The Empathy Engine: What if We Had to Feel the Harm We Caused

This paper proposes a philosophical thought experiment—the Empathy Engine (EE)—designed to explore a structural asymmetry present in many moral systems: perpetrators of harm rarely experience the suffering they cause. The EE is conceived as a hypothetical afterlife moral mechanism in which people who cause unjustified suffering must experience the subjective perspective of their victims until genuine moral understanding emerges.