Mind

I am involved in an ongoing battle with someone about the following issue and am beginning to doubt my own argument!! The issue : The example was of contrasting European and British attitudes to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The person claimed that the French are more likely to understand the Iraqis due to their experience of being occupied in WW2, whereas Britain, although they fought in the war, were never invaded, and no battles were fought on British soil. He believes that you cannot fully understand what you do not experience, or at least, that when you do experience something, your preconceived opinion of it is bound to change as a consequence. Whereas I am (was?) an adamant believer in the capacity for human imagination and speculation, which allows people to feel empathy for others even if they have not directly experienced the situation at hand. What are your opinions? I believe it may have something to do with empiricists and rationalists, although maybe that's just because I'm being indoctrinated by my current TOK module. Thanks ever so.

Comments

Understanding can be empathy, the capacity to put oneself into another's shoes, in which case it needs some sort of projection of one's mental states and experience onto the other's experience, in the sense : of "what would *I* think or feel or do in the same circumstances ?" But understanding can also be rational understanding, in the sense of the question : "what would a rational person, or a person in more or less idealised situation, think or do or feel in such circumstances?" Some philosophers call the first principle, the more empathic one, the principle of humanity in interpretation, and the second the principe of charity. But the difference between the two may not be so great in many cases. In trying to understand other people's political and social opinions, one certainly has to take into account their experiences, especially their historical ones. But that does not mean that one cannot understand in the purely rational manner, by trying to think of what, normally, a rationa person should think or feel. In that respect I do not see why the French (and I am French) would understand better the feelings of the Iraqi people because they have themselves been invaded by the Germans. In the first place, only people of the older generations (those born in the 1930) could have this "experience" and it is not clear how it can be transmitted from one generation to another (Germans children born after WW2 do not have the same feelings as their elders about the "cuplability" of Germany during WW2). In the second place, shouldn't we, in political matters try to assess things not with our feelings only but also with our reason ? It's true that politics is often a matter of emotion, but couldn't we be charitable in the sense of the second principle? So I do not see why the French, or any other people who would have suffered from an invasion would understand better, or worse, the feelings and beliefs of people who are occupied.

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