Empathy Merely a Tool Within Morality

[Immanuel Can]

Did you read the book???

You're double-posting. I'm answering you once. It sure isn't worth two posts.

[Iwannaplato]

But you contrasted empathy with the list of virtues. You complaint against the other virtues is that they are not central to morality since they can be 'used' in other areas of life. But now you are saying that this is true of empathy.

If we draw a venn diagram with Morality and Virtues separate domains but there is some overlap.

In this case empathy is common to both morality and virtues.
Empathy is a critical tool for morality, just as mathematics is critical for Physics but not for so much for biology and other sciences.
When we can identify the specific precise [unique] neural mechanisms of empathy in relation to morality, then we will be able to facilitate moral progress by developing greater efficiency in those mechanism.

The doubts and skepticisms raised by posters are due to their ignorance of how the brain works in terms of greater precision.
The feeling of empathy is triggered by perhaps millions of mirror neurons with millions of connections to various neurons in other functions which can be very complex.

You haven't explained why empathy is a tool not a function/attitude.
Tools are things we choose to use that are not a part of us.
Empathy is a function/attitude that social mammals have.

The doubts and skepticisms raised by posters are due to their ignorance of how the brain works in terms of greater precision.

Insult. Gives no information.

You did not respond to most of my post. I focused on your own mixed messages and also pointed out that what you said excluded other viritues applies to empathy as well.

and this....

The doubts and skepticisms raised by posters are due to their ignorance of how the brain works in terms of greater precision.
The feeling of empathy is triggered by perhaps millions of mirror neurons with millions of connections to various neurons in other functions which can be very complex.

is utterly irrelevant to the issues I raised. Yes, I've read about mirror neurons as well. It has nothing to do with the issue of exclusion, inclusion, tool vs. function/attitude, critical vs mere

[Veritas Aequitas]

Empathy can both be an emotion and a mental function.

The use of empathy as tool in relation to morality is metaphorical, something used or directed to facilitate the achievement of moral purposes.
I did that because I noted such is a very common usage in articles related to morality.

[Iwannaplato]

Empathy can both be an emotion and a mental function.

No, empathy cannot be just an emotion. It relates to feeling something that another person is feeling or seems to be. There is an interperson aspect and trigger. Being sad alone is not empathy, it must have that interpersonal dynamic to empathy.

The use of empathy as tool in relation to morality is metaphorical, something used or directed to facilitate the achievement of moral purposes.
I did that because I noted such is a very common usage in articles related to morality.

Could be. I'd have a problem with calling it a tool. Of course I realized it was a metaphor. I knew you didn't literally consider it like a hammer. I think it's a misleading metaphor, because it makes it seem like the function acts in ways it does not.

But please link me to articles where they use this metaphor for empathy.

[Veritas Aequitas]

• Especially in social psychology, empathy can be categorized as an emotional or cognitive response. Emotional empathy consists of three separate components, Hodges and Myers say. “The first is feeling the same emotion as another person …
  https://lesley.edu/article/the-psycholo ... ve-empathy#

Empathy as a tool..

• In each of the cases we have imagined, the empathy offered helps as a tool to discern richly the morally relevant particularities of the case
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/27504344

The above can be found using a simple search in google.
It is annoying to have to baby-fed on the above simple task.

[Iwannaplato]

• Especially in social psychology, empathy can be categorized as an emotional or cognitive response. Emotional empathy consists of three separate components, Hodges and Myers say. “The first is feeling the same emotion as another person …
  https://lesley.edu/article/the-psycholo ... ve-empathy#

which fits perfectly what I said. It's not an emotion. It's an emotional response to someone else, so there are perceptual components, and if you continued the quote you'd see there are a number of components.

Empathy as a tool..

• In each of the cases we have imagined, the empathy offered helps as a tool to discern richly the morally relevant particularities of the case
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/27504344

The above can be found using a simple search in google.
It is annoying to have to baby-fed on the above simple task.

1) you didn't have to do anything. I asked. You chose to get a link. (to an article I can't read, by the way, but nice for you that you can) 2) you didn't respond to my objections to the use of the metaphor 'tool'. Just because some professional uses the metaphor doesn't mean it is a good one. So, thank you for the link, but that was only part of my response. 3) I'm sorry if you think actually justifying your claims is like feeding babies. You might consider this a basic confusion about what happens in rational discussions. In fact, golly gosh, you ask people for support for their claims also. It's easy to google various defenses of realism or whatever on your part also.

You still haven't explained the excluding of the list of what are called virtues.