Is human morality and affective empathy intrinsically linked in some way?

Human morality is a societal stance on what is acceptable vs what is not acceptable in terms of shameful actions. The defining characteristic of morality is the absence of performing a shameful action result in an individual’s moral acting.

So, in that context, what is affective empathy then? It’s a subconscious reaction causing you to experience someone else’s emotional moment. You can feel affective empathy when someone gets hurt or when they are excited from having a great day. One interesting way to feel affective empathy might be argued that when someone watches a movie, they feel the emotions of what that character would be feeling. They cry in the end, or they get excited as if they were experiencing the action right alongside the main character. No one actually tries to feel what these characters are feeling but they can’t help but get this rush of emotion. So, it’s all subconscious.

So, is affective empathy the root of morality? The ability to feel someone else’s experience truly the core of morality?

I would argue that it is not.

Morality seems to be more of a judgement on a macro level for someone’s actions. It’s how society views a person’s actions and either shames them or celebrates them. A person’s value system is truly what guides their actions and whether or not those values align with society’s morality is where we often find problems. Still, a person’s value system is only partially informed by affective empathy.

Our values are taught to us by our parents, teachers, siblings, the TV shows we watched as kids, but they are also largely formed by the events and happenings which are directly tied to our situation. That is, the environment and our first teachers are the ones that create our value system. As part of the environment affective empathy could be argued to be a component of that but it certainly wouldn’t be the core of morality.

I’ll give an example of how affective empathy can be exclusive of a decision which still has a moral judgment.

A person is put in a situation where they can either save one person or two people but they can’t save all people. In terms of empathy the person feels it in both cases so it’s not really a factor in the morality of this decision.

People would normally say you save the two people every time and that would be a moral decision but what happens if the two people are 90-year-olds and the one person is an 8-year-old? What moral decision gets made in this instance. The person’s value system and what they view as an individual’s value system is what will inform them as to which way to handle the situation but, in either case, empathy wasn’t a factor in the decision. It was a decision based off of logic and what that person found to be more important. A young life that hasn’t had the chance to live or two old lives that have a lifetime of memories already. One or two? young or old?

One could argue that it is empathy that helps the person decide to act as to whether or not to save anybody, but we don’t know that either because the person could be motivated by wanting to be seen as a good person (like a narcissist would) or they might see money in for them (ASPD) in which case empathy has no bearing at all. It may just increase the likelihood of action but by no means would I say that it is the core.

The core of moral action is found within an individual’s value system and that value system varies from one person to another and one culture to another which again would indicate that empathy is a factor but is not the core.