Is empathy the problem?

[GLam1761]

“the compassion of the wicked is cruel, while the
righteous cares for the life of his beast” Prov. 12:10

 

[HarryStotle]

Difficult to parse that to see if you agree that there should be concrete reasons for any moral position. So I guess we can cut to the quick…

Can you give me good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts, why you shouldn’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower?

Why should we assume non-religious moral grounds for anything?

You haven’t made the case for non-religious morality, so why are you constraining me to your metaphysical presumptions?

I am perfectly happy to admit there are no non-religious grounds for morality. It is you who are touting atheistic morality, so really it is up to YOU to provide the “good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts” for morality. I have already said there are none, and you haven’t been able to provide any. So why should I argue a case from what neither YOU NOR I consider good grounds?

My claim is that if God exists and God is the transcendent ground of all Being, then we have objective moral grounds for why we shouldn’t steal a lawnmower. The Ground of Existence Itself (AKA God) endows every human being with meaning, purpose and worth, therefore we ought to treat other human beings and their property with respect because the very nature of existence is moral to its core – meaning, purpose and value being written into the ground of existence itself.

If existence is merely purposeless, causal and material in essence, then – I would claim – there are no moral grounds for not stealing your neighbor’s lawnmower. There might be pragmatic or self-preservation grounds, but those aren’t moral, just practical.

So the onus is on you, NOT ME, to give your “good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts why you shouldn’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower.” Why is it up to me to make your argument for you?

Go ahead! We are still waiting. You keep deflecting.

 

[Babaganoush]

I don’t think the article says anything new. The truth is that we are all limited in our capacity to love and have empathy for others. We can’t love everyone equally. If we try we will end up loving no one. That is a fact of human existence.

We all have loyalties, and consequently we are more empathic to certain people than others. As a conservative, my criticism of the progressive left is that it has created communities based on ideology, and consequently it encourages loyalties to people and groups that have nothing to do with you and people you have never met and never will meet. People will advocate breaking ties with your family because they voted for trump or because they don’t support open borders, or because they oppose gay marriage. The progressives empathize with those who are distant over those who are near, and it leads to the destruction of local communities. A conservative will typically be more patriotic, more religious, and have more family ties. Their empathy is toward those within those groups. They are their own groups, and if someone does something that violates the unity of one of those groups the conservative will have no empathy for them just like the progressive has no empathy for anyone who rejects their ideology.

I choose to love my family, my church and my country because that is what has been given to me. It doesn’t mean I hate those who aren’t part of one of these groups; I might love and have empathy for them too. But love of those who are given to me to love is primary because I can’t love everyone.

Thinking of the words of Christ, it may be ideal to also love those who are your enemies and will destroy those whom you love as well. But that doesn’t imply that they should ever be thought of in the same way as your family or those whom you are required to love.

 

[HarryStotle]

Freddy:

‘Don’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower’. I’d imagine you’d be able to tell me why. And the golden rule would feature in that explanation. Likewise that that very rule is predicated on your ability to understand what your neighbour would feel if he found his mower stolen. Would you want to feel like that? No? Well don’t steal from him.

In fact, my neighbors lawn mower is killing the Earth via Climate Change since he refuses to use an electric one and still uses one that blows toxic fumes all over Mother Earth, causing her further damage. We need to cease this barbaric act! Not only does it decapitate the glorious roots of Mother Nature but it further kills Mother Nature with these toxic fumes. Let’s end Climate Change denial and take the lawn mowers out of circulation. Anyone opposed to taking this lawn mower out of circulation is a Climate Change denier.

Yeah, but Mother Nature isn’t a person, so we need not accord her with any rights according to @Freddy. Neither are the animals, so the only one’s with rights – according to your adversary in debate – are those known to definitively be “persons,” however that might be determined.

 

[Babaganoush]

It is also relevant that morality is a law of a community. It isn’t an abstract set of beliefs that an individual stubbornly follows. If you accept one community in favor of another, you are also accepting one morality in favor of another. When those two communities come into conflict the other community is always morally repugnant. There is a conservative morality, there is a Christian morality, there is a progressive morality. Every nation has its own morality. And every family has their own morality. It holds the community together. When a part of a community holds a morality that is contrary to the rest of the community they have essentially created a new community.

