Compassion and empathy

[Oneofthediaspora]

Cantata;
So compassion only really informs us about the sort of behaviour that prolongs the survival of certain genes?
Would you agree?

 

[Braunwyn]

But the golden rule is compassionate; it acknowledges the fact a person often values himself above all others, thats all. It asks you to value others in the same way, most people don't really think of the golden rule as preparing for any of their possible eventualities.

Maybe I'm understanding compassion incorrectly. I tend to think of compassion as a sensitivity to suffering that goes past the 'me' factor. The golden rule or empathy, looks like a personal consideration of "I wouldn't like that so perhaps this other being wouldn't like it either". It seems that it could become limited pretty quick. What if there is somethig that you do like, but the other being doesn't like? Bigots are a good example. They don't like the idea of homosexuality, cannot relate to it, so it makes no difference to them if a homosexual suffers due to not being allowed to be who they are (sorry if that sentence reads disjointed). The golden rule simply doesn't apply in this case. Compassion OTOH isn't about how I would feel about something but how it's affecting the person outside of me.

 

[Nathan45]

But my point was, supposing th monkeys were of different species, if the one in the cage did not have empathy it would be better off.

I could be wrong but I honestly doubt that a chimp would go without food so a different kind of monkey wouldn't get an electroshock. If he did it would probably be more out of fear than compassion (maybe the other monkey is larger and dangerous looking?).

So, basically I'm asking why compassion and emotion are essential, or even slightly beneficial in our social development?
You can say because we could not form strong bonds without it; but if we had emotions there would be no need to feel any sense of a bond.

Strong bonds are a survival trait, that's the whole point. If you have strong emotional bonds with other creatures (not even necessarily of the same species, read up on symbiosis), you can work as a team not as an individual.

You've pointed out that emotions are not strictly necessary to work in a cooperative fashion with other creatures... i'd point out that getting creatures to act like vulcans or robots is probably harder than getting them to act from emotion, people arn't that smart and having a loosely accurate, emotional gut based instinct on what to do in situations is a good enough shortcut to rationality from an evolutionary perspective.

It's also worth mentioning that letting everyone know that you always act in a perfectly rational way is not in your own interests.

If you read up on game theory, a "player" may be at an advantage if other "players" assume that he does not act in a rational fashion.

It's important to understand that actual compassion would be more likely to engender trust than obvious emotionless naked self interest.

People are more likely to trust you and cooperate with you if they think that you have some kind of emotional bond or loyalty with them rather than if they think you're simply acting in your own rational self interests. So simply having a naked emotionless rational self interest, is going to get you into trouble because other people will worry that you might stab them in the back if you ever feel it suits your interests.

It's much easier to trust someone who acts out of compassion or loyalty than one who acts out of rational self interest, so it is often in one's rational self interest to be compassionate rather than selfish.

edit:

But my point was, supposing th monkeys were of different species, if the one in the cage did not have empathy it would be better off.

And i still don't see why you say it would be better off. As long as the monkey doesn't starve or start wasting away, it hardly matters how much or how little food it eats. It's probably accurate to say that most creatures will have compassion as long as it doesn't threaten their own survival. Going without food for a few days for the sake of compassion is not going to kill the monkey or make it worse off. At some point the hunger will overtake the compassion and then it will eat, but there's no reason for it to eat before then.

Unless the monkey actually starves to death from not pulling the lever, having compassion is not going to make it less fit in any way.

 

[cantata]

Just a note - if you knew people would only do favors when it had some overall benefit for them, you would do the same, it wouldn't be a matter of trust. You wouldn't feel any sense of trust, and neither would any one else, they would just be perfectly rational. But I see your point.

Again, it's not about knowing.

Besides, we can know, and yet we still feel the emotion and we don't feel a need to do away with it.

Fair 'nuff.
So some random evolutionary mutation [1] produced mirror neurons, which proved to cause the species to form stronger societal bonds, based on favor-swapping and another emotion(and act of intellect), trust, [2] and thus last longer than those species who had formed societies for pure benefit? [3]
Would that be a correct sum of your position?

Notes to the above:

1. Mutations aren't "evolutionary". A series of mutations, which were random in their occurrence, were non-randomly selected by environmental pressure ultimately to produce mirror neurons (although each stage between no-mirror-neurons and mirror-neurons was evolutionarily beneficial).

