This is a philosophy forum, and you're spouting philosophy in order to argue against the use of overarching generalities and categories and worldview in order to attempt to understand the specificity of individuals. but what is utterly lacking in your account , ironically, is any apparent familiarity with those philosophical positions which tear apart the attempt to use overarching concepts and generalities to understand people. For instance, phenomenology , deconstruction, poststructuralism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, Heideggerian Being-with, enactive affect embodied cognitive psychology all find a way to follow individuals in their uniqueness and particularity while at the same time finding both what lends an individual's life continuity from one moment to the next and also what links that individual to larger communities, not in terms of imposed categories and overarching concepts , but in terms of dynamic interactions and intersubjectivities. In fact, I would argue that it is those philosophical approaches which do the best job of grasping the individual in terms of their utter particularity that are the most effective at being able to relate to others' lives and concerns and viewpoints. Your approach, on the other hand , ossifies differences into hermetically sealed off boxes (their biology is different!).
"Words are just arguments and sentiments expressed by people affected by nature'nurture influences. "
Tell me, which philosophical positions are you drawing from? Which writers have influenced you most?From which model of personality are you getting your idea of the unpredictablity of
human behavior? Do you identify with a pschoanalytic id-ego-supergo-unconscious psychic structure? IS the mind a stimulus-response machine conditiond by environmental stimulus contingencies? Is behavior mostly dictated by instinctive drives and dispositions shaped by biological evolution? I mention these approaches because they posit the individual as arbitrarily pushed and pulled by environment and biology, which seems to jibe with your arguments.
You should know , however, that there are richer , more insightful accounts of personality than these that may help you to see inter-relationality where you are now only able to see arbitrariness and categorical separation.

Cool. Hence the utility of empathy.

Where is the issue of 'empathy' more real and complete? In a domestic relation that is suddenly recognized estranged? Or for the alien in a strange land who suddenly and unexpectedly is made to feel welcome? If estrangement of a long term familiarity and initial intimacy in an otherwise alienating circumstance are mirror images of the same moment, maybe we can thereby begin to get some parameters on the issue.

This is a philosophy forum, and you're spouting philosophy in order to argue against the use of overarching generalities and categories and worldview in order to attempt to understand the specificity of individuals — Joshs

Why spouting? Are you serious?

Anyway, I mean the issue here is that I don't know how much you've read of what I've written in this thread and how much you think we've deviated from OP. If we're still talking about OP then I am actually arguing against the use of empathy as a tool for understanding people. It's not really a "philosophy" I'm just saying it doesn't work out as well as people seem to think it does.

all find a way to follow individuals in their uniqueness and particularity while at the same time finding both what lends an individual's life continuity from one moment to the next and also what links that individual to larger communities, not in terms of imposed categories and overarching concepts , but in terms of dynamic interactions and intersubjectivities — Joshs

I'm not familiar with most of the philosophies you listed and I am not going to learn so many just because you think they're relevant. Ask me to learn one or two that make your point.

I don't really think anything you've said has anything to do with using groups to understand individuals, which is what I think you're talking about. I don't care about the dynamic interactions between individuals and communities. I don't know how much I want to go into this because it's not relevant to OP and I'm not really sure why we're talking about it.

Briefly, there are a huge range of problems. Lack of unity in the group, differing interpretations, experiences, priorities, reasons for being part of the group and other peripheral aspects. Whenever I hear someone talking about Muslims for example, I just kind of roll my eyes. Muslims live in many different countries, different sex, different interpretations of their religion, different sects, different socio-economic statuses, different levels of education and so on.

The moment you start talking about "Muslims" you lost, there is nothing you can say anymore which will be worth listening to.

Tell me, which philosophical positions are you drawing from? Which writers have influenced you most?From which model of personality are you getting your idea of the unpredictablity of
human behavior? Do you identify with a pschoanalytic id-ego-supergo-unconscious psychic structure? IS the mind a stimulus-response machine conditiond by environmental stimulus contingencies? Is behavior mostly dictated by instinctive drives and dispositions shaped by biological evolution? I mention these approaches because they posit the individual as arbitrarily pushed and pulled by environment and biology, which seems to jibe with your arguments. — Joshs

I don't study philosophy or read any works from philosophers or Freud.

