dk

I see no relationship between justice and empathy. In the strictest sense justice is giving to a person that which they are due, nothing more or less. Morality is concerned with both justice and values. Through empathy I can appreciate (value) the suffering of someone in prison, and be morally obliged to visit a prison, but my empathy makes no comment on justice. Since morality regulates conduct by force (punishment) I find empathy consonant with the virtue of mercy. Virtue is consonant with a person’s character hence given freely. I’m not an atheist, but I assume even an atheists believes in justice so empathy is an insufficient basis for morality.

[ August 23, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

ManM

Your.Master,
This is what I'm talking about. He would never have been able to do what he did without the rhetoric of a greater good. Jews were bad, not because they were just bad, but because they opposed the greater good. The people's general will to do good was still there. If you believed that the world would be a better place without Jews, how would you justify letting them live? This is a brutal question I know, but I'm just trying to highlight how belief molds the way we express our universal morality. If you knew that sacrificing a child to God would save your people from famine, would you not do it? If you had the chance to kill Osama Bin Laden pre-9/11, would you have pulled the trigger?

[ August 23, 2002: Message edited by: ManM ]</p>

Jamie_L

What I meant was that there is no explicitly stated moral code that everyone around the world follows. From a religious standpoint, each religion, and each sect within the religions, have their own moral codes.

The follow-on point was that since we aren't all following the same religion, yet the human race (as you point out) clearly has moral codes that are common from one culture to the next, adherence to a particular religion is not required for functional morality.

Thus, the OP is correct at least in part. We can discard explicitly stated "God's laws" as a requirement for a moral foundation.

Jamie

Aerik Von

I love that book...simply fascinatiting...

dk

Empathy is a psychological term coined by modern psychology in the 20th c., but the flip/side of empathy is blame. The emotion that historically units and divides people is blame. Hitler blamed the Jews for WW I defeat and post WW I economic woes. A quick review of negative TV campaign ads makes it clear blame is the glue that unites people. Empathy for the poor urban blacks blames racism (whitie). Empathy for teen pregnancy blames chastity. Empathy for gays with AIDs blames the traditional family. Empathy for battered wives blames marriage. Empathy for 401K plans of Enron workers blames all corporate VPs throwing the whole stock market into a tailspin. Empathy for a pregnant women's reproductive cycle blames the fetus. As a matter of fact that's exactly what made Clinton such an effective politician, he nurtured empathy so he could unite the Democratic Party with blame. There is a real problem with empathy as the basis of morality.

tronvillain

Well, you simply assert that the flip side of empathy is blame, and then assert that feeling empathy will lead to blame, with the implication that blame is a bad thing. Frankly, I fail to see why anyone should listen to this drivel.

dk

I offered several examples to support the hypothesis. In an earlier post I explained that morality was concerned with both justice and values while empathy was only concerned with values hence insufficient basis for morality.
The ground rules for objective morality require a positive proposition of empathy. My argument is that empathy is insufficient because it doesn’t consider justice at all. For example through careful study over a long period of time I could project my personality upon rats to contemplate their value. I could reasonably come to the conclusion that rats should be esteemed not exterminated as pests. It doesn’t matter because empathy lacks any consideration for justice. For all my empathy justice must still order rats to be extermination. By golly don’t you remember the fabled story of Ole Yeller, empathy didn’t mitigate his execution, or degrade Ole Yeller’s value.

As to blame being the flip/side of empathy, I think its a no brainier, that’s why 95%+ of campaign adds turn negative in the last few weeks before an election. Don’t take my word for it, watch the upcoming congressional elections. Democrats and Republicans will parade out their suffering minions to peak empathy, then democrats are going to blame republicans for the economy, corporate corruption, deficit spending, and breaking open the social security lock box; republicans are going to blame democrats for the airport security, crime, and stifling small business. It’s formula politics, first parade suffering people through the media to peak empathy, then blame your political adversary for the injustice. Play it again Sam.

tronvillain

dk:
Those examples, like the rest of your statements, are merely unsupported assertions. "Empathy for battered wives blames marriage"? I presume this is supposed to mean, "Feeling empathy for bettered wives causes one to blame marriage for wives being battered", but people are entirely capable of feeling empathy for battered wives without blaming marriage, which makes your assertion fairly weak.

