Being fully rational requires taking stock of the whole. To focus exclusively on good (or bad) is to make a partial judgment. To deny the Enlightenment's responsibility for anything bad after, say, 1750 while giving it credit for everything good thereafter is a double standard.
OK, fair enough. Fortunately, they're widely recognised as loons and most people recognise that the universe doesn't care if we torture each other to extinction. We have to decide what matters tho empathy, compassion, justice etc are innate & guide this.
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We already covered empathy here. Empathy doesn't allow you to expand a more principle to people who don't belong to your group. Paul Bloom covered that in his recent book, Against Empathy.
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There can certainly be many limitations on empathy but this doesn't change that we have an innate sense of it & it informs our moral sense. 'Don't do things to other people that you wouldn't like done to you' comes up over & over again in various cultures as a moral premise.
End of conversation
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