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Comment author:Lumifer
06 October 2016 03:11:50PM
3 points
[-]
So, if the emotional empathy should be discarded, why should I help all those strangers? The only answer that the link suggests is "social propriety".
But social propriety is a fickle thing. Sometimes it asks you to forgive the debts of the destitute, and sometimes it asks you to burn the witches. Without empathy, why shouldn't you cheer at the flames licking the evil witch's body? Without empathy, if there are some kulaks or Juden standing in the way of the perfect society, why shouldn't you kill them in the most efficient manner at your disposal?
Comment author:gjm
06 October 2016 06:42:39PM
-1 points
[-]
The article distinguishes between "emotional empathy" ("feeling with") and "cognitive empathy" ("feeling for"), and it's only the former that it (cautiously) argues against. It argues that emotional empathy pushes you to follow the crowd urging you to burn the witches, not merely out of social propriety but through coming to share their fear and anger.
So I think the author's answer to "why help all those strangers?" (meaning, I take it, something like "with what motive?") is "cognitive empathy".
I'm not altogether convinced by either the terminology or the psychology, but at any rate the claim here is not that we should be discarding every form of empathy and turning ourselves into sociopaths.
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Comments (37)
So, if the emotional empathy should be discarded, why should I help all those strangers? The only answer that the link suggests is "social propriety".
But social propriety is a fickle thing. Sometimes it asks you to forgive the debts of the destitute, and sometimes it asks you to burn the witches. Without empathy, why shouldn't you cheer at the flames licking the evil witch's body? Without empathy, if there are some kulaks or Juden standing in the way of the perfect society, why shouldn't you kill them in the most efficient manner at your disposal?
The article distinguishes between "emotional empathy" ("feeling with") and "cognitive empathy" ("feeling for"), and it's only the former that it (cautiously) argues against. It argues that emotional empathy pushes you to follow the crowd urging you to burn the witches, not merely out of social propriety but through coming to share their fear and anger.
So I think the author's answer to "why help all those strangers?" (meaning, I take it, something like "with what motive?") is "cognitive empathy".
I'm not altogether convinced by either the terminology or the psychology, but at any rate the claim here is not that we should be discarding every form of empathy and turning ourselves into sociopaths.