Oh, empathy is an insufficient basis for morality, but it plays an important role. Why do you not heave a rock at a stranger's head? Well, there is the fear of the consequences of being discovered, but there is generally also the empathy for the suffering of another. If there was not, then in the absence of any fear of potential consequences, anger could easily induce one to smash someone's brain in with a brick. Morolity emerges from a variety of emotions, but empathy is an important one.

Who said anything about objective morality? We are discussing realities here, not fictions.

As I said before, insufficient does not mean unimportant. Empathy alone, without other motivations or reason would not produce a normal moral system.

All that would is that other values (such as concern for human life and property) still outweighed your empathy for rats. If your empathy for them was sufficiently high, you would no longer think it "justice" to exterminate rats as pests.

Well, Old Yeller had rabies, so one could easily argue that empathy for him entailed his execution, though there was of course concern about others being infected.

It's a "no brainer" is it? I could say something on the subject of having no brains, but it would be too easy. Now, again it does not follow from your examples that "blame is the flip-side of empathy." I could use the same example to argue that "blame is the flip-side of justice":

-RRH-

I think blame plays a part in morality along with empathy. It is, in a sense, the opposite of empathy, in that one tends to blame people with whom one does not empathize. But to try to say that every time you empathize with someone, you are also blaming something, as dk tried to assert with examples, isn't quite getting it right.

Let's look at one of dk's examples: "Empathy for gays with AIDs blames the traditional family."

I don't think empathy here requires blame, really. The way I see the relationship between blame and empathy, it leads to situations more like this:

Person A feels empathy for gays with AIDS, just in terms of identifying with someone who has a disease. Because A empathizes with them, he doesn't blame them.

Person B feels that people with AIDS have brought it on themselves, through risky sexual behaviour, and so are to blame for their own fate. Because B blames them, he doesn't empathize as much with their situation.

So, the more one empathizes with someone, the less one is likely to blame them. The more one blames someone, the less one empathizes with them.

Now, we have seen that there are cases where blame has been misplaced, with disastrous results. But what about misplaced empathy?

dk

dk: First I didn’t say everyone blamed marriage, or that marriage was to blame. My proposition is easily supported by many of the reforms the institution of marriage has undergone (and continues to undergo) to remedy the injustices inflicted upon battered wives by husbands, police, and courts. The blame is made explicit by the reforms. Fifty years ago husbands were given authority over their wives, and could punish and rape their wife with impunity, under the protection of the marriage contract.
dk: - It appears we are in agreement on; empathy is insufficient basis for morality. I would also agree empathy plays an important part in the formation of values people hold.
dk: - This thread posted by Aerik Von asks “Simply put, how many athiests use Empathy as a moral guide instead of supernatural assurances? “ I assume atheists are reasonable people, so atheists understand that empathy is insufficient as a ‘moral guide’ or basis for morality.
dk: - We seem to be in agreement, empathy is an important factor in the formation of values, and values are, in turn, important to moral propositions.
dk: Well if human life and property outweigh empathy then property and life logically become the basis for morality.
dk: - It follows directly from the laws of causality. If empathy for rats justifies a remedy, then empathy becomes the basis for justice to re-order the moral law. In particular to order a remedy for an injustice (say poisoning rats) requires a ‘finding of fact’ that terminates with an assessment of guilt (blame). The remedy is then fashioned, and ordered by a ‘finding of Law’, in this case moral law. The remedy in this particular case probably takes the form “exterminators are punished for the immoral use of rat poison”. But because empathy is unconcerned with justice, the Moral Law has been corrupted. The rat population will explode spreading deadly diseases that put good people in harms way. Families living in rat infested areas suffer diseases (many deadly) spread by rats, health care costs sore, and property values plummet in the infected areas. Parents being obliged to protect and secure the safety of their children are placed in an untenable position. They either break the moral law to keep their children safe, or leave their children uncovered. When the law acts against the law, the law forces people to live lawlessly.
dk: - Excellent, you’ve paraphrased my statement substituting ‘justice’ for ‘empathy’, making empathy the basis for justice. But justice is giving to a person that to which he is due, nothing more or less. Therefore because empathy is unconcerned with justice, it is an unsuitable basis for morality. By basing justice on empathy we engage the politics of destruction that fundamentally corrupts the democratic experience. Bingo!!!

[ August 25, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>