Altruism and Neuroscience

(this post was written by Kyle on November 5, 2007, and it concerns altruism & levinas & neuroscience)

From Salon’s I feel your pain: “Before the discovery of mirror neurons, cognitive scientists assumed that we gained access to the feelings of others by theorizing about them. Now we know that a direct experience is responsible for much of what we thought was computation, speculation, memory or inference.” [This all reminds me of Levinas' assertion that we come into being only through the face of the Other.]