The issue here is that person A talks about "women this, women that".
Person B talks about "conservatives this, conservatives that".
Person C talks about "extroverts this, extroverts that".
The list goes on forever.

Then Person Z comes along and she's an extroverted, conservative, intelligent, disciplined, spiritual, wealthy, well-spoken, romance-loving, Indian woman ETC.

Person A to Person Y have all made these generalisations about people with all these different categories and characteristics but then you finally have Person Z.

Let's assume that from Person A to Person Y, they all had very good reasons to say what they said. There's a possibility for variations within all the things they said, all these people would agree. It's just some stereotypes they've seen or some causal arguments they've made.

We've actually learned a lot about Person Z, I am not saying we shouldn't use all this information when trying to understand her. I'm just pointing out things get tricky because there's going to be contradictions, she's not going to fit all these categories as people thought. She's going to experience things differently because of these other various aspects about her. Person B will talk about her worldviews based on the fact she's one of these things but that's also what Person E said about his point about Indians and the worldviews are totally different.

Lots of implications for this, I don't feel like going into that though.



I am also currently understanding how to be a computer programmer by imagining myself as a computer programmer. I will let you know on the results soon.

I am also currently understanding how to be a computer programmer by imagining myself as a computer programmer. I will let you know on the results soon. — Judaka

You mean how to literally be a computer programmer? Because empathy isn't about literally having the other person's perspective.

Meh.

i want to go back to the core of your argument. Let's start with your definition of empathy. You said 'we are biologically hardwired for empathy, it cannot be "discarded"(this is a philsophical position, by the way).
That proposition is highly debated in psychological research , and more importantly, even for those who believe that there is such a thing as hard wired empathy, the question is, what exactly is it that is inherited? Is it merely a 'feeling', a 'sentiment'? Current research in mirror neurons focuses not on emotion but on the ability to recognize the other's behavior as similar to one's own. I've written a lot about emotion, and my definition of empathy would see it as necessarily beginning from a cognitive appraisal that recognizes something identifiable, relatable, familiar , in the other. Can this appraisal be wrong or fatally superficial? Of course. This is where your critique is useful. Empathy begins as an incipient appraisal, a beginning, sketchy hypothesis. It is no different than an initial judgment or perception in any other domain. It is only the beginning of a process of unfolding a more and more nuanced and complex picture of situations with others.

Whether one's motive is to empathize or to condemn, it will always be an endless process to construct a full understanding of any subject matter. You critique of empathy really comes down to a critique of relying on one's gut, one's first impression, one's initial hypothesis without adequately exposing oneself to the particulars . Seeing empathy as a special category or device or supposed hard-wired module is beside the point . The blame for our prejudices and biases comes down to the weaknesses of human pattern-forming. How do we know when we've got it right?

You have set up a dichotomy between imagination, theory and sentiment on the one hand and 'facts' on the other. You wrote "It's important to deal only with the facts, not be too confident in our assumptions and confirm our beliefs. I will try to stick to the facts." Your imagination-sentiment vs fact binary is a bit problematic. This is where philosophy comes into play(when I said your were spouting philosophy, I meant you were asserting a philosophical position without knowing it. ). It is now understood that interpretive valuation and empirical fact are inextricably dependent on each other. A fact implies a grounding scheme of interpretation to make sense of it, or to even allow it to be seen as a fact in the first place. Knowing this doesn't radically change your argument, but it allows us to appreciate that the difference between a starting hypothesis-sentiment and getting the 'facts' is a matter of degree rather than of kind. Deterministic causality is itself a theory, that is , it is framed by valuative presuppositions, so rooting someones behavior in a causal chain does not get us to the irreducible bed rock 'fact' of the matter.

It's necessary to constantly test and question one's imaginative hypotheses against what one is observing in front of one, but If you think you've gotten to the bottom of the matter via causal facts you're less farther along than you think compared to the person who forms their view on their initial 'empathetic' or condemnatory impulse. In understanding our world , it's sentiment and hypothesis and imagination all the way down, just a matter of how how adaptive , flexible and explanatory we can manage to build our constructions of each other. The others will tell us when we're on the right track.