 

[HarryStotle]

It is also relevant that morality is a law of a community. It isn’t an abstract set of beliefs that an individual stubbornly follows.

“Stubbornly” follows?

What precisely does “morally obligatory” mean, then? No moral principle is morally obligatory because that just means to “stubbornly follow?”

Peculiar.

Isn’t offloading one’s own moral responsibility onto the community – as if the individual has no responsibility for their own morality – a way of excusing oneself from having any moral responsibility?

I am not clear how the Christian belief in the final judgement comports with this idea of yours.

Do you think that when we are called before God to account for our OWN behaviour that a legitimate defence will be: “The community told me it was okay.”

Let’s imagine a German citizen pre-WWII who goes along with the pogroms of the Nazi Party because “morality is a law of a community,” then justifies that cooperation because morality “isn’t an abstract set of beliefs that an individual stubbornly follows.” So stubbornly following the “abstract beliefs” about the value of every human being can be subverted when the community agrees that extermination of those the community thinks are “less than human” is moral and just?

 

[Freddy]

Aquinas11:

Freddy:

‘Don’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower’. I’d imagine you’d be able to tell me why. And the golden rule would feature in that explanation. Likewise that that very rule is predicated on your ability to understand what your neighbour would feel if he found his mower stolen. Would you want to feel like that? No? Well don’t steal from him.

In fact, my neighbors lawn mower is killing the Earth via Climate Change since he refuses to use an electric one and still uses one that blows toxic fumes all over Mother Earth, causing her further damage. We need to cease this barbaric act! Not only does it decapitate the glorious roots of Mother Nature but it further kills Mother Nature with these toxic fumes. Let’s end Climate Change denial and take the lawn mowers out of circulation. Anyone opposed to taking this lawn mower out of circulation is a Climate Change denier.

Yeah, but Mother Nature isn’t a person, so we need not accord her with any rights according to @Freddy. Neither are the animals, so the only one’s with rights – according to your adversary in debate – are those known to definitively be “persons,” however that might be determined.

Did someone say that we shouldn’t value the environment? You must be confusing me with someone else.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Difficult to parse that to see if you agree that there should be concrete reasons for any moral position. So I guess we can cut to the quick…

Can you give me good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts, why you shouldn’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower?

Why should we assume non-religious moral grounds for anything?

You haven’t made the case for non-religious morality, so why are you constraining me to your metaphysical presumptions?

I am perfectly happy to admit there are no non-religious grounds for morality. It is you who are touting atheistic morality, so really it is up to YOU to provide the “good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts” for morality. I have already said there are none, and you haven’t been able to provide any. So why should I argue a case from what neither YOU NOR I consider good grounds?

My claim is that if God exists and God is the transcendent ground of all Being, then we have objective moral grounds for why we shouldn’t steal a lawnmower. The Ground of Existence Itself (AKA God) endows every human being with meaning, purpose and worth, therefore we ought to treat other human beings and their property with respect because the very nature of existence is moral to its core – meaning, purpose and value being written into the ground of existence itself.

If existence is merely purposeless, causal and material in essence, then – I would claim – there are no moral grounds for not stealing your neighbor’s lawnmower. There might be pragmatic or self-preservation grounds, but those aren’t moral, just practical.

So the onus is on you, NOT ME, to give your “good reasons, without reverting to religious concepts why you shouldn’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower.” Why is it up to me to make your argument for you?

I made the argument that the golden rule and empathy will get us to a moral rules. Such as: ‘Don’t steal your neighbour’s lawn mower’.

If you want a fuller explanation then we can start from some common ground and go from there. So the first thing is to agree that everyone can differentiate between good and bad. Nothing esoteric at this point. Just simple things like breaking a leg is bad and having a loving family is good.

I would have thought we could have skipped this bit as it’s blazingly obvious. But having gone through the same process with @upant and fallen at the first hurdle (he wouldn’t agree that being sick could be descibed as bad and being healthy could be described as good) we may need to start at Step One.

So can we agree that there are situations in the world that can be described as bad and those that can be described as good with which we would both agree?

 

[HarryStotle]

Did someone say that we shouldn’t value the environment? You must be confusing me with someone else.

