empathy is not innate

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

it is obvious that mainstream thought is that we are born with the innate function to be emphatic.

that is to

em·pa·thy (mp-th)
n.

  1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.
  2. The attribution of one’s own feelings to an object.

before i even start to hold my case i would like to empasize that i completely agree that we are born with the capability to be emphatic, but that this is learned and is not an instinc like other people say. i would also highlight that

“everything we learn is because we have the ability to learn it.”

second its is important to say that understanding entails knowledge, which i define as useful information or conditioned information if you may. therefore one must have consciousness to understand.

that would erradicate the notion that empathy is innate because we are not born with any information, “associations”

now this leads us to two different conclusions either we change the definition or it is not learned.

so lets change the definition of emphatic to one that would suggest that it is innate.

so the idea or concept of emphatic is that someone is can feel what another person is feeling.

thus if i am “sad” then a person next to me would in theory be “sad” as well, since the definition is not selective emphatic could also be “happy”.

now we have two different perspective, either we infer the feeling or we feel the feeling.

there is a big difference between the two if we infer the meaning this means that it is learned, why? because the person must “see the feeling” this mean see external behaviour that suggest that the person is sad.

if we feel the feeling this would suggest that there is some kind of “energy” which connects the person to another that lets animals “sense” as a function of an extra “sixth sense” what another is feeling.

now i am going to suggest that we infer the meaning.

now we can test this rather easily lets say a person is sad but does not show any symptoms does the person near them feel sad?

prediction “no”.

if a person shows symptoms that differs from what he is feeling then a person can in theory be mislead?

prediction “yes.”

i guess that is enough description.

now i have found this. in the ny times.

Manifestations of empathy often show up early in life, as when a toddler brings a favorite toy or blanket to another child who is injured or in distress. Some experts maintain that infants display empathy when they whimper or cry upon hearing another baby cry.

i would say the following babies copy as an innate function but they dont “feel” what the other is feeling instead they infer through time what they associate with crying. but they certainly do not understand what the others are feeling nor do they “feel” what another is feeling as a function of an extra sixth sense.

i can test this with the following.

" a baby is “sad” and starts crying another baby in a separate room starts crying."

both notions are help here.

now lets see the following situation “if the first baby stops crying then the other stops.”

both are held

now lets say that “the first baby cries again the other starts crying aswell.”

one of the notion is not held and that is the sixth sense recognition

this is because if crying is the way to demonstrate the feeling it should continue even if the crying stops.

you could argue that if the baby stops crying is because the feeling stops but i predict that if the room is made so as to stop sound coming out it would give the same results.

2

It seems like your argument rests on the assumption that if something develops, unfolds over time, it is not innate. if babies are not doing what adults do when they feel empathy this shows that empathy is conditioned. There is a huge gap in that argument. There are many innate traits that develop over time almost regardless of nurture. You argument would imply strongly that the blooms of flowering plants are not innate because young pre-blooming flowering plants do not have blooms.

You could try to demonstrate that unless children are conditioned to feel what other people feel they do not feel empathy. But pretty much everyone feels empathy, even people raised in really rather damaging, anomalous households.

Your idea also does not explain why people with specific brain structures - like, some people with Aspberger’s - do not feel sympathy, regardless of conditioning. They have a different brain structure, specifically around mirror neurons.

Other children, with this area in tact, will have empathy naturally unfold.

yes, nurture can enhance this, but the adult ability to feel empathy is innate. It will naturally develop almost regardless of conditioning.

In fact, you have to be conditioned to not feel empathy.

you have to be taught that Jews are not human and this is how to identify Jews, for example. Then the natural tendency to view another human with reactions like sympathy and empathy can be conditioned OUT.

You have to inhibit a natural, innate trait, to get an adult without empathy - and hell, even Hitler felt empathy, just not for certain groups. His anti-empathy conditioning was not complete, though it was damn well pretty broad.

Some people have more of this, some less.

Some kinds of upbringing can enhance this innate trait more than others.

But to say that empathy is conditioned is like saying that adult female breasts are conditioned.

Sure, if you withhold food from females they will starve or perhaps be so malnourished they never develop secondary sexual characteristics. And so with empathy. Put a child in a box for its entire childhood and the adult may very well lack empathy.

But otherwise, empathy manifest in relation to at least some other people.

