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I haven't claimed that animals don't have it. In general, empathy can be either an evolved behaviour, a learned behaviour, or both. In humans this is largely-

by epgui 2y ago

I haven't claimed that animals don't have it. In general, empathy can be either an evolved behaviour, a learned behaviour, or both. In humans this is largely-but-probably-not-exclusively socialized behaviour. Most cases of (human and non-abused) feral children exhibit behaviour that is not particularly compatible with empathy. I shared my rationale for why we "haven't always had this capacity" a few comments up this thread, and you seemed to agree with it before immediately making the contradicting statement.

DangitBobby 2y ago
If you think I'm contradicting myself, then I didn't know what "abstraction" was referring to in "sophisticated abstraction". (FWIW, it's pretty difficult to review the conversation and formulate good responses on mobile, since all I can see easily without switching back and forth is the comment I am replying to). I think it's "sophisticated" to have the language and philosophy required to follow a moral system that you prioritize over your own instincts—in this case, the prioritization of members of your species. I don't think it's "sophisticated" to not attempt to maximally exploit everything around me for even the most modest benefit to the deteriment of all else. Maybe I have too high an opinion of people. Maybe it's just a consequence of scale. I see empathy alone as being much more basic, requiring only a very low-level "theory of mind", likely arising from the type of evolutionary pressure that leads to social species. I would be surprised to learn that was a recent adaptation in our evolutionary line. Maybe most species have it "off by default", if you consider the "default" to be a constant state of duress and resource scarcity.