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Mavis Biss Loyola University Maryland

Empathy and Interrogation

Abstract: Against the background of not-so-distant debate regarding “enhanced” interrogation techniques used by the United States during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which many understand to be torture, this essay explores the moral complexities of “ordinary” interrogation practices, those that are clearly not forms of torture. Based on analysis of the written reflections of two United States interrogators on the work they did during the Iraq war, I categorize the roles played by multiple modes of empathy within interrogation and argue that empathetic responsiveness within the context of military interrogation poses a significant threat to the moral integrity of interrogators. Key words: Empathy, Interrogation, Moral Integrity Bio: Brief Author Bio: Mavis Biss completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011 and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. She specializes in moral philosophy, with particular focus on Kantian ethics and conceptions of moral imagination. She has authored articles in History of Philosophy Quarterly, Hypatia, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy Compass and Kantian Review. Her current work focuses on the ideal of moral self-perfection in Kant’s ethics and the complexities of rational agency in the face of contested moral meaning.

Written under the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, How to Break a Terrorist

(2008) gives a first-hand account of the interrogations leading up to the successful

assassination of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a rural

safe-house on June 7th, 2006. The subtitle, “The U.S. interrogators who used brains, not

brutality, to take down the deadliest man in Iraq,” expresses the author’s confidence in

what he calls the “new techniques,” methods of interrogation that forgo demoralization of

detainees in favor of using rapport and cultural knowledge to obtain information. Joshua

Casteel’s Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), composed from e-mail messages sent during

his deployment as an interrogator in Iraq, also testifies to the effectiveness of empathetic

understanding and building trust as interrogation techniques. While the new techniques

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are clearly morally superior to the old, they are not morally unproblematic. In particular,

the effectiveness of empathetic response as an interrogation technique depends on

displacement of altruistic motive from the target of empathy, which threatens a kind of

moral schizophrenia1.

Both Casteel and Alexander offer highly self-reflective accounts that describe

shifts between feigned and genuine empathetic responses to detainees during

interrogation sessions. Casteel, who concludes his book with excerpts from his

Conscientious Objector application, comments explicitly on the threats to his moral

integrity associated with capitalizing on trust gained through empathetic responsiveness.

Alexander focuses on other moral dangers associated with his work, but his extremely

detailed descriptions of interactions with detainees demonstrate the problem articulated

by Casteel and raise several philosophical questions. How should we distinguish genuine

empathy from feigned empathy and what is the best characterization of these

interrogators’ range of responses? Does their genuine empathy for the detainees have

moral value in itself, beyond its instrumental value in stopping terrorist attacks? And

finally, what kind of moral dangers follow from dissonance between empathetic response

and moral end, and the strategic regulation of empathetic response? I will begin with a

brief discussion of the “new” and “old” interrogation techniques and then address the

above questions, with focus on the issue of moral danger.

The central claim of Alexander’s account is that the new techniques he learned at

Fort Huachuca, AZ are both more humane and more effective than those aimed at

eroding detainees’ self-respect. Alexander writes, “Bobby [a fellow interrogator] has

watched me treat every detainee with civility and respect, and I do it because it is the

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right thing to do. But I also do it to establish rapport” (91). Proponents of the “old

techniques” based on fear and control debase detainees’ humanity (as well as their own)

and also deprive themselves of powerful tools of psychological manipulation. Advice

from Alexander’s rival “‘gator” epitomizes the old perspective: “You need to break him

down… Tear down his self-respect” (185). In reaction to his colleague’s failure to get an

important detainee to talk, Alexander muses, “Instead of trying to crush Abu Bayda’s

self-importance, why not use rapport to build him up and then earn his respect by

demonstrating a knowledge of his culture and religion and even sympathy with his

cause?” (187). Adherents of the old techniques do not know how to use empathy as a

means, whereas “…we use our knowledge of our enemies’ culture against them, we show

concern for their well-being, we negotiate. Our new methods are smarter, not harsher”

(107).