A flower not given water will never bloom, but it’s bloom is not conditioned. conditioning can affect the health of that bloom, however.

As a side issue, I suspect you want there to be a role for eduction of empathy and some hope of improving people. Certainly there are many ways of getting people to be more aware of other people’s situations, pain and so on, and via this increase their empathy. Just as one’s innate ability to move around can be trained and extended. We can train people to run the 100 in under 10 seconds, some of them anyway. But running/walking is innate, even though babies cannot walk (yet).

3

thanks for the contribuition thats was what i was looking for. however.

i do not understand why empathy has to be put in the same category as a physical function of the body.

empathy is not a physical function, it is a function of interpretation it is a mental one caused by knowledge intake. this ofcourse is only possible if you believe that emotions are physical, they are mental, not physical, yes they have physical causation yet its the sensorial stimuli that conditions them.

you could argue we have the innate function to speak. speaking is innate. everyone does it, and those who donot have metal disabilities.

but anyway that i didnt explain something does not mean my initial proposition is incorrect if the experiments where held they would yield positive results.

i have demostrated by logical resoning and through prediction making my case tell me why it is wrong or how can someone feel what someone else feels that makes more sense than the “telephatic sixth sense”.

4

they are still being raised by someone my theory holds true if the person is not raised by someone and still understand what another feels. (the person would still copy but will certainly have no understanding of it.)

5

any time a thread starts with “it is obvious that” you know it’s gonna be bad

6

mirror neurons is what makes copying an innate function.

7

i would say that empathy is like a habit, that someone always sucks his thumb does not mean that they were born with it.

empathy starts with copying then develops through associations made through them. anything can be conditioned to be of secondary nature this is not evidence of it being innate.

anyone that has his mirror neurons “well” develops empathy, since he must be in contact with humans as a necessary condition to develop, “a baby cannot survive on it own”.

8

funny you should say this, because sucking is one of the few things babies ARE born with

9

There are also stages in perception that develop in children with or without adult training of it. Some have to do with spatial thinking. I am thinking of Piaget’s work. Younger children cannot perceive certain things, but later they can. They do not get conditioned to learn this. They are not trained. It unfolds naturally. Like facial hair which is also not conditioned, even though male babies do not have it. At least not this rough stuff I have to battle every day.

10

not really my goal my problem with empathy being is innate is that it fails to explain too many things that are often contradictory. most notably a telephatic sixth sense.

more especifically it does not help me in any way to make accurate predictions. it basically doesnt make sense.

a good experience friends see me thinking they then try to cheer me up because they believe i have aproblem when in fact i just like thinking. “wouldnt this innate function tell them i am actually happy?”

why would so many people have problems understanding other peoples feelings?

why are the results of the experiments above positive?

11

this is actually very significant, since it is basically how everything develops. from an innate trait yet sucking your thumb is not innate is just a consequence of something else.

12

so you’re going from empathy not being very accurate to it not being innate… why?

13

this is actually a misinterpretation of yours or a failure to express my self correctly (most likely the second). i believe empathy, feel what another feels, is not innate and that saying it is, is not accurate in the sense that we copy the the action and through it we infer the feeling. so it is misleading.

if it doesnt clear it up could you reference why you said it?

14

what do you mean when you say innate?

15

determined by genetic structure, as such it is its immeadiate causation,

or a human trait that can be observed in the absence of sensorial input

or an inbuilt response to an external stimuli. e.g withdrawing your hand from a fire or unpleasant sensation.

16

i would like to add the clarification that sucking is innate but devoping a habit of sucking your thumb is not.

17

you mean like being multicellular?

You mean like being made of cells?

you mean like the way a baby’s cry keeps humans awake when similar volumes of other noises don’t, even if the individual has never heard a baby’s cry before?

18

Isn’t ‘innate’ what you’re born with? Were you not born to feel ‘vibes?’ Animals certainly are–what makes you so different?

19

I think raising the animal issue is important. Animals feel empathy and they are much less conditioned creatures than we are.

Though again, empathy can be enhanced and stifled. I actually think mostly we are conditioned to not feel our innate empathy and that’s why it seems like we need to be trained to feel it.

20

I think this rings of truth. We live in a society with too many relationships to feel full on for everyone we meet, and people tend to deceive others. Empathy makes us gullible to other humans and perhaps animals with faces like dogs and cats and otters. Normally that would be fine!