This program is brought to you by Emory University. Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone to this lecture, and I thank you all so much for taking time out of your schedules. This is a very special event for us. My name is Frank Alexander, and I'm privileged to be on the faculty here at Emory Law School and co-direct the Law and Religion Program with my colleague John Whitty. Today's lecture is the part of our new project in the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion that has been funded by the Alonzo L. McDonald Family Agape Fund. This fund was created by Al and Susie McDonald, and we're delighted to have Al McDonald here and sad that his wife Susie could not join us this afternoon. Susie's been ill, but thankfully she is recovering. Al McDonald is an incredible figure in what he has done and what he stands for. He's a native Georgian born here in Atlanta, began his career working for what is now the AJC, the Atlanta Journal at the time. He's an Emory graduate. He then, however, migrated away from reporting and went to work for Westinghouse. After five years with Westinghouse, he went to work for what was then a small company called McKinsey. Al McDonald then rose through McKinsey and Company, headed the Paris office, the Zurich office, became the managing director worldwide of McKinsey and Company. In the middle of that position, a fellow Georgian called upon Al McDonald and said, Al, I need you. Most people could not get to Al McDonald, but this person was Jimmy Carter. The multilateral trade negotiations were at a stall. President Carter said, I need somebody who's got the understanding and clout and capability of pulling off the multilateral trade negotiations. In 1977, President Carter appointed Al McDonald as the special ambassador in charge of the trade negotiations. In record short time, Al McDonald completed the negotiations for the trade treaties. Al McDonald then, instead of going back to McKinsey and Company, which he had planned to do, he then agreed to become deputy chief of staff in the White House for President Carter. After he left the White House, Al McDonald decided not to go back into McKinsey, instead went to Bendix and was the CEO there for several years. He jokingly says he retired in 1983, but what he did was start his own development and investment bank, Avenere Group, out of Michigan. He is still on the board of numerous corporations worldwide and in buying and selling companies and investing in a number of startup ventures. But one of the most significant features of what Al and Susie McDonald have done in recent years is a profound commitment of their own personal faith, their personal resources, and their energies to have an impact on education. Mr. McDonald is a trustee emeritus of Emory University, but what he has done most recently is make possible for us in the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion a five-year project in which we are doing a second series of works in Christian jurisprudence. Al and Susie, his wife, are deeply committed to developing some of the finest scholarship they can in the academies, not just here at Emory, but at other schools across the country. Scholarship which is devoted to questions of faith and the practice of that faith in the community. Much as Al and Susie have done in their own lives, they're challenging constantly us academics and academic institutions to understand in greater ways than they ever have the manner in which faith impacts their walk in the community. And he's now doing that with us in the law school, challenging us and making possible for us to begin to probe the question of how we can begin to walk our talk in better ways. The McDonald gift to the Center for the Interdisciplinary Studies of Religion makes possible this lecture series. And the first lecture today is part of this series and this new project is being given by one who is known to all of you, my dear brother, my friend, my colleague, John Whitty. One of the mantras of corporate development that is repeated often is that if you want to grow, if you want to develop, if you want to be better, always hire people that are smarter and better than you. And that's what I am so delighted to have been able to do with John Whitty. I came here and then was able a few years later, Professor Harold Berman joined our faculty. And then Hal Berman and I were able to persuade the young scholar John Whitty, a recent graduate of Harvard, to come down here and join us in our law and religion program. A mere 18 years ago, it's phenomenal what John Whitty has done, both for our program, for the law school, for the university, indeed for the study of legal history, law and religion across the country and now across the world. Hardly anything like a native southerner, John hails from across the northern border. He's a Canadian by birth. He speaks more languages than I can count. And the thing that's most amazing about John's language ability is that his books have now been translated into more languages than he speaks. He has authored more than 20 books in recent years. He has authored over 120 articles in just a few years. He doesn't set the standard, thankfully, for those of us in the academy. He is so far beyond what the rest of us do collectively in any given year. Part of the way he accomplishes this, I give him grief, is he only needs to sleep four hours a night. And those of you in his classrooms know this well because he is up at 4.30 every morning preparing his lectures. John teaches more students than any other professor in the law school, more effectively than any other professor in the law school. He has won more teaching awards than all the rest of the faculty combined. Not just here at the law school, but every teaching award that this university gives, John has been recognized with. His scholarship is known not just here at Emory, but in every major university in the United States. On a weekly basis, virtually, John is speaking to audiences, law school, theology, philosophy groups throughout the United States, distinguished lectureships at schools such as Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, and increasingly abroad, distinguished professorships and lectureships in England and just next month in Tel Aviv. So there's little I can say that's good that you perhaps wouldn't already be aware of about my brother John. But the most important thing that I can share with you is how proud I am of my little brother John. I present to you today Professor John Witte to speak on Fact and Fictions of Separation of Church and State. My goodness. Thank you very much, my dear friend and brother and colleague, for that very warm and remarkably generous introduction. Good afternoon to each of you. It's a privilege to see all of you here. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. I want to join Professor Alexander in offering a very special word of thanks to Mr. Alonzo McDonald for sponsoring this new lecture series and the accompanying project on Christian Jurisprudence. Mr. McDonald, as you heard, has been a model leader of church and state and society and has long lavished every university ample portions of his time, of his talent and of his treasure. And I consider it a great personal privilege to be standing at a lectern that bears his good name and that of his wonderful family. I thank you, Mr. McDonald, for taking the time to be with us today and I think it would not be inappropriate, albeit embarrassing for you to ask you to perhaps take a little bow and to receive the applause of appreciation from our colleagues who are gathered here. Al McDonald. In the past decade, a veritable cottage industry of important new books and articles and briefs and judicial opinions has emerged devoted to the history of separation of church and state. We now know a great deal more than we did about the history of separationist rhetoric from Thomas Jefferson's famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association to Justice Hugo Black's famous opinion in 1947 in the case of Everson versus Board of Education. We now know more about the odious manipulation of separationist rhetoric by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups against Catholics and Jews and other minority faiths and new emigrants in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. And we now see much more clearly than we did before that Justice Black drew some of his inspiration from these nativist teachings particularly those of the Ku Klux Klan of which he was a ranking member in crafting his famous Everson opinion mandating universally in the United States the separation of church and state. For peculiar souls like me who labor on the history of law religion and the First Amendment this has all been a rather sobering but edifying corrective to the traditional story. But the newly corrected history of religious liberty is quickly beginning to create its own ample distortions of the historical record. The first distortion is the argument that the principle of separation of church and state was an invention of 19th century anti-clerical and anti-religious elites starting with Thomas Jefferson. The second distortion is the argument that this principle was hijacked by later 19th century anti-catholic and then anti-religious nativists who introduced all manner of prejudicial changes in American law in the name of separation of church and state but to the detriment if not the bankruptcy of religious liberty for all. Because of its recent pedigree and because of its odious origin it is now argued we should jettison the principle of separation of church and state and some of the harsher laws that it occasioned including some of those old laws from religious schools and religious institutions. I respectfully disagree with this new history. My reading of the sources leads me to conclude that separation of church and state has a much longer history and a much more complex and wholesome pedigree than some recent history writing allows. And today I'd like to argue that long before the famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists the purported source of separationist teachings long before that the 18th century American founders had at least five distinct understandings of separation of church and state several of them with millennium long western roots. Each of these understandings made important contributions to the protection and prosperity in the 19th century and each of these understandings still holds enduring lessons for us today as I'd like to argue 36 and a half minutes from now as I move into my conclusion. Separation of church and state is often regarded as a distinctly American and a relatively modern invention. In reality separationism is an ancient modern teaching rooted in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible repeatedly commanded