Em Walsh is a post-doctoral student at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University. Her primary research interest concerns the intersections between memory, madness, and marginalization.
A post by Em Walsh
The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.
bell hooks
Imagine the following two scenarios. The first involves a conversation with a friend. My friend has told me they are experiencing discrimination for being Latinx at university. They tell me that they are mocked for not having sufficient knowledge of their second language after having just moved to the university from abroad. I respond with a quiz instead of comfort by querying what proof they have that it is legitimate discrimination over someone having a bad day at said university.
The second involves an encounter with a stranger, a new student in my class. She tells me that, as a woman, when she wants to speak in class, she cannot, no matter how hard she tries. When I ask her why she responds that she feels like she has a choker on that tightens after every word and that she imagines others in the room could tighten it too. Rather than try to imagine what she is going through, I respond by saying that she should raise her hand and speak. I haven’t tried to imagine what it feels like to have her experience of talking.
In both cases, I have failed my friend and the stranger. The question lies in how exactly I have failed them. Philosophers could point to the above reactions as exposing several epistemic vices such as close-mindedness and insouciance, the affective posture of not caring if one’s beliefs have any basis in reality, or adequate evidential support (Cassam, 2019). Discrimination against Latinx and women is well-documented and has pervasive adverse effects on their mental and physical well-being (Manne, 2019; Medina, 2013; Murry et al., 2022). I ought to know this and factor this into how I respond to my friend and the stranger. But I do not. Thus, in both of my responses, I seem to be exhibiting these epistemic vices towards my friend and the stranger, which ultimately causes me to gaslight their experiences.
While the debate on epistemic vices can explain some of the ways in which I fail in these cases, my proposal is that I have failed both my friend and the stranger more fundamentally, humanly: in a duty of love. What could this duty of love be? The duty to imagine being another. Mackenzie & Sorial (2021) have distinguished between three kinds of imagining in empathetic imagination: (i) imagining oneself otherwise, (ii) imagining oneself as another, where one imagines themselves in the other's shoes (iii) imagining being another (2021, pp. 368-269). The latter kind of imagination is the most demanding as it requires a shift from the first-person perspective to another perspective entirely. So doing requires imagining that one is someone other than oneself, similar to how actors have to imagine when they take up a new role (Gordon, 1986; Mackenzie & Sorial, 2021). Imagining being another is difficult and demands a cognitive, affective, and epistemic shift. Philosophers have been divided on whether one can effectively bridge the gap between imagining others' perspectives, particularly across racial, gendered, and embodied differences (Kind, 2021; Mackenzie & Sorial, 2021). Despite this controversy and the associated difficulty in doing so, loving another requires that we commit to imagining being another, no matter how imperfect we are at first at this task.
Several reasons point us in this direction. Philosophers have identified that imagination used in service of understanding can help us to connect and relate to those around us (Kind, 2021). Acts of imagination, so conceived, enhance our relationships and open up our minds to the beauty of other perspectives. So doing is viewed as an essential component of love, as loving requires that one does not just think of oneself, however tempting that possibility is (hooks, 2000). Philosophers note that cultivating one’s imaginal capacity is the key to developing virtues of the mind such as open-mindedness and avoiding the moral vices of close-mindedness (Medina, 2013). Moreover, failing to engage in any acts of imagining being another has the opposite effect: we risk developing epistemic and moral vices of the mind, and harming those around us. Ordinarily, the mental and affective states of even those closest to us remain a mystery (Parrott, 2019). This mystery can deepen if one never engages in imagining being another, to such an extent that one can develop fear and hostility towards others who do not share their viewpoint. This breaks down not only sharing of experiences and narratives but the ability to sustain relationships with others, as “fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation” (hooks, 2000). Domination and love cannot co-exist, as they are at odds with one another. This is why such a duty of love must exist. Failing to imagine being another results in moral harms to oneself and one’s community, harms which can be overcome by keeping to our duty to imagine being another.
