True or false statement?

I honestly think I disagree but cool thesis statement and I hope you go for it.

Here's a counterargument for you to ponder and possibly try to refute in your paper:

We often care about lives not because we have an emotional connection to them, but because we have an intellectual understanding that like you and your loved ones, they are also a life filled with hopes, desires, dreams, suffering, joy, and all kinds of other characteristics that you recognize in you and your loved one. On an emotional level, you may feel nothing for this person, but you may still care about their well being, in essence, because you have an intellectual recognition of their personhood and the rights and dignities that that entails.

Chew on that and see if you have a good counter argument to incorporate into your paper if you think my challenge is decent. Good luck! Fun topic.

Reply to River

@Brian(Y)

I feel the primordial reaction to moral issues is emotion. We feel happy when we do something good and feel guilt, remorse, sadness when we're immoral.

Logic and reason follow- rational analysis of our emotions, their basis, their consequences, etc.

Your thesis rests on the proposition that "caring" is an emotion. If you can show this you have a paper.

The premise seems vacuous to me. It would have to be plausible to someone that caring isn't an emotion or doesn't necessarily involve emotions. But who is that plausible to, and what would their argument for that be?

"You can care about a life only if you can have an emotional connection with it."

So then you can care about your family, your friends, people you are emotionally invested in but not in the nameless, faceless suffering masses that abound in our world?

Quoting Cavacava

So then you can care about your family, your friends, people you are emotionally invested in but not in the nameless, faceless suffering masses that abound in our world?

One can care about faceless and have a connection via empathy, which would be an extrapolation of caring. A good question would be (and highly metaphysical) is why some people have more or less empathy and caring than others. It can be explained using a spiritual, transcendental life model where the memory form is constantly learning through multiple physical lives but almost impossible (without resorting to magic) with the typical materialistic gene model where emotions of all sorts spring out of no where. However, as a basis for an academic probation paper, such a metaphysical approach would be treacherous. Even Bergson dared not go there.

It's a tautology. What is caring if not being emotionally invested? It's like saying "You can only eat if you can ingest food". My advice is to rework your thesis.

Reply to River
Depends on how "can" is interpreted, whether that means in principle or in fact. Depends on how "connection" is taken, whether that means there's some response, either possible, again in principle or in fact, or actual.

It looks a little creepy to me. Even if you're going to allow we can care about people we have never and will never meet, it looks like it could rule out caring about people in a coma, caring about an unborn child, caring about people with certain mental disorders. That's if "emotional connection" is taken to imply some reciprocity.

Most people recognize caring to be an asymmetrical relationship. I can care about you whether you do or even could care about me. It looks like your definition is designed to undercut people who claim to care about things you think they really don't or shouldn't. (E.g., you can't care about a tree.)

Quoting Reformed Nihilist

It's a tautology. What is caring if not being emotionally invested? It's like saying "You can only eat if you can ingest food". My advice is to rework your thesis.

Yes, agree. If the current wording is not a tautology, it is at least too close to one and is vaguely worded. But the idea behind it has much potential, in my non-philosophy degreed opinion. How about something like- Beings influence and affect each other despite the lack of any apparent emotional connection. (or not, whichever position you choose). Maybe you could cite people's emotional connection to animals as a counterpoint. Also, possibly explore the "accidental hero" aspect, where strangers are instantly risking their lives for each other. Just an idea. Good luck!

Perhaps a thesis along the lines of "the basis for ethics is empathy"? No tautology, and I think it's supportable.

Quoting River

"You can care about a life only if you can have an emotional connection with it."

Perhaps. As Reformed Nihilist pointed out, it's a tautology. but...

Can you choose to care--can your rational machinery direct your emotional machinery to care? Which part of your brain (rational/prefrontal cortex or emotional/limbic system) decides whether you are going to feel caring or not?

