Moral choice versus involuntary empathy

I saw a video on the Internet that deals PRECISELY with that. I posted it, the link, here, on this site and within hours my post with the link disappeared. I don't know what rule I violated, but I shan't violate the same rule again. Anyhow, that video attempted to answer your question dead-on.

Maybe a MOD can clear up why videos from Youtube are not allowed to link?

Is it because I am not a supporter? I mean, a subscriber? Perfectly possible. I don't know.

Empathy is a faculty that contributes to someone being moral. A defective or missing faculty of empathy will make it more difficult to be moral.

Reply to god must be atheist, I haven't seen a youtube about it. Feel free to summarize here.

Reply to darthbarracuda, right. Empathy is typically involved in moral judgment.

I see no way around it.

Rawls' veil of ignorance (ideal standard of ethical decision making in my opinion) requires one to imagine their welfare other than it currently stands.

Something about that is fundamentally an appeal to empathy.

Reply to jorndoe

I located it. Do a search on youtube with this term: "ethics private and public 2019 09 22"

MODS:
If this is illegal by TPF standards, please delete this post and I apologize and I promise never to publish search terms again for Youtubel, until such time that I become a subscriber. Thanks. I know the law (only subscribers can post links) but I don't knwo if the law applies to posting search terms in lieu of links.

I am really at odds whether I'm breaking the rules or not. Please don't punish me, but help me out by interpreting the law (rule) for me. Thanks.

The video is pretty straightforward, but the guy speaks with an almost incomprehensible accent. Luckily he posted at the trailing end of his video some explanatory notes in typed English.

He says, in a nutshell, that personal scruples are inborn, and societal ethics are ingrained. The common element, he says, is that both have the same punishment / reward system. There are lots of details given about the sameness and differences between the personal and the common systems.

He is not very original when he builds a superstructure of his basic discovery, but his discovery is interesting. I see his point.

I just am not read in philosophy to know whether his idea is original or he stole it / borrowed it from someone else. You know how it is: Copying one idea from one publication is stealing. Copying many ideas from many publications is research.

Quoting jorndoe

Seen elsewhere:

If morality requires choice And empathy is involuntary, Then empathy is not a basis for morality.
— madebyjimbob

My initial thought was that "Made By Jimbob" might change it to this for validity:

if morality requires choice and empathy is involuntary, then empathy alone is not a basis for morality

But, what do you folk think?

Assuming that empathy is involuntary, it doesn't have the power to compel one action over another.

Quoting jorndoe

Seen elsewhere:

If morality requires choice And empathy is involuntary, Then empathy is not a basis for morality. — madebyjimbob


My initial thought was that "Made By Jimbob" might change it to this for validity:

if morality requires choice and empathy is involuntary, then empathy alone is not a basis for morality


But, what do you folk think?

You wouldn't even need to change it to "empathy alone is not" or "empathy is not the sole basis."

A basis for x is never identical to x. Necessarily, something else goes into x to make it x.

People frequently misunderstand this when they're dealing with fictions and artworks in general. They get annoyed that the subsequent work departs from the basis in various ways. But they're simply misunderstanding what a basis conventionally is.

My objection would be that the consclusion is different from what the premises entail.
Premise: Moral actions are voluntary.
Premise: Empathy-based-actions are involuntary.
Therefore, empathy-based-actions aren't moral.

Howewer, while this gives us a ground for thinking that actions based on feelings of extreme empathy are not good -which is counterinitutive, but that's besides the point-, this doesn't give us the ground to say that whetever an empathy can't be a logical basis for an action. Those are two different things. While the first simply says that, when judging a person's action from the perspective of morality -and, consequently, thinking about whetever the person should be praised for doing it-, involuntary things shouldn't be taken into consideration. But the second statement is about the evalutation of whetever we should do an action or not and that doesn't require that we do an action simply as a result of our empathy. That seems to be an important distinction to me.
So, in other words, it feels like a non-sequitur.

Reply to god must be atheist @fdrake or another mod can you please confirm or deny this supposed rule about links? I’ve been linking a bunch to my own essays in other threads, ignorant of any such rule, and would like to know if I should stop.

Reply to god must be atheist Reply to Pfhorrest

You can link to videos (at least I don't delete all posts containing them), just write a bit about it and make sure it's relevant. Relevant might include an in context joke.

Also suggest using the [ url="link" ][/ url] (remove the spaces and paste the link) around the url, neater.

Some empathy is involuntary (e.g. reactions) - some empathy is selective (requires deeper understanding..).

Psychopaths (ASPDs) are prime examples of 'voluntary empathy' as they can still make moral judgments - sometimes compassionate ones - just fine, and 'involuntary empathy' plays very little on their moral judgments/decision-making.

Empathy is useful, not reliable if that is all you are using to make judgments, necessary to feel but not required function.

Reply to Swan "Voluntary Empathy", at least in the sense you're presenting it, doesn't seem to be the real to me. While psychopaths do make moral judgements -and, like you said, compassionate ones-, that is generally based on egoism and are merely coincidences rather than genuine intent.

Although, yes, some empathy is selective-they need much more than simply a reaction that is the case in emotional empathy (which just requires a reaction). But, when emotional empathy is lacking, such compassionate acts seem to be lacking as well-that is the case with people who have Narcisstistic Personality Disorder (who have cognitive empathy, which is understanding of other's mental states, but lack the emotional counterpart) and Antisocial Personality Disorder (the same as before).