At this point one might urge that it is important to distinguish between real and

feigned empathy. Alexander stresses the value of acting empathetic, not truly

experiencing empathy. On this distinction, however, the text is not altogether clear, for

Alexander describes what seem like genuine empathetic responses concurrent or

alternating with calculated performances of empathy. Whether or not the interrogators’

responses were really empathic is of course also a matter of the conception of empathy

one has in mind. While the literature on empathy within the fields of psychology and

philosophy covers a wide range of different cognitive and emotional phenomena, I will

address three psychological processes that have been associated with the concept of

empathy and are particularly relevant in the context of interrogation: simulation or

“reenactive empathy,” empathetic identification, and sympathy.

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‘Reenactive empathy’ is a technical term used to refer to a cognitive ability aimed

at knowledge of another person’s mental states.2 The concept of reenactive empathy is

distinct from the ordinary concept of empathy as an emotional phenomenon, though like

some forms of emotional empathy it involves engaging another person’s perspective. We

reenact or simulate the mental states of another person based on knowledge of our own

mental life and knowledge of the other’s beliefs and circumstances. Reenactive empathy,

on this model, does not refer to the reproduction of a watered-down version of the other’s

emotion, but rather the use of one’s own thought processes as a reference point from

which to attribute mental states to others. This mode of empathy does not require

emotional responsiveness to the other because we can abstractly imagine how the other

feels without sharing her emotions or having any moral concern for her whatsoever.3

Paradigm cases of “feeling with” another and emotionally “walking in another’s

shoes” belong to the category of empathetic identification, which is the conception of

empathy most central to my argument. When we empathetically identify with another

person, we experience emotions similar to hers because of our belief that she is

experiencing these emotions.4 I will use the notion of empathetic identification broadly

such that it includes the experience of an emotion congruent with – in the sense of “in

agreement with” – the emotions of a person perceived as relevantly similar to oneself.5

The empathetic identification interrogators experience in relation to detainees may be less

robust in its affective component than paradigm cases of empathy, but I will argue that it

is still recognizable as a form of “feeling with” another.

I turn now to sympathy, the third psychological process associated with empathy

that may be at play in the context of interrogation. Although some theorists hold that

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empathy in the sense of empathetic identification is not sufficient for sympathy or even

the attitude of respect, I follow Tamar Schapiro and Aaron Simmons in claiming that

some forms of empathetic identification entail respect for the other’s personhood as well

as some degree of sympathy.6 Typically we use the term ‘empathy’ to refer to “feeling

with” another person in the sense of sharing in her emotional experience, whereas

sympathy refers to “feeling for” another person. Sympathy involves some level of

concern or pity for the other, if not approval of her actions and plans. Schapiro suggests

that mature empathy is “a morally informed capacity that presupposes a commitment to a

certain moral orientation.”7 More specifically, mature empathy “involves respecting

others as separate persons, in the sense of being both independent sources of mental

activity and autonomous sources of claims that put limits on one’s own activity.”8

Simmons usefully demonstrates that the moral implications of empathy depend on which

aspects of another’s experience are taken as objects of empathy. He argues that

empathetic identification with another’s concern for her own basic well-being is

incompatible with a lack of sympathy: I cannot come to share S’s feeling of concern for

her well-being and at the same time lack felt concern for her well-being.9 The genuine,

deliberately chosen empathic identification with detainees’ that is described by the

author-interrogators under consideration here presupposes and sustains respect for

persons and is not wholly distinct from sympathy.

In what follows, I explain the roles played by each form of empathy in specific

interrogation approaches, assess the moral value of empathetic identification in this

context and clarify its morally dangerous features. Throughout I seek to align my

interpretation with the authors’ own uses of the term ‘empathy’, as well as their

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descriptions of responses to detainees that fall under the category of empathetic

identification as it has been theorized by philosophers. I focus on the implications of

interrogators’ genuine empathic identification with detainees whose well-being they

cannot take as an end and argue that the displacement of altruistic motive from the object

of empathy poses a threat to the moral integrity of interrogators.

