I don't think obedience entails submission, I think obedience can come out of self-interest, pragmatism, there can be limits to it (aka you aren't submitting).The examples you gave of listening to teachers, parents and policemen are all examples of this. I don't think you've really brought up any sensible argument against the instances in Western society where obedience is celebrated but not pragmatic, making it seem like you're celebrating rebellion against pragmatic rules/structures and without stating why.

Alternatively, you're just saying exactly what is the status-quo (i.e obey within reason) and acting like you're arguing against the status-quo at the same time.

You talk about dictatorships and brutality in history and now things change. However, you still aren't making sense...

I also think anyone is entitled to go against any order that has bee set up. I do not believe anyone has the kind of authority that should force people to obey them. — Andrew4Handel

"Entitled" to the punishments awaiting those who don't obey? People in those situations have the kind of authority that DOES force people to obey them, power.

If you were a slave preaching this to other slaves, you'd just be telling them they're entitled to throw their lives away for nothing.

We are discussing obedience not pragmatism. Pragmatism is not obedience and examples you have been giving are pragmatic or self interested rule following. — Andrew4Handel

You're the one talking about submission to traffic light rules, you're going to ignore the pragmatic aspect?

I don't feel you have a realistic grasp of history. It is not just dictatorships that enforce rigid but unjustified rules. Slavery and racism was enforced. Sexism and lack of equal opportunity was forced. Religious observance and social norms have been forced. The possibility for most adults to vote has been a modern phenomenon. — Andrew4Handel

I didn't think we were talking about anything other than right now. By dictatorships, I was thinking North Korea, Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, China, and so on.

However obedience now has taken the form of an attitude with people not questioning norms sufficiently. — Andrew4Handel

I am not talking about pragmatism but bring up some examples where obedience is celebrated and there's no pragmatic element. Until you can do that, it just appears that you are, in fact, arguing against pragmatic rules and this makes NO sense. You brought up people submitting to traffic rules as a problem and you won't tell me the better alternative.

I think we have a moral obligation as an intelligent species to end the suffering of the other animals which lack the capacity.

I don't think that's enough because life would still remain on Earth. Perhaps evolution has led to this moment? Earth created life capable of destroying all life so that it could finally be free. We must complete our mission.

...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sexism is a category of many things all and which things are defined by interpretation, which things fit into this category is determined by interpretation. The rules for what is sexism and what isn't is determined by interpretation and whether sexism is defendable or not is argued using interpretations.

Any prevailing understanding of sexism is simply a dominant interpretation. It became dominant because it resonated with the right people or the right amount of people. The authority of a dominant interpretation is determined by interpretation.

Behind these interpretations is the truth which was interpreted. Which might be that men and women are biological disposed towards or nurtured towards particular beliefs and these result however they result. Those results are interpreted to mean various things.

Behind how we interpret what those various things mean, there are real consequences and difficulties for people to overcome. Truths which serve as obstacles for the accomplishment of particular goals which could be interpreted to be reasonable and pragmatic. They are what most people want.

What causes these obstacles should not be called sexism, this category says nothing, it's useful only for demagogues and generalisations.

I'm not saying all these things to be difficult or because I think you don't agree. The reality is that there is not actually any such thing as "sexism" and what sexism is, is completely subjective.

Of the things sexism refers to or can be interpreted as sexism, some are problems that you face because of how others perceive your sex.

So there's sexism (an interpretation) and the reality (which is interpreted) and then the reality as it is an obstacle which can be measured to some extent.

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.

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.

You have a long way to go. There are all sorts of things problematic with your worldview here. Far too much to take to task in one year, let alone one session here. — creativesoul

....

Empathy is the ability to recognize another's suffering/distress/discontent. That begins the road to better understanding others. Putting yourself in another's shoes requires more than just simple empathy. — creativesoul

You don't need imagination to understand concepts. Even robots can read human expressions and label them, many of them are universal across humans - even blind people. Recognising something and understanding it is not the same at all. You say it "begins the road" but what does that even mean?

Honestly, creativesoul, what I'm getting from you is that you hold contempt for nuance and specificity.

So you've "empathised with the homeless" with the understanding that homeless people are homeless and broke and whatever else you either know to be the case or imagined to be the case. Explain how your understanding of homeless people has increased.

Oh, but they do. They consist of words. Words are meaningful. Meaning transcends the language user... most certainly. — creativesoul

Words are just arguments and sentiments expressed by people affected by nature'nurture influences, what transcendence occurred here?

