empathy and the great moral fallacy

["Alice Evans" <apyyae@nottingham.ac.uk>]

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** For Your Eyes Only **

Dear All,

A few musings on David's paper (from the recent conference)

in my view, the greatest problem facing society today is the general failure of the individual moral agent/ collective group to empathise beyond their immediate perameters.

Now, David correctly identified the flaw in Kant's reasoning (recognising that not all rational creatures are naturally moral). To expand, not all persons, capable of reason, first, seem to think about how their actions might affect others and secondly, take that on board when deliberating over a choice of routes.


It seems that something more is required in order to motivate society into empathising and that 

First, Jane (my hypothetical person) doesnt always think about adverse consequences and secondly she doesn't care, despite being rational.

Just because Jane is rational doesn't mean that she necessarily 'cares' about future generations (least not enough to recycle)

Just because Jane is rational doesn't entail that she necessarily cares about her mother having to do the washing up (and so leaves a few dirty dishes)

and this goes on and on.


David's solution is empathy.

Now, correct my if i've misunderstood but how is the statement "put yourself in someone else's shoes" sufficiently motivating?


1) how do you make Jane empathise at every juncture?

2) why should she bother?

David failed to say how we should get Jane to do so and, a far more important omission, why Jane should bother to think about others at all.........?

The motivational force of our immediate concerns is overwhelmingly more powerful than lesser worries.
Perhaps that's a tautology but i think it's an important distinction.
When we are more aware of something, we care more, information seems to have a motivational force
When we care more, we want to do more.

So, Jane is very aware that she's hungry, she can't help being aware of this problem
She cares so much about this problem that she prioritises it above her other goals and goes and gets something to eat.

Jane seems to have naturally prioritise this concern with little effort

This is an easy example, because it's a physical suffering, but the same formula applies to conceptual worries, like the motivational force of Jane hearing her brother has been mugged - she cares, wants to help and rushes home.


But how do we make other matters an issue? that is, how do we make Jane care enough to will herself to empathise in the first place? and once she has empathised how do we make sure that her appreciation of other people's concerns is sufficient for her to take their interests into account rather than just saying "sucks to be them?"

Sadly, i cannot offer a compelling reason why Jane 'ought' to do anything. Scratch as I might at the bottom of the moral barrell i cannot - a consequential bugger of not believing in moral facts. Even David's essay falls short.

But, despit such shortcomings, we must act now.

Clearly some people do have the capacity to care (whether or not empathy is deployed) about concerns beyond their immediate physical concerns. So how do we make 'worthy matters' subjects of individual concern?

Perhaps reason is strictly required, once people are aware of an issue, they act; once they realise the landfills are overflowing and that we can diminish this problem by a simple reduce, reuse, recycle policy, they do so.

But I disagree, we need them to care enough to want to do so.

Plato said, "no one does wrong knowingly", now there are 3 answers to why ppl remain selfish


1) ppl dont know that buy non-equi-trade bananas adversely affect 3rd world poor (doesnt contest plato)
2) ppl are aware of the general details but they havent experienced a sufficiently compassionate argument to motivate and make them think theyre doing 'wrong' (maybe contrary to plato)
3) ppl do know and dont care (contrary to plato)

So maybe we need to provide more information?

But is it even issue specific? Or is it about fostering the capacity to care?

Just because someone has the capacity to care about one issue doesnt mean they'll care about another.

Jane is a member of the Countryside Alliance and refuses to use non-organic pesticides on her farm but she routinely eats beef (ie. doesnt empathise, doesnt use Rawls' 'Veil of Ignorance')

Or take John, the researcher for a left of centre think tank, who cares deeply about the poor, but routinely 'uses' women and cheats on his girlfriend. 


Why does he care about some ppl not others?
it seems that we naturally prioritise our web of concern, the ever-extending but progressively so circles, first immediate family and close friends, then housemates, etc, then ethnicity, then gender, then social class, then nationality, then species (obviously these are random priorities)

but generally it's a case of whose problems ur more aware of, u care about more.
that's why comic relief shows images of 'the needy', to impel us to feel compassion

But why do we feel compassion?

Now, i think David over-intellectualised the notion, ppl dont just do 'good' because they 'empathise'; Jane doesnt need to put herself in her brother's shoes to encourage herself to go home to care for him, she seems to do so automatically, unthinkingly.

But when Jane lacks issue specific compassion David's answer doesnt motivate.
So is empathy neither a necessary nor sufficient reason for being 'moral'?


So, im looking for answers.... but suggestions will do

Any thoughts?




(for those who did not attend BUPS conference but would like to see the paper, I have it and await David's authorisation to release it, so email if you'd like a copy)

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