Are you going to.....

.....keep proving you don't understand what empathy means?

Also, cognitive bias, or the oxymoronic term selective empathy, isn't true empathy. It's hypocritical.

And you've completely ignored the altruistic aspect.

the point i'm making is that empathy is not something that applies across the board

meaning that we are selective subconsciously (and consciously) about who or what we are empathetic towards... which means that its misguided to use empathy as some form of measure for morality

here's another example, lets say i'm poor and i have a sick wife i have to provide for and i stab and rob an innocent person in order to provide for her... in that situation i'm being preferential towards my kin over someone outside of my preferred social grouping

this is very easy to understand, i honestly don't see why you don't get it... the empathy argument really does not work for morality

Of course we are selective.

What does this prove? We are a tribal species. We will empathise with those we consider a tribe of. Wich is why i used the tribe word in particular.

It's misguided? It's not misguided, its a survival tool. Of course we have the ability to have reflexive thought, so we can fight that urge if we so wish and extend it to everyone. That is our choice. Some people feel more towards another than others. As i said, this isnt an on/off switch. If we don't feel risk for our existance we can extend that empathy towards others if we so choose.

If you look here, you will see how it works with the pyramid of necessities:
https://mariaavilablog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sin-tc3adtulo.png

do you not see how that selectivity with regards to empathy kind of destroys its utility with regards to what people would consider morality to be?

So which one is the best system?

Morality isn't your highest concern in survival. Its just one of them. Theres others that are more important. Only when those are satisfied do you concern yourself with it (or if its to ensure other primary needs). Rather than destroying, i would say its prioritising.

Are you trying to tell me it isn't that way? When the bully on the school attacks a kid and the other kids are cheering. Why do you think they cheer? The kid that gets in the way sometimes and stops them also had an interest.

We are not the altruistic people you think we are. Altruism, empathy... those are things that comes to us later after our most basic necessities are ensured, or in order to ensure them. It propagates more in the current (mostly safe) society we built for ourselves.

Tomorrow if an apocalypse were to happen, you can be sure we would go back to the rule of the strongest and band up in tribes. It's what we are. Religion was created as a defense mechanism for societies to not fall in chaos since policing them effectively was impossible. Also, because it made it easier to make empty promises so people would be motivated soldiers in war.

"Morality isn't your highest concern in survival"

jesus christ i didn't say it was

"We are not the altruistic people you think we are"

lmao is this not the point i was trying to impress upon you? are you being serious right now?

"Tomorrow if an apocalypse were to happen, you can be sure we would go back to the rule of the strongest and band up in tribes. It's what we are."

exactly and i never claimed otherwise in fact this was at the base of my argument

well at least its good that you've stopped doing the whole "our empathy makes us moral" thing

Oh boy... Yes, that is the point! Morality comes from our empathy, wich isn't our number one priority. We make morality, our genes make morality, our will to survive and propagate give us morality, not some magical entity in the clouds.

"My insistence that you don't change words is not silly word play.  I don't see how this contradicts anything else I said. "

its silly word play and a contradiction because you have conceded that some behaviors are objectively better than others (my mistake it appears you haven't, you just resorted to trying to argue that being unfit can be better than being fit apparently)

"Even if it's the closest we can get to objective, it is nowhere near objective."

so... therefore, you are claiming that objective reality does not exist

if you are dismissing whatever methods we have devised to be as close as possible to objectivity is that not the same as saying that objectivity is not possible?

what about the scientific method? is that nowhere near objective also? ( well it has to be since its the same thing )

"I have no idea what objective reality has to do with this.  We can have objective reality without objective morality."

the methods we use to determine both (repetitive observations over a long period of time) are the same

i'm serously curious with regards to whether you consider our scientific experimentation to be objective and why if you do, that should be interesting

"Best is a subjective term that would require evidence.  It's your claim, the burden of proof is yours."

as i said the proof is history and all of the civilisations that reached the height of prosperity with the aid of moral systems involving the concepts of gods : Egypt, Mesopothamia, Rome, Greece etc etc etc

every single successful civilisation we have known about where mankind flourished had god or gods at its center

those with humanism at their core such as the soviet union resulted only in suffering

"I did not agree with that at all..."

lol i never thought i'd see someone try to argue that being unfit can be better than being fit... its interesting i suppose

so how far are you willing to take this? are you willing to claim that all values are subjective and therefore no state of being is better than another state of being? (or in other words a dismissal of objectivity)

"Ok.  So, you agree that this is not objective morality?"

um... i just explained this... to reiterate, the method of communication for a message can deteriorate while the message itself still retains its value

i'd just like to add as an aside that its quite interesting that some of the same people i see here rallying aggressively against the idea of objective morality will debate about how bad someone(like trump) is for their behaviors in other threads... its a bizarre contradiction but interesting at least

if its all subjective... how can you assess the behavior of other people?

lol we've just gone through how it does not

morality is not selective with regards to social groupings... we generally say that morality is the correct treatment of ALL people

you just admitted that empathy on the other hand tends to cause us to treat our preffered social grouping better than other social groupings

...jesus, its either that you don't get what morality is or you don't get what empathy is... or maybe both

the other thing is that morality does not come from genes, it comes from determining the best practices for man and distributing that information to the community in some way

that is, it comes from reasoning not internal biological systems