A
I recently listened to and took notes on a 5.42-minute video
snippet, narrated by Jordan Peterson. I write out what he said below with some
slight editing. The title of the video is When High IQ turns Luciferian. This
clip was made in December 2024. I will lay out his video which, lightly edited
by me, and then response to it. Here it is.
Jordan (J after this): “If you look at personality
attributes, the two or three that you would associate, like say with morality.
Like it is tricky and there’s not a one-to-one relationship, and I’m not
implying that. But, generally speaking, people regard those who are
conscientious, diligent, hardworking, reliable, industrious as moral.
Now, that’s not the only dimension of morality because you
have agreeableness. And more people who are more agreeable in our society at
least are deemed more moral, because they are more caring, they’re more
empathic, they’re more polite.
And so you could even see conscientiousness as the
conservative virtue and agreeableness as the liberal virtue if you wanted to.
It doesn’t matter. Those are the places where virtue seems to be captured to
some degree in the personality models.”
There is zero correlation with IQ.”
My response: I intuitively cannot buy this conclusion of his
that IQ correlates not at all to being virtuous or moral.
My hunch is that reasoning more than feeling is how humans
act well, that godly individuators, agents with high IQs, natural or unleashed
spiritually, will be egoists and individualists, and one cannot be a
well-developed moral person, without intellect figuring deeply and inextricably
into the equation. I will seek to prove this.
I will have to ponder
on it and see how IQ is virtuous, because humans morally and scientifically
advance and progress best when people reason, ponder, create, and discover, so
IQ is moral. Somehow it is tied into the agent’s good will, for reason is an
instrumental servant of a good will, but the will is intelligent consciousness.
As a result, reason, not just feeling and passion, is a motivating will of
force.
It seems that emotionally willing, instinct and desire are
the primary motivators and rulers of us
as lower level consciousnesses with minimal free will excrcised per capita, as
group-living agents, altruistic and selfless; as we maverize as rational
individuals, then our reason increasingly is resorted to by us, not only for
instrumental practical rationality and logical trains of thought, but also our
reaching moral judgment about our moral choices is triggered and utilized as we
evolve as consciousnesses.
When our intellectually driven good will and articulated
application of our consciences to value choices ethically drives our
decision-making, then we are attuned to and are an extension of the divine
logos and the Creator’s natural law being applied by us to action choices
before us in the world. As part of the divine logos that made and runs natural
law guiding the universe both, the natural and supernatural worlds, ideas come
to us by our rationally intuitive route, or just thinking about options, as logically
worked out, defined, labeled concepts full blown into our consciousness.
Thus, good people growing
as individuators are rational more than emotional but both are used and should
be used to be a good person.
A good will of a thinking adult is good and is good
reasoning that is morally good. Jordan wants no individualism no freedom, no
pride no self no intellect for the masses because he thinks they cannot handle
the responsibility of it, and they will no longer lean on him to guide them,
and he fears being powerless and ignored.
J: “Like zero. So, another way and it’s very important to
discriminate intellectual capacity, let’s say or merit, from moral worth.”
My response: We may be able to separate intellectual
capacity from moral worth a lot, but I believe that the thinking
agent—regardless of IQ level--, especially if wise and of good will, is advised
to think long and hard among her moral choices, and she can learn to excel at
it. If she selects wisely and acts out her selection, there resides her moral
worth properly earned, yielding veridical self-pride, pride in one’s thinking,
and intellectual decisions made.
J: “Because it’s also the case that the intelligent have
their temptation. The evil figures of mythology are always stellar intellects
gone spectacularly wrong.”
My response: The intelligent--and this is everyone who
thinks for herself and individuates so she is smart and wise, who avoids giving
into temptation most of the time—uses her intellect to be proud, good, and
self-interested, and to be moral.
It is the
nonindividuator, humble, selfless, feeling-propelled and without pride that is
weak-willed, often more bad-willed. She first did not withstand the pack. She
cannot withstand her base selfish urges which her consciousness is warning her about.
Most evildoers and evil is done by joiners: none are naturally unintelligent
even with an IQ of 85. The leaders of evil mobs and gangs may be of stellar
intellect but most people willing to follow them are groupists which makes even
naturally intelligent persons unintelligent due to social pressure and a love
of evil in their midst.
J: “That’s why it is always the evil scientist in the modern
mythologies, right. All the enemies of the superheroes are evil scientists.
They are all evil geniuses. And that’s because general cognitive ability is not
only associated with moral per se.”
My response: Jordan seems to worry that those that are
geniuses will come to worship their own intellects, to become so arrogant and
self-deluding that they presume they can bend the fabric of reality by lying
and engaging in vice, that karma does not apply to them—only the masses—or as
geniuses, they are gods that will rewrite natural law with no ethical limits on
what they plan to do, or how they hurt others, or gather power and money unto
themselves by any means, for as geniuses they are above natural and
supernatural law. God’s rules do not apply to them as trans-humans, as
superhumans.
My evidence-lacking hunch is that, in reality, geniuses per
capita are less evil than dumber people, but all are smart and wise if they
wish and do as they should, but sinners or those who refuse to think, learn, grow,
keep open-minded and seek truth and objectivity, they choose stupidly and
become stupid over time, willfully blind. It is the emotional and
anti-intellectual that are associated with immorality per se, and this applies
to the masses as well as to geniuses.
J: “It’s worse than that in a sense. I think because it is
definitely the case that the higher general cognitive ability confers upon, you
a tremendous advantage in a complex society. Because you can learn faster, and
the differences are not trivial. It’s the biggest singly difference between
people is general cognitive ability.”
My response: Anyone can learn and learn fast like, when in a
complex society, the difference between successful doers and unsuccessful
goldbrickers is not general cognitive ability: it is the will and push to learn
as much as possible, as fast as possible, and the will to work as hard as
possible so the smart individuators are the haves and the dull nonindividuators
are stuck in the masses where they were born. The biggest difference, between
loving, successful, productive, prosperous, creative individuating winners and
self-hating and other-hating, average or poor, minimal producers is that the
latter are parasites, poor, derivative, lazy, unambitious, even if not actively
revolutionary, nihilist and deconstructive. The thinking egoist presents and
inserts his will upon the world, the will to be an individual and the
willingness to work hard.
The masses with reason, agency, modestly absorbed lifestyle
of individualism and some egoist ethics—blended with and hindered by their adopting
or being reared in the moral code of altruism and continued accenting group
living and conformity--gave us the modern West democracy, capitalism, modern conveniences,
and enormous--almost unimaginable wealth
and the wondrous Enlightenment.
J: “And it’s an appalling literature to familiarize yourself
with to some degree because it does seem to violate the principles on first
glance of universal cosmic justice. It’s like why is it fair for some people to
be born with an IQ of 85 which barely makes you competent to even be a member
of the armed forces, regardless of what role you are in.
Or to have an IQ of 145 which opens the doors that say to
places like Harvard or investment banking, as a career strategy.”
My response: Cosmic justice is that all are born rather
smart, some more than others, and if people use their big brains—as Stephen
Hicks describes human minds—there are almost no limits to what they can
accomplish and achieve if they maverize; the sky is the limit if people would
be dream and live their dream and go for it—that is cosmic justice if people
choose to live and flourish rather than pack-live and lead their Thoreauian
lives of quiet despair and Hofferian discontent.
J: “The cards are dealt out in a relatively arbitrary way.
Well, that’s a very bitter pill to swallow.”
My response: Jordan laments but warns the masses, allegedly
but not actually or necessarily immoral, dumb, and inferior, to just accept
their fate in life, that they will end up poor or barely scraping by; all they
can do is suffer, stay poor, take on all the altruistic suffering and
self-sacrificing that they can, and then perhaps heaven is theirs, for there is
no material hope for them on earth.
Jordan insists that success on earth is granted the gifted
and ingenious, and they can even know heaven after death, if they have remained
humble and non-Luciferian, if these very smart persons assumed as their telos,
a life of moral service to mankind, then they may have paid God back for their
intellectual privilege, thus accessing rewards after death in heaven.
