I can see how empathy can be physically real but I see no reason in physics why it would necessarily be limited to humans without some kind of neurological filtering system that recognizes "humans" and then only turns on "empathy" for "humans".
My theory is that autism is caused by what ever part of the brain controls empathy being completely open to everything and so treating objects, ideas, systems,... and people the same, yet in the way of elevating the former rather than demoting the latter. This leads to a comparative demotion of people though. A person or even a group may still become interesting to us, but they have to compete with all the other stimuli.
When I empathize with people it feels the same as when I'm really close to things that aren't people, so I figure it makes sense that in NTs the ability to empathize is limited to people, causing slower development of our own empathy when applied to people but not empathy in general.
So in a way the difference between empathy and systemizing is a social construct, but it's also due to NT brain-wiring. In the far off future the distinction between the two may fall away entirely.
21 Nov 2011, 3:04 pm