You did claim on another thread that personhood was the basis for empathy and that empathy was the grounds for moral action.

So if I say that I do not (and physically cannot) empathise with a zygote (nobody can) it means I don’t consider them to be a moral agent and do not consider actions against it to be determined from a moral perspective.

Mother Nature isn’t really a person, so we cannot, according to you, empathize with Mother Nature, so we cannot consider actions for or against nature to be determined from a moral perspective.

That needn’t mean we cannot value nature (I never claimed you said that.) However we cannot, according to your grounds for acting morally, consider our treatment of nature to be determined from moral principles.

Sure, we can “value” nature, but that is hardly the same as according rights to nature and animals. To have a right means others have a moral responsibility to uphold those rights “from a moral perspective.”

Value is not the same thing, exactly. To value something might mean that generally you act in certain ways towards it, but it doesn’t mean you have a responsibility or obligation to do so. Hence, not being persons, Mother Nature and animals do not have rights – that was the point of your persons deserve empathy argument, was it not?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Did someone say that we shouldn’t value the environment? You must be confusing me with someone else.

You did claim on another thread that personhood was the basis for empathy and that empathy was the grounds for moral action.

So if I say that I do not (and physically cannot) empathise with a zygote (nobody can) it means I don’t consider them to be a moral agent and do not consider actions against it to be determined from a moral perspective.

Mother Nature isn’t really a person, so we cannot, according to you, empathize with Mother Nature, so we cannot consider actions for or against nature to be determined from a moral perspective.

That needn’t mean we cannot value nature (I never claimed you said that.) However we cannot, according to your grounds for acting morally, consider our treatment of nature to be determined from moral principles.

Sure, we can “value” nature, but that is hardly the same as according rights to nature and animals. To have a right means others have a moral responsibility to uphold those rights “from a moral perspective.”

Value is not the same thing, exactly. To value something might mean that generally you act in certain ways towards it, but it doesn’t mean you have a responsibility or obligation to do so. Hence, not being persons, Mother Nature and animals do not have rights – that was the point of your persons deserve empathy argument, was it not?

That argument was one in opposition to the claim that the cells that a woman carries in the early stages of pregnancy was a person. That was obviously not correct as one can empathise with a person but not a zygote. It wasn’t an argument about value. Which you knew. Or at least should have known. But you rarely take the time to understand what I write so it doesn’t surprise me.

Value is a different matter. As you said, one cannot empathise with the environment but one can value it. Something does not have to have rights to have that value. And if we value something we want to protect it. If that value is removed by the thing that is valued being taken away or destroyed then it has negative consequences. Maybe to one person. Maybe to many.

But we need to get to Stage One. Which is that we can both agree that certain things are good and certain things are bad.

Are we in agreement on that?

 

[HarryStotle]

Value is a different matter. As you said, one cannot empathise with the environment but one can value it. Something does not have to have rights to have that value. And if we value something we want to protect it.

Precisely why a zygote should be valued despite whether you can empathize with it or not. It is a human being developing into a human person. Therefore, it is to be valued for its own sake.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Value is a different matter. As you said, one cannot empathise with the environment but one can value it. Something does not have to have rights to have that value. And if we value something we want to protect it.

Precisely why a zygote should be valued despite whether you can empathize with it or not. It is a human being developing into a human person. Therefore, it is to be valued for its own sake.

Yes it can be. Perhaps as a potential person but not as a person at that time. Empathy, or the impossibility of empathising with a zygote was a reason I put forward why women have no problem in having abortions at an early stage.

It’s difficult not putting that point in all caps because you keep ignoring it.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

Value is a different matter. As you said, one cannot empathise with the environment but one can value it. Something does not have to have rights to have that value. And if we value something we want to protect it.

Precisely why a zygote should be valued despite whether you can empathize with it or not. It is a human being developing into a human person. Therefore, it is to be valued for its own sake.

Yes it can be. Perhaps as a potential person but not as a person at that time. Empathy, or the impossibility of empathising with a zygote was a reason I put forward why women have no problem in having abortions at an early stage.

It’s difficult not putting that point in all caps because you keep ignoring it.

And the point I have made that you keep ignoring is that there are different levels of empathy.