The new techniques draw heavily on interrogators’ skilled reenactive empathy in

both design and execution.10 Again, reenactive empathy is an epistemic process of

imagining oneself into the mind and experience of another person, and since this does not

require being “empathetic” in the usual sense of warmly responsive and emotionally

engaged it is a tool that allows one to better manipulate another person. Alexander

introduces his readers to the pithy names of various interrogation approaches in his

repertoire. “Prisoner’s Dilemma” pits one detainee against another, while “You’re Totally

Screwed” convinces the detainee that there is no way out and “We Know All” asserts the

pointlessness of withholding confession. Some techniques draw on psychological

motivations that are amplified within Arab culture and require more fine-tuned

imaginative simulation of detainees’ emotional responses. For example, Alexander and

his partner Marcia run a “Boss Introduction” approach geared towards Arab respect for

social hierarchy. Marcia assures the detainee that her powerful boss, Alexander, has the

authority to speak to judges on his behalf and explains that she is risking her own job in

order to gain the detainee access to him (195). Similarly, “Love of Family” uses the

power of familial bonds and “honor,” of utmost importance in Arab culture, to gain

leverage. Interrogators sometimes offer protection of the detainee’s family in exchange

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for information or suggest that they can help restore a detainee’s honor for the sake of the

family.

Clearly reenactive empathy is extremely important to successful interrogation, but

I will set the notion of reenactive empathy aside to focus on empathetic identification and

sympathy, as the claims I make about the moral implications of empathy in the context of

interrogation pertain only to these emotional forms of empathy. The effectiveness of the

approaches described above often depends on the interrogators’ ability to pretend to

experience some combination of empathetic identification and sympathy for detainees.

Feigned empathy and sympathy are important interrogation techniques, as interrogators

build trust and perform sympathetic understanding in order to better manipulate

detainees. Alexander speaks of the ever-changing persona he creates during

interrogations, “Sometimes I must have a wife or children so I can swap stories with the

prisoner, though I have neither” (91). In this way Alexander convinces the detainee that

he feels what the detainee feels, that he identifies with his perspective. He addresses some

detainees as “my friend,” sits very close to them and at times places a hand on the

detainee’s leg. Expressions of sympathetic concern put detainees at ease and make them

more likely to open up to the interrogator.

Feigning empathy and sympathy may involve pretending to identify strongly with

the detainees goals and sentiments. For example, Alexander convinces a detainee that he

is seeking permission from Washington, DC to make him a key ally in a secret

conspiracy to fight the Shi’a and Iran (255). Like Alexander, Joshua Casteel uses his

understanding of Arab culture and history to construct a sense of empathetic relationship.

He writes, “…I talked to a man about how our joint venture in killing someone wanted by

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him and by his tribe and by the coalition (well, we “think” it’s the same guy…but, if it’s

not, who cares…) would be a good thing… how we could, say, high-five each other over

the thought of each party assisting the other in vengeance and military expediency…”

(87).

The interrogators often perform empathy and sympathy through offers of aid they

know to be emotionally charged. Alexander tells one detainee that he has contacted a

marine commander by phone in order to ensure that the man’s wife and children are safe;

he pretends to offer another $10,000 in cash and he even creates false divorce petition

documents for a man desperate to rid himself of his second wife. In “Fear Down” the

interrogator aims to show the detainee “the true consequences and then give him an out

and become his savior” (103). Of course interrogators know that they cannot actually

save the person: the person quite likely is totally screwed. Those found guilty of assisting

suicide bombers will be executed—many others will spend hellish months or years in

prison.