the chosen people of ancient Israel to remain separate from the Gentile world around them and to separate the Levites and other temple officials from the rest of the people. The Hebrew Bible also made much of building and rebuilding walls to protect the city of Jerusalem from the outside world and to separate the temple from its priests, from the commons and its peoples. Traditions still recognized and celebrated in the prayers and rituals that occur at the western wailing wall. The New Testament warned Christian believers to remain separate from the world not to conform to the world and its temptations and ever mindful that their true citizenship lies in heaven. Echoing the Hebrew Bible St. Paul spoke in Ephesians 2 literally of a wall of separation between Christians and non-Christians interposed by the law of God. These Biblical passages have inspired a long history of western reflection on separation and the wall of separation between church and state. The archives hold a massive fair ago of patristic medieval and early modern sermons and Biblical commentaries that call for a separation between the faithful and the fallen the religious and the political the clergy and the laity the spiritual and the temporal the prelate and the magistrate and the church and the state. At the same time churchmen and statesmen over the centuries forged countless treaties, statutes and other constitutional texts to define and to delimit their respective offices and powers and to determine their mutual duties and rights. And these theological and political teachings were distilled into powerful models of separationism known as two ways two cities, two powers, two swords two kingdoms and other dualistic constructions. Many of these models were transmitted across the Atlantic to the American colonies and then transmuted to accommodate local colonial conditions. The 18th century American founders called on this European and colonial legacy to press at least five concerns at once. First, the principle of separation was invoked as a means to protect the church from the state. This had been a common Christian understanding of separation since the first century of the common era. And it was captured in the Christian clergy's perennial call in subsequent centuries for freedom of the church or what the edict of Milan of 313 had called for the first time in the West the free exercise of religion and religious groups. The 18th century American founders principle concern was to protect church affairs from state intrusion church properties from state encroachment, church rules and rights from political coercion and control. This understanding of separation of church and state was prominent in 18th century America. Elisha Williams, the great New England jurist, spoke for many churchmen when he wrote every church has the right to judge in what manner God is to be worshiped by them and what form of discipline ought and what clergy ought to be elected by them from all of which the state must be utterly and completely separate. George Washington wrote in 1785 of the need quote to establish effectual barriers so that there was no threat to the religious rights of any religious society including beleaguered minorities like Jews and Catholics and Quakers whom Washington favored with a number of special letters pledging his support. Thomas Jefferson called in his 1784 notes on Virginia for government to resist what he termed intermeddling with religious institutions their doctrines, disciplines or exercises. Every religious society said Jefferson has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper to them according to their own peculiar tenets and none of this can involve in any way the state or the magistrate. This first understanding of separation of church and state was captured especially in state constitutional guarantees of the free exercise rights of peaceable religious groups the right of religious bodies to incorporate and to hold authority to appoint and remove clergy and other officials to have sites and rights of worship education charity mission burial to maintain standards of entrance and exit for their voluntary members and more all of which the state constitutions passed in the 1770s and 1780s delineated in great detail. This understanding of separationism was also at least implicit in the First Amendment free exercise guarantee. Earlier drafts of the First Amendment and the cryptic house debates of 1789 that have survived about these drafts spoke repeatedly of the need to protect religious sex denominations groups and societies to guarantee their rights to worship property practice. None of this concern for detailing the rights of religious groups was rejected in the house debates and can at least be plausibly read into the generic free exercise guarantee that was ultimately passed Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Second the 18th century founders invoked the principle of separation of church and state to protect not only the church from the state but also the church. This was a more recent Western understanding but it became increasingly prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries. The sores tyrannies have been those who have united the royalty and the priesthood in one person wrote the authors of Cato's letters in 1723. Churchmen when they ruled states had not only double authority but also double insolence and mercy and regard to conscience property and the domains and demands of statecraft. In the same vein John Adams devoted much of his 1774 dissertation on the canon and the feudal law to documenting what he called the tyrannious outrages that the medieval Catholic church and early modern Protestant churches had inflicted through their control of the state. A wicked confederacy between two systems of tyranny Adams wrote with ample bitterness. This second understanding of separation helped to inform the movement in some states to exclude ministers and other religious officials from participating in political office. Such exclusions had been commonplace among 17th century American Puritans and various evangelical and anabaptist groups. But arguments for such clerical exclusions became more commonplace in 18th century America. Seven of the original 13 states and 15 later states banned ministers from serving in political office. State constitutional provisions not formally outlawed until the 1978 Supreme Court case of McDaniel v. Patty which held that the per se exclusion of ministers from political office was a violation of their free exercise rights. Third the principle of separation of church and state was invoked as a means to protect the individual's liberty of conscience from the intrusions of either the church or the state or worse both of them together. This had been an early and enduring understanding of separationism among colonial quakers and anabaptists. This argument became more prominent in 18th century America. Every man has an equal right to follow the dictates of his own conscience in the affairs of religion. Elisha Williams wrote this is an equal right with any rulers be they within the church, within the state or within a combination of the same. James Madison put this case in his 1785 memorial and remonstrance calling for what he termed a great barrier between church and state to defend the religious rights of the individual. And Thomas Jefferson's famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association also tied the principle of separation of church and state directly to the principle of liberty of conscience. After his opening salutation, Jefferson's letter reads as follows believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his god that he owes a count to none other for his faith or his worship that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions. I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience. I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man their natural rights convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. In Jefferson's formulation here, separation of church and state assured individuals of their natural rights of conscience which could be exercised freely and fully to the point of breaching or shirking their social duties. Jefferson is not talking here about separating religion from human rights altogether. Indeed, in the very next paragraph of his letter, President Jefferson performed an avowedly religious act of offering prayers on behalf of his Baptist correspondence. He wrote, I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common father and creator of man. Fourth, the principle of separation of church and state was originally used to argue for the protection of individual states from interference by the federal government in governing local religious affairs. Jefferson used the principle of separation in this federalist jurisdictional sense as well. Jefferson said many times that the federal government had no jurisdiction over religion. Religion was an entirely democratic and local matter in his view. As he put it in his second inaugural, quote, in matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the federal government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them as the constitution found them under the direction and discipline of the local church. The separation that Jefferson had in mind here was between local church state relations and the federal government. The federal government could not interfere in the affairs of local churches and the federal government could not interfere in the affairs of local states vis-à-vis those local churches. Under this federalist jurisdictional reading of separationism, state institutions were not allowed to recognize and protect religion or to prohibit or abridge religion as their own state constitutions allowed or dictated, but the federal government was entirely foreclosed from the same. Some scholars have imputed this fourth understanding of separation of church and state into the First Amendment provision that says Congress shall make no law of religion. The argument is that Congress shall make no laws respecting a state establishment of religion. In 1789, when the First Amendment was being drafted, six states still had religious establishments, which both their state legislatures and constitutional conventions had defined and defended often against very strong opposition by religious dissenters or nonconformists. Moreover, Congress passed Jefferson's bill for the, quote, establishment of religious freedom, also against firm opposition now proffered by traditional establishment terrians. Having just defended their state establishments of whatever sort at home, the new members of Congress were not about to relinquish them to the new federal government, especially this most dangerous branch, the Congress. This is a plausible reading of this mysterious respecting