"Morality stems from our ability to empathize"- How true is this?

True rating (of 10): 4

There are better explanations of most morality.

For example: Killing all the enemy was the rule until agriculture came along and people realized that making slaves of their enemies and putting them to work in the fields was much more profitable. Slavery was the rule until industry came along and paying people wages was even more profitable than slavery.

Now we want to agree that slavery always was wrong. And that may be true. But acceptance of that principle was not widespread until the economic basis of society changed. Some people empathized with slaves all along, but what turned the trick was that everyone with good sense realized that wage labor was more profitable than slavery.

More explanations of moral issues can be found in game theory. More people are better off most of the time if people play by a certain set of rules. The rules do not always provide a good outcome for every individual in every situation, but if people follow the rules, more people have better outcomes most of the time.

It may do, but I'm pretty sure there isn't consensus on that.

There is a theory (see Skyrms) that suggests that fairness in the human species beats out both altruism and selfishness as the most 'evolutionary stable strategy' over time. In other words, the morality of fairness (which many cultures seem to have at their core) results because it leads to the most productive and consistent functioning for the species as a whole more than being too selfish or too giving.

Empathy, on that account, does not have to play a role in forming such a morality. Indeed, empathy may even be argued to stem from the moral strategy of fairness, or is the offshoot of the less stable strategy of altruism.

Of course, this isn't necessarily a truth. It is a theory. Empathy may arise merely from the fact that we are social, conscious creatures with a complex and vast emotional capacity and a lovely set of mirror neurons, which in turn leads us to consider a moral system concerned with not harming others as something important and even necessary to us as a species.

Still, even if that were the case, not all moral values are concerned with not harming others, which suggests that even if morality can stem from our ability to empathise there must be other factors that contribute to the development of morality as well.

I think it also comes from somewhere in our past having learned to trust in each other and hope in each other in dependent ways. There is a lot of history packed into our genes. That reflects in the many ways we are with each other now even if such dependency is not a conscious one.

200%

I'd give it an eight.