Feigned empathy (in the sense of empathetic identification) clearly contributes to

the goal of obtaining maximal information in minimal time, but genuine empathy also

plays a role in “breaking” detainees. Casteel writes, “Empathy, if it is authentic itself, is

incredibly unsettling, and forces a person to question the legitimacy of their training and

indoctrination” (14).11 Empathetic responses from interrogators may loosen a detainee’s

conviction, for example, that America is Satan or that the Iraqi coalition is a Zionist

conspiracy. Casteel further reflects

I see my job much more as a Father Confessor than an interrogator. As a Confessor you cannot coerce a person to reveal that which they wish to hide. A Confessor’s aim is to help the one confessing to be sincere, to arrive at the kind of

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contrition that actually desires self-disclosure—and to that end, empathy and understanding go a long way (14).

Here Casteel describes genuine empathy as itself a technique—a means to the end of

another’s unconcealment. Casteel does not unpack exactly what he means by “authentic

empathy,” but we might infer that Casteel acknowledged the other as one he was willing

and able to understand, expressing this with body language, tone of voice and perhaps

eye contact. I associate this responsiveness with empathetic identification because both

parties are unsettled by the recognition of a shared humanity: they identify with each

other as human beings. Authentic (or genuine) empathy impacts the physical presence of

a person before another and for this reason may trigger a process of “emotional

contagion”, or the involuntary mimicry of another’s emotion. The detainee might “catch”

or mirror the openness of the interrogator.

Other interrogators have also spoken of the effectiveness of genuine empathy as

an interrogation technique. In response to the question “What makes a good interviewer

or interrogator?” posed to him during an interview for 60 Minutes, former FBI agent and

military interrogator Ali Soufan says: “Knowledge and empathy. I think these are the two

things. You need to connect with people on a human level, regardless if they don’t like

you, if they want to kill you.”12 Soufan remarks that it is very difficult to empathize with

terrorists, suggesting that he endeavors to truly connect to the detainee as a fellow human

being, as opposed to pretending to do so. The good interrogator has knowledge that

makes him an excellent “mind-reader” and a capacity for emotional responsiveness even

to hostile others. Like Alexander, he is an outspoken critic of the use of “enhanced

interrogation techniques,” which he believes are both ineffective and immoral.13

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What kind of moral value might genuine empathy have in the context of

interrogation? Casteel points out that empathetic understanding does not amount to

approval or unconcern for accountability (20). On this issue Adam Smith was wrong, for

as Nancy Sherman asserts, we can empathize without being “in sympathy” with someone

in the sense of agreeing with their beliefs.14 Genuine empathy, as described above, need

not undermine the interrogator’s commitment to obtaining information that could lead to

punishment for the detainee, while protecting innocent people from harm. The ethical

relation is, however, dramatically different from that of a parent who empathizes with her

child’s fear of social rejection without endorsing it.15 In this case, the parent’s empathic

engagement is altruistic, a way of contributing to the child’s wellbeing. Is empathetic

response in the context of interrogation altruistic or in any way linked to concern for the

other’s wellbeing? Does it manifest moral virtue or contribute to the development of

altruistic virtue?

The answers to these questions are complex. On the one hand, empathetic

response from interrogators may have positive short- and long-term effects on detainees

and protects the moral integrity of interrogators. On the other, it is a tool to “exploit” a

person for information and threatens the interrogator with a kind of moral schizophrenia.

Alexander sees empathetic response to detainees as a refusal to dehumanize people, and

thus part of his commitment to not become like the enemy. Casteel’s deep religious faith

intensifies his concern for maintaining moral integrity. His e-mail messages read as self-

interrogations that record the escalating tension he feels between his work and his

identity as a Christian. Still, Casteel attributes moral value to some aspects of his

empathetic engagement with detainees.

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Listening to cues of a person who does not want to come right out and say something, but doesn’t want to continue carrying a burden of guilt or shame, is not only what interrogation is about… it’s what being a decent human being is about… I do not coerce… Everyone, however, has some level of desire to be understood, and to be justified in their actions or beliefs. Knowing the other person, understanding them in their own convictions, and listening to them tell their own stories is something I value (36).

