So how come many kids will seem to bond with small pets, feed them and love them a little too much...are they not showing natural empathy for what caring is and how it makes others feel 'wanted'?
Excellent comment. Psychopathic kids torture animals instead of loving them. I disagree with Pete - I don't think empathy is learned behaviour. You have to have a natural physiological disposition for it. Research suggest psychopaths are biologically deficient here. That's the point.
So every person who grows up in an environment of selfishness and self-gratifiction, where they need not be concerned at all about any other human or other will lack any and all empathy with anothers situation, feelings or general understanding of how their own actions affect others Pete?
See post #5. We seem to mean different things by empathy, or there are different varieties of empathy. Some types certainly are capable of being learned; perhaps some types aren't. Or perhaps it is the capability of learning empathy which can only be innate.
So would appear that many of us work from different maps of the world then? Question is, who's map is more right than the others...
OK, suppose some empathy is learned. The point is, you have to be biologically equipped, in that case, to learn it. The amygdala where empathy is supposed to be located is one of (or the most) primitive bits of the brain (seeming to imply that a propensity for it is indeed innate). So how can you learn it if you are physically incapable of experiencing it? It's a bit like people who can't do maths. You can try and learn it all you like. If your brain isn't developed to deal with it, you won't get very far. So once again, are we responsible for our characters and talents and shortcomings?
Is all empathy a learning experience OR built in exclusively? Is empathy really what is needed for an individual to make decisions based on whats 'right or wrong'? What extremes of mental deficiency are we looking at? Someone selfish who thinks of bottom line over people or someone who doesn't gauge it wrong to torture a cat? Still not sure what the baseline for this discussion is.
Many years ago I had to learn about enthalpy and entropy and had little empathy with the lecturer at the end of the process, if that's any help.
A few years ago there was an interesting case of an unfortunate man who suffered a serious brain injury in an accident which was someone else's fault. Previously a gentle man, his character changed so that he became violent and aggressive. He was prosecuted for violent offences, convicted and sent to prison. He also sued for damages from the accidental injuries and was awarded a large sum, which was larger on account of his character change, violence and prison sentence. So in the civil court the law accepted that the violence was not his fault, but in the criminal court the law punished him on the basis that it was his fault. Was either court wrong in principle? Or could they both be right?
Well Pete, that is what we are debating on this thread. So get off the fence and tell us how you see it.
The civil court did not accept the "violence was not his fault". They accepted the accident was not his fault. The criminal court accepted that the outcome of the accident did not excuse his subsequent criminal behaviour. They were both right.
OK, let's set it out in more detail. The civil court accepted that the accident was not the man's fault, that he must be compensated for his sufferings resulting from the accident and injuries, and that the sufferings for which he ought to be compensated included being sent to prison by the criminal court. The criminal court accepted that he had committed violent criminal behaviour, and decided that he must be held responsible for that behaviour, notwithstanding that the cause of the behaviour was the brain injuries he had suffered which were not his fault. There is a well-known principle that it is against public policy for any person to be paid, rewarded or indemnified for going to prison (unless the imprisonment was wrongful, obviously). The civil court in this case, unusually, went against that principle, and decided to award damages under heads including the prison. IMHO that civil court decision was inconsistent with the criminal court's decision - and the criminal court should always have primacy. PS This is not a hypothetical case, it was an actual case in the UK.
