They may experience it differently, but if they can act on it, they will be good people. Without being able to act on empathy, no matter how you perceive it, you cannot be good, and refusing to act with empathy towards people and other lives on earth is bad.
SenK@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
So if someone literally cannot “act” in some way, you get to decide if they are good or evil?
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 22 hours ago
How else can you judge someone’s character if not by their actions?
SenK@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
How about not judging? How about just asking if they cause harm or not, and how to prevent that harm.
Protoknuckles@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
🤷♂️ Yeah, kinda. What metric are you using?
SenK@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
First I can look at my own values and discover that I happen to value human well-being. I like it when people are happy, healthy and free of suffering. It doesn’t make me a “virtuous” person, I’m a human too so I could be purely guided by self-interest.
Then I can look at science and reason and conclude that by those things, I can generally figure out what kind of things impact human well-being and how.
Then I can look at someone’s behavior and conclude that it’s either beneficial or detrimental to human well-being.
Then I can look at science and reason again to find out how to address that behavior in order to reduce (or even entirely prevent) harm.
I don’t need a moral framework for any of that, and I certainly don’t need to judge people as essentially “good” or “evil”.
Protoknuckles@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
But why is it a beneficial for other humans to be happy? Why do you like that? That is empathy.