This passage appears early in Casteel’s correspondence and his later reflections express

more distress about the dual motives and conflicting ends of empathetic understanding.

He wills to listen to another human being for the person’s own sake and for the sake of

information, yet the exploitation of a person for information conflicts with taking the

person’s wellbeing as an end.

Despite the discord between motive and end, an interrogator’s empathetic

response may help the detainee maintain self-respect, a primary moral improvement of

the new techniques. Detainees experience less psychological stress and perhaps some

comfort in the short term; should they be released, they may be less shattered by the long-

term after effects of trauma. Yet the fact that the reason for empathizing in the context of

interrogation is to aid manipulation and deception calls its moral worth into question. The

same relation that allows a detainee to maintain self-respect makes him more vulnerable

to interrogators’ ruses.

Even more striking, the same relation that preserves the moral integrity of

interrogators threatens to erode it. As an interrogation tool empathetic response generates

displaced altruism: one empathizes with x (detainees) in order to help y (potential

victims). In the context of interrogation the altruistic impulse is displaced from the object

of empathetic response to parties with whom the agent does not directly interact. I claim

that habitual displacement of altruism threatens moral integrity because it conduces to

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moral schizophrenia, understood as disconnect between an agent’s motives and reasons

for action. The work of an interrogator seems to require a split between motive and

reason for action that roughly fits the model described by Michael Stocker in his famous

essay “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” (1976), though the stakes are

higher, the motives more complex and the problem located in practice rather than theory.

Stocker coined the term “moral schizophrenia” to articulate a criticism that

applies to egoism, act- and rule-utilitarianism and deontological ethical theories. These

theories assign no moral value to the motives of love and friendship and recommend

acting for reasons that bear no direct relationship to these compelling motives. Adherents

of the targeted theories must develop a split self in order to enjoy the goods associated

with emotional attachment to another, for one must forget that she is an egoist, utilitarian

or deontologist if she is to act wholly for the sake of another. Alternatively, the devotee

of a modern moral theory will remember her convictions and therefore judge motives

based in emotional attachment inadequate bases for action. In either case, what one is

moved to do (what one is motivated to do) and what one judges good to do (what one has

reason to do) come apart, causing psychic disharmony. According to Stocker, this

disharmony is not only “psychologically uncomfortable, difficult, or even untenable,” it

also makes one’s life “essentially fragmented and incoherent,” rendering it “impossible to

achieve the good in any integrated way.”16

Although Stocker’s use of the term ‘reasons’ to apply to values, goals and

justifications is somewhat difficult to track, the basic framework of his critique helps

clarify the moral danger of empathizing in the mode of displaced altruism. In applying

this framework, I will use the term ‘reasons’ to refer to considerations that an agent

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believes make an action choiceworthy.17 Concern for public safety and justice motivate

interrogators and they judge that they ought to pursue these ends. So far motive and

reason for action are in harmony. Practitioners of the new interrogation techniques are

motivated to build a relationship with the detainee by means of empathetic response, but

their mission only gives them reason to value this relationship as a means to extract

information. Empathizing is judged choiceworthy only insofar as it serves the goal of

information gathering.

Because real empathetic identification with another18 supports altruistic

motivation, as has been established empirically through many experiments designed to

investigate the “empathy-altruism hypothesis,”19 the interrogator faces a dilemma. He

may try to withhold any semblance of genuine empathy, but this suspension of a basic

human response threatens moral integrity because it requires that the agent

compartmentalize his attitudes towards detainees in a way that facilitates refusal of the

moral regard owed to all persons as bearers of dignity. The interrogator may instead

respond with a mix of feigned and real empathy and develop something of an altruistic

motive towards someone whose wellbeing he is in no position to protect and, as an

interrogator, has no reason to promote. Here we see the threat of moral schizophrenia.

