Epistemic Compassion Definition

My goal in this paper is to analyze compassion, selfishness, and gullibility in an epistemic context. Specifically, how one’s level of compassion influence how they weigh evidence and knowledge – and how being compassionate, at least intellectually, can be considered an important epistemic virtue. Compassion, outside of an epistemic context, is generally viewed as a desirable character trait. I say generally, because no two individuals have exactly the same sense of what the word compassion truly means. This applies to any word representing an abstract character trait or idea, so discussion regarding what is specifically required to be a compassionate person is inherently subjective. In an effort to mitigate subjectivity I will here define compassion, rather broadly, as the ability and willingness to understand and relate to another’s emotions and experiences. …show more content…
If they were to read a news article of a different political leaning, they would be much less inclined to believe the evidence it presents when compared to an article matching their own political stance. They are evaluating the evidence in the context of who the evidence is from, however this does not make them intellectually compassionate. It could instead be argued that this behavior would make them more intellectually selfish because of their automatic and dogmatic dismissal of any evidence from a source they do not agree with. The key instead to being intellectually compassionate would be for this individual to try to understand why another would have a different political leaning in the first place; how might their own experiences influence the evidence they support? Does this person even fully understand their own reasoning for dismissing the news article’s evidence in the first