language in the First Amendment establishment clause. This Federalist, but the evidence for it is demonstrably thin in the surviving House debates. But this Federalist reading of the establishment clause is becoming more and more prominent today. It was given very strong expression in a very recent concurring opinion by Justice in the New Dau Pledge of Allegiance case as part and product of the court's neo-Federalist revolution of many areas of constitutional law in the past decade and seemingly as part of the court's broader effort to selectively unincorporate the religion clauses from the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Fifth, and finally, the principle of separation of church and state was induced as a means to protect society and its members from unwelcome participation in and support for religion. Already in later colonial America, several religious groups used separationism to argue against the established church's policies of mandatory payments of ties or required participation in swearing oaths or forced at religious services, compulsory registration of their church properties and more. At the turn of the 19th century, the language of separation of church and state also began to fuel broader campaigns to remove traditional forms and forums of religion in law, politics and society and to remove special state protection, patronage and participation in religion. This was the most novel and the most controversial understanding of separation of church and state in the young American Republic but it began to gain rhetorical currency in the course of the 19th century. The first notorious instance came in 1800 during the heated election debates between Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party and John Adams' Federalist Party. This was a clash of propaganda machines that made the recent Bush carry campaigns look like child's play. Adams' Party accused Jefferson of being the antichrist, the whore of Babylon, a Jacob and infidel and secularist bent on destruction of the necessary religious foundations of law and necessary alliances between church and state. Jefferson's Party accused Adams of being a Puritan Pope, a religious tyrant bent on subjecting the whole nation to his suffocatingly narrow beliefs and to his smug self-serving ministers who stood for square against liberty and progress. These proved to be only opening shots in a century-long American battle over the means and the meaning of separating church and state. The battles broke out thereafter over dueling, freemasonry, lotteries, drunkenness, Sunday laws, slavery, marriage, divorce, women's rights, religious education, blasphemy, prosecution, enforcement of Christian morality and much more. These were battles fought in Congress and in the courts, in states and on the frontier, in churches and in the schools, in clubs and at the ballot box. They were largely wars of words, occasionally wars of arms. The battles included many familiar foes, Republicans and Federalists the North and the South, Native Americans and New immigrants. They also included a host of newly established political and ideological groups, the Know Nothing Party, the American Protective Association, the National Liberal League, the American Secular Union, the Ku Klux Klan and dozens of other ideological and political groups right and left. Let me just focus on one running episode in this great 19th century battle, namely the repeated clashes between Protestants and Catholics over separationism. The long and the sad story of the anti-Catholicism of 19th century Protestants is well known.  But with the swelling tide of Catholic emigres into America after the 1820s, all demanding work, building schools, establishing charities, converting souls and gaining influence, native born Protestants and Patriots began to protest. Catholic bashing became a favorite sport of preachers and pamphleteers. Then rioting and church burnings broke out in the 1830s and 40s followed by even more vicious verbal piltering and repressive actions against Catholics. What several recent studies have made clear is that the principle of separation of church and state became one of the strong new weapons in the anti-Catholic arsenal. Foreign Catholics were for the union of church and state the propagandists claimed. American Protestants were for the separation of church and state. To be a Catholic was to oppose separationism and American-style liberties. To be a Protestant was to defend separationism and American-style liberties. To bash a Catholic was thus not a manifestation of religious bigotry, but a demonstration of American patriotism.  All this is a proper corrective and amendment to the traditional story that students of American religious liberty need to hear. But it's important that this corrected story not now be read as a simple dialectic of Protestant separationist hawks versus Catholic unionist doves as several recent writings and briefs and judicial opinions have done. And it's important to be clear that Protestant Catholic battles over separation of church and state had two sides with Catholics giving as well as taking winning as well as losing. First it must be remembered that many American Catholic clergy were themselves separationists building their views in part on ancient and medieval formulations of two communities two cities, two swords, two powers. These American Catholic clergy saw separation of church and state as an essential principle of religious liberty particularly as a religious minority and they embraced the difference of a without evident concern or cavill. Both Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Acton, two foreign observers of American life made note of this at some length. Secondly many Protestant anti-Catholic writings started not so much as gratuitous attacks upon American Catholics as counter attacks to several blistering papal condemnations of Protestantism, democracy, religious liberty and separation of church and state. The papacy charred by the savagery of the 1789 French Revolution had a quite different view of separationism than prevailed among many American Catholics. In the 1832 papal document Morori Vos for example Pope Gregory the 16th condemned in no uncertain terms all churches that deviated from the church of Rome and all states that granted liberty of conscience free exercise and free speech rights to their non-Catholic citizens. For the pope it was quote an absurd and erroneous proposition to claim that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. The pope denounced what he called freedom to publish any writings whatsoever and disseminate them to the people. The church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books and the state should too. The pope declared anathema against what he called the detestable insolence and probity of Luther and other Protestant sons of the devil. Those sores and disgraces of the human race who joyfully deemed themselves free of all. Even worse the pope argued were the plans of those who quote desire to leave the church from the state and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. The reality the pope insisted was that state officials quote received their authority not only for the government of the world but especially for the defense of the Catholic church. In the blistering syllabus of errors of 1864 the papacy condemned as cardinal errors the proposition that quote Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion. It was likewise a cardinal error that quote the church ought to be separate from the state and the state from the church. Six years later the 1870 Vatican Council declared the pope's teachings to be infallible and condemned Protestants anew as quote heretics who dared subordinate the divine magisterium of the church to the judgment of each individual's conscience. It is perhaps no surprise that American Protestants repaid such alarming comments in kind and then with compounding interest. The pope as Americans heard him had condemned the very existence of Protestantism and the very fundamentals of American democracy and liberty. Many Protestants saw the papacy's favorable references to its past medieval powers specters of the church's tyrannical rule and a unified Christendom. This simply could not be for Protestants. Conveniently armed with new additions of the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin American Protestants repeated much of the vitriolic anti-Catholic and anti-clerical rhetoric that had clattered so loudly throughout the 16th century Protestant Reformation. At least initially the loud commendation of America's separation of church and state and loud condemnation of the Catholic Union of church and state was more of a rhetorical quid pro quo to the papacy than a political low blow to American Catholics. But inevitably there was plenty of political imitation and plenty of cheap shots taken at American Catholic clergy particularly those who stood up in defense of the papacy. And inevitably this rhetoric brought anti-Catholicism and pro-separationism into close association especially in the minds of the right and left wing propagandist groups. A third and a final caveat to the corrected story is that when local anti-Catholic measures did pass as they too often did in the later 19th and early 20th centuries both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress sometimes provided Catholics with relief using the very principle of separation of church and state to protect their religious liberty. And thus in Cummings versus Missouri in 1866 the court held that a state may not deprive a Catholic priest to preach for failure to take a mandatory oath disavowing his support for the Confederate States. Separation of church and state, said the court, exists for the sake of protecting the conscience particularly of the clergy. In Watson versus Jones in 1871 in three subsequent cases the court required civil tribunals to defer to the judgment of the highest religious authorities in resolving inter-church disputes explicitly extending this principle to Catholics in the name of separating church and state. In Church of the Holy Trinity versus the United States in 1892 the court refused to uphold a new federal law forbidding contracts with foreign clergy a vital issue for the Catholic Magisterium and in Pierce versus Society of Sisters in 1925 the court invalidated a state law making public school attendance mandatory thereby protecting the rights of Catholic parents and schools to educate children in a religious school environment. These, and a dozen other Supreme Court holdings were in part expressions of the principle of separation of church and state and there were many more such Catholic victories in state courts with separation of church and state used repeatedly as a means to protect religious consciences clerics and corporations from overreaching state or local authorities. All this changed rather dramatically with the Supreme Court case of Everson versus Board of Education in 1947. This case made two major moves at once. First, the court applied the First Amendment Establishment Clause to the states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion now became in effect government of whatever sort shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion the federalist understanding of separationism was ipso facto jettisoned. Second, Justice Black speaking for the majority in the Everson court read into the Establishment Clause a strict separationist logic that was amply coated and coated with the anti-religious sentiments that Black had absorbed as a former ranking member of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. What had been fringe anti-religious rhetoric in the 19th and early 20th century was suddenly lifted to constitutional mandate universally binding on the nation. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Justice Black wrote for the Everson court means at least this. Neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion or another. No tax in any amount large or small can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions whatever they may be called. Neither a state nor the federal government can openly or secretly participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups or vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to create a wall of separation between church and state. Religion Justice Black said a bit later is just too powerful, too sinister and too greedy to permit its unhindered perversion or perversion of the civil majesty. The same powerful religious propagandists who are allowed to succeed in making one in road on the state in its laws doubtless will continue their propaganda looking toward complete domination and supremacy of their particular brand of religion. It is nearly always by insidious approaches that the citadels of liberty are most successfully attacked. The First Amendment has thus erected a wall of separation between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. It cannot approve the slightest breach. The Supreme Court applied this newly minted strict separationist logic primarily in cases challenging traditional state patronage and participation in religious education. In more than two dozen cases after Everson, the court purged religion from the public school and removed religious schools for most of their traditional state support. In the 1971 case of lemon versus curtsman the court distilled the separationist logic of its earlier cases into a general test to be used in all future establishment clause cases whether applied to education or anything else. Henceforth every law said lemon challenged under the establishment clause would pass constitutional muster only if it had first a secular purpose second a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion and third fosters no excessive entanglement between church and state and their officials. This lemon test rendered the establishment clause a formidable obstacle to many traditional forms and forums of church state cooperation particularly the lower courts used the lemon test to outlaw all manner of government subsidies for religious charity social services, mission works and government use of religious services, facilities, publication language, rituals, symbols and more. Some of these establishment clause cases in the name of separation of church and state helped to extend the ambit of religious liberty particularly for minority faiths. But some of these cases also helped to erode the province of religious liberty by effectively empowering a single secular party to veto popular laws touching religion that caused him or her only the most tangential and attenuated constitutional injury. It must be remembered that separation of church and state is only one principle that the establishment clause teaches and the establishment clause is only one guarantee that the First Amendment embraces for the protection of religious liberty the other being the free exercise clause. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. These two religion clauses hold complimentary guarantees of religious freedom. The free exercise clause outlaws government proscriptions of religion. Actions that unduly burden the conscience, unduly restrict religious expression, unduly discriminate against religion or invade the autonomy of churches and other religious bodies. The establishment clause in turn outlaws government prescriptions of religion. Actions that coerce the conscience, that mandate forms of religious expression that discriminate in favor of religion or improperly ally the state with churches and other religious bodies. No undue burden on, no undue coercion of conscience, no undue restrictions on, no undue mandating of religious expression, no discrimination against, no discrimination for religion, no government intrusions within, no government alliances with religious bodies. Read together this way the free exercise and establishment clauses afford reciprocal and complimentary protections of multiple principles of religious liberty, liberty of conscience, freedom of religious expression, religious equality for a plurality of faiths and yes, separation of church and state. When it's viewed in isolation therefore, the principle of separation of church and state serves religious liberty best when it is used prudentially and not categorically. James Madison, a rather firm proponent of separationism in his later life, warned already in 1933 that quote, it may not be easy in every possible case to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. Madison's caveat has become even more salient today. For better or for worse the modern American welfare state and now the modern American security state reaches very deeply into virtually all aspects of modern life through its vast network of education, charity, welfare, childcare, healthcare, construction, zoning, workplace, taxation, immigration and sundry other regulations. Madison's preferred solution was what he called an entire abstinence of government from interference with religion in any way whatsoever beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others. This traditional understanding of a minimal state role in the life of society in general and of religious bodies in particular. However alluring a classic libertarian theory is simply no longer realistic in practice. Some level of confrontation some level of cooperation between church and state are almost inevitable in our modern polity. It is thus even more imperative today than in Madison's day that the principle of separation of church and state not be pressed to reach what Madison called potentials. Government must strike a balance between coercion and freedom. The state cannot coerce citizens to participate in religious ceremonies and subsidies that they find odious. But the state cannot prevent citizens from participation in public programs and forums just because they happen to be religious. It is one thing to outlaw affairs and broadcasted Bible readings from the public school classroom after all students are compelled to be there. It's quite another thing to ban moments of silence and private religious speech in these same public schools. It's one thing to bar direct tech support for religious education quite another thing to bar text deductions for parents who choose to educate their children in religious schools. It's one thing to prevent government officials from delegating their core police powers to religious bodies. Quite another thing to prevent them from facilitating the charitable services of voluntary religious and non-religious associations alike. To press separationist logic too deeply into the unessentials not only trivializes religion as Stephen Carter has saged it also trivializes the Constitution converting it from a coda of cardinal principles of national law into a codex of petty precepts of local life. Individuals should exercise a comparable prudence in seeking protection from the public expressions of religion that they cannot abide. In the constitutional schemes of 19th century America it was not so much the courts as the frontier that provided this freedom a place away from it all where one could escape with one's conscience and co-religionists. Today the frontier still provides this freedom if not physically in small towns and in wild mountains then virtually in our ability to sift out and to shut out the public voices of religion that we do not wish to hear. Both modern technology and modern privacy doctrine make escapes to this virtual frontier considerably easier than in the days of covered wagons and mule trains. Just turn off Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Turn away the missionary at your door close your eyes to the city and the politics that offends. Cover your ears to the public prayer that you can't abide. Forgo the military chaplain's pastoral counseling. Skip the legislative chaplain's prayers. Walk by the town halls menorah and star. Don't join the religious student group at your public university. Don't vote for the collared candidate. Don't browse the evangelical's newspapers. Avoid the services of the Catholic and religious leaders. Don't rush on the readings of the Scientologists. Turn down the trinkets of the coal porters. Turn your back on the ministries of the hate mongers. All these escapes to the virtual frontier. The law does and will protect with force if necessary. Such voluntary self-protections from religion will ultimately provide far greater support for the public. And we will be discussing yet another tried and tired constitutional case. Thank you for your kind attention. We've got about ten minutes for questions. I encourage any of you that have questions. We do ask that we've got mics set up. And that you speak your questions into the mic for purposes of our government. I didn't know the microphone was on quite that loud. Congress is the one that legislated under God into the Pledge of Allegiance. Not some state government. And don't you think that the court should have agreed with Michael Newdell that the federal Congress should not have the right to demean and to coerce atheists. I'd also like to hear what you have Frank. The Pledge of Allegiance Newdell case raised several issues at once when the court was trying to address them all at once. The constitutional issue that's central to this discussion is the establishment clause question. Does Congress's addition of the under God language to the Pledge of Allegiance result in an establishment of religion? There are alternative constitutional considerations and concerns that the court was also addressing. One was how generous do we want to be in the recognition of standing? When