Stocker’s warning about the strategy of “indirection” – the attempt to get x by seeking y –

is apt: “There is always a great risk that we will get the something else, not what we

really want.”20 An interrogator who empathically identifies with the humanity of a

detainee may get concern for this person that must be redirected.

I have identified empathetic response of interrogators to detainees as a relation of

displaced altruism, where the genuine target of this altruism is the public that the

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interrogator seeks to protect from terrorist action. One might wonder why the

displacement of the altruistic impulse does not neutralize the threat of moral

schizophrenia: if the altruistic motive is truly displaced, then the interrogator would

experience no tension between motive and reason for action. I contend that the altruistic

motive cannot be totally displaced without creating another form of moral schizophrenia,

in which empathetic response becomes detached from altruistic motivation. As a morally

informed capacity, empathetic identification with another’s humanity should contribute to

altruistic virtue. However, the ways in which successful interrogators marshal their own

capacity for empathetic response do not align with the ordinary moral reasons to engage

empathetically with others. Cultivating a separation between empathetic response and

concern for the object of empathy is counter-purposive to the development of altruistic

virtue and threatens a state of severe psychic disharmony.

I do not intend to accuse either Alexander or Casteel of moral schizophrenia;

rather, I have aimed to more explicitly identify the moral danger sensed by the authors

themselves as they shift between experiences of real and feigned empathy with detainees.

The simultaneous need for emotional closeness and emotional distance became untenable

for Casteel, who actually removed himself from an interrogation, realizing that he had

lost objectivity. Casteel found himself empathizing with a 22 year-old (non-Iraqi) jihadist

who asked him bluntly why he did not better follow the teachings of Jesus. Casteel

confesses, “I lacked the power to challenge him in any way that I did not challenge

myself…” (101). Casteel identified strongly enough with the other’s perspective that he

became uncertain of how it was relevantly different from his own. He was motivated to

further engage the other, as opposed to efficiently exploiting him for information.21

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In his application for status as a Conscientious Objector Casteel writes, “My first

moral difficulty dealt with deception, and from this issue everything else evolved… I

have simply lacked the ability to look at the person I interrogate in a way that does not

demand I also think about what is best for him” (116). I suggest that Casteel cannot—and

does not want to be able to—empathize in the mode of displaced altruism because it

threatens his sense of moral integrity. Casteel’s greater distress in comparison with

Alexander can be partially explained by his beliefs regarding his duties as a Christian and

the fact that he interrogated many more innocent people than Alexander, who regularly

worked with very high-level perpetrators of terror attacks.

Although Alexander was better positioned to focus on the ultimate good achieved

by his work, making the displacement of altruistic motive easier, I do not think he was

insensitive to the threat of moral schizophrenia. Alexander registers the pain experienced

by Abu Haydar, a member of Zarqawi’s inner circle, when he learns that information he

provided led to the death of his best friend in the same bombing that killed Zarqawi. He

comments, “Over a year later, General Petraeus reached out to Sunni nationalists and

armed them, finally delivering on my promise to Abu Haydar to work together and forget

the past…” (283). Alexander’s attempt to resolve the moral remainder of his broken trust

with Haydar takes something of a solemn tone. Ordinarily, promising gives one reason to

fulfill the promise, trust gives one reason not to betray and relationship gives one reason

to take another’s wellbeing as an end. An interrogator cannot act on these reasons, but

may well have some of the altruistic motivations empathy usually generates.

The context of interrogation complicates the moral value of empathy and its role

in moral agency. In ordinary contexts, empathy plays an important epistemic role in

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moral thinking as part of moral perception and can also itself be a moral response, a way

of promoting another’s wellbeing.22 While empathetic responsiveness still plays these

roles to some extent in the context of interrogation, interrogators must displace the

altruistic motive from the object of empathy to absent others. In combination with the

need to master feigned empathy, displaced altruism poses a real threat to the

interrogator’s moral integrity regardless of whether displacement is partial or complete.