Okay but I don't have an expectation of empathy and I just said that.

So rather than feeling their pain, we see their pain and sad for them and want to help, is what you said. I don't know if the difference has any relevance to what I said so I got nothing more to add.

I think, like may people in the world, you have difficulty stepping into the shoes of someone else and seeing the world from their perspective. — Joshs

Nobody can do this, not me, not you, nobody. It's your imagination at play.

The advantage of powerful philosophical and psychological worldviews is that they are able to
transcend what appears to you to be hopelessly different manifestations in different contexts.
The problem isn't in the world , its in your inability to construct a more effective, flexible and comprehensive scheme of interpersonal undestanding . — Joshs

Worldviews do not transcend anything, they are products of a variety of nature/nurture influences. Behind every overreaching generalisation lies overwhelming complexity and nuance which demolish all of your attempts to put things into neat little boxes.

This is the quintessential problem of empathising with "groups" or "categories of people", you have to ignore the millions of differences that exist within the group. That's good enough for you, not for me.

Sorry, what do you think is misinformed? You said that empathy allows us to see "pain" in others and see that pain in ourselves, we feel their pain.

It's about knowing how other people are feeling, knowing what they're going through, whether it be heartache, anxiety, suffering, death of a loved one, etc. — creativesoul

So you agree that we can intellectually understand these things then what's the point of bringing up that empathy can do this? What are you trying to say?

What sort of understanding do you expect empathy to help provide one with? — creativesoul

None.

Are you perhaps doubting that others use empathy irresponsibly? I am not attacking empathy, I'm criticising people who use empathy as a tool for understanding people (among other things). I am giving arguments for why people shouldn't do this and why it's wrong.


I agree with that.

I am discussing empathy as a tool for understanding people, you talk like you're disagreeing with me but it doesn't seem like you are. Provided you aren't expecting any kind of specificity with "knowing what they're going through" then I don't know what you disagree with.

There does appear to be a slight contradiction in what you're saying that I would ask you to clarify.

Mirror neurons. If you witness them in pain and it makes you 'sad' for them, or want to help eliminate their suffering, then you'd be empathizing. If you witness them in pain and give it no further thought, or even laugh and/or make jokes about it, you're not. — creativesoul

I agree with that but then you say.

It's about knowing how other people are feeling, knowing what they're going through, whether it be heartache, anxiety, suffering, death of a loved one, etc. — creativesoul

Don't you think someone can tell when someone else is in pain without being sad about it? They aren't empathising but they can read facial expressions, understand expressed sentiments and so on. I don't think it's fair to say empathy is responsible for being intellectually aware of the existence and nature of something like "heartache" or whatever else.

I think that's a false dichotomy. You can (and should ) use evidence, studies, knowledge, etc. to help guide you in your attempts at empathy/imagination. — NKBJ

If you have to use empathy then I agree but I don't think you do. If you don't understand then ask more questions and try to understand but not by using your imagination. You probably have some ideas based on deductive reasoning, probability, experience, perhaps expertise and so on about what's going on. Strong platforms from which to begin further questioning or establishing your theories and their probabilities.

For example, a good empath knows someone is feeling x, y, or z even before anything has been said. You often can't pinpoint at first how you know someone is feeling something, but you pick up on all the little bodily cues: eye movements, posture, hand placement, clothing, facial expressions, etc etc. — NKBJ

I don't agree reading body language is empathy but I do agree to be able to read body language is useful for understanding people.

I think you're correct that psychologists need to avoid appearing judgement or analytic, I agree that displays or attempts at empathy are good for disarming people and making them feel like you're on their side. Empathy and displays of empathy are very useful but should a psychologist be using their imagination and assumptions to understand their patients?

Many psychology students think being a psychologist is about using anecdotal evidence, intuition and so on. They become very disillusioned with all the data they need to learn. Studies and more studies backed up with evidence, experiments and testing.

It's very important that psychologists use the available evidence and not their imagination. My argument is that this kind of thinking should extend to all things.

Understanding different perspectives is useful information. — Terrapin Station

I agree.

Good question.

I'd like at least a plausible explanation as to why you think empathy would overcome the barriers I listed or perhaps some fairly conducted experiments that showed empathy can be accurate?

We could even talk about anecdotal examples... Really I haven't heard anything remotely interesting as a counter-argument, I have given an absolute argument and usually I hate absolute arguments. I'm sure there's some exception to my rule and I'm hoping people can add nuance to my understanding even if they can't completely reverse it.