parties press a constitutional case, how active do we want to be in allowing them to represent interests which are distant from their own interests but maybe recognized in a party whom they represent? And the second issue that was implicated besides the establishment clause was the question of how much deference are we going to be giving to state domestic relations law which dictated in the particular Newdell case what relationship the father Mr. Newdell had toward his non custodial child. The court took the case in part because of the collision of these three lines of cases and had to resolve it. What the court's majority chose to do is to focus on the standing issue and to coat it with a federalist reading. That is, it's interested in curbing undue standing as it had said several times in prior cases Lujan and its many progeny and there is also interested in underscoring the new federalism that the court had engineered under various other constitutional provisions and which was being threatened by a lack of recognition of the domestic relations issue and what legal representation meant with respect to the custodial versus the non custodial parent. I think the court took the case not because it wanted to punt on the establishment clause issue but because it couldn't figure out which of the three important constitutional questions it wanted to make the driving engine of the case. Ultimately what the court did in its majority opinion was punt on the establishment clause question but ultimately in punting on the establishment clause question and finding as it did reversing the Ninth Circuit creating again a uniform application of Congress's mid-1950s laws under God. Now that ducks the hard question which is is the imposition of the oath that says the Pledge of Allegiance excuse me that says one nation under God a an establishment of religion especially as the questioner underscores this is Congress doing it not the states where a federalism argument might obtain. I think in this instance you have to read the issue of under God together with the Barnett case of 1943 where the U.S. Supreme Court there said quite clearly parties may if they have conscientious scruples because of worries of language or worries of symbol or failure to want to participate in the religious ritual can escape participation in the ritual and the Barnett case gives a release valve and tries to provide a free exercise ground to deal with the constitutional issue at hand when Congress passes a law there is also a 1961 case Tercoso V Watkins where the Supreme Court says quite clearly we are interested in protecting the rights of atheists and forcing an atheist to profess an oath alleging his belief in God is a violation of his free exercise rights with those two constitutional precedents in place providing free exercise relief from those who are minorities with respect to Congress's mandated conduct requiring a pledge of allegiance including under God I think the court could quite easily in the pledge of allegiance case come to the conclusion this is not an establishment of religion that would be the way it would resolve that conflict whether satisfactory or unsatisfactory in open question there is one other avenue of argumentation which I think is going to have to come up in subsequent cases and that is the Supreme Court has repeatedly said on issues of tax exemption on issues of the use of religious symbols on issues of the use of legislative chaplains in state legislatures long standing practices themselves may by reason of their long standing quality become de-religionized or if you will secularized and you get the argument that Justice O'Connor presses especially in Lynch v. Donnelly in the concurring opinion where she talks about ceremonial deism long standing practices largely escape establishment clause scrutiny because by reason of their long standing secular practice they lose the odious religious taint that without it would result in establishment of religion the problem is those arguments from history have always to date been predicated by ancient practices tax exemption goes back to the Jewish law issues of legislative chaplains goes back to 1774 the first session of Congress the use of religious symbols by government goes back to the earliest times in the colonies here we have an instance of the importation of language 50 odd years ago driven by political calculus in the cold war to the communists and saying we are engaging in a crusade here we have God on your side and you affirmatively profess you don't have God on your side the court is going to have to decide how long is long enough to de-religionize an issue it does not have clear guidance so far in its case law to resolve that dispute other question here in the cases of teaching of creationism or intelligent design in public schools it's direct it's directly related to this 1947 supreme court case and you said in your closing arguments that it's one thing to prohibit prayers in the public schools but then when you get to teaching mandating and teaching intelligent design you're essentially coercing public students that are controlled by local boards not by the federal government or by congress you're mandating that they be instructed in religious ideas in a science class so how do you feel that that the wall of separation church and state should come down when it comes down to a local school board mandating teaching intelligent design we have three supreme court precedents on point which are more pertinent than what I think the supreme court precedents on point are number one the dicta of the shamp case in 1963 where the supreme court says quite clearly even while banning the use of the bible and prayers in the public school the use of religion as part of civic education is perfectly appropriate there's nothing wrong with teaching the history of the middle ages and mentioning the catholic church there's nothing wrong with talking about the settlement of new england and talking about the puritans and their covenant theology as long as it's part of civic education it's appropriate say the dicta of shamp in a case of 1968 called eppers and verses arkansas where there was an attempt by a state legislature to ban the teaching of evolution the supreme court not only was inventive in its standing doctrine but concluded that would be unconstitutional simply to ban a scientific theory because of religious offense it might cause to the teacher of the student or the local school board was insufficient to meet establishment clause concerns and then in a 1987 case edwards versus agalar there was a circumstance where a state sought to get equal time for the teaching of creationism alongside evolutionism the notion being that an evolutionary theory if it gets 20 minutes in discussion should have a corresponding alternative theory of creationism that's proffered a state had created that as what it thought to be an equal time opportunity for theological as well as scientific theories of origins and the supreme court and edwards the agalar said very sorry that's a violation of the establishment clause with those three rather firm precedents in place and with the predicate of the last two at least being that evolution is a scientific theory creationism is a theological theory one would be very hard pressed to find a constitutionally local school board or state order that would say we ask you to teach in your science classes evolution and creation slash intelligent design if you can coat your creationism or intelligent design theory as a scientific theory and question the premise of the last two cases a person and egg yard then you got an argument but the place for the teaching of creationism would not be in a science course on the history of origins per shamp it would be where in the teaching of literature with the Bible being used as a literary text and Genesis one and two being in that context that would be constitutional but the teaching of it in a science class would not be any other questions I thank you so much for your kindness oh we have the good judge the good judge don't know anything about anything but you know much about much madame could you talk for about a half an hour on the the new mantra that's running around the state and the federal government to on faith services executive programs legislation and even now a possible state constitutional provision permitting the same whatever you choose to answer that regard I haven't been following the local colloquies so my answer is going to be predicated on ignorance but that's never stopped me before I should say that at this lectern in September my colleague Steve Tipton stood here and gave a long lecture on issues of faith based initiatives that the congress was excuse me the white house was pressing and there's a long learned speech that's available on our center website which I would commend to your bruise if you haven't seen it already this move toward the reintegration of church and state authorities at the federal and at the state level has been encouraged in part by the gradual fracturing of the supreme court in its separationist stand the supreme court over the last 15 years has been using separation of powers arguments federalism arguments and alternative understandings of the establishment clause that do not sound in separation of church state terms but talk instead about a coercion endorsement and other things and has softened the rigor of establishment clause scrutiny those trends in recent establishment clause jurisprudence have encouraged both congress and the white house but also states both executive and legislative branches to become more experimental again in the church state cooperation that historically obtained and which ever sent in its immediate progeny outlawed the court so far has been relatively generous in allowing new kinds of church state cooperation for the delivery of secular services the issue is always to what extent is the religious body in receipt of state or federal funds using those funds for religious purposes if that is the case those actions are automatically unconstitutional even under the current fractured opinion making by the supreme court but when religious bodies choose to receive state or federal money and to use that state or federal money for the sake of delivering educational charitable or other kinds of services to a general population against whom no religious test oath or screen is used the issue is an appropriate efficient way of getting stuff done why should the state spend all of its money all of its time doing these things why should the state create a variety of new institutions when we have communities of faith that are prone that are primed and that are eager to take this on and so in my view these are healthy experiments healthy experiments in rethinking whether in the post-Eversonian age some level of cooperation is again appropriate not for the sake of helping the church or other religious bodies but for the sake of helping those poor folk out there 40 million of whom live below the poverty line and who are in desperate need of social services hitherto foreclose to them because of the ineptitude of the government officials delivering same there's a lot of negotiation and policing that has to go on with respect to the propriety of the use of the funding but the generic issue of whether it's appropriate to use religious bodies alongside non-religious like position bodies to deliver basic services as a private sector activity I personally have no reservation about thank you so very very much thank you Professor Whitty for your words of clarity thank you Professor Whitty for your words of conviction and your words of commitment thank you Al McDonald for making this lecture possible for your commitment to us here at Emory Law School I ask that all of you take a look in your program you'll see a form that we'd like you to fill out just so that you can give us information on how you found out about today's presentation and turn in that form to one of our staff members as you leave and also take note of our future lectures and finally simply give me in one final round of thanks to Professor Whitty and Mr. McDonald The preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University


