Empathy, a Sign of Humanity

Not long ago, a large group of old friends and I met again. Before the pandemic, we had managed to see one another at least once a year, but for some time afterwards even that became difficult. We come from different parts of Germany, so we meet somewhere that is roughly equidistant for everyone. We reserve a table at a restaurant or a hotel, then spend the evening together, laughing, talking, and letting the hours pass in each other’s company.

As the evening deepens, everyone eventually speaks to everyone else, and sometimes an interesting subject arises. Not every conversation can be followed through to its end. Some drift into another subject before they have properly begun. Our meetings are always joyful. They may last into the early morning, or sometimes stretch across an entire weekend. Then Monday comes, and each of us returns to ordinary life, promising that next time we will meet more often. Yet in the end, it usually remains one meeting in the following year.

This time, a conversation about the series “Murderbot” and Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” led us to the question of whether an android can ever be human. By then, the night had grown late, and the conversation increasingly scattered into digressions and half-formed thoughts. We rarely reached any real depth, though the discussion remained immensely enjoyable.

Still, one question stayed with me. What, exactly, is humanity?

From a biological perspective, the answer that emerged that evening initially seemed clear. An android cannot be human because it is not a biological human being. We might ultimately have agreed on that point. Yet something essential remained unresolved. Are humanity and being human truly the same thing?

The question can be pursued in two directions. On the one hand, an android may never be a biological human, yet it might possess qualities we regard as human, such as empathy, care, responsibility, compassion, self-reflection, and the capacity to suffer. On the other hand, this leads to the more difficult question of whether an artificial being truly experiences such qualities, or merely imitates them convincingly. The matter of genuine feeling, consciousness, and imitation alone could become a subject in its own right, so I will not pursue it further here.

For this text, another direction seems more fitting. It is the question of human humanity. Do human beings always act humanely simply because they are biological humans?

In Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, there is the Voigt-Kampff test. Within the novel, empathy serves as the decisive measure of humanity. Androids are regarded as beings who lack the capacity to respond empathetically to the suffering of others. Yet through the character of Rachael, the novel unsettles this apparently clear distinction. She possesses implanted memories and initially believes herself to be human.

Her past may have been artificially constructed, but for her it is real. Those memories shape the way she understands herself, her expectations, and her actions. This raises the question of whether humanity can truly be judged by biological origin alone. If memories, relationships, and experiences help form a being, might an android not also develop qualities we would call human?

Empathy is not a simple possession, nor is it something fixed and unchanging. Over the course of a life, people learn to imagine the perspectives of others and to consider the consequences their actions may have for them. Yet this ability is expressed differently from person to person, and it does not reveal itself in the same way in every situation. Being biologically human, then, does not in itself make someone empathetic. Nor is it certain that empathy alone can finally determine who, or what, is human.

We also observe behaviour in animals that we may interpret as care or consolation. Dogs and cats sometimes notice when a familiar person is sad, come close, or remain by their side. Whether this is empathy in the human sense cannot easily be decided. Yet that uncertainty itself shows how cautious we must be when we treat empathy as a clear and definitive criterion of humanity.

Even if animals are left aside, the more fundamental difficulty remains. If empathy is meant to prove humanity, what are we to say about a human being who consciously meets others with indifference, cruelty, or contempt? Conversely, what would it mean if a being we consider non-human were to show care, compassion, and responsibility?

The difficulty of judging empathy brings to mind Aristotle’s idea of virtue as a mean. Virtuous action does not mean placing oneself at the mathematical centre between two possibilities. It means finding what is appropriate between two extremes within a particular situation. Applied to empathy, this might mean that neither complete insensitivity to another person’s pain nor the total abandonment of one’s own needs can be convincing forms of humanity.

Someone who ends a relationship while knowing that they will hurt a person they love is not necessarily acting without empathy. Perhaps they understand the other person’s feelings more clearly than anyone. Yet if the relationship is no longer honest, or no longer good for either of them, separation may become necessary. To act empathetically in such a moment does not mean preventing every wound. It may mean seeing the other person as someone with feelings and treating them with honesty, respect, and responsibility, without causing needless harm.

From this perspective, Dick’s empathy test appears almost too clear-cut. It looks for a measurable response to another person’s suffering and treats it as the boundary between humans and androids. Yet human empathy does not reveal itself only as immediate emotional disturbance. It may be obscured by fear, overwhelm, or self-protection, and still remain within a person. Perhaps humanity cannot be recognised in a single response. Perhaps it lies closer to the continuing effort to guide one’s actions towards others responsibly, without losing oneself in the process.

Even a particularly empathetic person may, at some point, no longer be able to meet every person with the same degree of openness. This need not mean that they possess less humanity. When empathy is directed outward at all times, it may itself become destructive. Someone who has given too much of themselves to others may eventually have to learn how to draw boundaries. There may be a form of humanity in not being able to take on every pain with equal force, without becoming indifferent.

And so I am still not sure whether there is any criterion of humanity that can be attributed, without dispute, to human beings alone. Of course, I know what kind of empathy I hope to encounter in the person before me. But does everyone feel empathy in the same way? And if it does not always reveal itself in the same form, how can I know that what another person feels is the same thing that I call empathy?

Perhaps some questions remain most alive where they first arose, in the countless conversations that were never carried through to their end.