrum

Ah, no. I'm saying it requires empathy for someone to engage in it. I really don't see how it would be possible to manipulate others (for whatever ends) if you don't have it.

As far as I can tell, most people divide others into members-of-my-group (who they care about) and others-who-are-not-members-of-my-group (who they don't). So long as the impact is confined to those outside their group, they don't care. Often, the impact doesn't even seem to register; they're completely oblivious to it.

The idea that empathy means someone cares about everyone and wouldn't do them any harm simply isn't borne out by history, though it is often held up as a ideal. The thing about ideals, though, is they're ideals because the vast majority of people don't measure up to them.

eg a child is sad as their pet hamster died and a non-autistic child might comfort them, hug them, offer them to come and visit their own pets etc. An autistic child might completely ignore the child's distress and instead ask if they can borrow a pencil. The autistic child can't accurately report that they lack cognitive empathy as they were not aware that the other child was even upset.

This could be interpreted in (at least) two different ways:

1. The autistic child is offering an example of a similar experience to establish commonality, saying, in effect, "I know how you feel because I too have felt that".

2. The autistic child is being very self-centered and insensitive, engaging in one-upmanship and trying to take the spotlight away from the distressed child.

So, if autistics express empathy differently to how NTs express empathy, it doesn't get recognized as empathy. Instead, the people around them attribute some other motive or intent to them.

Sociopaths are known for manipulative skills,

To test if psychopathic individuals lack this empathic brain activation, the clinic transported 21 convicted violent psychopathic offenders to our scanner. One by one, in bullet proof minivans. Because metal cannot be brought in the vicinity of magnetic imaging scanner, the guards were unarmed, but the patients had wooden sticks sawn into their trousers and plastic hand-cuffs to keep them from running away or hurting anyone.

Each patient was then shown movies of people hurting each other while brain activity was measured using fMRI. First, patients were simply told to watch the movies carefully. Later, Harma Meffert, the doctoral student who conducted the study (now at NIMH in Bethesda) went into the scanner room and slapped the patients on their hands to localize brain regions involved in feeling touch and pain. We could then zoom into these brain regions to see if the patients activated their own pain while viewing that of others. We did the same with 26 men of similar age and IQ. The results of the study, which are published today in the journal Brain, indicate that the vicarious activation of motor, somatosensory and emotional brain regions was much lower in the patients with psychopathy than in the normal subjects. The theory seemed right: their empathy was reduced, and this could explain why they committed such terrible crimes without feeling guilt.

But then, how can they be so charming at times? I remember chatting with one of the patients, Patient 13, a particularly severe psychopath (he had scored the full 40 points on the psychopathy checklist). Surrounded by the guards, he seemed a most pleasant person. He was smiling, engaging, and seemed to feel exactly what we wanted from him. Many of our ‘normal’ participants seemed rough and unfriendly in comparison. Valeria Gazzola, with whom I lead the lab, suggested that we let the patients watch the movies again, but asking them to try and empathize with the victims in the movies. What we found was that this simple instruction sufficed to boost the empathic activation in their brain to a level that was hard to distinguish from that of the healthy controls. Suddenly, the psychopaths seemed as empathic as the next guy. Their empathy was switched on.

So psychopathic individuals do not simply lack empathy. Instead, it seems as though for most of us, empathy is the default mode. If we see a victim, we share her pain. For the psychopathic criminals of our study, empathy seemed to be a voluntary activity. If they want to, they can empathize, and that explains how they can be so charming, and maybe so manipulative. Once they have seduced you into doing what serves their purpose, the effortful empathy would though probably disappear again. Free of the constraints of empathy, they is then little to stop them from using violence.

I have avoided using the term "cognitive empathy" - to me it seems clumsy and imprecise in application, and more confusing that helpful in dialogue most of the time. The edges of what it means are too fuzzy somehow. It's a peculiar terminology really. Where did that parlance come from? Who invented it?

eg a child is sad as their pet hamster died and a non-autistic child might comfort them, hug them, offer them to come and visit their own pets etc. An autistic child might completely ignore the child's distress and instead ask if they can borrow a pencil. The autistic child can't accurately report that they lack cognitive empathy as they were not aware that the other child was even upset.

With the mechanistic/mentalistic distinction, does that have anything to do with the difference
between looking at why versus WHY? Like, saying grass is green because the chlorophyll matches the color of the sun versus we see that color as green because it's the median color as that's the color most the sun's light and our eyes and minds evolved to reflect that. Or from Candide, the nose is a particular shape so glasses may rest upon it rather than the other way around? Maybe I'm autistic because I don't get what's so distinctive about mentalistic thinking.

All of these would be examples of mechanistic mode.

A mentalistic mode explanation would be something like: the grass is green because it thinks the colour is slimming, or that it wants us to know that its not ripe so we won't eat it, or the angels made it green to provide a proper contrast to the colours of the soil and the rocks, or it's trying to hide from the sheep by blending in with the leaves of the trees. It's all about motivation and intent; about why the grass would want to be green rather than about the physical processes that causes it to be green.

So, yes it is the difference between why (what is the physical cause of this phenomena?) and WHY (what reason would someone have for doing this?).

Several researchers have suggested that animism and religion are the product of applying mentalistic thinking to mechanistic phenomena.

Or, in terms of autism: the refrigerator mother is a mentalistic explanation (it's produced by internal mental processes shaped by experience), while different neurology is the mechanistic one (it's cause by different wiring).

And you're right: mentalistic mode can be simulated through mechanistic thinking. It's just mammalian brains have evolved a dedicated sub-system just for mentalistic mode thinking. Whether or not this applies to other classes of animals, such as birds, is still being researched.

I don't see how "1" could be interpreted from my scenario, and "2" is effectively a lack of empathy albeit effective empathy rather than cognitive.

It's not the expression of empathy that is being questioned but the recognition that there is something that needs empathising with in the first place.

What is under discussion is how aware autistic people are of other people's emotions.

The animosity on this thread alone is surely an indicator that the issue is far deeper than it first seems?

Well, if you're going to cut out my revised example, then obviously it can't be interpreted from your scenario.

The expression is the only way you know the recognition has occurred. The recognition is an inference based on the expression.

And how aware are NT of autistic's emotions?

The underlying assumption is that NTs can read an autistic's emotions with certainty — and I have half-a-century's worth of life experience that says otherwise.

I think SBC has some unexamined assumptions in his work that have led him astray. Pointing out those assumptions is legitimate criticism, part of the back and forth of scientific research.

It's very easy to see that when someone suggests that autistics lack empathy it can be read as saying autistics aren't really human.