2. Compassion, favour-swapping, and trust do all go together. But it's not just about favour-swapping. It's also about kin selection. Your siblings and your cousins have some of the same genes as you, so it's in your genes' best interests to look after your kin.

3. I'm not really sure what you mean by a society formed for pure benefit. All societies are formed for the benefit of those in the society. The point is that cooperative societies are the most effective kind.

And, as you say compassion is now not a really essential emotion anymore, and is often easily ignored, or deformed, by people. So are we potentially in the process of losing the emotion of compassion?

I don't think we can make that assumption. Evolutionary pressures are very different in modern human society from those that our distant ancestors faced. And at the moment, there are still social benefits to all of us to be compassionate because it is expected of us and it makes others trust and like us. We need to be trusted and liked to attract partners. So no, compassion is not "inessential". My point was merely that it evolved in circumstances very different to our own and is therefore no longer running at peak efficiency in evolutionary terms. That is not a moral judgement, by the way.

Whenever I make a similar statement to an atheistic evolutionist, they correct me and say "No, there is no end - so nothing evolved in order to achieve any end."

Fair enough. That's my sloppy language again.

But the point remains: it turned out to be beneficial, at each stage of the evolutionary process, for human beings to be compassionate.

And I understand them, but then that raises the question sort of contained in the OP: why do humans percieve some things seen as "ends", as "goods" or "good" (even when these these things are in opposition to pure survival-oriented behavior)?

I mean we talk about a will to live, and about genes wanting to reproduce and pass themselves on, but unless we're real pantheists, we know genes don't "want" or "will" anything.

Well, I'd recommend reading The Blind Watchmaker for an accessible but in-depth discussion of how a self-replicating molecule can appear to "want".

Basically if you have something that naturally (blindly) makes copies of itself, the better and more efficiently it can do that, the more copies it will make. From an evolutionary point of view, bodies are nothing but vessels for genes.

Cantata;
So compassion only really informs us about the sort of behaviour that prolongs the survival of certain genes?
Would you agree?

No.

It informs us about the sort of behaviour that used to prolong the survival of certain genes, before modernity came along and interfered.

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

It's important to understand that actual compassion would be more likely to engender trust than obvious emotionless naked self interest.

People are more likely to trust you and cooperate with you if they think that you have some kind of emotional bond or loyalty with them rather than if they think you're simply acting in your own rational self interests. So simply having a naked emotionless rational self interest, is going to get you into trouble because other people will worry that you might stab them in the back if you ever feel it suits your interests.

It's much easier to trust someone who acts out of compassion or loyalty than one who acts out of rational self interest, so it is often in one's rational self interest to be compassionate rather than selfish.

Now this goes some way to providing an argument for Cantata as to how and why lying can be evolutionarily beneficial.
If you can fool other people into believing that you are compassionate and loyal then you can reap the benefits.

 

[cantata]

Now this goes some way to providing an argument for Cantata as to how and why lying can be evolutionarily beneficial.
If you can fool other people into believing that you are compassionate and loyal then you can reap the benefits.

Absolutely. You're getting it.

You have to remember that none of these are moral claims. They do not entail or imply value judgements. I admire compassion and loyalty as much as the next person. But evolution doesn't "see" it that way.

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

No.

It informs us about the sort of behaviour that used to prolong the survival of certain genes, before modernity came along and interfered.

So compassion informs us of a certain type of behaviour that tells us something about what used to be important for the continued survival of some of our genes a relatively long time ago.

Methinks the materialist should not listen to compassion then and use some other guide to inform behaviour.
What do you think?

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

Absolutely. You're getting it.

You have to remember that none of these are moral claims. They do not entail or imply value judgements. I admire compassion and loyalty as much as the next person. But evolution doesn't "see" it that way.

Of course it doesn't. It doesn't see anything. Genes are concerned with surviving. That's what they do.
Why do you and I admire compassion and loyalty though?

 

[cantata]

So compassion informs us of a certain type of behaviour that tells us something about what used to be important for the continued survival of some of our genes a relatively long time ago.

Yes.

Methinks the materialist should not listen to compassion then and use some other guide to inform behaviour.
What do you think?

I disagree. It is our emotions that make us want to behave "morally". There are no other options.

