Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

3.3. 
The limits of empathy
The first problem comes when we try to turn empathetic ability into action. 
Empathy makes one more aware of other people’s suffering, but it is not clear that 
it actually strongly motivates one to take moral action, or prevents a person from 
taking immoral action. In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards 
sometimes wept as they killed Jewish women and children, but they still did it. 
Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt considerable anguish as they 
appeared to administer electric shocks to other research participants, but they 
administered the shock anyway (Milgram, 1963). Even where empathy orients one 
towards the interest of others and thus to moral action, it is not sufficient if that 
action comes at a personal cost or where other strong considerations are present. 

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However, an even more serious problem concerns the potential of empathy to result 
in bad outcomes. This can occur, for example, if one is overwhelmed with others’ 
suffering to the point where the ability for effective action is impaired. Baron-
Cohen (2011), in his book 
The Science of Evil,
draws upon experimental and 
clinical psychology and social neuroscience to argue that the notion of evil 
should be replaced with the concept of ‘empathy erosion.' After proposing 
that we describe the empathetic ability within a six-level framework – 
‘spanning from no empathy at all to being continually focused on other 
people’s feelings . . . . in a constant state of hyperarousal, such that other 
people are never off their radar,’ Baron-Cohen argues that a high degree of 
empathy is conducive to making people good and creating good societies.
He further illustrates this point as follows: 
Hannah is a psychotherapist who has a natural gift for tuning in to 
how others are feeling. As soon as you walk into her living room, 
she is already reading your face, your gait, your posture. The first 
thing she asks you is ‘How are you?’ but this is no perfunctory 
platitude. Her intonation—even before you have taken off your 
coat—suggests an invitation to confide, to disclose, to share. Even if 
you just answer with a short phrase, your tone of voice reveals to 
her your inner emotional state, and she quickly follows up your 
answer with ‘You sound a bit sad. What’s happened to upset you?’ 
(…) She has an unstoppable drive to empathize. (2011, p. 27) 
In response, Bloom (2014) points out that that although Hannah might be a 
good psychotherapist or a parent of young children (see: also Feshbach, 1990; 
Rosenstein, 1995; Moses, 2012), it is far from clear that this ability is good for 
others or for her – if, indeed, ‘the drive to empathize’ is unstoppable or 
strong. He argues that Hannah’s experience might be the opposite of 
selfishness but is just as extreme: ‘A selfish person might go through life 
indifferent to the pleasure and pain of others—ninety-nine for him and one for 
everyone else—while in Hannah’s case, the feelings of others are always in 
her head—ninety-nine for everyone else and one for her’ (Bloom, 2014). 
Bloom argues that some research (e.g. Batson and Weeks, 1996; Batson et al. 

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1988) suggests that the higher rates of depression and anxiety in women are in