I agree with you that imagination and theory divorced from a thoroughgoing questioning of, and interaction with, the person or group one is theorizing about empathetically will give one an impoverished picture of who they are. What theory and imagination will do is provide one with a method of approach to forming hypotheses and testing those hypotheses . it will guide one toward how to question, what to look for, how to interpret, how rigidly to hold an interpretation, whether pure facts exist, etc. In fact, i would argue that one's methodological framework is the most important element in dealing insightfully with others.
One could say that philosophical method can be the antidote to the dangers of empathy.
A philosophical method is essentially what you've offered here. You've told us to consider insight gained from empathetic feeling and canned theory to be inadequate by itself. You 've told us to engage in thoroughgoing manner with the person you are attempting to relate to.
You've told us to look for causal sequence when we can, to attempt to arrive at facts, to not settle for categories in place of particulars.

Everything you've laid out is consonant with the philosophical underpinnings of modern scientific method, but not consonant with much of medieval or classical thinking about the methods of arriving at truth.

Enough of this... Empathy allows you to understand the perspectives of others? By taking a few select characteristics as a framework and using your imagination and making assumptions? Only a fool could seriously believe it.

Meh. — creativesoul

What is that supposed to mean? You don't have the answers you thought you did and you lack the humility to admit it? Or you are like a hungry lion who decided his prey is too much of an effort?


This is a good post, I can't understand how this post and your other posts came from the same person and so I'm just going to respond to this post by itself.

I don't actually have many opinions about how empathy works, I follow a general rule that if something is highly prevalent (90-99%) in humans across the spectrum of geographical, time, nurture and nature possibilities, it's almost certainly biological. However, there are many definitions for empathy and not all of them fit mine. Some people in this thread have called empathy things that I don't necessarily think are biological. It is an epistemological position I suppose, I haven't said that my philosophies aren't present in this thread.

It is no different than an initial judgment or perception in any other domain. It is only the beginning of a process of unfolding a more and more nuanced and complex picture of situations with others. — Joshs

This is probably the most major claim in your post. I have three responses.

1. The way you've laid out things here is by far the least problematic interpretation of empathy and what to do with it that I can imagine. When I made this thread, I was really criticising people for overexaggerating empathy as a tool for understanding things. There have been posters in this thread who disagreed with me but probably aren't egregious offenders while others have taken empathy beyond the starting point you describe and take it as a tool for developing deep understanding.

I still think empathy is worthless as a tool for understanding people and that is probably generous. More accurately, in most situations, it's a harmful tool that sets you behind from the start.

2. Empathy is not equal as a starting point and 3. Empathy is not going to help us progress from starting point.

So we know little but we are making an effort to know more, we make some initial observations with empathy, using imagination mixed with some knowledge and experience, creating theories to be confirmed or forgotten. Now we must confirm the theories (I don't think most people actually do confirm them but let's be generous) and to do this we need to set empathy aside and start doing some real investigation. Asking questions, reading people, learning more information, challenging our assumptions and so on.

We have some theories that we are looking to confirm or deny, this is already kind of a problem. For you, it might not be but people don't like to have wrong theories. To go back to the soldier example I gave, which you can find on page 2 of this thread just search soldier, we have these ideas about what we're looking for, initial premises that serve as foundations for our investigation and theories. All of this is probably wrong when you constructed them with imagination and assumptions (empathy).

Your imagination and your assumptions were never going to provide you with truthful premises or sensible theories. You should never have had these biases to begin with.

You aren't starting at an equal point to alternatives at all. You could have made initial premises and theories using statistics, interviews, reports, bare-bone causal arguments and leaned more on what you knew rather than your speculation. Doing this means you're going to be asking the right questions and without a false understanding causing tunnel vision and bias. It would be better to start with no ideas than bad ones.