Besides, the fact remains that I desire to listen to my feelings of compassion. If I didn't, I wouldn't. It's not a case of what the materialist should or shouldn't do. If you find you are moved by compassion, then that's just how it is.

Of course it doesn't. It doesn't see anything. Genes are concerned with surviving. That's what they do.
Why do you and I admire compassion and loyalty though?

Isn't this where we started?

We admire these qualities because we feel them ourselves and our genes "know" it's a good idea to promote them.

And also because of a massive amount of cultural conditioning and both positive and negative reinforcement.

 

[morningstar2651]

If compassion is good, does that mean that autism is evil?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070504121241.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106123725.htm

A dysfunction of the mirror neurons is related to the impaired social interaction of autism.

Impaired social interaction doesn't sound evolutionarily useful to me. Maybe it's a good thing we have mirror neurons?

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

I disagree. It is our emotions that make us want to behave "morally". There are no other options.

Besides, the fact remains that I desire to listen to my feelings of compassion. If I didn't, I wouldn't. It's not a case of what the materialist should or shouldn't do. If you find you are moved by compassion, then that's just how it is.

I'm glad you used quotation marks around morally there. You could quite easily have left the word out altogether though and the sentence would be better:
"It's our emotions that make us want to behave". Morally or imorally doesn't come into it does it?
We have already decided that for the materialist the emotions can only give us some outdated and morally neutral information about genetic survival so why mention morality?
Why do you desire to listen to your feelings of compassion?
Does reason inform this desire at all?

 

[Chesterton]

From an evolutionary point of view, bodies are nothing but vessels for genes.

...and genes are nothing but vessels for atoms.

The hard part for me is, that evolution says things do what they do with no design or aim or choice, but no one praises or condemns things for doing what they can’t help but do. It would be absurd to call Jupiter admirable or contemptible for orbiting the sun. So if genes and monkeys and people all just do what they do, how and why would moral judgments arise?

You can't say "to encourage certain actions" because only a mind can "encourage". So we say we don't really mean "encourage", and when we remove all the metaphors like "encouraged", "geared towards", etc., we're left with the bare fact that whatever happened is what happened (in evolutionary history), then we're back to "then how can it be praiseworthy?".

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

We admire these qualities because we feel them ourselves and our genes "know" it's a good idea to promote them.

And also because of a massive amount of cultural conditioning and both positive and negative reinforcement.

Our genes "know" nothing. They promote such behaviour because such behaviour used to prolong the survival of such genes in the genepool. Is this a reason to admire such behaviour?


In the last sentence you allude to the next part of the equation in the atheist/materialist expalantion of compassion.
I'm guessing you are aware of the concept of memes?

 

[cantata]

I'm glad you used quotation marks around morally there. You could quite easily have left the word out altogether though and the sentence would be better:
"It's our emotions that make us want to behave". Morally or imorally doesn't come into it does it?

Well, it does in the case of compassion, because people tend to want to label compassionate acts "moral".

What I meant is that it's this particular emotion, among others, that makes us want to act "well" - that is, in a way that we think we "ought". We only have the spurious language of morality with which to discuss these specific kinds of motivations!

We have already decided that for the materialist the emotions can only give us some outdated and morally neutral information about genetic survival so why mention morality?
Why do you desire to listen to your feelings of compassion?
Does reason inform this desire at all?

I can see pragmatic reasons to behave in some ways which, externally, might be thought of as compassionate. There are pragmatic reasons to be kind to my friends, for example. These partially motivate me, along with my feelings of compassion.

However, I can't see a pragmatic reason to buy soul for a homeless person. The fact remains that, for whatever reasons - biological, sociological, &c. - seeing a homeless person sitting in a doorway on a cold night makes me feel an urge to give them hot food. Fulfilling that urge feels good; failing to fulfil it feels bad. That's my motivation right there. I don't personally see a need to try to stop feeling compassionate, because I've been taught to think that it's a "good" feeling to have, and as such, I feel it very strongly.

I don't see why one would need to demand a further motivation. We do everything because of how we feel.

 

[cantata]

...and genes are nothing but vessels for atoms.

But atoms are not self-replicating. The point is that your genes contain the "design" for your body, and your body is a machine for making more of your genes.

