Whilst deleting old email, ran across this from one of my favorite correspondents:

If you realise that you have no empathy for other people, but realise and accept that you don't, is that really an oxymoron, because the very realisation is proof that perhaps you have more empathy than you thought you had??

No, this isn't a trick question. It's a genuine thought that's occurred to me. I mean, having been raised by a mother who really does appear to have no empathy whatsoever for pretty well anyone, I am extremely concerned that I might be the same and not realise it. Yet there are times when I think I do. Huh??? I hear you think (maybe - but then maybe I'm just dreaming that I might be empathetic enought to think that).

So if I think I realise that I might be disturbingly as un-empathetic as my mother, does that somehow make me empathetic? Or just hopeful?

What do you think???

This is an interesting moral quandary. Is a moral person in the Epicurean sense truly moral, or are they moral out of their own best interest? This is similar to the question of John Searle's Chinese Room, as to what point something which simulating intelligence actually becomes intelligent. I haven't read Kant, but I'm sure he had something to say about this.

In order to be able to have empathy, you need to be feel what the other person is feeling. In specific situations, Person A might say that he doesn't have empathy for Person B, and I don't think that would mean that Person A is therefore empathetic. For example, I might have an African-American colleague who feels that others are biased toward her because of her race. I, then, would admit that I don't understand because I've never been there. That doesn't make me more empathetic.

Yet your question is more general, asking if one generally admits to not being empathetic, does that mean that he in fact is more so than he thinks. As Sean says, that's more a philosophical question, and I don't know what the big thinkers would say on it. However, I do think that admission would mean the person is more empathetic generally just because of his perception about himself.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
In order to be able to have empathy, you need to be feel what the other person is feeling. …As Sean says, that's more a philosophical question….

I wholly agree with this interpretation. You have to feel "in the other person's shoes" to be empathetic. The word has become hackneyed, commonly misused when the word sympathetic is more appropriate.
Dale's insight or sense of guilt may be commendable in moral terms, but generally, insight into one's lack of sympathy or empathy is a different matter, and guilt over one's self-perceived lack is but one step towards correcting it.
I suspect that empathy (or lack of it) is a purely man made moral construction. We acquire our consciences and sense of right/wrong at a very early age. They are a very useful part of our self-survival kit.

Perhaps another example of semantic shift or what I call smearing

This wonderful poem has some lines that do a good job of expressing empathy ...... I think .....

quote:

"... For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, --
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own. ..."

I could have sworn we'd discussed the difference here between sympathy and empathy, though I couldn't find it. It's a subject that debated in nursing because with some patients we'll never be able to truly empathize.

When you meet someone who has lots of empathy, would you call them empathetic, or empathic?

quote:

Originally posted by Caterwauller:
When you meet someone who has lots of empathy, would you call them empathetic, or empathic?

Yes. The OED Online records empathic from 1909 and empathetic from 1932. But you already knew that.

quote:

The OED Online records empathic from 1909 and empathetic from 1932. But you already knew that.

I'm training other staff in personal safety techniques, and the official text of our script uses empathic. I think it sounds odd on my tongue, so I usually say empathetic.

To be honest, I didn't look it up. I don't bother because it's easier and more interesting to ask you guys.

Lazy . . .

The word Empathic makes me think of Deanna Troi.

I never have quite understood the distinction between empathy, "the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another," and sympathy, "the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration". They sound pretty much the same to me, at least in this sense.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
It's a subject that debated in nursing because with some patients we'll never be able to truly empathize.

K. You illustrate the problem admirably. Don't you think that the minority of health care workers who are not administrative or managerial, i.e. old-fashioned nurses or doctors, would be more effective if they were sympathetic not empathetic.
Once you identify emotionally with a patient's illness and suffering you are in grave danger of losing the objectivity needed to make rational and correct decisions. These can be effected with kindness and care by being sympathetic.

I hadn't thought about it in that way, Pearce, but that does make sense. I had always thought empathy was preferred over sympathy, but you make an excellent point.