The gist of your argument is "I can't understand or didn't read what you're saying, therefore, you're saying something else". I'm not going to have a debate about what I am saying or not saying when I've been very clear in my argumentation.

Empathy could provide small bits of useful information, large bits of useful information or a comprehensive idea. Demonstrations of any of these things would have been counter-arguments to my position NOT just the latter. Talking to you has been a waste of my time, I give you detailed accounts of my position only to have to refute things like "dude empathy isn't about mathematics" and "empathy isn't perfect... but you're acting like it should be!!"


I agree. Truth must be rigorously and earnestly pursued and no short cuts will be satisfactory.


This thread is about empathy being worthless as a tool for understanding people, not empathy being worthless. I personally use empathy to advise me on the moral thing to do all the time and I can't see why I should stop. I think empathy is a great thing, I just don't think people should be using it as a tool for understanding.

If you become a great judge of people, that's not the same as becoming good at empathy, in my view. Becoming a great judge of people means having knowledge, experience and skills which you utilise to make theories and then confirming them later. I have many theories about people too, I hope they give me insights but I won't use empathy as a tool for understanding.

So answer to your question is, what types of things are people trying to use empathy to understand.

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

We may as well use this quote as a reference...

So my position is that whether empathy as a tool for understanding is useful or not isn't unambiguous, It's always not. You could just give your own examples of what you are trying to use empathy to understand really.

I agree that people do use empathy to understand the things you've stated, surely you had an idea of what you meant by that.

I've given multiple comprehensive arguments against empathy as a tool for understanding with many examples already. If you still don't get it then that's a pity but I won't keep giving proper responses to careless questions and assertions.


Well, I might open the door for someone but I have no idea what they thought about me doing it. Even if they smile at me, perhaps they're merely being polite. I can't read minds.

Has the existence of empathy contributed to the development of the idea that opening the door for someone is good manners? Could be. I am not saying empathy doesn't exist as a thing which has consequences. Empathy has many consequences on all different levels across society. It's a hugely useful and influential thing in many different areas of life.

We don't rely on empathy for expressing, for instance, discontent with someone. If a culture of giving people their personal space developed, it could as likely be because the person whose space has been violated becomes angry and communicates that anger through word or action.

Or perhaps people know that they like their personal space and treat others as they would like to be treated themselves.

I don't see the things you've listed as evidence of empathy being successful at developing understanding.

OK then the premises of your question are wrong and have nothing to do with empathy. I think the title "Unicorns are worthless for understanding people and the world" would be much more accurate. — pbxman

....

I don't think empathy guarantees goodness just the limited ability to feel through others. — pbxman

Me neither and I didn't say it did.

I don't think one ought to try to become happy. Happiness is a product of things you should want.
1. Safety/Security
2. Satisfaction
3. Contentment
4. Hobbies you enjoy
5. Self-respect
6. Self-esteem
7. Positive attitude

And so on.

Equally, unhappiness is caused by things that you don't want.

I think you can never have too much of the things that cause happiness and if those are your goals then you will never stop having dreams and ambitions.

Well, I have provided examples as I hoped they would help others understand my views. I have also provided reasons for why I think empathy is a worthless or even counter-productive tool for understanding people and ideas for what should be used rather than empathy.

I am also not arguing "empathy is worthless" as I don't believe that is the case. I think empathy is important in encouraging people to be compassionate and act harmoniously with others. Empathy can give us the courage and resolve to do good, I think most people are good people and empathy has a lot to do with that.

My motivations for arguing against empathy as a tool for understanding people is not to do with people being unfairly judged but more simply because I think the process of using empathy to understand people or more generally imagination/theories to understand things to be an abundant source of stupidity and falsity.


I think I am painting a picture of empathy being completely worthless and harmful as a tool for understanding people. I am hardly saying "well it's not perfect so let's steer clear of it".

So in my "ugliness" example, I answered that the person who imagined how the state of ugliness is experienced would be pretty much completely wrong in their assumptions. I also think that this person would not realise they were completely wrong and would possibly not care enough to challenge their assumptions.

It would've been better if this person simply said "hmm I have no idea how it would feel to be ugly". That's the sensible answer. The alternative is to go watch some yotube videos about people who are ugly talking about their experience. That alone would actually give this person a chance but you obviously can't take that at face value.