The hard part for me is, that evolution says things do what they do with no design or aim or choice, but no one praises or condemns things for doing what they can’t help but do. It would be absurd to call Jupiter admirable or contemptible for orbiting the sun. So if genes and monkeys and people all just do what they do, how and why would moral judgments arise?

You can't say "to encourage certain actions" because only a mind can "encourage". So we say we don't really mean "encourage", and when we remove all the metaphors like "encouraged", "geared towards", etc., we're left with the bare fact that whatever happened is what happened (in evolutionary history), then we're back to "then how can it be praiseworthy?".

I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

I'm a hard determinist. I don't believe in objective morality. I don't believe in free will. I believe that you and I and everyone else are biological machines. We have the illusion of free will, but it's just that: an illusion.

So the evolution of moral feeling is, for me, just another part of that process and of the propagation of our genes. I don't believe that anything "out there" makes such-and-such an action praiseworthy. I just know that I approve or disapprove of it, that it gives me a good or a bad feeling, that it has this or that effect in the world, and I make my "moral" judgement accordingly.

Our genes "know" nothing. They promote such behaviour because such behaviour used to prolong the survival of such genes in the genepool. Is this a reason to admire such behaviour?

No, of course not.

But it is (partly) the source of our finding this behaviour admirable.

In the last sentence you allude to the next part of the equation in the atheist/materialist expalantion of compassion.
I'm guessing you are aware of the concept of memes?

I am.

I think the social side of compassion has so far been a bit neglected in this thread.

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

I don't personally see a need to try to stop feeling compassionate, because I've been taught to think that it's a "good" feeling to have, and as such, I feel it very strongly.

No. I think you feel it very strongly because you are a good person with a conscience that that has been formed in the image of Love Itself and which you try to maintain because you are intellectually honest and you recognise the purity and goodness of the emotion that is in itself a beautiful and precious thing. I think you would probably still help the homeless person if it did not make you "feel" anything.

I am guessing that you do not feel the same intensity about other feelings that you were taught were "good" or "bad".

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

We do everything because of how we feel.

No. I have to disagree with you there. Either that or your use of the phrase "how we feel" encompasses a hell of a lot more than what I take it to mean.
I sometimes still feel like smoking a cigarette.
I sometimes feel so lacking in compassion and/or empathy when shopping in Ikea that I feel like kicking the person dawdling in front of me up the ****.

By God's good grace alone, my feelings do not translate into actions.

 

[cantata]

No. I think you feel it very strongly because you are a good person with a conscience that that has been formed in the image of Love Itself and which you try to maintain because you are intellectually honest and you recognise the purity and goodness of the emotion that is in itself a beautiful and precious thing. I think you would probably still help the homeless person if it did not make you "feel" anything.

Well, most of this is not something I want to argue with you about. But the last sentence, I strongly disagree with. I only do "good" things because it feels good to do them or bad not to do them. I can't imagine any other reason to do them. I need a motivation to do things, and no fact - not even a "moral" fact - can swing that unless it affects my feelings.

Why would I help the homeless person if I didn't feel anything?

I am guessing that you do not feel the same intensity about other feelings that you were taught were "good" or "bad".

I can't think of many other feelings I was taught were good or bad.

I suppose I was taught that love is good and hate is bad, and I feel very strongly about those, too.

By the way, thank you.

 

[cantata]

No. I have to disagree with you there. Either that or your use of the phrase "how we feel" encompasses a hell of a lot more than what I take it to mean.
I sometimes still feel like smoking a cigarette.
I sometimes feel so lacking in compassion and/or empathy when shopping in Ikea that I feel like kicking the person dawdling in front of me up the ****.

By God's good grace alone, my feelings do not translate into actions.

When you feel like smoking a cigarette, I take it that your desire not to smoke the cigarette, or your fear of the negative consequences of doing so, is stronger.

When you feel like lashing out at dawdling customers, I take it that your desire not to harm them, or your desire not to get arrested for assaulting consumers of flat-packed furniture, is stronger.

You do what you do because of how you feel. When you feel two or more things at once, the strongest feeling wins.

 

[Oneofthediaspora]

Why would I help the homeless person if I didn't feel anything?

To relieve their suffering?

Do you only think hatred is bad and love is good because you were taught it?
Were you not taught things that you have come to disagree with?