Only those with an IQ of 145 will thrive and only they have the right to
try—Eric Hoffer would stingingly refute Jordan by pointing to the rich, free,
self-directing, free, practical, happy society-ruling American mass society
made by the masses, for the masses, and run (more or less) by the masses, but
none of this this does squares with Jordan’s traditional, rather Christian,
medieval view that the masses are inferior and must accept their lot and be
ruled by the rich, powerful gentry and their clerisy hanger-ons. Jordan’s
solution is to return the medieval times—no thank you, Jordan. You do not believe
in the masses and nor should they listen to you.
J: “But it is also the case that those who are intelligent
have the temptation of Lucifer-- essentially, if you think about it
mythologically. Because it is very easy to worship your own intellect, and then
to worship intellect, per se. And that’s very dangerous thing to do.”
My response: Jordan presents a false dilemma: either you
humble yourself, prostrate yourself before God, denying your worth, power,
agency, right to do things for yourselves, to think and trust your intellect
(not worshiping your intellect), or you are filled with supreme but sickening confidence
in, reliance upon, and love of your own smart intellect (a delusory stance to
assume), worship your own intellect in your vaunted pride and bragging, and you
follow Satan, turn evil and will burn.
I suggest one worship neither one’s own intellect or God’s
intellect, but to have affection and proper pride towards the self—merited
pride, and also, real affection and humility before God, to enjoy all of God’s
beauty and glory, which includes De’s intellect but not worshiping De’s
intellect, which is demonic and blasphemy. God wants humans to have pride and
smart intellects, but still to worship God, while not vying against or
disrespecting God.
J: “To develop that sense of wounded intellectual pride if
people are not bowing at your feet, or even the presumption that merely because
you’ve been gifted with intelligence, because it’s not something you earned,
that means you’re of a stellar moral character.”
My response: Obviously, there is no correlation between
being smart and being moral, though smarter people might be more logical and
rational, and thinking is likely more conducive to being a good person because
one knows how to reach wise conclusions about how to live and how to conduct
oneself.
Jordan is always too
melodramatic though he is accurately describing the wounded pride of those
spurned by the masses; these rebuked, would-be-elitists do seek revenge—power,
control, and tyranny to get even with the masses.
Such wounded, vicious intellectuals are people who are not individualists,
who ordinarily are content and at peace with themselves, quietly calm,
confident, proud and function well at room temperature. And, as individualists,
they seek not power over others, but liberty for all. Individualists do not
much care if people think well of them or not, or obey them or not—live and let
live is their motto.
The intellectuals whom Jordan is referring to are not
individualists. They are groupist intellectuals, part of the Party that rules
and masses, and these are very dangerous, cruel people if they forcefully grab
the power to hurt the masses whom they despise.
These joiners, these intellectual elitists, are seriously
out to maim the masses, their wounded, Luficerian pride is all packed-geared,
all altruistic and selfless. They nurse a special grudge for and hatred against
for the self-sufficient American masses who are rightly, instinctively leery of
these malcontents. As Eric Hoffer famously emphasizes, the character of these
pack intellectuals reveals their evil natures, and these wicked people
demonstrate behaviors and traits not those of individualists, or intellectuals,
but those of elite joiners running society from its top rungs.
J: “I was really shocked in my clinical practice, you know,
quite regularly, because people in my practice who were definitely in the lower
quintile of intelligence, let’s say, very, very impaired, unable to read,
certainly unable to use a computer.
They were virtually unemployable regardless of how much
effort was poured into that, yet how often they were unbelievably admirable in
their in the ability to bear up under the complex and stressful conditions of
their life, without being bitter or resentful while still being of service to
other people. It was really shocking to me to watch that (Ed says, one can
always be grateful and adopt a good attitude, no matter how things have turned
out.), and as a reminder that just because you are intelligent, doesn’t mean
you are good and that does.
And we do in our culture, and the Left is particularly
egregious in this regard, I would say, to casually allude to cognitive ability
with moral worth, with general cognitive ability.”
My response: Moral worth and natural or earned high IQ can
be coordinated with individual moral worth only if the agent is grateful,
optimistic, positive, loving and seeking wisdom.
The less intelligent adults are not naturally more humble
and thus better, selfless, more moral person just because they have lower IQs
and less talent. Indeed, I would counter argue that those with more
intelligence and talent, on average, are naturally more moral than those with
less talent and lower IQ, though the difference is not huge, and the difference
is of negligible impact if both groups of people decide to live egoistically
and maverize, regardless of their IQ and talent.
Your moral character is based upon your loving the Good
Spirits, loving yourself and then loving others, and when you in action act out
loving interchanging with the Good Spirits, with oneself and with others, that
is how you become a virtuous and holy agent, and talent and IQ do not factor in
that much at all.
There is just not a strong causal connection between being
brainy and being virtuous, but where the individual is egoistic, and genuinely
intellectual and rational, it is likely that moral goodness will follow and
permeate the good egoist’s consciousness.
J: “You know, if you have a materialist viewpoint, that’s,
it’s a very easy thing to do. It’s a hard thing to fight against.”
My response: Once again Jordan is astute about discovering a
maladaptive human behavior, but his final analysis and solution is mostly
inaccurate and disastrous if implemented. His moral solution is the
traditional, conventional altruistic answer which promotes other-interest and
self-sacrifice, the very evil practices which deplete residual individual
self-esteem, and rewards self-loathing and low self-esteem. Remember evil in
society is hatred in action and that comes from a phony humility and low
self-regard. Jordan’s moral solution will grow evil in the world.
It often is so that Leftists and materialists or professors
who are secular humanists do worship their own intellects, and their high IQs
make them especially susceptible to believing sincerely that because they are
smarter than the masses, they are better than the masses, not only
intellectually but morally, so the masses should just bow down and allow these
educated elitists to run their lives.
What Jordan has detected, but mischaracterized and not
unpacked and uncovered here, the shocking, fast, universal ache for many
perhaps most people to allow a little power and a little status For the
insecure joiner, being a bit smarter than the average person is a kind of
elevated status, and the urge to chase after this status is most corrupting. He
who chases after this petty status would sell his children to acquire a little
higher rank on the social pecking order. With slightly altered status as a
groupist, these selfless fools allow the modicum of increased personal social
power to go right to their heads, to believe that they are above average, and
that they now have a right even a duty to direct and straighten out the
inferior masses.
This global, endemic, sickening proclivity is most alluringand
ruins lives, but it does not grow out of individualistic, veridical self-esteem
but is meant by insecure, self-loathing power abusers, to give them a little
internal or social reassurance that they are no worthless after all, that they
are superior to their neighbors, that they must demonstrate this “superiority”
over their neighbors by ruling, exploiting, abusing them.
This willingness to allow power to go to one’s head grows
not out of self-centeredness and self-esteem, nor from overweening pride of the
narcissistic Luciferian intellect, but is a compensatory substitution for
missing enlightened self-interest and healthy self-regard, by the majority,
other-centered, selfless, and group-oriented.
J: “Our society does differently award people with high
general cognitive ability because our society is very complex and rapidly
changing. So, we differentially devote resources to the cognitive skills. And
our culture is set up so that’s more and more the case.
But then there’s another issue too that I think is totally
relevant. You see, the worship of the intellect in and of itself has this
danger of pride associated with it. And it’s a very big danger. The way we
should be conceptualizing intelligence is the manner in which gifts are
portrayed in the gospel accounts, for example.
So, one of the things Christ says—two things that are in
some ways contradictory. One of them is that ‘to those that have everything,
more will be given, and from those that have nothing everything will be taken.
So that’s the Matthew Principle.”
My response: I have never denied that the Matthew Principle
is social reality, but it is only inevitable if people fail to work, maverize,
and build prosperity as part of a free market, democratic system. Jordan is on
his hobbyhorse again about the brightest being unequally rewarded in our
society, so complex and fast changing.
He is warning the brightest not to allow being elevated
economically, socially, and institutionally, which leads to that accumulated
power and special status going to their heads as their worship their intellects,
becoming suffused with Luciferian pride, turning away from God and moral
goodness.
