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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Feeling little or no empathy does not preclude a person from engaging in helping behavior.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Genuinely moral helping behavior requires the agent to be moved by the other's good as an end in itself, not merely by external incentives or habit.
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    • 2.Empathy, as the affective recognition of another's perspective, is the primary psychological mechanism by which another's good registers as intrinsically motivating.
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    • 3.Therefore, helping behavior produced without empathy lacks the motivational structure necessary to count as morally significant altruism, even if it is behaviorally identical.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Aristotle and subsequent virtue ethicists hold that virtuous action must flow from stable character dispositions that are reliably sensitive to morally relevant features of situations.
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    • 2.The suffering and need of others are paradigmatically morally relevant features that empathy specifically tracks, making empathy partly constitutive of virtues like compassion and beneficence.
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    • 3.Helping behavior that bypasses empathic sensitivity therefore reflects a deficit in the relevant virtue, undermining the claim that such behavior is equivalent to empathy-based helping.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • The desire to help can be produced by a variety of processes in which empathy plays no role.
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