You (mercifully) don't have emotional connections with all 7,000,000,000+ people on earth, but you may very well care about their well being in a general sort of way--like, there are too many people, not enough resources, suffering will result, that is bad, woe is us. But what, exactly, is it that you care about? The individual, detailed suffering or the more abstract suffering of the many?

Good luck with your paper, whatever you rationally choose (or are driven by your emotions) to write about -- and will you be able to tell the difference?

Reply to Bitter Crank Although we can't usually directly will ourselves into altering our feelings, we can consciously exploit our own emotional and psychological make ups to achieve specific ends. That is more or less what cognitive behavioral therapy is. As someone who studied acting in college, I can attest that you have to learn to manipulate yourself to elicit desired emotional responses, but one can learn to do so.

Reply to Reformed Nihilist I don't consider it a tautology. Care is not a synonym for "emotionally invested..."

Nonetheless I do appreciate criticism.

Reply to River So what do you mean by caring? I'm not aware of a use for the word that isn't roughly synonymous with being emotionally invested in the object of the caring.

Reply to Reformed Nihilist Yes. William James observed that behavior affects emotion. Acting (he didn't mean on stage) as if something was fearsome would tend to enhance ones fearfulness. Conversely, acting as if something -- or someone -- was nothing to be feared might eliminate fear altogether.

Reply to Bitter Crank I think that it can be more complicated than that. For years, the self help industry was based on ideas like positive self-talk. Remember Stuart Smaller?

It turns out that if your self esteem is low enough, positive self talk can actually have a negative effect.

Reply to Reformed Nihilist No, never saw the Stuart Smalley bit. Of course it's more complicated than that -- James was referencing just one connection between thought, emotion, and behavior. His idea works well when the object or person is not actually dangerous but is imagined to be dangerous. Scratching the ears of a big snarling dog is likely to get one's hand bit off. Fearing all dogs, because one imagines them all to be dangerous, would be reduced by interacting with friendly dogs.

Quoting Reformed Nihilist

It turns out that if your self esteem is low enough, positive self talk can actually have a negative effect.

I don't want to defend the often vacuous self-help industry, but there is some truth to the notion of positive self-talk and visualization of a desired action (like visualizing pitching a baseball perfectly). Probably not a lot of truth, just some truth. 25% truth/75% baloney.

Reply to River But getting back to the OP's problem: One can decide intellectually--to will--that one will care about people more. Say, one decides one ought to be more caring about homeless people. We can not just throw a switch, producing the fact of an emotional caring for the needs and suffering of the homeless. One has to involve one's self at some level with people who are homeless and interact with them.

This is a place where James' idea can work. By interacting with homeless people AS IF they were real people who might be interesting as well as unfortunate, we can develop emotional connections. (Of course, this can backfire. A homeless person can, like any other person, be intensely disagreeable.)

By interacting with homeless people, one can establish the necessary emotional connection to actually care.

On the other hand, one can be blinded by emotional connection.

Take the case of illegal immigrants and refugees. Some (maybe many) of the advocates for these groups of people have an intensely strong emotional connection. This can interfere with a more comprehensive view. Immigrant and refugee advocates sometimes can not see contradictions -- like opposing an effort to reduce human trafficking. "Cracking down on human trafficking will break up families." Trafficking wouldn't be going on if the families weren't already broken up, and human traffickers are NOT on the side of refugees or illegal immigrants. Traffickers are on the side of easy money, sometimes at the cost of the lives they are trafficking in.

Similarly, people who advocate for users of illicit drugs ALWAYS object to tighter enforcement and control of drugs because "that will just drive drugs users underground". Well, they already are underground, and are dying because of drug use, not because of law enforcement.

Another example of blinded advocates were gay men in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were emotionally too close to the problem to recognize that some of their gay sexual behavior was causing very significant health problems -- even before AIDS appeared in 1981.

UPSHOT: It is necessary to have emotional involvement to care, but too much emotional involvement can interfere with perception, just as no emotional involvement can interfere.