I realise that statistics, for example, don't provide you with absolute information. For example, the number one cause of divorce is cited to be money problems. So it might be reasonable in your questioning to focus on that when talking about divorce with someone who is getting divorced. This is better than trying to empathise with the person and using your experience or imagination to direct your investigation. I think this is pretty obvious. People who don't understand this are going to struggle to be successful at anything. You need to structure your thinking around the best evidence available.

I am not really sure what your position is, whether you are trying to help me overcome some problems you perceive in me or you are actually trying to argue empathy is a useful tool for understanding people. If it's the latter, this could just be /thread, empathy is at best a mediocre and unhelpful starting position and it definitely isn't going to help advance us from the starting position. Really, only Josh Alfred (page 2) gave a convincing argument for why empathy is a useful tool for understanding others and it's really more why empathy is a good tool for extracting information out of others but all the same, it's a good argument.

My argument against empathy could really be simplified as an argument against using imagination to understand truths (rather than for creation). These other things you bring up (gut feel, not questioning initial beliefs) are things I somewhat believe in and may have spoken about but do not serve an important role in my argument.

To this idea of the dichotomy between "imagination, theory and sentiment vs facts". So I'd change that to imagination and theory based on bad logic or false premises often created by imagination vs facts but not a big deal.

A fact implies a grounding scheme of interpretation to make sense of it, or to even allow it to be seen as a fact in the first place — Joshs

You will find most of my posts in this thread arguing this same point with others, it is refreshing to hear some sense with regards to the importance of interpretation. I appreciate your technical retort to the way I've used the word "facts" and I am clearly in the wrong here (with my language). I didn't mean facts in the traditional sense, I really just meant at least attempting to interpret things (or using others' interpretations) observed by your senses or someone else senses in a way which passes your standards for acknowledging the validity or possible validity of that interpretation and its implications.

I talked a bit about how reading body language isn't empathy but it is useful for understanding people. How you interpret someone's body language is hardly an exact science, it's not a fact that if someone crosses their arms then they are suggesting something to you yet you may interpret it in a specific way.
I am actually happy for people to use this kind of information and call it credible (although requiring confirmation and not good by itself yada yada). So this is the contrast I wished to make between imagination and endeavour to understand things through better means.

I also want to mention that context is important here, we don't always necessarily have a lot of time to figure something out as we do in philosophy. So I am okay with going with your "gut feel" when you have no information, no time and you need something to go on. However, I really just don't see anything for empathy as a tool for understanding people. It's clearly horrible in contexts here you've got a lot of time and it's fairly horrible even if you've got no time.

I might trust someone intelligent to use empathy, I might not think it will betray them and lead them to falsehood. There may be antidotes to the dangers of empathy as a tool for understanding but for those who don't have them, they will be lead into falsehood and ignorance, among other things I haven't laid the groundwork to say.

As a social tool, empathy has unbelievable importance. It's a powerful instrument used to condition and manipulate, befriend, resolve disputes and it makes people more compassionate and courageous and so much more.

Empathy allows you to understand the perspectives of others? — Judaka

Yes or no, do you understand that no one is proposing that you'd literally have the other person's perspective? If you understand that, we can figure out what the idea is instead of that.

Empathy helps us to understand the character of others, and the mind of character, as oppose to the physical nature of character, and other things. What's wrong with exploration? I'd like to explore the characteristic side, emotional and sensual side as to benefit harmonization of people and other things.

Although talking to you is clearly not going to produce any intellectually stimulating or informative discussions, there is a comedy to you that keeps me coming back.

I, Judaka, do solemnly here swear, that I do not and have never thought that Terrapin Station was suggesting empathy allows us to literally have another person's perspective.

I would ask God to encourage Terrapin Station to read what I write, instead of using his imagination and assumptions to inform himself about my views, so that we can get through a single idea without it requiring me to repeat myself several times.


Exploration is great, when I was younger I wanted to explore the world. As I got older, I guess I just got boring.

I didn't ask you what I was suggesting, but what is conventionally being referred to.

Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?

Conventionally? You think you follow convention, do you?

Do I really need to explain to you that I don't believe in magical powers that people to LITERALLY see other peoples' perspectives? Are you out of your mind? Do you even know what literally means?

