#1 April 25th, 2013 09:47 AM

blissed

Member

Empathy is about imagination

You may be a man who needs to experience pegging to empathise with people who enjoy receiving penetrative sex, or you may be a Republican who needs  to have a gay child before you see the merit and humanity of gay marriage. The closer we get to experiencing someone else's condition, the less imagination we need and the less empathy.

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blissed

Member

Re: Empathy is about imagination

50 views and no replies, I guess everyone just agrees with me

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artemesia

Member

Re: Empathy is about imagination

Did you see the study released recently that shows that racism is partly to do with mirror neurons? That is, they can measure it in the brain. Mirror neurons are neurons that are activated when you see someone else perform an action. Racist people were found not to have them activated at all when they saw someone of a different race performing an action.

I miss studying..

blissed

Member

Re: Empathy is about imagination

That's interesting, I wonder if the mirror neurones are disabled by racism just like they are for us all when we see a baddy in a movie, (whose character is drawn with no redeeming features at all) get their just payback. My hunch is we shape our mind with our experiences and conclusions and the study may have seen some of the resulting brain architecture.  Be nice when we can map the brain and start the development of our understanding about what neurology we're born with and what we create.

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artemesia

Member

Re: Empathy is about imagination

There is so much happen in the field of brain architecture! They are thinking that soon we will be able to upload memories and knowledge in a fashion similiar to the matrix. A lot of the brain is mapped as far as I'm aware, but most of the basic questions are still unanswered.

As in, 'How do I perceive the colour red?' and so forth.

There are some very strange feedback loops in the brain and lots of the brains conclusions rely on experiences as you've mentioned above.

Last edited by artemesia (April 26th, 2013 12:47 PM)

blissed

Member

Re: Empathy is about imagination

I would define a human mind  as a small conscious mind With a much larger subconscious made up of 24/7 thinking machines and apps. into which we input data from our conscious mind and the subconscious receives data directly from our senses that bypasses our conscious mind too.

A good thought exercise is
Imagine a tree. Now tell me exactly how many leaves it has. We can't do that but we can see all the leaves in our minds eye. If a computer imagines a tree it could tell you exactly how many leaves it has and where they are.  The imagination app in our subconscious has made our tree  just as reliably as the computer and with a similar level of detachment from  our conscious thought processes, though our subconscious app can respond to our thoughts much more efficiently than a computer can.

When I see a sexy pic and animate it in my mind my libido feels involved much more than if I was merely watching a video as a voyeur, my libido is participating and so much hornier. I could just fantasise with a pic but the picture makes the fantasy more effective, probably using less brain bandwidth than an unassisted fantasy. 

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