Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

So we have to use logic to decide where to point the spot light

But if you don’t empathize with her, you won’t look for ways to fix the issue that caused a faulty vaccine. Statistics remove humanity if used in a vacuum.

People often cross the street to avoid encountering suffering people who are begging for money. It’s not that they don’t care (if they didn’t care, they would just walk by), it’s that they are bothered by the suffering and would rather not encounter it. Usually, escape is even easier.

I don’t think it’s empathy that makes them cross the street. It’s trying to avoid it. Knowing that there but for the grace of god go I, and it’s uncomfortable to feel that vulnerable. So we avoid the empathetic response.

Someone I know well, an affluent professor, spent a period of her life regularly working as a volunteer in a New Haven soup kitchen, even though she knew that she would do far more good by writing a check.

Why make this an either/or proposition? Why can’t one work in the soup kitchen AND write and check?

In the real world, as we’ve seen, the truth is usually the opposite.

No friend, you’ve shown some specific instances, and illustrated some of them poorly. This does not mean “usually.” And you failed to explain the economic arguments slavery, as opposed to the empathic arguments for it. At least it seemed like you were saying there was some sort of emotional argument in favor of slavery. I couldn’t really tell.

I feel like he switches between discussing empathy as an automatic reaction and as a conscious one.

This is the point I think Bloom keeps missing. You don’t having to live there, but we have to be able to feel some sort of empathy for people if we are going to respect their problems.

(Not to pick on Asma here, but can you imagine a more obnoxious title?)

I hope this is tongue in cheek

I believe it would have been morally right to engage in such action even thought it surely would have led to the death of innocent people.

This would require some foreknowledge that we simply are not capable of. You can’t talk about the harm prevented, because it is an unknown, unquantifiable entity.

As predicted, the more warmly they felt toward the victim, the more aggressive they said they were, consistent with a connection between empathy and violence.

But you said feeling warmly toward someone and having empathy are not the same thing. That was your whole point of the previous chapter.

empathy (“I’ve never been this low on funds and it really scares me”),

Again, couldn’t this be pity, or concern, not empathy.

there is some controversy as to whether they are incapable of empathy or choose not to deploy it.

So is it a choice or not? This section makes it seems as if it may be something we choose to engage in.

That’s how we should think about empathy.

This I agree with. However, it is not what you stated as your purpose in writing the book. You said we would be better off doing away with it.