But I am indirectly affected greatly by overfishing and directly by the overall health of the oceans. The health of the environment directly effects me. So shouldn’t I also have some say in the health of the environment?
I think maybe I’m quibbling over word nuance.
Maybe I’ve got an odd take on it, or we’re saying the same thing. Like humans as a whole should definitely try to be more empathetic in their lives. Being more empathetic is something I’m working on a lot myself right now. i don’t think empathy is about “Feeling what someone else would feel if you were in their situation”. I say that because everyones experience of life is different, some people feel pain more than others, or social pressures, or hunger, or whatever. What I mean is that we experience the world uniquely, and empathy is coming to understand the unique experience of others. As in it’s not how I would experience their situation, but how they are experiencing their situation. And a coffee maker has no experience. But maybe I’m talking about something other than empathy
Isn’t that personification not empathy? Like you’re not understanding it’s feelings, but giving it feeling. I think it can be moral to attempt to fix the coffee maker. It also sounds emotionally exhausting (for me) to care that much about something that has no agency of it’s own.
Some friendly pushback to help me understand, overfishing doesn’t directly effect me, I don’t eat fish, I don’t live near the ocean. But I’d say it has lots of indirect effects on me. Incentive structures still promote overfishing. What do? What does force mean? Is changing the incentive structure force? Is fines for overfishing, or losing your commercial fishing license force?
(P.S. is know nothing about fishing, this is just to help frame my questions)
To me empathy is a social connection where feeling aren’t just being heard, but understood. I’m finding it difficult to understand how that could apply to an object, so what’s your definition of empathy?
Don’t just tease me like this, what’s the objective standard? And like I’m totally following along, but i still want to know what the disagreements are.
I just like ethics and want to hear what you think.
I live to be a good person. Figuring out what that means is a lot of reading, reasoning, and experimentation. I’m not sure you even need to justify wanting to be a good person, but maybe it is good to do good.