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What is empathy?

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Re: What is empathy?

#31

Post by amag »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #26
projektir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. It's a pretty heavy prerequisite. A lot of bad things can be traced to people not understanding other people, or refusing to understand them (dehumanization). It's sufficiently fundamental and a common problem that I'm not sure how big the cohort of emphatic-but-manipulative people is. It certainly exists, but there are other issues mixed in there…

> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. By strict definition, the OP is correct. The __presumption__ is you will use that understanding for food. However, having that connection, and using it are two different things. No preq. Just a baseline.

The thing is, once you put yourself in someone else's shoes it is that much harder to act in a way that is against that person's best interest. You would actually need to deliberately work against your emotions to harm someone once you have empathized with them. It's kind of forcing yourself to jump off a cliff. Sure, it's possible, but it doesn't come natural. So the two (empathize and doing good) aren't completely two different things.

Re: What is empathy?

#32

Post by [deleted] »

ThomPete wrote: post #2

This is an ongoing discussion I have with many people. There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. In reality what it is is neither good nor bad. It's the ability to put yourself in the emotional state of someone else to understand things not only from their rational point of view but from the point of view of them as humans with both irrational (emotional) and rational perspectives. It can b…

[deleted]

Re: What is empathy?

#33

Post by amag »

slavik81 wrote: post #9
awat wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point. Empathy can be applied to judging moral crimes such as stealing food becuase you are starving. Although anctedotally I find that people who come from the exact background/situation tend to have less empathy even though they understand the context more.

Your experience seems to match the research. People who faced a challenge and succeeded in overcoming it tended to judge people who failed more harshly, but tended to judge people who succeeded more favourably. https://hbr.org/2015/10/its-harder-to-empathize-with-people-...

That makes sense because of the "if I did it, you should be able to"-fallacy that fails to take into account that people are different, even coming from identical backgrounds.

Re: What is empathy?

#34

Post by projektir »

amag wrote: post #31
chiefalchemist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. By strict definition, the OP is correct. The __presumption__ is you will use that understanding for food. However, having that connection, and using it are two different things. No preq. Just a baseline.

The thing is, once you put yourself in someone else's shoes it is that much harder to act in a way that is against that person's best interest. You would actually need to deliberately work against your emotions to harm someone once you have empathized with them. It's kind of forcing yourself to jump off a cliff. Sure, it's possible, but it doesn't come natural. So the two (empathize and doing good) aren't completely…

Yes. To both possess empathy and then proceed to do harmful things requires you to actively convert to a negative moral philosophy (i.e., legitimately realize you are doing bad things and are OK with it).

Most people are not like this, and actively believe they are good people, so higher empathy does, in practice, makes them nicer people.

Re: What is empathy?

#35

Post by projektir »

ThomPete wrote: post #19
projektir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. It's a pretty heavy prerequisite. A lot of bad things can be traced to people not understanding other people, or refusing to understand them (dehumanization). It's sufficiently fundamental and a common problem that I'm not sure how big the cohort of emphatic-but-manipulative people is. It certainly exists, but there are other issues mixed in there…

The problem with your belief is that you are assuming that it's easy to define sexism, racism, homophobia. The reality is that what a lot of people think are ex one of those three just aren't. Very few people are any of those things in any meaningful way. In fact I would claim that your belief is exactly part of the problem in that you confuse empathy with some ethical/moral idea and end up thinking that you have the…

> The problem with your belief is that you are assuming that it's easy to define sexism, racism, homophobia. The reality is that what a lot of people think are ex one of those three just aren't. Very few people are any of those things in any meaningful way.

I don't know about that. People face very real, easily definable dangers and risks from being in a marginalized group, which seems to imply there's more than just a few people involved. Is it really so outlandish to say that many parts of Russia are homophobic, for instance?

On the more obvious end of things, people who have participated in hate crimes or voted for laws that restrict marginalized groups are close enough to be deserving one of the -isms, and depending on the time period, they were not at all rare.

> In fact I would claim that your belief is exactly part of the problem in that you confuse empathy with some ethical/moral idea and end up thinking that you have the right interpretation and can judge whether someone is racist, sexist etc.

You're mixing quite a few things in here in a manner I find worrying.

> you confuse empathy with some ethical/moral idea

Please address this directly if you think I am doing so, because I'm pretty sure I am not. I've laid out my views on empathy and it's relationship to morality pretty clearly in the OP, I think.

> you have the right interpretation and can judge whether someone is racist, sexist etc.

I have to think that. It's my fundamental responsibility as a human to judge whether things are objectionable or not. If I do not do this, the default takes place, and the default is much worse than collective judgment errors.

If nobody had the right, like you say here, there would never be anyone to question the default, and I don't want to be anywhere near the kind of norms we used to have.