J: “That’s what economists call it. And it is a pointer to
the fact regardless of the discipline, resources accrue in the hands of the
few. And that’s what Marx observe that capital would accrue in the hands of
fewer and fewer people. That’s true. That happens in every society.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a capitalist society or a
socialist society by the way, and so he attributed to capitalism which meant he
misdiagnosed the problem, because it’s deeper than capitalism.”
My response: Jordan as a biological psychologist and
research scientist did great work, before he went into axiology and now wants
collectivism and altruism for the masses, so dim-witted that if they try to
think and develop their talents, they will fail but will become evil because
their so attempting is worshiping their individual intellects, so then they will
turn evil, anti-God and proud rebels against God in their vaunted Luciferian
pride. What nonsense.
Still, Jordan is accurate in displaying the Mathew Principle
at work for hundreds of millions of years in all life forms that hierarchies
and caste systems for human societies seems inevitable—he is correct, it is a
natural proclivity in all societies, but it is not inevitable. But the solution
is not Marxian revolution, which will only bring about a totalitarian social
hell and dystopian of no freedom, pure hierarchical living and unfortunate groupist,
low self-esteem, which grows hatred and malevolence in the world.
Living in hierarchies is not inevitable but the only cure is
rearing up a generation of individuating supercitizens—nothing else works as a
lasting or thorough solution.
J: “But it is the case that rewards are differentially
distributed and that in the higher echelons of the cognitive distribution are
more likely to accrue those rewards. But there’s another statement there that
is also relevant which is that those that have been given much, much will be
required.”
My response: I have no problem with God expecting much of
those that have been given much, but the rewards are not so much distributed to
the talented and smartest based on their genetic gifts: rather they made it to
the top, getting there mostly due to the talented and smartest being the most
egoistic and industrious, so they earned what they got.
If everyone maverizes, everyone will get more of the
rewards, and there will still be differences, but the range will not be that
great and individuating supercitizens will do just fine, and class society
mostly will dissipate and disappear.
J: “Like a gift that you misuse turns into your enemy and
this is more to justice elements. Like you might be rewarded, like your IQ is
stellar. Thank your lucky stars.”
My response: Yes, there are altruistic narcissists that
crave to rule the pack while remaining members of the pack. This talented and
intellectual elite misuse their natural gifts and that make their ability their
enemy, but they are damned by leasing to Satan their corrupt wills and
unwillingness to serve God as a living angel individuators soldier of God.
But this obligation to individuate and serve the Good
Spirits is rejected by the wicked,and they are rapidly accruing to themselves the
dire consequences for misusing life, life span and talent.
That many seek social power rather than work as living
angels is not a justifiable criticism of
intellect or that the masses should not and cannot have the ability to reason,
be talented or generally excel.
Rather it is a reminder for all to live as egoists, and to use
our reason to do well, to act well and to individuate, but you are responsible
for misusing it and always were, and that is nothing new. People could go to
hell thousands of years ago already.
J: “Does that make you privileged? It depends on what you do
with it. Like if you bore a responsibility that was commensurate with the
talent then you’ve paid existentially for your gift. And the classical warning
in deep religious texts is that if you misuse a gift that you’ve been granted,
it will become an unbearable burden and turn against you.”
My response: All are privileged and smart, some more than
others, all are talented, some more than others, so what. Get on with it and
maverize. Then, you are much less likely to misuse your gifts. You are much
more likely to know joy and pleasure as well as duty and responsibility for
suffering is part of life, but it is not the whole story, Jordan.
B
Here is an article I copied and pasted in its entirety, off
the Internet, on about 6/24/25. My thesis—which does require some qualifying--is
that intellect, reasoning and individualism make individuals egoistic and moral,
whereas feeling—especially as passion—and denial of the importance of
developing one’s intellect and taking proper pride in one’s cogitations and
their fruits—make individuals joiners and collectivists, immoral, vain and
Luficerian.
Here is that article:
Article 1 (A1 after this): “As a library, NLM provides
access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply
endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National
Institutes of Health.
Learn more: PMC
Disclaimer | PMC
Copyright Notice
Annu Rev Psychol
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Apr 28.
Published in final edited
form as: Annu Rev Psychol. 2007;58:345–372. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070145
Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior
June Price Tangney 1,✉,
Jeff Stuewig 1, Debra J Mashek 2
·
PMCID: PMC3083636 NIHMSID: NIHMS288615 PMID: 16953797
The publisher's version of this article is available at Annu
Rev Psychol
Abstract
Moral emotions represent a key element of our human moral apparatus,
influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. This chapter
reviews current theory and research on moral emotions. We first focus on a
triad of negatively valenced “self-conscious” emotions—shame, guilt, and
embarrassment. As in previous decades, much research remains focused on shame
and guilt. We review current thinking on the distinction between shame and
guilt, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two moral
emotions. Several new areas of research are highlighted: research on the
domain-specific phenomenon of body shame, styles of coping with shame,
psychobiological aspects of shame, the link between childhood abuse and later
proneness to shame, and the phenomena of vicarious or “collective” experiences
of shame and guilt. In recent years, the concept of moral emotions has been
expanded to include several positive emotions—elevation, gratitude, and the
sometimes morally relevant experience of pride. Finally, we discuss briefly a
morally relevant emotional process—other-oriented empathy.”
My response: Our emotions are an important element of our moral apparatus,
influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior. Emotions are
such an important element, but I believe and hope to show that our reasons,
intellect, thoughts, logical processes, and rational intuition are the most
important element influencing the link between moral standards and moral
behavior.
But reasoning is not all good, moral, and individual, and feeling is not all
bad, immoral and of the collective. Such a false dichotomy is a lie; it is
unworkable, and not how the world works, and we must discover how the world
works if we would live better and do better.
My axiom, moderation in most things, applies here. Be individual more than
collective. Be moral more than immoral. Seek truth not lies errors and
illusions. Think more than feel, but do both, and pursue self-interest more
than group-interest, but both are important and play a part. Be proud of your
intellect more than not, but only if you have learned to think, are rooted
deeply in reality, are individuating. Then your reasoned and felt moral choices
will introduce new, uplifting, sensible ideas, and action patterns to the
world, for the benefit of all.
A1: “Keywords: shame, guilt, pride, elevation,
gratitude
OVERVIEW
What confluence of factors foster a moral life lived to the benefit of self
and others? This review summarizes current theory and research on moral
emotions, offering a framework for thinking about the ways in which morally
relevant emotions may moderate the link between moral standards and moral
decisions, and ultimately moral behavior.
Living a moral, constructive life is defined by a weighted sum of countless
individual, morally relevant behaviors enacted day in and day out (plus an
occasional particularly self-defining moment). As imperfect human beings,
however, our behavior does not always bear a one-to-one correspondence to our
moral standards.”
My response: We must be sensible and reasonable in our expectations: there
can never be a one-to-one correspondence between conducted behaviors and actual
moral standards. If we come close, that is a great, even adequate effort in
divine judger eyes.
A1: “Many potential explanations exist for the discrepancy between
behavioral decisions (intentions) and actual behavior in both moral and
nonmoral domains. Historically, much social psychological theory and research
was devoted to understanding the imperfect link between intentions (e.g., moral
decisions) and behavior. Field theory, the very foundation of social
psychology, highlights the variability of individual behavior as a function of
situational context (Lewin
1943); interpersonal negotiation can undermine the link between
intention and behavior (DeVisser &
Smith 2004); and diffusion of responsibility can undermine one’s
ability to act on deeply held beliefs (see, e.g., Latane
& Darley 1968). Ajzen’s
(1991) theory of planned behavior offers a well-integrated model of
the ways in which attitudes, norms, and perceived control feed into behavioral
intentions and subsequent behavior.
As with the link between intentions and behaviors in general, the link
between moral intentions and moral behaviors is likewise an important issue.
However, owing to space limitations, this chapter focuses on the processes
further upstream from intentions: the less widely studied factors that
strengthen (or disrupt) linkages between moral standards and moral intentions
(which we refer to throughout this article as moral decisions), and thus moral
behaviors. In our view, the link between moral standards and moral decisions
and/or moral behavior is influenced in important ways by moral emotions.”
