The Blind-Spot of Empathy

Reply to Wheatley

You're just confusing empathy with sympathy. Empathy is (broadly) feeling what another person is feeling, sympathy is caring about what another person is feeling. The two are not mutually dependant.

Quoting Isaac

You're just confusing empathy with sympathy.

I don't believe I am. If you replace the words "sympathy for the words "empathy" in my paragraph it makes no sense.

Quoting Wheatley

You're just confusing empathy with sympathy.
— Isaac
I don't believe I am. If you replace the words "sympathy for the words "empathy" in my paragraph it makes no sense.

Yes, "cognitive empathy" is the ability to take the perspective of the other and it is germane to personality development in sociation.

edit. However you are conflating the cognitive and affective senses of empathy in your hypothesis, I think. Cognitively, I can empathize with the sociopath while, per impossibile, I cannot feel what it is like to have no feelings..

Quoting Wheatley

I don't believe I am. If you replace the words "sympathy for the words "empathy" in my paragraph it makes no sense.

I didn't say anything about the terms being interchangeable within your post. You've made a claim about empathy which does not apply to it, it applies to sympathy. We cannot empathise with a psychopath because we cannot feel the same things he feels. Your conclusion that we cannot feel bad for a psychopath does not follow from the fact that we can't feel what he feels because feeling bad for someone is sympathy,not empathy.

Quoting Wheatley

Therefore it's literally impossible to feel bad for a psychopath!

I can feel bad for a psychopath. I think that they have a hard life.

Yes, the empathetic can't get of a feel "of" being a psychopath but surely, the empathetic can feel "for" a psychopath.

It is possible for both to suspend empathy. In fact, the psychopath is not devoid of empathy (that's almost an urban myth). The psychopath has repressed empathy and conscience with such ferocity he does not feel it. He supresses it because if he didn't he could not indulge in his monstrous behaviours.

If you commit a crime against a psychopath s/he will tell you in no uncertain terms what you did was wrong and why it was wrong and how you should be punished. But s/he forgets all this when it is the other way around.

Quoting Wheatley

Most humans have empathy in that we can put ourselves in the shoes of other people and know what harm we can cause them. However a person with empathy can never put himself in the shoes of a psychopath because an empathetic will never know what it's like to be a person without empathy (psychopath).

I don't see how that actually follows. I feel like I can imagine what it's like to be a psychopath the same way I can imagine, well, perhaps any other experience you might have had in mind. Of course, if you mean more like casual everyday situations then sure, it's far easier to put myself in the shoes of someone with empathy than a psychopath, although in neither case I'll never know for sure if I got it right.

I'd feel bad for a psychopath being tortured, for instance, and if someone wouldn't then I'd consider them to be somewhat akin to a psychopath themselves.

Reply to Wheatley It seems to me that the presumption behind your logic is that we cannot put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is fundamentally different from us, just like it was investigated in the article "what is it like to be a bat". However, we should clarify what we mean by "fundamentally". For example, can an extrovert empathize with an introvert? Can an able person empathize with with someone with disability? Can a heterogeneous empathize with a queer?
In my view, all these cases depend on our perspective-taking abilities plus our compassionate disposition. The same goes for empathizing with a psychopath

Quoting zookeeper

Of course, if you mean more like casual everyday situations then sure, it's far easier to put myself in the shoes of someone with empathy than a psychopath, although in neither case I'll never know for sure if I got it right.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

I guess it depends on the type of person you are. An innocent person can never know what it's like to be a murderer no matter how much she studies them.

Quoting zookeeper

I'd feel bad for a psychopath being tortured, for instance, and if someone wouldn't then I'd consider them to be somewhat akin to a psychopath themselves.

You feel bad that a human is being tortured, but do you feel bad for the psychopath personally?

Quoting Carekess observations

However, we should clarify what we mean by "fundamentally". For example, can an extrovert empathize with an introvert? Can an able person empathize with with someone with disability? Can a heterogeneous empathize with a queer?

Not really.

Then do we really have empathy, when we cannot empathize with anyone but those who are exactly like us?

Reply to Carekess observations
All humans are 99.9 identical at the dna level. We are more alike than society would have us believe.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with what we were discussing. So the difference between a psychopath and another person in the dna level are the same as the difference between an able-bodied and a person with congenital disability. And we are all in this species which have 99.9% similarity. So either we can empathize with a psychopath or we cannot empathize with anyone who has a significant difference from us, unless you argue the dna level difference between a psychopath and a non-psychopath is somehow more pronounced than other variety of characteristics

Reply to Carekess observations I misread.

Quoting Carekess observations

Then do we really have empathy, when we cannot empathize with anyone but those who are exactly like us?

I cannot answer that question.

Reply to A Seagull Sociopaths have a hard life, but psychopaths usually do quite well if they can avoid becoming serial killers. About 3% of the population is estimated to fall into one of the antisocial categories.

This is what I have understood the difference between a sociopath and psychopath to be: a sociopath is a person with a withered, weak ability to empathize. A psychopath has a physical inability to empathize- it's impossible to. The difference is similar to one having weak arms and the other not having arms.
Please let me know if this is not correct.

my two cents: i have found that simplicity is best when fewer words are chosen to describe an observation. to compare an empath to a psychopath is like saying an orange and apple are the same because they come from a tree... The empath's vision is wide, while the psychopath is limited to his/her affliction.

Quoting EnPassant

If you commit a crime against a psychopath s/he will tell you in no uncertain terms what you did was wrong and why it was wrong and how you should be punished. But s/he forgets all this when it is the other way around.

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about this. There was a serial rapist who after being caught said he didn't understand what was so bad about rape, because he didn't imagine it to be a bad thing for himself. Maybe that changes if he actually got raped? I don't know. Plenty of hardened criminals in prison you could ask.

I've read that psychopaths don't tend to fear consequences. Thus they lack empathy for people who do, viewing them as weak.

Reply to Marchesk thank you for sharing your thoughts of behavioral insight. Though the empath/psychopaths' differ in their outlook, the census of the "group" determines differences in perception of good vs. evil; one goes beyond the rule to do good, while the other is unaware of the rules of conduct. (scientist have found anomalies on psychopath's abnormal behavior)( the original statement that the empath has a blind spot is false as the empath is conditioned to respond positive, to whatever behavior he/she encounters) ( an empath also is gifted with precognition which helps them to cope with diverse strategies of conflicts