Empathy is not required for logical coherence. It exists to override what one might otherwise rationally conclude. Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.
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Modeling someone’s cognition or experience is not empathy. Empathy is the emotional process of identifying with someone, not the cognitive act of modeling them.
It is. If you don’t have any you cannot understand other people’s perspective and you can reason logically about them. You have a broken model of the world.
> Bias toward anyone’s relative perspective is unnecessary for logically coherent thought.
Empathy is not bias. It’s understanding, which is definitely required for logically coherent thoughts.
For example, I can’t empathize with a homeless drug addict. The privileged folks who claim they can, well, I think they’re being dishonest with themselves, and therefore unable to make difficult but ultimately the most rational decisions.
If you can’t do that, it’s less about you being rational and far more about you having a malformed imagination, which might just be you being autistic.
— signed, an autistic
Being down and unmotivated is not that hard to empathize with. Maybe you've had experiences with different kinds of people, homeless are not a monolith. The science is pretty clear on addiction though, improving people's conditions leads directly to sobriety. There are other issues with chronically homeless people, but I tend to see that as a symptom of a sick society. A total inability to care for vulnerable messed up sick people just looks like malicious incompetence to me.
then what is it? I'd argue that is a common definition of empathy, it's how I would define empathy. I'd argue what you're talking about is a narrow aspect of empathy I'd call "emotional mirroring".
Emotional mirroring is more like instinctual training-wheels. It's automatic, provided by biology, and it promotes some simple pro-social behaviors that improve unit cohesion. It provides intuition for developing actual empathy, but if left undeveloped is not useful for very much beyond immediate relationships.
Because that provides better outcomes for everyone in a prisoner's dilemma style scenario