My response: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The gap between
moral intentions and moral behavior or practice is made worse because people
suffer from low self-esteem—that is they hate themselves more than they love
themselves, and an agent in which self-loathing monopolizes her consciousness
is an agent who will and must misbehave much of the time, despite her moral
code.
A1: “Moral standards represent an individual’s knowledge and internalization
of moral norms and conventions. People’s moral standards are dictated in part
by universal moral laws, and in part by culturally specific proscriptions. The
current review emphasizes cognitive and emotional processes relevant to the
more cross-culturally invariant moral standards. Of primary interest are
prohibitions against behaviors likely to have negative consequences for the
well-being of others and for which there is broad social consensus that such
behaviors are “wrong” (e.g., interpersonal violence, criminal behavior, lying,
cheating, stealing).”
My response: I enjoy the authors’ emphasis on how the individual
internalizes moral norms, so their moral code is partially dictated by
universal moral laws and in part by culturally specific proscriptions.
They are recommending that moral emotions upstream of the agent’s
intentions, if well developed and self-regulated, could lead the agent to
behave better, thus lessening negative behavioral consequences upon others.
Perhaps if moral thinking upstream was added, the agent could behave better,
more consistently too in self-care and communal care.
A1: “Naturally, people do, on occasion, lie, cheat, and steal, even though
they know such behavior is deemed wrong by moral and societal norms. Individual
differences in people’s anticipation of and experience of moral emotions likely
play key roles in determining actual moral choices and behavior in real-life
contexts.
Moral emotions represent an important but often overlooked element of our
human moral apparatus. Moral emotions may be critically important in
understanding people’s behavioral adherence (or lack of adherence) to their
moral standards. Haidt
(2003) defines moral emotions as those “that are linked to the
interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other
than the judge or agent” (p. 276). Moral emotions provide the motivational
force—the power and energy— to do good and to avoid doing bad (Kroll
& Egan 2004).
In this article, we focus on a triad of morally relevant, negatively
valenced “self-conscious” emotions—shame, guilt, and embarrassment. We also
consider several positively valenced moral emotions—elevation, gratitude, and
the sometimes morally relevant experience of pride. In addition, we discuss
briefly a morally relevant emotional process— empathy.”
My response: It seems clear that these psychologists regard strong,
operative moral emotions as likely to produce ethical adults who are
other-centered, compassionate, and empathetic.
A1: “SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS: ANTICIPATORY AND CONSEQUENTIAL REACTIONS TO
THE SELF
Shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride are members of a family of
“self-conscious emotions” that are evoked by self-reflection and
self-evaluation. This self-evaluation may be implicit or explicit, consciously
experienced or transpiring beneath the radar of our awareness. But importantly,
the self is the object of these self-conscious emotions.
As the self reflects upon the self, moral self-conscious emotions provide
immediate punishment (or reinforcement) of behavior. In effect, shame, guilt,
embarrassment, and pride function as an emotional moral barometer, providing
immediate and salient feedback on our social and moral acceptability. When we
sin, transgress, or err, aversive feelings of shame, guilt, or embarrassment
are likely to ensue. When we “do the right thing,” positive feelings of pride
and self-approval are likely to result.”
My response: It appears that moral reasoning as well as moral emotions can
curb behavior in the honestly self-reflective adults who sincerely, actively
seeks to be moral in line with her ethical code, feeling guilty when she sins,
and self-approving or veridically proud of her actions, when she gets it right.
A1: “Moreover, actual behavior is not necessary for the press of moral
emotions to have effect. People can anticipate their likely emotional reactions
(e.g., guilt versus pride/self-approval) as they consider behavioral
alternatives. Thus, the self-conscious moral emotions can exert a strong
influence on moral choice and behavior by providing critical feedback regarding
both anticipated behavior (feedback in the form of anticipatory shame, guilt,
or pride) and actual behavior (feedback in the form of consequential shame,
guilt, or pride). In our view, people’s anticipatory emotional reactions are
typically inferred based on history—that is, based on their past consequential
emotions in reaction to similar actual behaviors and events.
Thus far, we have been discussing situation-specific experiences of
consequential and anticipatory feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and
pride. In the realm of moral emotions, researchers are also interested in
dispositional tendencies to experience these self-conscious emotions (e.g.,
shame-proneness, guilt-proneness). An emotion disposition is defined as the
propensity to experience that emotion across a range of situations (Tangney
1990). From this perspective, shame-prone individuals would be more
susceptible to both anticipatory and consequential experiences of shame,
relative to their less shame-prone peers. That is, a shame-prone person would
be inclined to anticipate shame in response to a range of potential behaviors
and outcomes. In turn, such an individual also would be inclined to experience
shame as a consequence of actual failures and transgressions.
Shame and Guilt
The vast majority of research on moral emotions has focused on two
negatively valanced, self-conscious emotions—shame and guilt. Many individuals,
including clinicians, researchers, and lay people, use the terms “shame” and
“guilt” synonymously. Nonetheless, a number of attempts have been made to
differentiate between shame and guilt over the years.
What’s the difference between shame and guilt?
Attempts to differentiate between shame and guilt fall into three
categories: (a) a distinction based on types of eliciting events, (b)
a distinction based on the public versus private nature of the transgression,
and (c) a distinction based on the degree to which the person
construes the emotion-eliciting event as a failure of self or behavior.
Research indicates that type of event has surprisingly little to do with the
distinction between shame and guilt. Analyses of personal shame and guilt
experiences provided by children and adults revealed few, if any, “classic”
shame-inducing or guilt-inducing situations (Keltner&Buswell
1996, Tangney
1992, Tangney
et al. 1994, Tracy
& Robins 2006). Most types of events (e.g., lying, cheating,
stealing, failing to help another, disobeying parents) are cited by some people
in connection with feelings of shame and by other people in connection with
guilt. Some researchers claim that shame is evoked by a broader range of
situations including both moral and nonmoral failures and transgressions,
whereas guilt is more specifically linked to transgressions in the moral realm
(Ferguson
et al. 1991, Sabini
& Silver 1997, Smith
et al. 2002). In our view (Tangney
et al. 2006b), like its sibling guilt, shame qualifies as a
predominantly moral emotion, once one moves beyond narrowly conceptualizing the
domain of morality in terms of the ethic of autonomy (Shweder et al.
1997). Of the “Big Three” ethics of morality—autonomy, community,
and divinity (Shweder et al.
1997)—shame may be more closely tied to violations of the ethics of
community (e.g., violations of the social order) and divinity (e.g., actions
that remind us of our animal nature), but violations of particular ethics do
not bear a one-to-one correspondence to particular situations or events. As
demonstrated by Shweder
et al. (1997), most failures and transgressions are experienced as
relevant to a mix of moral ethics. In short, from this broader cultural
perspective, shame and guilt are emotions each primarily evoked by moral
lapses.
Another frequently cited distinction between shame and guilt focuses on the
public versus private nature of transgressions (e.g., Benedict
1946). From this perspective, shame is viewed as the more “public”
emotion arising from public exposure and disapproval of some shortcoming or
transgression. Guilt, on the other hand, is conceived as a more “private”
experience arising from self-generated pangs of conscience. As it turns out,
empirical research has failed to support this public/private distinction in
terms of the actual structure of the emotion-eliciting situation (Tangney
et al. 1994, 1996a).
For example, a systematic analysis of the social context of personal shame- and
guilt-eliciting events described by several hundred children and adults (Tangney
et al. 1994) indicated that shame and guilt are equally likely to be
experienced in the presence of others. Solitary shame experiences were about as
common as solitary guilt experiences. Even more to the point, the frequency
with which others were aware of the respondents’ behavior did not vary as a
function of shame and guilt, in direct contradiction to the public/private
distinction. Similarly, in a study of personal emotion narratives, Tracy
& Robins (2006) found that, relative to guilt, shame was
elicited somewhat more frequently by achievement events and personal events,
which are each more private than relational and familial events.”
