The role of empathy in decision making is allowing us to understand the other, and bring their mental state into our own larger decision making process. Empathy in and of itself is not a decision making tool.
I suspect you really do have firmer grounding for your position, but haven't performed the introspection necessary to figure out the boundaries of your position, or how to articulate them. And that's fine. Many people have the luxury to never be tested.
If we take the reductive approach of only using empathy, we wind up doing whatever it is that the other wants. Such a system has no room for doing what we think is the right response to the situation, because it has no mechanism for determining responses beyond those considered by the other. It leaves no room for personal self-determination because it has no way to evaluate our wants against another's. And has no way to handle a situation where you empathize with two people holding conflicting desires. I know I'm unfairly stretching an idea past it's breaking point, but that's sort of my point...
There must be a higher-order decision making process.
Frankly, I consider the way people frequently speak of "empathy" as an attempt to hide that process. Hiding it from just me, the world, or maybe from themselves too.
Well put. Especially the last part. "empathy" when used by certain groups, especially SJWs, can assume an almost religous ideal, very similar to "faith" used by Christians or Moslims.
For religous people, experiencing doubt is turn into a test of faith, and if you pass the test, you are seen as extra virtous.
For SJW, if you really feel hateful and resentful towards someone (ie the opposite of empathy), you can reclaim your virtue by showing even more empathy for the people that are seen as victimized or oppressed by the person or group they hate or resent.
Similarly, "empathy" can be used by fundamentalists to justify pretty much the same things that religious fundamentalists can justify by "faith".
For instance:
- to display virtue, often with the intent to gain status
- to separate in-group from out-group (often with poor justification)
- to punish members of the out-group when they "transgress"
- dehumanize the outgroup. Sometimes to the extent that they do not deserve to be treated according to ethical rules.
- to deny or make taboo science that contradict their dogma (sociobiology, iq research)
- to classify certain positions as heretical or evil (if you believe X is a fact, even if it is a proven fact, you are a nazi, and must be neutralized)
- to promote ideas that contradict scientific facts when it promotes the "cause" (ie tabula rasa, ghost in the machine)
I suspect you really do have firmer grounding for your position, but haven't performed the introspection necessary to figure out the boundaries of your position, or how to articulate them. And that's fine. Many people have the luxury to never be tested.
If we take the reductive approach of only using empathy, we wind up doing whatever it is that the other wants. Such a system has no room for doing what we think is the right response to the situation, because it has no mechanism for determining responses beyond those considered by the other. It leaves no room for personal self-determination because it has no way to evaluate our wants against another's. And has no way to handle a situation where you empathize with two people holding conflicting desires. I know I'm unfairly stretching an idea past it's breaking point, but that's sort of my point...
There must be a higher-order decision making process.
Frankly, I consider the way people frequently speak of "empathy" as an attempt to hide that process. Hiding it from just me, the world, or maybe from themselves too.