this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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the way we treat being egotistical as the worst personality trait is classist. Empathy is also the worst emotion to make decisions using.
That's gonna be a what from me dawg. I agree that people's empathy is often coopted to let the people actively doing harm get away with it, but holistically speaking shooting a Nazi for example is an act of kindness and empathy.
It is not that necessarily. If the person does it for those reasons it is, but if I shoot a nazis because of anger it is not an action of empathy. Empathy is a motivation, it cannot be brought into an action after the fact.
Empathy is just the ability to see how someone else feels. It's better to take actions based upon their materials outcomes rather than just an imagined emotional response to it. This isn't even self-centered, using compassion, which is not wanting to hurt others, is good way to make choices. but solely thinking about how others would feel or have felt is not great.
Could you explain what you mean re: empathy? Maybe it's the worst if the end goal is maximizing one's own well being with no regard for others. But if your moral theory says the neighbor's well-being is just as important as your own, then empathy plays a large part in helping choose correctly.
No it doesn't. Being able to know how my neighbor feels, which is what empathy is, is good for relating to my neighbor, and useful in more emotional situations to avoid hurting them, but in general thinking about the actual outcome of actions is better than gauging other's emotional response to them.
The other's emotional response to an action is part of the actual outcome of that action...
ya and it's better to consider it than not but it shouldn't be the most important thing. A lot of people are scared of conflict because they're too empathetic.
Maybe your definition is more specific to having an intuitive grasp of social situations.
In my view, empathy is a superpower that makes it easy to understand how much others may suffer or feel good given any decision. Whether it concerns a neighbor crying about a breakup or a child starving across the globe. It provides a huge dose of motivation to actually do something when others are suffering. It doesn't replace logical thought, it adds to it.
Show me an emotionally charged video of animals being beaten, and I'm much more likely to want to help, as opposed to only seeing some cold facts on a page about numbers of animals mistreated.
and this is my point. You aren't critically evaluating the situation, as the same thing happens in each case.
I'm saying without empathy you might see some cold data and ignore it. With empathy, you have a visceral understanding of the issue, and are motivated to go to the same cold data and make a rational choice for how to help. You're acting like you have to ignore rationality to feel empathy. They can coexist and compliment each other.
Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy. They may be very good at making decisions that benefit themselves, but aren't likely to do things to increase others' well being at their own expense, even if it's a net positive.