My response: Again, rational morals and emotional morals could both trigger
feelings of guilt and shame if one sins. My sense of it is that veridical
private guilt should motivate people of good will and strong conscience not to
go and sin no more or less so.
Being shamed is a social method of behavior modification, so therefore less
useful and less lasting. When remorse is individual and feeling guilty, it is self-oriented,
so lasting reform is possible. When remorse is the emotion experienced by the
targeted sinner being shamed, this
other-oriented suffering will not likely lead the sinner to reform.
A1: “Where does the notion that shame is a more public emotion come from?
Although shame- and guilt-inducing situations are equally public (in terms of
the likelihood that others are present and aware of the failure or
transgression) and equally likely to involve interpersonal concerns, there
appear to be systematic differences in the nature of those interpersonal
concerns. Tangney
et al. (1994) found that when describing shame-inducing situations,
respondents expressed more concern with others’ evaluations of the self. In
contrast, when describing guilt experiences, respondents were more concerned
with their effect on others. This difference in “egocentric” versus
“other-oriented” concerns isn’t surprising given that shame involves a focus on
the self, whereas guilt relates to a specific behavior. A shamed person who is
focusing on negative self-evaluations would naturally be drawn to a concern over
others’ evaluations. It’s a short leap from thinking what a horrible person one
is to thinking about how one might be evaluated by others. On the other hand, a
person experiencing guilt is already relatively “decentered”—focusing on a
negative behavior somewhat separate from the self. In focusing on a bad
behavior, rather than a bad self, a person in the middle of a guilt experience
is more likely to recognize (and have concerns about) the effects of that
behavior on others rather than on others’ evaluations. Several subsequent
studies (Smith
et al. 2002) provide ample evidence that shame is associated with
such concerns. For example, participants primed to focus on public exposure of
a moral transgression attributed equivalent levels of shame and guilt to story
protagonists, but when the public versus private dimension was not highlighted,
participants attributed less shame (guilt was uniformly high across
conditions). However, taken together, Smith et al.’s findings are consistent
with the notion that people focus on others’ evaluations because they are feeling
shame, not vice versa. When participants were asked to think of a situation in
which they had felt bad because an inferior aspect of themselves “was
revealed or publicly exposed to another person or to other people” (p.
154; emphasis added), the majority spontaneously described the resulting
feeling as one of embarrassment—only 6.7% identified the feeling as shame
(twice as many identified the feeling as guilt). Similarly, in the moral
condition (feeling bad because “something wrong” that they did was exposed),
the modal emotion term was embarrassment—three times more common than shame
(which was no more frequent than guilt). In short, when experiencing shame,
people may feel more exposed—more aware of others’ disapproval—but the reality
is that situations causing both shame and guilt are typically social in nature.
More often than not, our failures and transgressions do not escape the notice
of others.
The currently most dominant basis for distinguishing between shame and
guilt—focus on self versus behavior—was first proposed by Helen Block Lewis
(1971) and more recently elaborated by Tracy
& Robins’s (2004a) appraisal-based model of self-conscious
emotions. According to Lewis
(1971), shame involves a negative evaluation of the global self;
guilt involves a negative evaluation of a specific behavior. Although this
distinction may, at first glance, appear rather subtle, empirical research
supports that this differential emphasis on self (“I did that horrible
thing”) versus behavior (“I did that horrible thing”) sets
the stage for very different emotional experiences and very different patterns
of motivations and subsequent behavior.
Both shame and guilt are negative emotions and as such, both can cause
intrapsychic pain. Nonetheless, shame is considered the more painful emotion
because one’s core self—not simply one’s behavior—is at stake. Feelings of
shame are typically accompanied by a sense of shrinking or of “being small” and
by a sense of worthlessness and power-lessness. Shamed people also feel
exposed. Although shame does not necessarily involve an actual observing
audience present to witness one’s shortcomings, there is often the imagery of
how one’s defective self would appear to others. Lewis
(1971) described a split in self-functioning in which the self is
both agent and object of observation and disapproval. Guilt, on the other hand,
is typically a less devastating, less painful experience because the object of
condemnation is a specific behavior, not the entire self. Rather than needing
to defend the exposed core of one’s identity, people in the throes of guilt are
drawn to consider their behavior and its consequences. This focus leads to
tension, remorse, and regret over the “bad thing done.”
Empirical support for Lewis’s
(1971) distinction between shame and guilt comes from a range of
experimental and correlational studies employing a range of methods including
qualitative case study analyses, content analyses of shame and guilt
narratives, participants’ quantitative ratings of personal shame and guilt
experiences, analyses of attributions associated with shame and guilt, and
analyses of participants’ counterfactual thinking (for a review, see Tangney
& Dearing 2002). Most recently, for example, Tracy
& Robins (2006) employed both experimental and correlational
methods showing that internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions for failure
were positively related to shame, whereas internal, unstable, controllable
attributions for failure were positively related to guilt.
Shame and guilt are not equally “moral” emotions
One of the consistent themes emerging from empirical research is that shame
and guilt are not equally “moral” emotions. On balance, guilt appears to be the
more adaptive emotion, benefiting individuals and their relationships in a
variety of ways (Baumeister
et al. 1994, 1995a,b;
Tangney
1991, 1995a,b),
but there is growing evidence that shame is a moral emotion that can easily go
awry (Tangney
1991, 1995a,b;
Tangney
et al. 1996b).”
My response: I am no psychologist and no social scientist, but these
reasonable researchers do seem to be onto something, that feeling ashamed is a
social phenomenon, where morality is an individual phenomenon, so if one
concentrates on feeling guilt over one’s bad behavior, and seeks to atone and
do better, this private and personal approach might more closely elicit via an
active conscience, better behavior because the individual chooses to act
better, so that he can again approve of himself only when he mostly meets his
ethical standard which he has imposed upon himself.
A1: “In this section, we summarize research in five areas that illustrates
the adaptive functions of guilt, in contrast to the hidden costs of shame.
Specifically, we focus on the differential relationship of shame and guilt to
motivation (hiding versus amending), other-oriented empathy, anger and
aggression, psychological symptoms, and deterrence of transgression and other
risky, socially undesirable behavior.
Hiding versus amending
Research consistently shows that shame and guilt lead to contrasting
motivations or “action tendencies” (Ketelaar & Au
2003, Lewis
1971, Lindsay-Hartz
1984, Tangney
1993, Tangney
et al. 1996a, Wallbott
& Scherer 1995, Wicker
et al. 1983). On the one hand, shame corresponds with attempts to
deny, hide, or escape the shame-inducing situation. Physiological research has
linked the shame experience with elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokine
and cortisol (Dickerson
et al. 2004a), which can trigger postural signs of deference and
self-concealment (see New Directions in Research on Shame and Guilt:
Physiological Correlates of Shame). Guilt, on the other hand, corresponds with
reparative actions including confessions, apologies, and undoing the
consequences of the behavior. On the whole, empirical evidence evaluating the
action tendencies of people experiencing shame and guilt suggests that guilt
promotes constructive, proactive pursuits, whereas shame promotes
defensiveness, interpersonal separation, and distance.
Other-oriented empathy versus self-oriented distress
Second, shame and guilt are differentially related to empathy. Specifically,
guilt goes hand in hand with other-oriented empathy. Feelings of shame, in
contrast, apparently disrupt individuals’ ability to form empathic connections
with others. This differential relationship of shame and guilt to empathy is
apparent both at the level of emotion disposition and at the level of emotional
state. Research on emotional dispositions (Joireman 2004;
Leith
& Baumeister 1998; Tangney
1991, 1995b;
Tangney
& Dearing 2002) demonstrates that guilt-proneness consistently
correlates with measures of perspective-taking and empathic concern. In
contrast, shame-proneness is (depending on assessment method) negatively or
negligibly correlated with other-oriented empathy and positively linked with
the tendency to focus egocentrically on one’s own distress. Similar findings
arise in research on emotional states—feelings of shame and guilt “in the
moment.” In describing personal experiences of guilt, people convey greater
empathy for others than when describing shame experiences (Leith
& Baumeister 1998, Tangney
et al. 1994). Marschall
(1996) found that people induced to feel shame subsequently reported
less empathy for a disabled student, especially among low-shame-prone
individuals.”