The burdens borne by interrogators committed to human rights may seem

inconsequential compared to other things suffered by our soldiers in war, such as loss of

limbs and traumatic brain injury. Moral discomfort may seem like par for the course, the

expected cost of getting the job done. But I would suggest that this response too easily

relieves us of the task of taking account of all we ask others to undergo on our behalf,

especially given that people who have worked as interrogators express concern for its

impact on the kind of selves they are, a different cost than the experience of discomfort.

Casteel’s record of his attempt to integrate his faith and moral ideals with his

mission is a record of suffering and struggle for moral self-trust. And it is appropriate for

a person to not wish to sacrifice a sense of accord between his moral ideals and the

capacities he intentionally develops in himself, for as Stocker so clearly articulates, “we

should be moved by our major values… such harmony is the mark of a good life.”23 It is

practically necessary for an interrogator to become an excellent deceiver and, I have

suggested, to become good at empathizing in the mode of displaced altruism. Thus, the

interrogator develops “burdened virtues”, traits that it is not morally good to have and

which are therefore “disjoined from the bearer’s flourishing.”24 An interrogator may be

very confident in the importance of the information gained through his work and still

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regret aspects of the self he must become in order to do this work.25 We recognize that

others risk their lives and their bodies in war, and acknowledgment of post-traumatic

stress syndrome as an epidemic among military veterans has made it clear that they also

risk their minds. The writings of Casteel and Alexander help expose another kind of

sacrifice, which we would do well not to dismiss on account of its comparative subtlety.

References: Alexander, Mathew. (2008) How to Break a Terrorist. Free Press. Batson, C. Daniel. (1991). The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Pschological Answer. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. ______________. (2011) Altruism in Humans. New York: Oxford University Press. Casteel, Joshua. (2008) Letters From Abu Ghraib. Essay Press. Lenman, James. (2011). "Reasons for Action: Justification vs. Explanation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Miller, Christian. (2013). Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Oxley, Julinna (2011). The Moral Dimensions of Empathy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Schapiro, Tamar. (2011). “Empathy as a Moral Concept: Comments on John Deigh’s ‘Empathy, Justice, and Jurisprudence,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 49, pp. 91-98. Scheler, Max. (2008). The Nature of Sympathy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Sherman, Nancy. (1998) “Empathy and Imagination,” Philosophy of Emotions, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 22, pp.82-119. Simmons, Aaron. (2014). “In Defense of the Moral Significance of Empathy,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17:1, pp.97-111

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Snow, Nancy. (2000). “Empathy,” American Philosophical Quarterly 37:1, pp.65-78.

Stocker, Michael. (1976) "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” The Journal of Philosophy 73:14, pp.453-466. Stueber, Karsten. (2005). Rediscovering Empathy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Tessman, Lisa. (2005) Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles. New York: Oxford University Press 1 I do not use the term “moral schizophrenia” to refer to a medical condition. Rather, I

allude to Michael Stocker’s use of the term to describe tension between an agent’s

motives and reasons in his essay “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories”

(1976). I explain my appeal to Stocker’s model in due course.

2 Karsten Stueber develops the notion of reenactive empathy and argues for its essential

epistemic role in gaining knowledge of other minds in Rediscovering Empathy (2006);

see especially Chapter 4, p.158. All people engage in reenactive empathy to understand

other agents, but it is a capacity that can be refined. As Stueber notes, “…putting

ourselves into the perspectives of agents from different historical and social contexts can

be a rather difficult and laborious task. It cannot be accomplished without further

knowledge about the constitution of an agent’s social surroundings required for making

appropriate guesses about relevant differences between us and the interpretee” (pp. 201-

2).

3 The inner reenactment of another’s mental states is thus similar to what Max Scheler

calls “reproduced feeling.” He writes, “Equally little does the reproduction of feeling or

experience imply any sort of ‘participation’ in the other’s experience. Throughout our

visualizing of the experience we can remain quite indifferent to whatever has evoked it”

(2008, p.9).