You could probably spend many hundreds of hours researching this topic and your time would not be wasted. It's a very complicated issue.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable by suggesting that such a complicated topic shouldn't be tackled by the imagination of an individual who knows nothing about it and hasn't experienced it. That should be the bare minimum, that you at least know a little bit about it and you have some experience with people who experience ugliness.

Also, we are biologically hardwired for empathy, it cannot be "discarded".

I think intellectually you can appreciate that, for instance, nobody wants to be ugly. You can understand that an ugly person will want to try to improve their looks if they can.

So here are two major questions:
1. If someone who isn't ugly (maybe even attractive), who doesn't know many ugly people would try to "put themselves in the shoes of an ugly person" or "imagine what it might be like to be ugly" what kind of accuracy would you expect here? In understanding how that person experiences their "ugliness" and how it impacts their lives?

2. Would you agree that "ugliness" would be experienced differently by:
Men vs Women?
Extroverts vs Introverts?
Rich vs Poor?
Educated vs Uneducated?
Someone who is happy vs someone who is depressed?
Someone in a relationship vs someone who is single?
Someone with good friends/family vs someone without that?
What about different temperaments or cultures or religions or life goals or value structures?

My answers to these questions are 1. They would have no clue about what it's like, none whatsoever and everything they said would be more or less wrong. 2. It is experienced differently to the point where to talk about Person A's ugliness and think it's the same as Person B's ugliness is a bit silly imo. I have laid out more problems with empathy as a tool for understanding in my OP but these are most relevant to your perspective.

Do you agree that these questions are pertinent to the issue at hand? Do you disagree with my answers?

Empathy isn't about finding correct answers to mathematics and science questions. — Terrapin Station

I agree.

Theorise definition: To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.

I think I am being fairly unambiguous in talking about non-mathematical, non-scientific contexts like with understanding soldiers experiences in war and homeless peoples' experience being homeless. Is there some kind of problem?

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. I think perhaps you just saw "empathy" in the title and gave your 2 cents and it has been a bit of a waste of time for me to have responded to you about the topic of this thread. Is that invalid?

I don't think that inter-human understanding hasn't improved. Through technology, anthropology, psychology, biology, neurology, sociology, improved communication, travel, immigration and so on, things have improved.

I agree with your general sentiments but I think worldviews are products of the real differences which are biological and interpretative and these manifest themselves differently in different contexts and lead to different kinds of difficulties in understanding others.


About that which he theorises about, his theories will direct his focus towards unlikely or implausible outcomes or even worse lead to assumptions which act as foundations to further incorrect conclusions.

Example:

You imagine that soldiers returning from war have experienced traumatic experiences during their service. You meet a few soldiers who appear uninterested or unwilling to talk about their wartime experiences. You think "understandable, they don't want to relive those traumatic experiences" and it sounds reasonable and plausible but mainly because you had this first idea that they had these traumatic experiences. It's an interpretative focus caused by ignorance and it leads to invalid conclusions that sound reasonable and wise.

I am not a solipsist as a result of empathy, it's an epistemological question. I don't really want to go into it here.

Perhaps our existence is not that particular and special but our egos want to believe it is! — pbxman

In some ways it isn't and in some ways it is, I don't think this is an issue of people being unique but rather than there are many variants and you can't account for those in your analysis.

Overall it's important to realise I am talking about empathy as a tool for understanding. I am not complaining about the limitations of empathy but people who don't recognise and implement an understanding of the limitations of empathy into their use of it as a tool for understanding people, situations, concepts and so on.


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.

If an ignorant person seeks knowledge then there are many tools for that. Seek out those with experience and learn from them, gain your own experience, acquire knowledge and deal with the facts. That's how I try to overcome my ignorance.

Now if you honestly feel misrepresented by my words then state plainly your position and I will apologise for any mischaracterisations that I made. It remains that many others think in the way that I criticise and I think this is a rather mainstream idea; that empathising with people you don't know will help you to understand them.

If you don't know then you don't know! It's not a terrible thing. If you couldn't be bothered to do any research then it wasn't interesting to you and why should you care that you don't know about it. Imagination can be useful but there are pre-requisites of knowledge and experience. A brilliant chef with great imagination will be very successful, someone who knows nothing about cooking shouldn't be trying to imagine great dishes - go learn how to cook instead!

I don't agree with everything you said but I'm not criticising empathy as a motivator. Many good things come from empathy as a motivator and I think it's not something people can avoid. We were born capable of empathy and we can't become incapable of it.

I don't think people should be using fear or anger to understand things either. However, as motivators, they have their roles, important roles. So yeah I don't disagree with your overall sentiment.