My response: The researchers suggest feeling guilty renders one more
sympathetic to others whom one has transgressed against, while feeling shame is
more superficial and egocentric so that one really does not become more moral,
a group-interested state of moral being.
As an egoist, I flip this around: if feeling guilty about one sins is how
one feels, that is a personal feeling which is ego-centered—we straighten out
ourselves first, and then we can treat others better. It is unlike feeling
shame, a group-status feeling of being socially downgraded and other-centric,
so then one does not reform as deep and as well, because the self is not really
upset enough as an individual to take action for the better.
A1: “”Why might shame, but not guilt, interfere with other-oriented empathy?
Shame’s inherently egocentric focus on the “bad self” (as opposed to the bad
behavior) derails the empathic process. Individuals in the throes of shame turn
tightly inward, and are thus less able to focus cognitive and emotional
resources on the harmed other (Tangney
et al. 1994). In contrast, people experiencing guilt are
specifically focused on the bad behavior, which in turn highlights the negative
consequences experienced by others, thereby fostering an empathic response and
motivating people to “right the wrong.”
Constructive versus destructive reactions to anger
Third, research indicates a robust link between shame and anger, again
observed at both the dispositional and state levels. In her earlier clinical
case studies, Helen Block Lewis
(1971) observed the peculiar dynamic between shame and anger (or
humiliated fury), noting that clients’ feelings of shame often preceded
expressions of anger and hostility in the therapy room. More recent empirical
research has supported her claim. Across individuals of all ages, proneness to
shame is positively correlated with anger, hostility, and the propensity to
blame factors beyond the self for one’s misfortunes (Andrews
et al. 2000, Bennett,
et al. 2005, Harper
& Arias 2004, Paulhus
et al. 2004, Tangney
& Dearing 2002).
In fact, compared with those who are not shame-prone, shame-prone
individuals are more likely to engage in externalization of blame, experience
intense anger, and express that anger in destructive ways, including direct
physical, verbal, and symbolic aggression, indirect aggression (e.g., harming
something important to the target, talking behind the target’s back), all
manner of displaced aggression, self-directed aggression, and anger held in (a
ruminative unexpressed anger). Finally, shame-prone individuals report
awareness that their anger typically results in negative long-term consequences
for both themselves and for their relationships with others.
Guilt-proneness, in contrast, is consistently associated with a more
constructive constellation of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. For example,
proneness to “shame-free” guilt is positively correlated with constructive
intentions in the wake of wrongdoing and consequent constructive behaviors
(e.g., nonhostile discussion, direct corrective action). Compared with their
nonguilt-prone peers, guilt-prone individuals are less likely to engage in
direct, indirect, and displaced aggression when angered. And they report
positive long-term consequences to their anger (Tangney
et al. 1996a). Consistent with these findings, Harper
et al. (2005) recently evaluated the link between shame-proneness
and perpetration of psychological abuse in the dating relationships by
heterosexual college men. Shame proneness was significantly correlated with
perpetration of psychological abuse, and men’s anger mediated this
relationship.
Shame and anger have been similarly linked at the situational level, too (Tangney
et al. 1996a, Wicker
et al. 1983). For example, in a study of anger episodes among
romantically involved couples, shamed partners were significantly more angry,
more likely to engage in aggressive behavior, and less likely to elicit
conciliatory behavior from their perpetrating significant other (Tangney
1995b). Taken together, the results provide a powerful empirical
example of the shame-rage spiral described by Lewis
(1971) and Scheff
(1987), with (a) partner shame leading to feelings of rage,
(b) and destructive retaliation, (c) which then sets into
motion anger and resentment in the perpetrator, (d ) as well as
expressions of blame and retaliation in kind, (e) which is then likely
to further shame the initially shamed partner, and so forth—without any
constructive resolution in sight.
Recently, Stuewig
et al. (2006) examined mediators of the link between moral emotions
and aggression in four samples. We theorized that negative feelings associated
with shame lead to externalization of blame, which in turn leads shame-prone
people to react aggressively. Guilt, on the other hand, should facilitate
empathic processes, thus reducing outward directed aggression. As anticipated,
we found that across all samples, externalization of blame mediated the
relationship between shame-proneness and both verbal and physical aggression.
Guilt-proneness, on the other hand, continued to show a direct inverse
relationship to aggression in three of the four samples. In addition, the link
between guilt and low aggression was partially mediated through other-oriented
empathy and a propensity to take responsibility.
In short, shame and anger go hand in hand. Desperate to escape painful
feelings of shame, shamed individuals are apt to turn the tables defensively,
externalizing blame and anger outward onto a convenient scapegoat. Blaming
others may help individuals regain some sense of control and superiority in
their life, but the long-term costs are often steep. Friends, coworkers, and
loved ones are apt to become alienated by an interpersonal style characterized
by irrational bursts of anger.”
My response: When shamed individuals scapegoat onto others, it is because
they are other-centric not ego-centric as the researchers have concluded.
A1: “Psychological symptoms
When considering the domain of social behavior and interpersonal adjustment,
empirical research suggests that guilt, on balance, is the more moral or
adaptive emotion. Guilt appears to motivate reparative action, foster
other-oriented empathy, and promote constructive strategies for coping with
anger. But are there intrapersonal or intrapsychic costs for those individuals
who are prone to experience guilt? Does guilt-proneness lead to anxiety,
depression, and/or a loss of self-esteem? Conversely, is shame perhaps less
problematic for intrapersonal as opposed to interpersonal adjustment?
The answer is clear in the case of shame. Research over the past two decades
consistently indicates that proneness to shame is related to a wide variety of
psychological symptoms. These run the gamut from low self-esteem, depression,
and anxiety to eating disorder symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
and suicidal ideation (Andrews
et al. 2000, Ashby
et al. 2006, Brewin
et al. 2000, Crossley
& Rockett 2005, Feiring
& Taska 2005, Feiring
et al. 2002, Ferguson
et al. 2000, Ghatavi
et al. 2002, Harper
& Arias 2004, Henderson
& Zimbardo 2001, Leskela
et al. 2002, Mills
2003, Murray
et al. 2000, Orsillo
et al. 1996, Sanftner
et al. 1995, Stuewig
& McCloskey 2005; see also review in Tangney
& Dearing 2002). The negative psychological implications of
shame are evident across measurement methods, diverse age groups, and
populations. Both the clinical literature and empirical research agree that
people who frequently experience feelings of shame about the self are
correspondingly more vulnerable to a range of psychological problems.
Although the traditional view is that guilt plays a significant role in
psychological symptoms, the empirical findings have been more equivocal.
Clinical theory and case studies make frequent reference to a maladaptive guilt
characterized by chronic self-blame and obsessive rumination over one’s
transgressions (Blatt
1974, Ellis
1962, Freud
1924/1961, Hartmann
& Loewenstein 1962, Rodin
et al. 1984, Weiss
1993). Recently, however, theorists and researchers have emphasized
the adaptive functions of guilt, particularly for interpersonal behavior (Baumeister
et al. 1994, 1995a;
Hoffman
1982; Tangney
1991, 1994,
1995b;
Tangney
et al. 1992; Tangney
& Dearing 2002).
In an effort to reconcile these perspectives, Tangney
(1996) argued that earlier work failed to take into account the
distinction between guilt and shame. Once one conceptualizes guilt as a
negative emotion in response to a specific failure or transgression, there’s no
compelling reason to expect guilt to be associated with poor psychological
adjustment. Instead, guilt is most likely to be maladaptive when it becomes
fused with shame. The advantages of guilt are lost when a person’s guilt
experience (“Oh, look at what a horrible thing I have done”)
is magnified and generalized to the self (“… and aren’t I a horrible person”).
Ultimately, it’s the shame component of this sequence—not the guilt component—
that poses the problem, as the person becomes saddled with feelings of contempt
and disgust for a bad, defective self.”