Being ill suited to the responsibility to judge good and evil, as we are, does not mean we get to shirk it. It does not make it better to wash your hands, say you don't know, and stay out, because the default does not wait. It will catch up with us, and I know for certain it's not on our side, and it is much worse.

Re: What is empathy?

#36

Post by philosopher1234 »

projektir wrote: post #34
amag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, once you put yourself in someone else's shoes it is that much harder to act in a way that is against that person's best interest. You would actually need to deliberately work against your emotions to harm someone once you have empathized with them. It's kind of forcing yourself to jump off a cliff. Sure, it's possible, but it doesn't come natural. So the two (empathize and doing good) aren't completely…

Yes. To both possess empathy and then proceed to do harmful things requires you to actively convert to a negative moral philosophy (i.e., legitimately realize you are doing bad things and are OK with it). Most people are not like this, and actively believe they are good people, so higher empathy does, in practice, makes them nicer people.

I think it might be too strong to say the things you are doing are bad just because they hurt other people. Thats what tradeoffs are, like firing people, for instance. I would write more but basically I think its too strong to say that most people are not like this or perhaps its too strong to say that its morally wrong to doing something harmful to someone.

Re: What is empathy?

#37

Post by nabla9 »

Puer wrote: post #4

Empathy isn't the ability to say "I understand." Empathy is admitting that, sometimes, you don't understand, but you'll still try and be appropriately supportive.

sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them.

source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sympathy-empat...

Re: What is empathy?

#38

Post by ThrustVectoring »

projektir wrote: post #34
amag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, once you put yourself in someone else's shoes it is that much harder to act in a way that is against that person's best interest. You would actually need to deliberately work against your emotions to harm someone once you have empathized with them. It's kind of forcing yourself to jump off a cliff. Sure, it's possible, but it doesn't come natural. So the two (empathize and doing good) aren't completely…

Yes. To both possess empathy and then proceed to do harmful things requires you to actively convert to a negative moral philosophy (i.e., legitimately realize you are doing bad things and are OK with it). Most people are not like this, and actively believe they are good people, so higher empathy does, in practice, makes them nicer people.

>To both possess empathy and then proceed to do harmful things requires you to actively convert to a negative moral philosophy

Or taking a consequentialist moral philosophy quite seriously. You can both empathize with terrible people and believe that harming them the correct thing to do for the greater good.

Re: What is empathy?

#39

Post by jehlakj »

cko wrote: post #28
classics2 wrote: post #7

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

I used to think I had empathy. I mean, when I see someone being taken advantage of, I tear up immediately. Until one day my mentor straight up told me “you have no empathy.” Which didn’t really bother me, since I’m pretty sure I’m not a sociopath. (Though that probably wouldn’t bother me either, by definition.) Watching that video made me realize that what I usually feel is sympathy. I think I’ve been so fortunate (o…

I believe that nobody can “have” empathy. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is still you who’s in their shoes. It’s just impossible to share the same emotions as someone if you’ve lived a different life, different experiences. When we see a teen yelling, “You don’t understand!”, we really don’t understand even when we were teens ourselves. I’m not a huge fan of the word because I think the first step to true connection is to admit that you in fact do not understand, but you’re there for them. Like the video suggests (which in my opinion isn’t really talking about empathy).

Re: What is empathy?

#40

Post by jm__87 »

projektir wrote: post #17
ThomPete wrote: post #2

This is an ongoing discussion I have with many people. There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. In reality what it is is neither good nor bad. It's the ability to put yourself in the emotional state of someone else to understand things not only from their rational point of view but from the point of view of them as humans with both irrational (emotional) and rational perspectives. It can b…

> There is a weird idea that empathy is something that makes you good. It's a pretty heavy prerequisite. A lot of bad things can be traced to people not understanding other people, or refusing to understand them (dehumanization). It's sufficiently fundamental and a common problem that I'm not sure how big the cohort of emphatic-but-manipulative people is. It certainly exists, but there are other issues mixed in there…

If this sort of topic interests you, I'd highly recommend "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky. A lot of the book examines what is going on in the brains of people who have strongly held "us" vs "them" beliefs (i.e. sexists, racists, homophobes). The core thing with these people seems to be essentialist beliefs - believing there is something essentially different and/or wrong with the out group and being too cognitively lazy to view people as individuals or trying to find commonalities.

So some people can actually strongly empathize with their in-group and do terrible things to others in the out-group, so I'm not sure I'd say a lack of empathy is 100% the cause of some of humanities worst behavior. More so bad ideas and cognitive laziness. Another thing to mention is that empathy can actually hinder action if you happen to have strong feelings of empathy for someone who is suffering. The reason is because if you're feeling someone else's suffering, you're going to then be focused on how you can stop feeling the suffering yourself instead of how you can help the other person. It has been shown that the stronger you're feeling someone else's suffering, the less capable you will be to help them. Having more compassion is the answer to this problem and if everyone was more compassionate, the world would be immeasurably better.

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