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4 Certainly a person may have mistaken beliefs about the emotions of another person and

respond empathetically based on this mistaken attribution. This is a case of empathetic

inaccuracy. For further discussion of empathetic accuracy/inaccuracy see Snow (2000).

5 Julinna Oxley (2011) addresses the question of how similar the emotions of the

empathizer and the “target” must be with this notion of congruent emotion (p.24).

6 Karsten Stueber (2006) points out that research in social psychology “merges” the

concepts of empathy and sympathy (p.28). Because some forms of empathetic

identification entail sympathy, the two distinction between the two is not necessarily very

sharp in practice. Some authors refer to ‘empathy-sympathy’ to indicate a process that

blends participation in another’s emotion and sympathy arising from that participation.

This is roughly what I have in mind, as it more closely corresponds to the interrogators’

own use of the term ‘empathy’. Lastly, historical thinkers such as Adam Smith, David

Hume and Max Scheler use the term ‘sympathy’ to refer to processes that would now

more commonly be called ‘empathy’ because they involve sharing another’s emotions.

7 Tamar Schapiro (2011), pp.92-93.

8 Tamar Schapiro (2011), p.97

9 Aaron Simmons (2014), p.101-103

10 The new techniques combine skilled and informed reenactive empathy with a

commitment to respect detainees’ basic human dignity. The 2004 Abu Ghraib torture

scandal showed how cultural understanding can be used to more effectively humiliate and

torture in the absence of basic respect as a limiting condition.

20

11 Italics are my own. In this passage Casteel intends “a person” to refer to the detainee;

however, the statement has a double meaning, for Casteel’s genuine empathetic responses

to detainees cause him to question his own training and indoctrination.

12 “The Interrogator”, 60 Minutes aired September 11, 2011. Produced by Andy Court and

Michael Radutsky; Lara Logan, interviewer.

13 See, for example, Soufan’s op-ed piece “My Tortured Decision,” New York Times,

April 22, 2009.

14 Sherman (1998), p.92

15 Nancy Sherman uses this example to illustrate why empathy does not entail

endorsement of the other’s emotional reactions, in the sense of judging them reasonable

(1998, p. 94).

16 Stocker (1976), pp.455-6

17 One might call these ‘normative reasons’. I do not wish to enter into debate regarding

the nature of reasons for action, but for useful discussion of the concept of ‘normative

reasons’ see James Lenman’s discussion of normative reasons in section 5 of “Reasons

for Action: Justification vs. Explanation” (2011).

18 More precisely, forms of empathetic identification that involve sympathy support

altruistic motivation. As noted, empathetic identification with another’s basic well-being

concerns entails sympathy, so this form of empathy is connected with altruism. In the

case of a human beings, basic well-being concerns include physical safety and mental

health, but also dignity. Casteel empathizes with a detainee’s desire for others’

understanding and moral unburdening and Alexander empathizes with a detainee’s desire

21

to not be betrayed. I would suggest that these experiences of empathetic identification

entail some level of sympathy.

19 Social psychologist C. Daniel Batson and his colleagues have been researching the

connection between empathetic/sympathetic arousal and altruistic motivation for over

two decades. See Batson (1991, 2011) for presentation of the experimental findings. For

useful philosophical discussion of Batson’s research as it pertains to an empirically

informed theory of moral character see Miller (2013).

20 Stocker (1976), p.463

21 Casteel describes this episode in interviews included in the Emmy-nominated

documentary film Soldiers of Conscience (2008).

22 Nancy Sherman identifies these two roles of empathy as the main functions of empathy

in moral life (1998), p.96

23 Stocker (1976), p.454

24 Here I refer to Lisa Tessman’s (2005) conception of a burdened virtue, which she

develops to theorize the moral situation of agents who develop traits that allow them to

survive and resist oppression but that are also obstacles to their flourishing (p.4).

25 The language of “regretting the self one has become” is also Lisa Tessman’s (2005,

p.12).