The Functional Necessity of Empathy

Any dynamic structure has a functional value.

The functional value is denoted in mathematics as f(x) and describes how the structure operates within a context. The value is derived from the context and has no necessary value outside of the context. It is relational, transactional, provisional, and unfixed because it depends on conditions external to the structure to give it its functional value. It is a relative property between the object that has this function and a subject s upon which it acts.

The functional value is an output produced by a formula or algorithm. The algorithm is a set established from external elements. Because value is relational, we at all moments of t0 are able to choose from a theoretically infinite set of rubrics to establish the value of a given dynamic structure.

Let us assume as axiomatic that human beings are dynamic structures.

Let us also assume as axiomatic that the intrinsic value of a human being is not predefined.

At each domain we must choose the functional value of the person. We can choose, for instance, in our professional lives to see the functional value of our coworkers as helping to increase the value of the firm and its outputs. In our personal lives we can choose the functional value of our friends and family by what they provide for us.

This sounds selfish, and it can be. If we choose for instance to define the value of others as what they can provide for us — more money, more security, more love, more happiness, what have you — we are sacrificing our ability to choose by restraining the nature of the algorithm at each domain. At each moment of t0 we are not choosing from a theoretically infinite set of possible algorithms of external elements, we are instead using a meta-analytical algorithm to tip the scales towards our own benefit.

This is an extremely useful way to live for several reasons. It allows for compartmentalization of others to make our interactions with them less cognitively taxing. Also, by limiting the possible forms of our algorithms, we move away from an ergodic way of thinking that provides the paradox of choice problem, making our lives easier in the name of cognitive efficiency.

To further the cognitive savings, we can adopt off-the-shelf algorithms of value establishment and apply them to their relevant domains. It may be overly nostalgic to say that this was the case throughout most of modern history until recently: the theological algorithm for theological questions, the philosophical for that domain, the economic for that domain, and so on.

The problem with this is that insights in one domain cannot pass through to the other, so that a breakthrough in physics for instance will not necessarily impact the other. Yet our understanding of the physical world informs our understanding of the social world, the spiritual world, and so on. Thus a cross-domain meta-analysis of value is necessary not only to advance knowledge as a whole but also to avoid the category errors that happen in the cross-domain application of domain-specific algorithms.

This meta-analysis is actively discouraged in a world of specialists and specialization, and as a result specialists will develop a nasty habit: applying their view to other domains.

This can result in a naive oversimplification of a world that definitionally is impossible to be fully comprehended within any one system, but it also results in a reductive view of other people that can be extremely dangerous. And I don’t mean just in a genocidal sense, but in a more mundane interpersonal sense: if I am trained to be a highly effective middle manager at a tech firm and my value to society is functionally defined, my value is outputting shareholder value and inputting end-user goods and services. I am a cog in the machine of consumption. My wife’s value is limited to what she can provide for me, and my children are liabilities on a balance sheet if I see them as other people. This horrific worldview is often sublimated by a blurring of identity and seeing one’s children’s as one’s possessions — again objects either to be consumed as products for the father or as elements to further the productive machine of consumption.

I could easily attack a purely spiritual view of the world as equally horrific, but I don’t need to; Nietzsche’s critique of what he calls the slave mentality does this well by arguing that any metaphysical system that values the afterlife over the current life will by definition be anti-life. Even theologians have tacitly accepted this conclusion, hence the weight on the afterlife has diminished dramatically in their popular communication of religious values to the world, focusing instead on normative behaviors that make this life better. In other words, the functional value of their structure has changed completely as their algorithm changed to incorporate Nietzsche’s variables.

Balance is such a prosaic and unhelpful conclusion to come to, but what else do we have? Is the inevitable conclusion that, whatever shortcuts we make in the meta-analytical valuation of other people, we must to a certain extent dehumanize them?

If so, it seems to me the only solution to this is a kind of radical empathy, not for the benefit of the other person (as how empathy is usually understood) but rather as the most valuable tool to understand a person’s value not just in one domain, but in all possible domains.

Empathy is not good. It is necessary.