Note that your concept of empathy includes cultivating a social circle in which people honestly and accurately report their own preferences when asked and then explicitly asking someone in that circle for their preferences. It includes reading the results of studies on the revealed preferences of different communities and assuming that someone shares the most common preferences of the community they demographically match.
More generally, it includes a number of things that completely ignore any impressions you might garner about an individual’s preferences by observation of that individual.
I agree that your concept of empathy is a useful thing to have.
I also think it fails to map particularly closely to the concept “empathy” typically evokes in conversation with native English speakers.
Note that your concept of empathy includes cultivating a social circle in which people honestly and accurately report their own preferences when asked and then explicitly asking someone in that circle for their preferences. It includes reading the results of studies on the revealed preferences of different communities and assuming that someone shares the most common preferences of the community they demographically match.
Huh. I don’t entirely see where you are getting this. I’ll reread my comment, but what I meant is that empathy is accurately modeling people’s preferences using any means whatsoever.
Sometimes people use the term empathy to mean (for example, with respect to a ‘bleeding heart’) that the empathetic person tries very sincerely to model other people’s preferences and weights those preferences strongly. Also, empathy can mean that a person relies solely on predicting emotions for modeling preferences. I’m not sure how prevalent these different definitions are but regarding “your concept of empathy is a useful thing to have”, thanks.
A good distinguishing question for the common concept of empathy might be to ask-the-audience if a sociopath could have empathy. That is, consider a sociopath that is really good at modeling other people’s preferences but simply doesn’t weight other people’s preferences in their utility function. Could this person be said to ‘have empathy’?
If the answer is decidely ‘no’, then it seems a common concept of empathy might really be about a feeling a person has about the importance of other people’s preferences, depending on whether ‘accuracy’ is or isn’t also required.
Agreed that that’s a good distinguishing question. I predict that audiences of native English speakers who have not been artificially primed otherwise will say the sociopath lacks empathy.
As for not seeing where I’m getting what you quote… I’m confused. Those are two plausible techniques for arriving at accurate models of other people’s preferences; would they not count as ‘empathy’ in your lexicon?
As for not seeing where I’m getting what you quote… I’m confused.
I’m confused too. I read your comments over again today and they made sense. I kept making the same consistent mistake (at least 3 times) that you were defining rather than giving examples.
… I applied some google-foo and not having empathy is one of the defining characteristics of sociopaths, and then the first definition given seems pretty straight-forward:
The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
I’m happy with that definition, and it doesn’t change much. On the one hand, to understand the feelings of another you’ve got to have a good model for their preferences. Then sharing their feelings is the human/connection aspect of it.
In relation to this thread, I would refine that (perfect) empathy would be more than enough to be moral since understanding another person’s preferences is the first part of it. (I don’t think the second part is necessary for morality, but it makes it more natural.)
Well, OK.
Note that your concept of empathy includes cultivating a social circle in which people honestly and accurately report their own preferences when asked and then explicitly asking someone in that circle for their preferences. It includes reading the results of studies on the revealed preferences of different communities and assuming that someone shares the most common preferences of the community they demographically match.
More generally, it includes a number of things that completely ignore any impressions you might garner about an individual’s preferences by observation of that individual.
I agree that your concept of empathy is a useful thing to have.
I also think it fails to map particularly closely to the concept “empathy” typically evokes in conversation with native English speakers.
Huh. I don’t entirely see where you are getting this. I’ll reread my comment, but what I meant is that empathy is accurately modeling people’s preferences using any means whatsoever.
Sometimes people use the term empathy to mean (for example, with respect to a ‘bleeding heart’) that the empathetic person tries very sincerely to model other people’s preferences and weights those preferences strongly. Also, empathy can mean that a person relies solely on predicting emotions for modeling preferences. I’m not sure how prevalent these different definitions are but regarding “your concept of empathy is a useful thing to have”, thanks.
A good distinguishing question for the common concept of empathy might be to ask-the-audience if a sociopath could have empathy. That is, consider a sociopath that is really good at modeling other people’s preferences but simply doesn’t weight other people’s preferences in their utility function. Could this person be said to ‘have empathy’?
If the answer is decidely ‘no’, then it seems a common concept of empathy might really be about a feeling a person has about the importance of other people’s preferences, depending on whether ‘accuracy’ is or isn’t also required.
Agreed that that’s a good distinguishing question. I predict that audiences of native English speakers who have not been artificially primed otherwise will say the sociopath lacks empathy.
As for not seeing where I’m getting what you quote… I’m confused. Those are two plausible techniques for arriving at accurate models of other people’s preferences; would they not count as ‘empathy’ in your lexicon?
I’m confused too. I read your comments over again today and they made sense. I kept making the same consistent mistake (at least 3 times) that you were defining rather than giving examples.
Ah! Yes, OK, the conversation makes sense now. Thanks for saying that out loud.
… I applied some google-foo and not having empathy is one of the defining characteristics of sociopaths, and then the first definition given seems pretty straight-forward:
I’m happy with that definition, and it doesn’t change much. On the one hand, to understand the feelings of another you’ve got to have a good model for their preferences. Then sharing their feelings is the human/connection aspect of it.
In relation to this thread, I would refine that (perfect) empathy would be more than enough to be moral since understanding another person’s preferences is the first part of it. (I don’t think the second part is necessary for morality, but it makes it more natural.)