Inquiry and/or empathy
I've been very interested in the discussion around knowing and feelings of loss. It's a fertile set of examples to reflect on -- but, also, I was having my own experience of that kind. A few weeks ago a car crash in rural Wisconsin took the life of a 16-year-old boy to whom I am related in a complicated sort of 'modern family' way (he was my sister's ex-husband's step-son). I didn't know the boy well, but his death devastated a number of people I do know well (including his parents and my nieces and nephew). So I found myself confronting the same sort of questions that some of you were reporting: do I really know what these people are going through? Can I say, "I know how you feel?" Are my own experiences of loss comparable enough to theirs to serve me as a model? I was especially awed by the obviously profound grief of the boy's mother and step-father. I tried to imagine how I would feel if one of my own teenage sons had been killed, and it seemed to me that I just could not really comprehend it. In the end I could not honestly say that I knew how they felt.
Now I want to tie this back to Fay's discussion a bit: Fay emphasizes the way that our experiences are shaped by our social and cultural groups and also by our particular life-history and experiences. He concludes that, if we define knowing (a person) as "having the same experiences as (that person)", then we don't know anyone, not even ourselves. (Re-read pp.12-15 if you can't remember how he makes his case for this claim.) And even similar experiences may be hard to identify. What if I had lost a child? Would my experience necessarily be that similar to the experience of my friends in Wisconsin? What if my child had died after a long illness? Would that change the character of the loss from what it was in this case (a sudden and unexpected accident)? Those parents have some spiritual beliefs that are very different from mine -- does that alter the character of their thinking and feeling about the death of their son? They live in an intensely supportive small community where virtually everyone they meet as they go about their daily lives knew their son and knows of their loss. How different is that from the experience of a grieving big-city-dweller, surrounded by people who neither know nor care? And, finally, these people are just very different in temperament and personality from me (and from each other, for that matter) -- how does that affect the quality or nature of their experience of loss? As Fay argues on pp. 16-17, the only way to answer these questions would be to compose detailed descriptions of our respective experiences and than compare them. We can't just assume that some particular kind of event or some particular aspect of our history or identity is sufficient to make our experiences similar.
But the more important issue in the context of this class (which is about inquiry, not empathy -- or, better, about empathy only to the extent that it is necessary for good inquiry) is whether having the same or similar experiences is actually an important aspect of understanding or 'knowing' about something. Perhaps the following question can bring the issue into focus: Suppose I was a psychologist and I wanted to study the way people respond to loss of a loved one (perhaps I had a theory about the stages of grief or some such thing). Would I necessarily have to have suffered my own similar losses in order to carry out that study? Would my own personal experience of loss be necessary in order to inform my inquiry? Or would there be, perhaps, a danger that my personal experience of loss might get in the way of my inquiry, unless I was careful not to assume that others' experiences were similar to my own?
(Ross raises a similar question in a comment you might have missed, here .)
We will come back to these issues, by the way, when we consider 'women's ways of knowing', later in the semester. The authors of that book contrast a masculine style of 'separated knowing' with a feminine style of 'connected knowing'. They claim, among other things, that women students are poorly served by institutions of higher education that downgrade personal experience in the way that Schick and Vaughan (and other scientifically minded people) do. I am sympathetic to the impulse behind this idea. But personal experience really does have all the problems identified in Chapter Five of "How to Think...", doesn't it? (More about that later.)
Now I want to tie this back to Fay's discussion a bit: Fay emphasizes the way that our experiences are shaped by our social and cultural groups and also by our particular life-history and experiences. He concludes that, if we define knowing (a person) as "having the same experiences as (that person)", then we don't know anyone, not even ourselves. (Re-read pp.12-15 if you can't remember how he makes his case for this claim.) And even similar experiences may be hard to identify. What if I had lost a child? Would my experience necessarily be that similar to the experience of my friends in Wisconsin? What if my child had died after a long illness? Would that change the character of the loss from what it was in this case (a sudden and unexpected accident)? Those parents have some spiritual beliefs that are very different from mine -- does that alter the character of their thinking and feeling about the death of their son? They live in an intensely supportive small community where virtually everyone they meet as they go about their daily lives knew their son and knows of their loss. How different is that from the experience of a grieving big-city-dweller, surrounded by people who neither know nor care? And, finally, these people are just very different in temperament and personality from me (and from each other, for that matter) -- how does that affect the quality or nature of their experience of loss? As Fay argues on pp. 16-17, the only way to answer these questions would be to compose detailed descriptions of our respective experiences and than compare them. We can't just assume that some particular kind of event or some particular aspect of our history or identity is sufficient to make our experiences similar.
But the more important issue in the context of this class (which is about inquiry, not empathy -- or, better, about empathy only to the extent that it is necessary for good inquiry) is whether having the same or similar experiences is actually an important aspect of understanding or 'knowing' about something. Perhaps the following question can bring the issue into focus: Suppose I was a psychologist and I wanted to study the way people respond to loss of a loved one (perhaps I had a theory about the stages of grief or some such thing). Would I necessarily have to have suffered my own similar losses in order to carry out that study? Would my own personal experience of loss be necessary in order to inform my inquiry? Or would there be, perhaps, a danger that my personal experience of loss might get in the way of my inquiry, unless I was careful not to assume that others' experiences were similar to my own?
(Ross raises a similar question in a comment you might have missed, here .)
We will come back to these issues, by the way, when we consider 'women's ways of knowing', later in the semester. The authors of that book contrast a masculine style of 'separated knowing' with a feminine style of 'connected knowing'. They claim, among other things, that women students are poorly served by institutions of higher education that downgrade personal experience in the way that Schick and Vaughan (and other scientifically minded people) do. I am sympathetic to the impulse behind this idea. But personal experience really does have all the problems identified in Chapter Five of "How to Think...", doesn't it? (More about that later.)
Neuroscientist Jean Decety had this definition for empathy that I found interesting.
"A sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals"
Concerning the grief study. I see no reason why you could not conduct a valid study if you use the proper psychology research methodologies. Not sure you could find out how people truely felt or have the same experience, but categorizing different stages of grief based on observing peoples behavior is possible. As with any psychology research there will be research biases and other factors. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving is widely accepted by some but not others. We have a variety of theories of personality. Based on our own experiences, some seem better (Inference to the Best Explanation) than others.