That's the whole point. — Terrapin Station

If you find it entertaining then why should I criticise?

If I wanted to learn, for instance, what it's like to be a soldier in war. I could read up on what soldiers say it's like or I could imagine what it might be like. If I do either option and I want to make some opinions about soldiers, I've got a few things to look out for, some appreciation for what might've happened to these people and how it might've affected them.

If you want to indulge your imagination as being valid and plausible, despite the fact you probably know as much about war as could be expected of someone who's never fought in one and knows very little about it (like myself) then go ahead. Personally, I will try to stick to the facts, read body language and understand expressed sentiments and try to keep my imagination on a tight leash.

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.

You also talk about "empathising with people who do "'evil'". You're talking about something very complex which most people don't understand, have experience with, know the backstory for or really anything at all. You want them to imagine what it might be like despite all that and try to come up with some reason that allows them to 'understand' the individual a bit better?

Your theories are just that and have no place being called understanding, imprecise or not.

Empathy promises unrealistic results - even the idea of using it face-to-face implies intuitively understanding things you have no means to understand - you can only imagine.

When we're dealing with someone face-to-face, I would say that making assumptions isn't as bad if you can confirm their truth or not with that person. Especially if you have experience and knowledge.

Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7eBNeDW1GQf2NJQ6G6gAxw

This guy gives people financial advice and because of his personal experiences with debt, his experiences of dealing with many people with financial stress and his knowledge about how debt works. He has a lot to draw from to understand people who are going through those things. However, even he asks whether his assumptions about them are correct or not and he says things which are just logical.

He has some more advantages:
1. Tone/word usage or (facial expressions)
I don't think he could know how someone with a lot of debt is feeling becasue there are many ways to interpret that debt. However, he knows they feel they need help, he can hear how desperate they are and how frazzled they are. You can make a lot of assumptions with this added context.

2. Applying basic knowledge of causation
He knows that for this person to be in the kind of debt they in, there must be a cause. That might be their behaviour, their lack of income or whatever else. So he can safely assume that if you're a high-earner but you're in debt that you are being financially irresponsible and with some questions about that, he can get a pretty good idea of what's going on.

3. Applying commonality in interpretations
There's a lot of difference in interpretation but also commonality, for instance, I remember a caller saying her fiancee had $250,000 in debt that she didn't know about. We can't exactly understand how she feels about that or what went on but it doesn't take much to confirm that she fits into a larger pool of some kind of interpretation. Which might be "He needs to commit to a plan to dealing with the debt or I'm leaving" or "He lied to me so I'm leaving" and so on. Once we understand the why and the what, we can make guesses.

All in all, understanding someone as a means to an end is possible. We can recognise and relate to sentiments and interpretations even if we don't personally share them. It's important to deal only with the facts, not be too confident in our assumptions and confirm our beliefs.

I think most people get this when we're talking about a single person. I just think many throw the complexity out the window when it becomes inconvenient for them and impedes their ability to make generalised assumptions that become premises in their arguments, interpretation and understanding.

What I am describing is not sympathy and doesn't even necessarily entail sympathy. Sympathy does not involve imagination, it involves feeling badly towards someone else's situation. What you've quoted actually has a lot more to do with the definition you've given of empathy.

So you've given me a google definition for empathy well let me give you one for sympathy. It is "feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune". No imagination or no understanding involved.

I can promise you that there are a lot of definitions for empathy out there and the one you've given really hasn't scratched the surface. If we can't agree on this then that's okay. Our disagreement is limited to a definition.

You will hear people use empathy as a tool for understanding all the time. You can google "empathy for/towards" and see what others have been searching and it is clearly being used as a tool to understand others. Even your definition says that empathy means to understand and share the feelings of others. This necessarily requires imagination because you aren't literally feeling their feelings.

What I meant by understanding "sentiments" are like people saying "I feel so alone" and you don't just feel sorry for that person, you may very well think back to moments of your own aloneness and really feel it with them or you see the pain on their face and you feel that with them. Or you might see a character running away from something and really feeling that you yourself may as well be the one being chased.

Empathy has many benefits to it because you don't always need to understand precisely what's going on, sometimes you just need to be there for people or have a basic idea of what's going on. If your roommate looks annoyedly at you when you lost the remote then it'd be bad if you don't understand their frustrations or empathise with that feeling and react appropriately.

I am talking about:
1. Empathising with people you don't even know like homeless people, refugees, transpeople, people living in debt and so on. Using your theories, imagination and guesses.
2. Thinking empathy actually gives you true understanding.

