just thinking out loud

well, yeah, that's most of what gets done in this space, but this post, kinda moreso.

So I was thinking about empathy as both an adaptive and learned behavior. Actually, this line of thought came from a post that I made for my Psych 441 class:

I have heard many people react very strongly against the idea that humans are animals. Don't get me wrong! I think that humans are amazing, fantastic, brilliant animals. But I do not believe that we are divine creatures of thought. I think that we are animals, and that, like other animals, we sing to the tune of our hormones, our brain chemistry, the food we eat and the water we drink, and to the strong music of our shared genetic heritage. I think that when we can say "All humans do *this*" that the *this* is something we might want to look at as biological instinct.

Nothing has come back from the class, I mean, no posts at all since this post I sent out on Friday afternoon. 'S makin' me paranoid.

A fellow worker asked the question I'm getting kinda tired of hearing, and I said "Ya know, I really doubt that the only reason you do the right thing is because you don't want to be punished." And I'm afraid that I irritated him -- I just didn't explain my thought well. But I've been thinking about empathy, about how automatic it is. I mean, when I see someone who is hurting, I don't take the time to consider if I will help them or not. I experience empathy as an automatic, subconscious process.

I think that empathy is something like language aquisition. Neuroscientists and biopsychologists theorize that there's an aquisition mechanism for launguage. I have a feeling that the same is true with empathy. An infant who experiences launguage, has adaquate reinforcement, and adequate physiology for language will speak.

But I'm kinda thinking, too, what is it beside empathy that guides us to do "the next right thing."