Wilson wrote:I think empathy and sympathy are very closely related and can almost - but not quite - be used interchangeably. Here's the internet definition of empathy: Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position.LuckyR wrote: You are clear on the difference between sympathy and empathy, right? They are not really similar beyond the vaguest sense.
Of course any individual can be intellectually challenged, but my point that psychopaths are not, as a group unable to understand societal rules is valid.
Technically one could understand the feelings of another without any sympathy for that person - but that's getting into sociopathic territory. A sociopath - a person without concern for anyone but himself - might be able to analyze the emotions in another and use it to fake sympathy - but in my opinion that isn't really empathy - that's an intellectual activity. The basic idea of empathy is that you literally feel the pain (or happiness) of another person - in a reduced version, of course. It's an instinctual emotion that I believe evolved initially so that a mother would feel the pain and needs of her newborns almost as if they were her own pain and needs, especially in humans, since babies are helpless and would die without someone devoted to their care. And then evolution spread that to other family members and eventually to others in the groups or communities, because it aided in bonding together and cooperating and therefore surviving better.
You forgot to include the internet definition of sympathy. Not identical.
I agree that a sociopath will not be able to empathize for exactly your reasoning (since it is essentially the definition of the problem). OTOH, a sociopath can intellectually understand the Law at minimum and follow it (since avoiding illegalities does not require empathy, though it is helped by having it). Reaching for much higher fruit (beyond legalities) a sociopath who was motivated could approximate regular social interactions to the point of having a social network, friends etc.