I never said anything about seeing things from other peoples' perspectives - YOU DID. You told me that empathy allows us to understand different peoples' perspectives. You asserted "The idea of empathy is not that you're literally going to have someone else's perspective. That's obviously not possible".

In my OP, there's nothing about that. In none of my comments either. I've been patient and explained no to you despite the absurdity and you still don't seem convinced.

Do you think you're being reasonable? I can't tell you what we're talking about, I know you don't understand me and I don't understand you, that much is obvious.

Here's the question I'm interested in you thinking about: "Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?"

(Feel free to respond with a few hundred words that just ignore answering the question, though.)

Does answering your questions lead somewhere? Doesn't appear that way.

The idea of empathy is not that you're literally going to have someone else's perspective. That's obviously not possible. The idea is to not be so self-centered via imagining yourself in the others' situation as best as you can, with an eye to gaining some insight into why the other might react or behave as they are in that situation, trying to understand different perspectives and views than your own, etc. — Terrapin Station

This is the kind of empathy that I am criticising, you aren't becoming less self-centred via imagining yourself in others' situations you're just pretending that there's any similarity between your imagination and the reality. You can explore different perspectives as an intellectual exercise but you can't turn ignorance into knowledge by using imagination. — Judaka

You talked about empathy as being useful for understanding different perspectives. To theorise (for the sake of gaining insights into others) about possible reasons for behaviour.

My opinion is that the theories of an ignorant man are more likely to lead him towards falsehood than truth. They're not giving you insight, they're not useful and I'm not expecting empathy to be perfect but it's not even ineffective it's just harmful. — Judaka

It's about understanding feelings and situations and decisions and actions and the like. — Terrapin Station

Right. I am saying to use empathy in this way is wrong and covered extensively as to why I think this. That's literally what my OP and this entire thread is about — Judaka

Yes or no, do you understand that no one is proposing that you'd literally have the other person's perspective? If you understand that, we can figure out what the idea is instead of that. — Terrapin Station

I probably missed some good ones but I find this funny, perhaps I have a bad sense of humour. I mean you might not be able to understand my answer to your question from this but let's be honest, there wasn't much chance even if I just answered simply anyway.

If I said that I'm surprised you didn't answer "Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?" would you believe me?

If I said that I'm surprised you didn't answer "Okay, so if we're not talking about literally having another person's perspective, what are we talking about? Any idea?" would you believe me? — Terrapin Station

No.

At least you have some insight about that. :razz:

...

I like the brevity, at least.

What is that supposed to mean? You don't have the answers you thought you did and you lack the humility to admit it? Or you are like a hungry lion who decided his prey is too much of an effort? — Judaka

Nah. Some things aren't worth pursuing. One who does not comprehend the words he reads isn't worth arguing with. You've quoted numerous things and then asked questions that were answered within the quote.

Meh.

Are you serious...? You haven't even understood that you've spent most of your time in this thread arguing against positions I don't have.

What a donkey.

You've claimed that empathy cannot lead to better understanding people.

That's one thing you're wrong about.


You've claimed that no one can empathize with and/or understand a group of people because they are all different people with different personal experiences, or some such...

That's another thing you're wrong about.

You're wrong because what you say is contradictory to everyday events. All sorts of people actually do the shit everyday, on a daily basis, that you say cannot be done.

Empathy is a fantastic tool that can be used to gain a better understanding of other people's plights. Empathy is not equivalent to understanding everything there is to know about another, nor need it be. We need not know everything about another to empathize with them about something or other. When we empathize, we begin to listen closer, more carefully. We empathize with someone's plight by virtue of knowing what it is like to have the feelings that they have, whatever they are. That's a fantastic start to better understanding...


When we empathize with a group of people, say young American blacks, it means that we understand the all too common difficulties that group faces on a daily basis. We can know that young black men get harassed by police far more than whites. We can know that young black men get sentenced far more often and for much longer sentences for the same crimes as whites. We need not know anything at all about their personal particulars to be able to empathize with them as a group, based upon what is common to the group.

Hee Haw...

