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I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by "axioms" here—a lot of these fundamental beliefs that inform which arguments you have to use with people to convince them, are "orthogonal to truth"—that is, things that aren't part of a causal graph, like normative or theological beliefs. It takes a different thought process to convince someone that e.g. climate change is happening, if they're a Young Earth Creationist, than it does if they're a paleontologist. It takes different arguments to convince someone to donate money to charity if they're a deontologist than if they're a consequentialist. None of these axiomatic positions affect what (empirically discoverable) facts are true, per se; they just affect what facts are relevant to changing one's mind about what one should do—that is, these axioms influence how the "is" statements† a person hears will affect their confidence in various "ought" statements. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem So, this kind of "empathy aikido" is less about modelling a person who believes different facts are true, as it is about modelling a person who cares about the truth-value of different facts than you do. It's not that you might have to believe [X thing you believe is true] to be false; it's that you will have to pretend that [X thing you believe being true] is not a compelling argument, and might be so unimportant that you've never even thought about it and never will. Whereas the truth-value of [Y thing you don't care about] might be, to the person you're talking to, the most important thing in the world; the "trick" is figuring this out and then using a (true) argument about Y to convince them, despite thinking personally that only X, and not Y, holds any real sway over the truth-value of your conclusion C. It can still feel bad, but I hope you can see how that intuition is less grounded here in any real injustice you're doing. Telling a virtue-ethicist that it is "noble" to e.g. donate to the Against Malaria Foundation, when you think that "nobility" is complete poppycock and the only thing that matters is that those donations mean people won't die, isn't an example of a lie. It is a manipulation, but not an illegitimate one—because, from the other person's perspective, it's just the honest truth. |