Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

Rather, I’m making the distinction in a different way. My suggestion is that cases like Tumor Man are special because they involve actions that are disengaged from the normal neural mechanisms of conscious deliberation. One way to see this is that when people in these states are brought back to normal—the tumor is removed, the drug wears off—they feel that their desires and actions were alien to them and fell outside the scope of their will. Accordingly, such individuals in their altered states are less responsive to carrots and sticks: Even the threat of imprisonment did not slow down Tumor Man, because the part of his psyche that motivated his sexual behavior was disengaged from the part of his psyche that computed the long-term consequences of his actions.

Yeah, this is fair.