[lbo-talk] M. Parenti joins the New Atheists?

[Andy]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Matthias Wasser
<matthias.wasser at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd hesitate to group morality and empathy together like so.
>
> Empathy is an innate feature in humans (not that it doesn't exist in other
> animals.) The ability to model other minds in a fairly complex way, and thus
> to hold justified nth-order beliefs, is pretty clearly adaptive - you
> couldn't survive in a complex social group like the ones humans form without
> it. The way in which it does so inclines us to be more altruistic - although
> we also have the ability to accept social programming that selectively turns
> off our empathy - but I see no evidence that that's not a spandrel.

Just to clarify, I was quoting from memory an argument that I don't
necessarily agree with in a field I don't know a great deal about.
I'm trouble like that.  My point was that calling him a rightist
doesn't make much sense.

-- 
Andy