You may not have noticed but I am wearing my Count Dracula outfit Okay kiddos and kidettes women and womenettes Third time lucky. This is the third video of the day. I am testing Your resilience and your inner strength Let's see who will break up first you or me I'm gonna keep making videos until one of us one of us lies down and lays his weapons Peace So today's video is a kind of a new new theory of empathy There's a question here when you empathize with someone are Are you empathizing are you relating to are you interacting with an external object with the representation of this external object in your mind with a kind of Internal object that represents the external object with an avatar an icon. I don't know how you want to call it a handle or Are you interacting and relating to a totally internal object that has very little to do with the external object So these are the three possibilities totally external representation of the external internally or totally internal and The common answer today is that when you empathize with someone you are interacting 100% with an external Object with an entity out there and that you are relating to this entity that this entity this external entity provokes in you internal psychodynamics internal processes We're gonna study this in depth and I'm gonna come up with an alternative Which is a bit shocking because my proposed new theory of empathy is that when we empathize We are actually Reacting to a totally Internal object that is extremely little to do with the external object the external object the other person is just a trigger It triggers the internal object Now if this is true the whole nature of empathy Should be completely reconceived and many disorders of empathy like narcissism like psychopathy should also be reconsidered and then there's a question of Partial empathy such as cognitive empathy called empathy, which is reflexive plus cognitive and in babies Reflexive empathy babies have only reflexive empathy. It opens a whole a whole can of worms But before we go there just a clarification I never actually in several videos and several interviews of my channel I made very clear that I regard autism to be a brain disorder.  We don't know exactly what causes autism by the way There's no a great theory on what causes autism.  That's all I said I don't think autism is caused by upbringing or by mother mothering or by bed parenting or by by any of the theories that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s So now to the topic of today's video a new theory of empathy first of all the very existence of empathy should be questioned It is often confused with intersubjectivity What is intersubjectivity the oxford companion to philosophy defines intersubjectivity this way it says intersubjectivity refers to the status Of being somehow accessible to at least two and usually all minds or subjectivities intersubjectivity implies that there is some sort of communication between those minds Which in turn implies that each communicating mind is aware not only of the existence of the other minds But also of its intention to convey information to the other minds Intersubjectivity is Is a kind of idea which if subjective processes Can be brought into agreement Then perhaps this is as good as the unattainable status of being objective Completely independent of subjectivity in other words if we could bring all minds into sync If we could bring all minds into agreement on something perhaps this is a good enough definition of objectivity and in this sense ironically Empathy enhance empathy theoretically should lead to objectivity By the way, this is not the case The more empathic you are the more you misread people. This is what studies have shown So empathy does not lead to objectivity It does not lead outside. It seems to lead inside The more empathic you are The more you withdraw From other people the less well you read them the less well you understand them It's a shocking Recent discovery in many many studies And so if this is true empathy has something to do not with other people But a lot more to do with you the empathizer the Companion the Oxford companion to philosophy continues the question facing us is whether Intersubjectivity is definable Without presupposing an objective environment in which communication takes place the wiring from subject A to subject B At the least fundamental at a less fundamental level, however the need for intersubjective verification of Scientific hypothesis has been long recognized. So for example in quantum mechanics, we talk about the Contribution of the observer to the experiment Okay Here's the thing if empathy was about other people Then empathizing with a huge number of other people would have led you to a better grasp of reality But this is not the case The more you empathize the less the more impaired your reality testing the less correctly your grasp reality At least about other people So it therefore the inevitable conclusion is Inescapably that empathy is much more in internal process much more to do with you Then with others on the face of it the difference between intersubjectivity and empathy is dual double one intersubjectivity requires an explicit Communicated agreement between at least two subjects and it involves external things so-called objective entities other people these differences are Look very fundamental, but actually they're pretty out if artificial This is how empathy is defined in a textbook psychology and introduction by Charles G. Morris 1996 He says Closely related to the ability to read other people's emotions is empathy the arousal of an emotion in an observer That is a vicarious response to the other person's situation Empathy depends not only on one's ability to identify someone else's emotions But also on one's capacity To put oneself in the other person's place and to experience an appropriate emotional response Just as sensitivity to non-verbal cues increases with age So does empathy the cognitive and perceptual abilities required for empathy develop only as a child matures in Empathy training for example Morris continues each member of the couple is taught to share inner feelings and to listen to and understand the partner's feelings before Responding to them empathy technique Focuses the couple's attention on feelings and requires that they spend more time listening and less time in rebuttal so empathy Does require the communication of feelings and an agreement on the appropriate outcome of the communicated emotions We call this an effective agreement Not effective affective in the absence of such an agreement in the absence of an agreement on the outcome of the Communicative options. We are faced with inappropriate effect. For example laughing at a funeral Laughing in a funeral is inappropriate and it happens because we don't agree on the outcome of communicating emotions such as sadness Moreover Empathy does relate to external objects. It is provoked by them There is no empathy in the absence of an empathy someone you empathize with It's true that inter subjectivity is intuitively applied to the inanimate While empathy is applied to the living animals humans even plants But this is a difference in human preferences not in definition Empathy can be redefined as a form of inter subjectivity which involves living things as Objects to which the communicated inter subjective agreement is applied It is wrong to limit our understanding of empathy to the communication of emotion Rather, it is the inter subjective concomitant experience of being The empathy for the person who empathizes Empathizes not only with the empathy is emotions But also with the empathy is physical state and other parameters of existence like pain hunger thirst suffocation sexual pleasure and so on So I disagree I disagree with the Distinction between inter subjectivity and empathy I think empathy is a private case of inter subjectivity and I also disagree with Morris and others that In the absence of communication of emotion. There's no empathy because you could empathize with non-emotional states of being So empathy is not about emotions. It's about existence. It's about being What is it that we feel in empathy Do we feel our emotions? Do we feel do we experience our sensations? provoked by an external trigger Which is classic inter subjectivity Or do we experience some kind of magical enchanted transfer of another person's objects another person's feelings and another person's sensations to us Do we see someone? He triggers us and then we experience our own emotions and sensations or That person transfers to us Emotions and sensations which of the two Well, let's start with the basics a Transfer from one person to another is physically impossible as far as we know so following Sherlock Holmes If you deem something impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth So if it's impossible for one person to transfer feelings Emotions sensations to another person it means that empathy takes place 100% inside It's an internal phenomenon It has very little to do with anything external or any one external The other person just triggers in us a cascade of Emotions cognitions sensations feelings. It's a trigger Empathy is the is a set of reactions emotional and cognitive its reactions to being triggered By an external object by the other it is equivalent of resonance in the physical sciences or flashbacks in PTSD But we have no way of ascertaining that the wavelength of such