My response: I do think the researchers are correct that we should teach
sinners to feel guilty about bad behavior, more than shame themselves as bad
persons. If we change the behavior, we will be able to feel veridical
self-esteem meritoriously increase and that increases self-love, and
self-esteem and when one loves the self, then one will love other smore, and
act better towards the self and others, lessening the need to feel shame or
guilt.
A1: “Moreover, such painful feelings of shame are difficult to resolve.
Shame—and, shame-fused guilt—offers little opportunity for redemption. It is a
daunting challenge to transform a self that is defective at its core. Thus,
guilt with an overlay of shame is most likely the source of the painful
self-castigation and rumination so often described in the clinical literature.
In contrast, there are typically a multitude of paths to redemption in the case
of uncomplicated guilt focused on a specific behavior. A person (a)
often has the option of changing the objectionable behavior; (b) or
even better yet, has an opportunity to repair the negative consequences; (c)
or at the very least, can extend a heartfelt apology. And when it is not
possible to make these external amends, one can resolve to do better in the
future.
Consistent with this conceptual analysis, empirical studies that fail to
take into account the distinction between shame and guilt, or that employ
adjective checklist-type (and other globally worded) measures that are
ill-suited to distinguish between shame and guilt, report that guilt-proneness
is associated with psychological symptoms (Boye et al. 2002,
Fontana
& Rosenbeck 2004, Ghatavi
et al. 2002, Harder
1995, Jones
& Kugler 1993, Meehan
et al. 1996). For example, using the Interpersonal Guilt
Questionnaire (O’Connor
et al. 1997), Berghold
& Locke (2002) found that solely the “self-hate” guilt scale
differentiated between a control group and adolescents diagnosed with anorexia
nervosa. (The authors concluded that, in fact, shame—not guilt—is more
important to a clinical understanding of this eating disorder.)
On the other hand, measures sensitive to Lewis’s
(1971) distinction between shame about the self versus guilt about a
specific behavior (e.g., scenario-based methods assessing shame and guilt with
respect to specific situations) show that the propensity to experience
“shame-free” guilt is essentially unrelated to psychological symptoms. Numerous
independent studies converge: guilt-prone children, adolescents, and adults are
not at increased risk for depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, etc. (Gramzow &
Tangney 1992; Leskela
et al. 2002; McLaughlin
2002; Quiles
& Bybee 1997; Schaefer
2000; Stuewig
& McCloskey 2005; Tangney
1994; Tangney
& Dearing 2002; Tangney
et al. 1991, 1992,
1995).
It is worth noting, however, that in most scenario-based measures of shame
and guilt (including the Test of Self-Conscious Affect, or TOSCA), the majority
of situations are relatively ambiguous regarding responsibility or culpability.
For the negatively valenced (but not positively valenced) situations,
respondents are asked to imagine events in which they clearly failed or
transgressed in some way. Problems are likely to arise when people developed an
exaggerated or distorted sense of responsibility for events beyond their
control or for which they have no personal involvement (Ferguson
et al. 2000, Tangney
& Dearing 2002, Zahn-Waxler
& Robinson 1995). Survivor guilt is a prime example of such a
problematic guilt response that has been consistently linked to psychological
maladjustment (Kubany et al. 1995,
2004;
O’Connor
et al. 2002). In an experimental study of elementary school–aged
children, Ferguson
et al. (2000) varied the degree to which situations in a
scenario-based measure were ambiguous with respect to responsibility. They
found a positive relationship between internalizing symptoms (e.g., depression)
and proneness to guilt specifically in situations where responsibility was
ambiguous.
In short, the benefits of guilt are evident when people acknowledge their
failures and transgressions and take appropriate responsibility for their
misdeeds. In such situations, the interpersonal benefits of guilt do not appear
to come at a cost to the individual. The propensity to experience “shame-free”
guilt in response to clear transgressions is generally unrelated to
psychological problems, whereas shame is consistently associated with
maladaptive processes and outcomes at multiple levels.”
My response: I agree that feeling shame over one’s transgression will lead
to further corruption in the self and psychological dysfunction, where as guilt
linked to bad behaviors specifically are useful for the self to shape up,
behave and heal.
A1: “Linking moral emotions to risky, illegal, and otherwise inadvisable
behavior
Because shame and guilt are painful emotions, it is often assumed that they
motivate individuals to avoid doing wrong. From this perspective, anticipated
shame and guilt should decrease the likelihood of transgression and
impropriety. But what exactly do the data show?
Empirical studies of diverse samples, employing a range of measures, clearly
indicate that guilt-proneness is inversely related to antisocial and risky
behavior. In a study of college undergraduates (Tangney
1994), guilt-proneness was associated with endorsing such items as
“I would not steal something I needed, even if I were sure I could get away
with it.” Similarly, Tibbetts
(2003) found that college students’ guilt-proneness was inversely
related to self-reported criminal activity. Among adolescents, proneness to
shame-free guilt has been negatively correlated with delinquency (Merisca &
Bybee 1994, Stuewig
& McCloskey 2005; although Ferguson
et al.1999 found a negative relationship between guilt-proneness and
externalizing symptoms among boys, the opposite was true for girls). The moral
emotions appear to be well established by middle childhood and have
implications for moral behavior for years to come (Tangney
& Dearing 2002). Children prone to shame-free guilt in the fifth
grade were, in adolescence, less likely to be arrested, convicted, and
incarcerated. They were more likely to practice safe sex, and they were less
likely to abuse drugs. Importantly, these findings held when controlling for
family income and mothers’ education. Guilt-prone college students, too, are
less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol (Dearing
et al. 2005). Even among adults already at high risk,
guilt-proneness appears to serve a protective function. In a longitudinal study
of jail inmates, guilt-proneness assessed shortly after incarceration
negatively predicted recidivism and substance abuse during the first year
post-release (Tangney
et al. 2006).
The pattern of results for shame is quite different, with virtually no
evidence supporting the presumed adaptive nature of shame. In studies of
children, adolescents, college students, and jail inmates, shame does not
appear to serve the same inhibitory functions as guilt (Dearing
et al. 2005, Stuewig
& McCloskey 2005, Tangney
et al. 1996b). To the contrary, research suggests that shame may
even make things worse. In a study of children, Ferguson
et al. (1999) found that shame-proneness was positively correlated
with externalizing symptoms on the Child Behavior Checklist. In a sample of
college students, Tibbetts
(1997) found a positive relationship between shame-proneness and
intentions toward illegal behavior. Shame-proneness assessed in the fifth grade
predicted later risky driving behavior, earlier initiation of drug and alcohol
use, and a lower likelihood of practicing safe sex (Tangney
& Dearing 2002). Similarly, proneness to problematic feelings of
shame has been positively linked to substance use and abuse in adulthood (Dearing
et al. 2005, Meehan
et al. 1996, O’Connor
et al. 1994, Tangney
et al. 2006).
The differential link of shame and guilt to moral behavior may not
generalize across all populations with respect to all behaviors. Harris
(2003) assessed event-specific experiences of shame and guilt among
drunk-driving offenders following their appearance in court or at a restorative
justice conference. In contrast to most extant studies, Harris found no
evidence that shame and guilt form distinct factors. It’s important to note
that this study focused on a unique,homogeneous sample (convicted drunk
drivers, many of whom have substance abuse problems) and a single type of
transgression. Harris’s findings raise the intriguing possibility that individuals
with substance abuse problems may not have well-differentiated experiences of
shame and guilt. Alternatively, guilt and its attendant empathic focus on the
harmed other may be less relevant to transgressions, such as drunk driving,
that typically do not result in objective physical harm to others. (That is,
the magnitude of consequences of an automobile accident is potentially huge,
whereas the probability of its occurrence on any given occasion is rather
small. Most drunk-driving offenders are arrested for erratic driving, not at
the scene of an accident involving actual harm to another person.)
In sum, empirical results converge, indicating that guilt but not shame is
most effective in motivating people to choose the moral paths in life. The
capacity for guilt is more apt to foster a lifelong pattern of moral behavior,
motivating individuals to accept responsibility and take reparative action in
the wake of the occasional failure or transgression. In contrast, research has
linked shame with a range of illegal, risky, or otherwise problematic
behaviors. Thus, when considering the welfare of the individual, his or her
close relationships, or society, feelings of guilt represent the moral emotion
of choice.