Yet, it may strike some as unappealing to suggest that we have a moral duty to engage in any acts of imagination at all. Duties, after all, have been historically characterized as a particular class of deontic constraint. If I have a duty not to kill you, this duty applies in almost all circumstances, with minimal exceptions. In this way, duties are typically conceived as genuine moral requirements that license others in our moral community to treat us in specific ways (Kant, 1785; Kant, 1797). It isn’t clear how such a duty could or ought to work in terms of imagining being another.
This problem can, however, be overcome with clarification on what kind of duty I am thinking of. First, such a duty would need to be imperfect, as no one imagines being another in the same way, nor can they be realistically expected to. Certain neurological and psychological conditions may hinder people from performing this duty (Harster, 2022). And, of course, there are limits to the effectiveness of imagining being another. Projecting onto others what one thinks they feel can be problematic and create, rather than bridge, gaps between people's perspectives (Mackenzie & Sorial, 2021). This is why we must be cautious as to what this duty can return to us if we commit to engaging in it. Recall, I have emphasized that this duty is a duty of love; we ought to do it because we love others. It therefore should not be used to infer that we know more about others than they know of themselves. So doing often involves the kind of projection that can be harmful and reproduce oppressive modes of thinking, acting, and being (Mackenzie & Sorial, 2021). Humility is essential to one performing this duty correctly. One must commit to it to try and make a place for the other inside herself, not for knowledge's sake but for the sake of love.
That being said, duties of love, however imperfect they are, are demanding. It is a cognitive demand to imagine being another, particularly if we do not understand why people react in a particular way. Take the second example of the new student who tells me what she imagines when she attempts to speak in class. In relating to this student, I may have to draw on knowledge beyond my personal experiences, which requires listening, engaging, reading, and imagining being her. Recall that she has told me that she feels like something is around her throat and could constrict it at any time. I can attempt to simulate that experience in my imagination, knowing that others feel that way when they are unwell. Or, I can try on pieces of clothing to emulate the experience and help me imagine. I can also listen to people who have been afraid to speak to see if they report similar experiences. All of this is cognitively demanding. But I hope to have shown that it is a demand worth meeting: making a place for others inside of ourselves is crucial to beginning to understand them and is fundamental to loving them.
References
Cassam, Q. (2019) Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Gordon, R. (1986) Folk Psychology as Simulation, Mind & Language, (1), 158-171.
Harster, K. (2022) Symptoms of Trauma, Kantian Natural Powers, and the Duty to Seek Treatment, Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 29(3), 147-157.
hooks, b. (2000) All About Love: New Visions, Harper, USA.
Kant, I. (1785/2012) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, (tr. R. B. Louden), Cambridge University Press, UK.
Kant, I. (1797/1996) The Metaphysics of Morals, (tr. M. Gregor), Cambridge University Press, UK.
Kind, A. (2021) Bridging the Divide: Imagining Across Experiential Perspectives. In (Eds.) C. Badura & A. Kind, Epistemic Uses of Imagination, Routledge, pp. 237-259.
Mackenzie, C., & Sorial, S. (2021) The Empathy Dilemma: Democratic Deliberation, Epistemic Injustice and the Problem of Empathetic Imagination, Res Publica, 28 (2),365-389.
Manne, K. (2019) Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Penguin, USA.
Medina, J. (2013) The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Justice, and the Social Imagination, Oxford University Press: USA.
Murry, M. D., Nunziato, R. M., McQueen, E. L., Bartholomew, M. W, & Marks, A. K. (2022) Xenophobia and Discrimination: Consequences for Latinx Immigrants and Pathways to Restoration & Healing, Current Opinion in Psychology, 48: 101438.
Parrott, M. (2019) Enquiries Concerning the Minds of Others. In (Eds.) A. Avramides and M. Parrott, Knowing Other Minds, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-30