resonance is identical in both subjects Do we really know? The frequency of another person. Do we know what another person is feeling? Do we know the subjective experience of a specific emotion in another person? We have no way to verify the feelings emotions sensations or even cognitions Invoked and evoked and provoked and elicited in two subjects are the same. I don't know if my subjective experience of the color red is Your subjective experience of the color red When we use the word red, are we talking about the same thing? And this is the color red, which is a an objective Light frequency light wave frequency Imagine when we talk about love or hatred or repulsion these are compounded multifaceted Schemas of of everything Cognitions emotions values experiences memories thoughts identity Cultural and social morey they all interfere and intervene and compose and recompose and recombine and everything to yield to yield sadness When you're telling me I'm sad and I'm telling you I'm sad too Are we talking about the same thing? Is there and a procedure? Is there a test? Is there an experiment we can conduct that we tell us that what I call sadness is what you call sad? No, yes, there is no Colors for instance have unique uniform independently measurable properties the energy and even so No one can prove that what I see is black is what another person would call black adult adult honest colorblind person Uses the word black, but what he means when he says black is not what I mean If this is true with colors which are objective measurable phenomena It is infinitely more true in the case of emotions and feelings and we are forced therefore to refine the definition Let's try again Empathy is a form of intersubjectivity Which involves living things as objects to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates It is the intersubjective concomitant experience of being The empath or the person who empathizes empathizes not only with the empathy is emotions but also with his physical state and other parameters of existence such as pain hunger first suffocation sexual pleasure, but the meaning attributed to the words used By both of us by the empath or and the empathy The meaning attributed to the words the meaning The meaning attached to the intersubjective agreement known as empathy the meaning is totally dependent Upon each party There is no dictionary they can never be a dictionary between two people minds are inaccessible Mines are firewall by definition. I can never enter your mind. I have to rely 100% on What you report to me? If you tell me I'm said you may be faking I have no way of knowing I've no way of proving it not even With a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine Because you can fake that too There's no way no known way To establish with 100% certainty.  The subjective experience the introspective experience of sadness. I Can prove that it's the same for you as it is for me The same words are used the same denotates But it cannot be proven that the same connotates the same experiences same emotions and sensations are being discussed or communicated We are lying to ourselves We are we create a lexical dictionary convention We say listen Let's agree that the word sadness means the same for you as it is it does to me as it does for me Let's agree that your love is my love Which is the source of a lot of misunderstanding in many couples They use words Which describe emotions and even cognitions and they don't agree on a common dictionary And why they don't agree on a common dictionary because it's impossible to do it This is impossible to accomplish Even if I put two members of a couple a man and a woman and They talk for the next 80 years they discuss for the next 80 years. What is the meaning of love? It would still be something extraneous They would still not be discussing the experience of love How does she Experience love how does he experience love the physiological manifestations may be the same heartbeat blood pressure Pupil dilation, but that's it What's the subjective experience? What does love mean to her in the deepest most profound sense? How does he go through love? How does he become through love? There's no way to communicate this We are utterly Isolated solipsistic islands We are ships passing at the night in the night and and we blow our fog horns and we call this love communication and then we are gone Then we are gone Language and by extension art culture they serve to introduce us to other points of view What is it like to be someone else to paraphrase to paraphrase Thomas Nagel? By providing a bridge between the subjective inner experience and the objective words images sounds Language facilitates social exchange and interaction. It's useful It is a dictionary which translates one's subjective private language to the coin of the public medium knowledge and language or thus the ultimate social glue Though both are based on approximations guesses and frankly lies Confabulations, I refer you to George Steiners after Babel. I had the privilege of spending three years with him in Geneva amazing intellectual True intellectual old-fashioned type old school Whereas the intersubjective agreement regarding measurements and observations Concerning external object is verifiable or falsifiable using independent tools So when we talk about objective things We can conduct lab experiments We can conduct studies and we can reach an intersubjective agreement on the size of this laptop We can even to some extent reach an intersubjective agreement on how big Saint Vakni's nose is But can we reach a true intersubjective agreement?  Of course not None of these are verifiable or falsifiable using independent tools. I cannot Construct a laboratory experiment to tell me how how really of how you really feel about my notes And even if you report how you feel about my nose. I don't know how it feels to you the interpretation of Empathy this second kind of intersubjective agreement is dependent upon introspection Upon introspection. It's an assumption that identical words used by different subjects still possess identical meaning And it's a fallacious this assumption is not falsifiable or verifiable. It's totally fallacious It's neither true No false. It has no truth value. It is a probabilistic statement But without probability distribution or actually even a probability object It's a meaningless statement to say what I feel is what you feel what I think is what youth This is a meaningless. These are meaningless statements empathy.  It relies on confusing confusing words with essence Confusing reports with experience confusing objective with subjective No one can access your subjective world. You're trapped you're trapped there and no one can ever get to you We are all hostages of our minds We are the ghosts in our own machines In human speak if you say that you are sad and I empathize with you It means that we have an agreement. I regard you as my object You communicate to me a property of yours sadness and this Communication triggers in me a recollection of what is sadness or what it is to be said I Say that I know what you mean.  I empathize with you We agree about being sad. We have an inter subjective agreement, but alas Such an agreement is meaningless We cannot yet measure sadness Quantify crystallize it pulverize it access it in any way from the outside Measure it and most importantly experience it We are totally and absolutely reliant on Your introspection and my introspection There is no way anyone can prove that my sadness is even remotely similar to your sadness I may be feeling or experience something that you might find Ilarious and not said at all. This happens a lot by the way. Someone is communicating some tragic experience and Someone else finds it very funny Still I call it sadness and I empathize with you regardless of the of the internal content in Cyclopida Britannica Young children's growing awareness of their own emotional states characteristics and abilities Leads to empathy. In other words the ability to appreciate the feelings and perspectives of others Empathy and other forms of social awareness are in turn important in the development of a moral sense Another important aspect of children's emotional development is the formation of their self-concept or identity Their sense of who they are and what their relation to other people is according to leaps concept of empathy a person appreciates another person's reaction by Projection of the self onto the other in his book as aesthetic aesthetic So a German book published between 1903 and 1906 he made all appreciation of art Dependent upon a similar self-projection into the object He said that when you empathize with someone you project yourself into something similarly when you see a work of art You project yourself into the work of art This may well be the key Empathy has little to do with the other person the empathy Empathy is simply the result of conditioning of Socialization We are taught empathy In other words when we hurt someone We don't experience his pain We experience our pain. We project ourselves Hurting somebody hurts us The reaction of pain is Provoked in us by our own actions including the act of observation We have been taught a learned response a conditioned response operant conditioning of feeling pain When another person is in pain and also when we inflict pain But we've also been taught to feel responsible for our fellow beings This is guilt Judeo-Christian guilt Nietzsche would say So we are taught two things We are taught to appropriate other people's experiences as ours In other words to experience our our pain for example our sadness and Mislabelling and say it's not I who we said it's he he said It's not I Who is in pain? She's in pain We misappropriate other people's emotions states like pain hunger thirst and then we attribute this to art to ourselves We mislabel we mislocate We dislocate and The second thing we have been taught to feel responsible for what happens to other people via guilt and conscience So we experience pain or Any other state whenever another person claims to experience it as well. We feel guilty and When the emotion is positive we feel responsible somehow Very often we meet someone and they're happy in his she's happy and Unconsciously what we would say to ourselves. I had something to do with it. I Had something to do with it even if I only share this happiness Just share sharing is caring, you know Sharing also makes her happy. So her happiness is multiplied by sharing And This is a social instinct. It's nothing to do with psychology It's a social Conditioning part of socialization. So when we see another person, there are two processes immediately To reactive processes that start immediately another person's presence Just the fact that he's there a breathing triggers two processes process number one we