To continue the homelessness example; even if you've been homeless yourself, you still don't understand homelessness. You can relate to certain things, you have more experience and knowledge than others but these things don't mean you understand it.

You also don't know anything about a person just because he's homeless even if you've been homeless. So you can surely see a homeless person crying while talking about their homelessness and put 1 and 1 together and really feel that pain as though it's your own and that's okay but don't turn around and tell me you actually understand that person's homelessness.

All I am pointing out in this thread is that many people do try to use empathy as a tool for understanding people and situations when they really shouldn't be. Empathy is not worthless but it is a worthless tool for understanding people, it's not worthless at understanding sentiments but it's not great at that either.

If it did or didn't. whether your premise is true or not, it is not something you will understand without hard work, evidence and lots of research. Theories and philosophy won't help you.

https://www.ibtimes.co.in/indians-most-materialistic-after-the-chinese-report-530795

It is a dangerous thing to use theories and philosophies to know about the outside world.

I am not a Buddhist nor do I feel my interpretations of Buddhism are insightful or useful so I can't really comment on OP. I can say that Buddhism is not a religion that is based on being practical but rather pursuing spiritual enlightenment. It is unsurprising that it is not entirely pragmatic.

Knowledge is good but we are still merely making educated guesses. Interpretation, personality, experience and many other factors will impact an individual trying to empathise with the homeless which will lead to different results.

There's always more knowledge which can impact our understanding, here's a recent example for me.

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration-poverty-reduces-brainpower-needed-navigating-other-areas-life

Quite an interesting discovery which demonstrates even further how stupid the idea of empathy is. Science, knowledge, experience, open-mindedness are all great but give us realistically imperfect understandings. There's no way that a well-fed, happy person who has never experienced poverty can actually understand it just by imagining some things, making some assumptions and trying to compare it to their own, very different experiences.

I'm not saying we should give up on trying to understand others but rather than it should be obvious that it won't be easy to do that. Empathy is a half-hearted attempt which leads to falsehood.

As for the hypocrisy for people with their actions and their words, that's a whole other can of worms for a later time.

however, the real question youre asking is what is the potential fro understanding someone from their perspective such as to be able to identify with their behavior, views, choices, I would say it is unlimited — Joshs

Being able to identify with the behaviour of others is completely fine because it's something that you're feeling rather than an attempt to understand how someone else is feeling. For example, I saw this video on youtube where these two Russian soccer hooligan gangs fought each other for who knows why.

The title of the video was "Russians beat up Muslims" and despite the fact both sides were clearly white Russians and some commenters who understood Russian saying "these are two Russian gangs" many people identified with the frustration and aggression being shown in the video with their own anti-Islamic sentiments.

Now I'm not saying there aren't cases where there is understanding. The point of the story is to show that particularly when it comes to complete strangers, we're very easily misled and we really don't know anything at all until we get the facts.

So I'm not saying we should give up on understanding others at all, I'm just saying that empathy and imagination are not providing us with helpful tools towards the end of understanding others.

Unearned income remaining after an incomplete set of costs are figured. — Bloginton Blakley

What is unearned income? And unprofitable from who's perspective?

If I obey the traffic lights on a road then I am submitting. If ignore a red light and cross when I feel like it I am not submitting. Unless they are trained by humans, pets will do what they feel like. Humans are unique for the vast array of rules they submit to. — Andrew4Handel

No, you are not submitting. That's like saying if I play chess and follow the rules, then I am submitting to them. It's actually a really dumb way to think. There are many reasons why people follow traffic rules and most of them are pragmatic.

Same for most of the rules you've laid out except for following dictatorships which is an unfair example because that might've been true but only it was only achieved through indoctrination and propaganda.

What do you envision as an alternative?

If a student is not thinking that it would be rational to behave in class, he should be praised for it? If someone decides to go around running red lights, we should think that's commendable?

I'm a bit lost as to what you're trying to say.

How do you define "profitable"?

I still don't know what you're talking about, what examples can you give where obedience is treated as morally praiseworthy?

I definitely don't think obedience entails submission at all so perhaps that means we won't agree on whether obedience can be rational or not.

Submission to some extent literally means to throw away your own will. I can't think of any examples in Western society where submission is thought of as being a good thing except perhaps the idea of submission to God. In other cultures, submission can be thought of as a good thing but it's clearly based on power and obligation and restricts self-interest and rational thought.