[lit-ideas] Re: Moral Imagination [correction]
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:09:34 +0900
It seems to me that limiting imagination to "the ability to feel and
experience what *YOU* yourself would feel and experience" is a bit of a
stretch from more conventional meanings of "imagination." The word itself
contains its root, "image," and an image is more than feeling and
experience. It is, rather, a particular (typically visual) form by which
feeling and experience are evoked. As any product designer can tell you,
there's a lot more to imagination than the feelings and fuzzy notions of
experience for which the designer must imagine a specific form. To call an
iPad "magical" is not to imagine how the magic is produced.
That said, I am inclined to agree that empathy is a precondition for moral
judgment. I imagine a sociopath who observes another's suffering with keen
interest, perhaps even enjoyment, but lacks empathy. I would not be inclined
to call his judgments and subsequent actions moral.
John
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>wrote:
> I sometimes wonder whether we all share the same conception of what
> "imagination" means. Is it the same as "empathy"? Hannah Arendt and Mannie
> Kant
> think not. If I remember the distinction correctly: empathy is the ability
> to
> feel and experience what someone else is feeling and experiencing in their
> set
> of circumstances, while imagination is the ability to feel and experience
> what
> *YOU* yourself would feel and experience in the other's shoes. I think this
> is
> a distinction with a real difference but I'm of course open to refutation.
> (I
> think that empathy is not sympathy: You may be able to feel what the other
> feels but you have no sympathy for the other since you believe she deserves
> the
> dessert she receives for her transgressions.)
>
> Two questions that immediately come to mind:
>
> 1) Is either empathy or imagination a necessary feature of a moral life?
> Could
> a
> sense of obligation and respect for the autonomy and dignity of others as
> ends-in-themselves compensate for one's inability to feel empathy for
> others'
> suffering or imagine "what it would be like ..."?
>
> 2) Should moral education aim at developing children's capacities for
> empathy
> or
> for imagination or neither? Could one faculty be developed independently of
> the
> other?
>
>
> Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
>
> > I wrote
> >
> > > My point was that I consider it to have been 'wrong' (a word that
> > > seems far too thin to characterize what was done in the Nazi
> > > concentration camps), even though I cannot begin to imagine what it
> > > would have been like to have lived and suffered in one of them.
> > > Granted, Donal (via Popper?) says that such a feat of the imagination
> > > is a sufficient condition for being able to condemn the killing of
> > > millions of human beings in such barbaric ways; yet, to repeat, I
> > > don't believe it is even a necessary condition. I can't do it by means
> > > of any thought experiment, and no more can I imagine what it would be
> > > like to be a twelve-year-old girl dying of cancer.
> >
> > I was trying to rewrite a sentence and garbled it even more. Neither
> > Donal nor Popper believes that such a feat of the imagination is a
> > sufficient condition for....etc.
> >
> > Apologies.
> >
> > Robert Paul
> >
>
>
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--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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