Appropriate we steal from him We confiscate His emotions his facial expressions his body language his he's everything and We emulate we imitate we mold ourselves with shape shift to become him Numerous experiments have demonstrated that body language is contagious When someone crosses legs you cross legs the fact When someone's someone repeats a certain word a lot of times you repeat the same word a lot much more these are facts Social behavior is contagious. So that's the first thing we appropriate these emotions these states of being and we attribute them to ourselves we Steal them in effect. It's shop other lifting pitch like shoplifting So this is the first thing and then we mistakenly say his sadness is my sadness. So I'm experiencing sadness Second thing we feel responsible If the emotion is negative the others emotion is negative. We feel guilty. What did we do? If the others emotion is positive, we feel that by sharing it. We amplify it We are giving back to him his emotion. We are like mirroring or reflecting the emotion thereby Amplified it. You know when you shine a light to a mirror. It's amplified. We can use mirrors to amplify light We can use this process of mirroring to amplify happiness in some To use the example of pain We experience pain in tandem together with the other person because we feel guilty We feel somehow responsible for his condition a Land reaction is activated and we experience our kind of pain as well We communicate it to the other person and an agreement of empathy is struck between us He's in pain. I resonate It triggers my pain or a recollection of my pain I communicate to him this recollection and this resonance and we have an agreement now about pain Pain its nature its experience and its very existence We attribute feelings Sensations and experiences to the object of our actions. It is the psychological defense mechanism of projection He was right this guy the German guy quoted before he was right live We do project unable to conceive of inflicting pain upon ourselves. We displace the source So there's there's a someone with pain We look at him we observe him it triggers pain in us but inflicting pain on ourselves is no no it's taboo. It's wrong. It's pathological So we say well the pain we are feeling it was not self-inflicted It was imported from the other guy. It was transferred from the other guy to me I'm experiencing his pain, not my pain and defending Defending against the realization that I'm the one who is causing pain to myself I'm acting in a way mini micro-suicidally apropos mini Hello Where would I be without her? She's my liquidity So this is again a second layer of confabulation The first layer of confabulation We can experience what other people say what other people experience wrong second level of confabulation and emotion is triggered in us But we attribute this emotion to someone else to the other We say we got this emotion from him by contagion. He infected us with this emotion. I Appropriated his emotion. It's another confabulation. It's not true The emotion is ours The emotion I feel when I see someone said is my sadness not his sadness The Britannica cyclopedia Britannica Perhaps the most important aspect of children's emotional development is a growing awareness of their own emotional states and The ability to discern and interpret the emotions of others The last half of the second year is a time when children start becoming aware of their own emotional states characteristics abilities and potential for action this phenomenon is called self-awareness I Must add that it is coupled with strong narcissistic behaviors and traits primary narcissism Coming back to the Britannica cyclopedia Britannica this growing awareness of an ability to recall one's own emotional states one's own emotional states leads to empathy or The ability to appreciate the feelings and perceptions of others young children's dawning awareness of their own potential for action Inspires them to try to direct or otherwise affect the behavior of others with age Children acquired the ability to understand the perspective or point of view of other people a Development that is closely linked with the empathic sharing of other people's emotions One major factor underline these changes is the child increasing cognitive sophistication For example in order to feel the emotion of guilt a child must appreciate the fact that he could have inhibited a particular Action of his that violated the moral standard The awareness that one can impose Every strength on one's own behavior Requires a certain level of cognitive maturation and therefore the emotion of guilt cannot appear until that competence is attained That empathy is a reaction to external stimuli That is fully contained within the empath or the person who empathizes and then projected onto the empathy Is clearly demonstrated by inborn reflexive empathy? It is the ability to exhibit empathy and altruistic behavior in response to facial expressions newborns react this way to mother's facial expression of sadness or distress and The fact that newborns can react Can imitate can emulate mother's facial expressions six hours after they're born Six hours after they're born that turn their head to follow mother and within four months They imitate expressions This serves to prove that empathy is very little to do Very little to do with the feelings Experiences or sensations of the others of the other like the empathy The child at age four months when he is already clearly empathic Does not perceive the existence of other people as separate He does not perceive other people as autonomous independent entities He has a unitary view of the universe.  He regards himself as the world he and the world are one he does not concept of me and others So where does the empathy come from if it crucially depends on? Feeling another person experiencing another person sensing another person and on the feeling the experiences and sensations of other people How does it manifest at age four months? Surely the infant has no idea what it is like to feel sad Definitely not what it is like for his mother to feel sad In this case, it is a complex complex reflexive reaction Later on empathy is still rather reflexive the result of conditioning empathy therefore Technically the form of psychosis What is psychosis in psychosis? We have hyper reflection The the self of the psychotic Expands to include the world And as it includes the world the psychotic confuses Internal objects with external he thinks that his internal objects are actually outside himself. They're external This confusion he has a voice in his head. It's an interject He hears it coming from the corner of the room There's an image in his head. He sees it standing there. He confuses He kind of projects his internal objects to the outside. That's what we do in empathy We actually Empathy is a totally self-contained internal process. It is treated by the presence of Another person So there's another person That other person triggers a cascade of emotions and cognitions inside and memories inside us This cascade is totally Totally internal It involves only internal objects Only internal emotions Only self-generated internal cognitions Only it has nothing to do with the external object and yet Anyway, and yet We make we are confused. We make the mistake of thinking that these emotions and cognitions come from the other person not from us Everything happens inside, but we think it comes from the outside This is an excellent definition of psychosis Everything happens inside, but we think it's coming from the outside. That's what a psychotic would tell you It's coming from the outside Empathy is the same. It happens inside But we misperceive it is coming from the outside So empathy is a form of psychosis The encyclopedia Britannica quotes fascinating research which dramatically proves the object's independent nature of empathy In other words that it's a totally internal process Empathy is an internal reaction Triggered by external an external cue provided by animate objects It is communicated to the empathy other by the empathore But the communication and the resulting agreement I know how you feel. I know how you feel Therefore we agree on how you feel this resulting agreement is rendered meaningless by the absence of a monoviland unambiguous dictionary And so the Britannica says an extensive series of studies indicated Indicated that positive emotion feelings enhance empathy and altruism In other words when we feel good and we're happy we're in a good mood. We are much more empathy By the way, when we had just exercised Physically, we are much more empathic When we are sick ill Physically, we are less empathic Empathy depends critically on what's happening to us Not on anyone outside It's a totally internal thing. It reacts to our state of mind and to our health and to our To exercise and to neurotransmitters and to hormones. It's totally Totally internal thing and yet We keep saying no, it's not internal. It's external. I'm empathizing with him I'm empathizing with her. I feel bad for him. I feel good for her They have nothing to do with it. It's psychotic to claim otherwise Britannica continues it was shown by the American psychologist Alice M. Eisen That relatively small favors or bits of good luck like finding money in a coin telephone or getting an unexpected gift This kind of serendipitous events Of small favors or some small gift They induce positive emotion in people and that such emotion regularly increased the subjects inclination To sympathize to empathize to provide help Several studies have demonstrated that positive emotion facilitates creative problem solving One of these studies showed that positive emotion enabled subjects to name more users for common objects Another study showed that positive emotion enhanced creative problem solving by enabling subjects to see relations among objects and among other people And these relations between objects would have gone unnoticed. Otherwise Positive psychology positive emotionality positive experiences like gifts positive positive everything makes you much more empathic. What is empathy?  That's why people seek connection. That's why they want friendship. That's why they socialize Britannica continues a number of studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of positive emotion on thinking memory and action In preschool and older children, but if empathy increases with positive emotion If empathy increases with good luck With good mood with exercise Then it has little to do with the alleged objects of empathy With the other people There's a lot to do with the person in whom the empathy is provoked. It's a lot to do with you It's again about you It's in a way narcissistic Empathy is a narcissistic psychotic defense And that's the new way A totally new way of looking at empathy