:kiss:

When we empathize with a group of people, say young American blacks, it means that we understand the all too common difficulties that group faces on a daily basis. We can know that young black men get harassed by police far more than whites. We can know that young black men get sentenced far more often and for much longer sentences for the same crimes as whites. We need not know anything at all about their personal particulars to be able to empathize with them as a group, based upon what is common to the group. — creativesoul

This is so stupid, hurts my eyes to read.

Groups are comprised of individuals, who are not just black men being harassed by police officers. You are clearly trying to imagine what it's like to be subjected to a specific action or event and that's all.

Once again, same question, what do you think you've learned by empathising with them? Tell me one thing. It's a nuisance to be harassed by police officers? Great insight.

You wouldn't try to use your imagination to learn about any other complicated topic like even basic chemistry or biology. Why would anyone try to use it for something as complicated as understanding other people? Only an idiot would try.

Even if you came up with an idea of how it feels, you still need to contend with the fact that not every African-American man is even subjected to police harassment and those who are will have dramatically different perspectives about it. Logically, at best, you have the ability to understand a possible interpretation/reaction/feeling towards police harassment and even THEN you could have just listened to people who have been subjected to police harassment to get a clear understanding of how other people have perceived it in the past and the effects.

I think the main part of your argument relies on incredulousness that mainstream ideas aren't being taken for granted as true. Not uncommon on forums like these but characteristically leaves you supremely lacking in any justification for any of your assertions which makes for poor conversation.

Double post.

All things have their uses- both success and failure. Absolutely nothing within our grasp is perfect.

All things are fundamentally founded in Chaos, awaiting Order to structure Chaos for better understanding, moving toward the objective of the universal Law of Order. An objective which seeks sustainability.

Therefore, the judgment that empathy is worthless for understanding people is fallacious in its assertion per Nirvana Fallacy that since it is imperfect it is undoubtedly worthless. But imperfect by who’s standards? One who possesses the pinnacle of empathy? Or one who may believe they possess a certain degree of empathy? Possibly truer- very limited amount. Again- fallacious.

The only worthless notion is in committing such an intellectual blunder. But then again, the blunder educates the perceiver of a great many things about the blunderer; so not worthless in and of itself, per se, just in reference to the initial declaration.

Speculation? Possibly. But out of the ten truths I have gathered based on the initial post, I can successfully posit at least three facts.

Fact 1: There are differing degrees of possessed empathy.
Fact 2: Perfectionists possess underdeveloped cognition (a sign of youth or ignorance; possibly both).
Fact 3: Trying to judge empathy as worthless based on faulty understanding precluded by one’s fallible subjectivity is fallacious.

Truth 1: Sometimes ad hominem to counter ad hominem is the correct course of action in bringing things back to order (or is at least entertaining).
Truth 2: There is a general lacking in both better understanding and usage of empathy for understanding people.
Truth 3: Condescending pseudo-intellectual arrogance is unbefitting.
Truth 4: Redundant realism will rear its all too familiar head.
Truth 5: Test me and you will be made a fool.
Truth 6: This is quite a first post.
Truth 7: I am badass.

In light of this: your original statement of empathy being worthless for understanding people is true in a sense. Here’s why:

One does not seek to empathize with people. One empathizes with a person. One does not empathize with homeless people. One empathizes with a homeless person. Taken in this truer context, empathy is a highly useful and worthwhile tool for assessing individual circumstances and situations; not fully understanding. Nothing alone will allow one to understand someone else. It is a collective, multifaceted effort. Even then it is impossible to fully and completely understand someone, but closer is better than farther. The effectiveness, of course, will be determined by the level or degree of empathy an individual possesses- imagination to intuition ratio (?). Though I may have taken you too literally when you said “people” when you probably meant person.

Pursuant to the logic aforementioned, empathy works in understanding specifics, not generalizations.

You think too broadly; may I suggest taking your own advice about specificity?

OT: And the number one cause of divorce is actually marriage. Again, practice specificity.

Good question. — Judaka

How do you act/react regarding others? In other words how do you deal with people and know how what and when to do something? Empathy? I guess in the world today empathy isn't that important as it's the rule rather than the exception to tread on people's dreams.