The one you cling to is empathy based upon immediate feelings. I have made the point before that empathy need not be based upon immediately felt emotion but upon a larger apprehension of reality.

A mother-to-be might empathize with the unborn developing child in her womb because she can imagine and conceptualize a great deal about how that child is currently developing and what they will be like when born, when a child, when an adolescent and further on into adulthood.

Why stultify a mother’s capacity to empathize by restricting it to one moment in time of cellular development? That seems unnatural since human beings are constantly and naturally viewing their lives and the lives of their loved ones from many perspectives in the past, the present and the future, and not just as a biological specimen under a microscope.

It appears to me that you want to restrict the capacity of others to empathize by setting the parameters of that empathy to an unnaturally constricted moment of biochemistry.

Start looking at those you love as conglomerations of cells, organs, tissues and liquids. You might very quickly be reminded why your empathy isn’t based upon their biochemical makeup.

Here is your loved one…

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

We could get more graphic. Got empathy?

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How about now?

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See my point?

Can you empathize with an anatomical image of a human adult?

Why should we expect anything different when you insist that a woman must empathize with the cells of a developing zygote in order for it to have moral value?

Can you empathize with a digestive system? A brain? Muscles and ligaments?

 

[Freddy]

Why should we expect anything different when you insist that a woman must empathize with the cells of a developing zygote in order for it to have moral value?

Good grief. I am afraid I will have to resort to upper case…

EMPATHY DOES NOT DETERMINE MORAL VALUE.

Empathy was used ONLY to show that as one cannot empathise with a zygote it cannot de described as a person. When you experience empathy you understand what the other PERSON is feeling. Ipso facto, a zygote is not a person, hence the reason why women can opt for early term abortions.

Now if you DO empathise with someone (not something) then you have the ability to understand their feelings on any given matter. Their emotions. You can then make a moral decision on how to treat them. If you realise they are angry or sad or happy then you can respond based on that knowledge. And you can react in a way that coukd be described as morally good or morally bad. Empathy doesn’t dictate your response.

I really hope that’s clear as I find I am repeating myself an awfull lot.

Now do you accept that we can both agree if something is good or bad?

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

How can your average person feel empathy for someone who has been demonized by another?
Time was when we could agree to disagree on issues, without being disagreeable.
But we now live in a tribal time. Those on tribe A don’t just disagree with those in tribe B. They hate those in tribe B.
When I was in college, I took a course in social psychology. There was one exercise we did one day in class. It was called fighting fair. Two people debated an issue based on merits. If those two got into name calling or strayed from the issue, the teacher would get them back on course. It illustrated how people can sometimes stray from the issue and focus on name calling, etc.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

How can your average person feel empathy for someone who has been demonized by another?

And this is a stumbling block for me. So what if they are “bad” people? Why would that be a huge barrier?

Then again, people in general don’t make a lot of sense to me.

 

[IWantGod]

Context matters. Seems the problem is people that are highly empathetic to their “in group” but low empathy to the “out group”. Honestly it’s a puzzling trend to me.

True empathy must include tolerance since it speaks to something that we all are essentially, and everybody is in that group.

 

[JanR]

Extreme political correctness is carrying empathy a bit too far. There is such a thing as being too sensitive, too thin-skinned. We should all be respectful and kind, but this world isn’t perfect, and if one takes offense at everything, one is doomed to a miserable life.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

True empathy must include tolerance since it speaks to something that we all are essentially, and everybody is in that group.

I’d disagree slightly. Empathy requires tolerance as you said but also the ability to acknowledge someone is not in my group yet deserves similar levels of consideration as yourself and the “in group”.

 

[Freddy]

IWantGod:

True empathy must include tolerance since it speaks to something that we all are essentially, and everybody is in that group.

I’d disagree slightly. Empathy requires tolerance as you said but also the ability to acknowledge someone is not in my group yet deserves similar levels of consideration as yourself and the “in group”.

I think it’s the other way around. Tolerance requires empathy. And the fact that we consider some people to be part of our ‘in-group’ and some to be outside of it is just that. A fact. It’s part of who we are.

It’s part of our unconscious ‘manual settings’. As long as we realise that, we are in a position to override those feelings with conscious decisions.