Empathy in morality

We’re often told that we should consider other people. That’s right and proper, and an integral part of being part of a co-operative group of beings. But increasingly people are misconstruing this simple injunction. When we add one word to the end of the sentence: ‘we should consider other people’s feelings’, we change the entire meaning.
I can understand how the confusion arises. All through childhood we are taught how to integrate with and behave in society. As part of this, our parents teach us to understand other people. This not only advances our mental development, as we develop theory of self and learn to anticipate others’ wants and responses (which, we are told, is why our brains are so huge: big brains aren’t needed for calculating where a falling rock will land, nor how to move our legs, but for social interaction), but as theory of self develops it also coincides with moral learning. When children are old enough to interact with others on a social level and understand their parents’ reasoning, they are at precisely the age that involves learning the rules of social interaction. It is natural to appeal to their new knowledge and abilities to help them with learning. But it isn’t necessary. Morality follows theory of self because of how we raise children, not because empathy is its basis.
If empathy were the basis of morality, then a psychopath, who has none, would not be bound by morality: he would be freed, by a chance of nature, from a social construct. That’s fine: there’s no law against such a system. But it does strike me as absurd to base rules governing society on something hidden, personal and not universally shared by members of that society. The solution, then is to argue either that empathy is a sense some of us have of a universal truth, or else that the feelings themselves are the basis of morality. Personal and not shared senses of universal truth have been addressed many times and very comprehensively by atheists the world over, so I don’t need to debunk that idea here. The second assertion, however, is the core of this post, and the one that is usually asserted; I was merely ruling out alternatives before getting to it.
It is my assertion that feelings are individual, unpredictable and unreliable. Furthermore, when the feelings themselves occur reliably when predicted for everyone, they are still incomparable, unquantifiable (precisely) and unverifiable. If we are to accept the bald assertion that feelings are the basis of morality, which I don’t feel inclined to do, we have quite a selection of practical problems with codifying morality.
We have just seen that empathy is not a good basis for morality without me even mentioning ‘the golden rule’ and its problems with masochists (and all differences in taste). Empathy is a way of judging emotions from overt responses (after the event) or predicting responses based on perceived desires. If I’m to judge using perceived desires then I need to know the person, making moral action with strangers impossible, and I might well also need, if the person’s desires differ greatly from my own, to ignore my empathy (here meaning my intuitive understanding of human nature) and rely on ‘merely’ intellectual models of desires. We can’t judge the morality of an act if we need information that we can only acquire after the act. That covers both using responses and knowledge of the person. And as for using intellectual understanding of people’s desires rather than emotional, that’s a big leap from empathy.
Of course, some people are happy with the unpredictability of the morality of an action. They don’t think that morality has to be usable as a guide about what to do, but instead can quite reasonably be judged using consequences. Morality is then not a socialising force or a set of principles to live by, but a capricious and judgemental god who imposes (original) sin on us without us having any ability to avoid it. People are welcome to believe in ‘consequentialism’, but I think it’s a vile and barbaric creed that’s amenable only to those whose lives are so chaotic or who have so little self-control that capricious judgements seem normal. I don’t think it fulfils the basic requirements of morality such as people being responsible for doing wrong.
The second part is the unquantifiability, and hence incomparability, of feelings. Feelings will often compete, just as people do, for resources or rights or actions. A system that cannot judge between these pulls is not a system at all, and is unusable.
The third part is the unverifiability of feelings. I can quite easily lie about my feelings or exaggerate. If we base our moral system on something that can be altered for and by individual participants, we don’t have a moral system, but a ‘do whatever you want’ system. Of course this is, to an extent, solely a practical point. It is quite easy to say that morality does indeed rely on feelings and that dissembling is immoral and that there is no way that we can ever be certain of our moral judgements or of doing justice, because we can never trust anyone else. If you believe that, though, you might well agree that we should introduce another ‘moral’ system for practical control, just because some form of morality might well be better than anarchy.

Anyway, the fourth and most important for me (because I’ve thought about it before) point is about how if we rely on other people’s responses, as empathy dictates (in that it anticipates those responses) then we can be controlled by others who control their responses. Not only that, which might nonetheless be moral, but if we suffer anguish from choosing an option we didn’t really want, then they have a duty to anticipate our responses and act to minimise our anguish. They are then morally bound to conceal or even falsify their responses in order to minimise our anguish. And then we are bound to prevent them anticipating our anguish in order not to control them and thereby cause them anguish… it’s an endless circle of inter-reliance, and cannot be resolved except by removing the start: that other people’s responses should govern our actions. We don’t live in a static world where everyone else is unchanging whilst we make our choices. To use other people’s responses as a guide to actions betrays a distinct solipsism and lack of consideration of others as individuals, because it needs the assumption that they’re merely predetermined experiences for us.
To care for that person as another person, in a human way that ‘empathists’ would probably feel drawn to, needs us to acknowledge their humanity, their ability to choose and respond for themselves and the consequent impossibility of a system that sets us up to rely on each others’ responses in a self-referential way. Even though a simplistic summary might be that I’m advocating ignoring someone’s feelings in a rather inhuman way, I think that people are usually much happier when they’re not controlled or manipulated, which is what anticipating their feelings does for them. I also find that acting on principle, rather than on feelings, makes me more tolerable, not less; some people disagree with a thing here or there, but my actions and in particular my expectations (because I don’t really have any) aren’t arbitrary or capricious. And this takes me full circle to my recent note about spanking. As is agreed by experts everywhere, being arbitrary and capricious is no good way to engender love or even liking and nor does it set a good example for children.
So, in fact, the more we feel that we need to rely on others’ feelings to guide our actions, the more everyone is obliged to hide their feelings, the less guide we have, the more deceived and deceptive we become and the less genuine interaction there is.
I would rather feel free to express genuine emotion and see it, untroubled by the need to tailor it to produce the correct response in others or to interpret it carefully. This is what I do on those occasions when I do express emotion, and it’s why dogs are so rewarding. They show how they feel without concern about the effects on you, but simply because that’s what interaction ought to be. Whether they’re simple or not, their actions in this regard are remarkably wise. It’s the same joy that many people get when they deal with children: they are expressive for expression’s sake, open and honest. It is rewarding to be allowed to make one’s own decisions without interference from others, controlling their expressions.
I see no reason to ‘grow up’ past this beautiful state, and I refuse, where I can, to do so. Rejecting doctrines that require us to be closed, isolated and manipulative is certainly one way in which I can do so.