New directions in research on shame and guilt
Context- or domain-specific shame and guilt
Some clinicians have lamented the research literature’s heavy focus on
dispositional shame (Leeming & Boyle 2002). Andrews
(1998) notes that at least three different conceptualizations of the
high-shame individual are implicit in the range of current dispositional
measures of shame. Some researchers conceptualize shame-proneness as the
propensity to experience shame across a range of situations (operationalized by
scenario-based measures such as the TOSCA-3). Others conceptualize high-shame
individuals as those who frequently or continuously experience global shame, an
affect not necessarily connected to particular events (operationalized by
global adjective checklists, such as the PFQ-2, and by the Internalized Shame
Scale). A third and more recent conceptualization of “high shame” is explicitly
domain specific— individuals who are chronically shamed about particular
circumscribed behaviors or personal characteristics (e.g., physical appearance,
level of education, race/ethnicity, and stuttering).
A number of researchers have developed measures to assess shame and guilt
with respect to specific domains. For example, researchers concerned with the
psychology of eating disorders and those exploring hypotheses drawn from the
Objectification Theory of Frederickson
& Roberts (1997) have assessed feelings of shame specifically in
reference to one’s body. “Body shame” has been consistently associated with
self-objectification and eating disorder symptoms (Hallsworth et al.
2005). Andrews
(1995, 1998)
has examined the link between childhood abuse and body shame (see below).
Regarding guilt, researchers have begun to examine the nature and
implications of domain-specific feelings of guilt associated with trauma.
Trauma-related guilt cognitions, such as false beliefs about responsibility or
pre-outcome knowledge, are reliably associated with symptoms of depression
among diverse samples of trauma survivors (Blacher 2000;
Kubany
et al. 1995, 2004;
Lee
et al. 2001). Moreover, cognitive processing therapy and prolonged
exposure interventions appear to be effective at reducing trauma-related guilt
cognitions (Nishith
et al. 2005, Resick
et al. 2002).
Styles of coping with the shame (and guilt) experience
Most theory and research on shame and guilt has focused on the events that
lead up to these emotional experiences, the phenomenology of these emotions, or
the consequences of these emotions for motivation and behavior. Less attention
has been directed toward how people cope with aversive feelings of shame and
guilt. Drawing on Nathanson’s
(1992) Compass of Shame theory, Elison
et al. (2006a) developed a measure of individual differences in
coping with shame. The Compass of Shame Scale (COSS-4) consists of four 10-item
scales representing the poles of Nathanson’s Compass of Shame plus a fifth
assessing adaptive responses. More specifically:
“Attack Self” assesses
inward-directed anger and blame (e.g., self-disgust)
“Withdrawal” assesses the
tendency to hide or withdraw when shamed (e.g., avoid others)
“Avoidance” assesses disavowal
and emotional distancing or minimization (e.g., minimizing the importance of a
failing grade)
“Attack Other” assesses
outward-directed anger and blame (e.g., blaming someone else for the failure or
transgression)
“Adaptive” assesses
acknowledgment of shame and motivation to apologize and/or make amends
Some clear parallels exist between the scales of the COSS-4 and the scales
of the TOSCA. Attack Self and Withdrawal bear a close resemblance to the two
types of items that comprise the TOSCA Shame scale— negative self-appraisals
and avoidance. The Adaptive Responses scale bears a close resemblance to the
TOSCA Guilt scale. Attack Other bears considerable resemblance to the TOSCA
Externalization of Blame scale. And Avoidance resembles the TOSCA Detachment
scale (although the TOSCA Detachment scale appears less internally consistent
than the COSS-4 Avoidance scale). The use of different terms to describe
similar types of response most likely reflects differences in theoretical
formulation. Nathanson
(1992) draws on modern psychoanalytic theory, Tomkin’s
(1963) emotion theory, and associated attachment theory. The TOSCA
measures were informed by social-cognitive theories of emotion, with much
influence from Lewis
(1971). As one might expect, of the four scales of the COSS-4, the
Withdrawal and Attack Self scales are most highly correlated with shame, as
well as measures of more general psychological adjustment (Elison et al.
2006a,b).
In a sample of undergraduates, Campbell
& Elison (2005) found that both subscales of the Self-Report
Psychopathy Scale (SRPS) were negatively related to the guilt-like Adaptive
Response to Shame scale and positively related to Attack Others and Avoidance
scales. The SRPS subscale assessing antisocial lifestyle paralleling Hare’s
(1991) Factor 2 on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised was positively
correlated with Attack Self and Withdrawal scales—scales that assess shame much
as defined by Lewis
(1971) and Tangney
(1996). But the Primary Psychopathy subscale, assessing psychopathic
personality features akin to Hare’s
(1991) Factor 1, was negatively or negligibly related to shame per
se—the Attack Self and Withdrawal scales. Future research examining how
correlates of the COSS-4 parallel or differ from the TOSCA is needed.
Psychobiological correlates of shame
Researchers have recently begun to evaluate psychobiological markers of
shame, examining biological responses to laboratory manipulations designed to
threaten the social self (Dickerson
et al. 2004b, Gruenewald
et al. 2004; see Dickerson
et al. 2004a for a review). Dickerson et al. found that participants
who wrote about incidents wrought with self-blame, in contrast to participants
who wrote about daily activities, evidenced increased levels of self-reported
shame (and guilt) from pretest to post-test. More importantly, these same
participants evidenced increased proinflammatory cytokine activity from pretest
to post-test, and this response was significantly predicted by increases in
self-reported shame. Consistent with theory differentiating shame and guilt,
shame uniquely predicted this immune-related response; changes in neither guilt
nor general negative affect significantly predicted changes in the cytokine
response. Recent applied research is equally suggestive: Among people with HIV,
persistent feelings of shame predicted t-cell decline, an indicator of
compromised immune function (Weitzman
et al. 2004).
Gruenewald
et al. (2004) examined cortisol responses of individuals performing
stressful speaking and arithmetic tasks with and without an audience.
Individuals in the social evaluation condition reported more shame (and lower
self-esteem) than did individuals in the nonevaluative condition. Moreover,
those individuals in this shame-eliciting condition also evidenced significant
increases in cortisol levels. Similarly, among children, nonverbal expressions
of shame and embarrassment during laboratory tasks were associated with greater
cortisol changes during the session, relative to other nonverbal behavioral
styles (Lewis
& Ramsay 2002).
Considering these patterns of immunoresponse in toto, Dickerson
et al. (2004a) note, “… shame may be experienced
particularly in conditions characterized by negative social evaluation and
rejection. The cortisol and proinflammatory cytokine systems also appear to be
responsive to social-evaluative threat. While tentative, there is support for
the notion that the activation of these systems under the very specific
condition of threat to the social self may hinge on the experience of shame and
related emotions” (p. 1205).
Cardiovascular reactivity seems likewise associated with experiences of
shame. For example, in addition to evaluating cortisol response, Gruenewald
et al. (2004) also evaluated heart rate and blood pressure changes
in response to the stressful speaking and arithmetic tasks. Although heart rate
and systolic blood pressure increased in both the social evaluative and
nonevaluative conditions, the response was somewhat more marked in the social
evaluative condition. Extending this work with a clever laboratory manipulation
of experienced emotions, Herrald
& Tomaka (2002) evaluated cardiovascular reactivity in the wake
of pride, shame, and anger. They found that the negatively valenced emotions of
shame and anger resulted in higher levels of cardiovascular reactivity than
pride; importantly, participants in the shame condition showed higher
peripheral resistance (associated with hypertension) and participants in the
anger condition showed higher cardiac contractility (associated with coronary
disease).
In sum, there seems to be distinct physiological correlates corresponding to
the experience of shame. Such physiological markers may prove to be useful as a
measurement tool in future research on situation-specific states of shame.
Childhood abuse and the propensity to experience shame
Clinicians have long reported that victims of abuse or trauma are often
haunted by feelings of shame. This may especially be true in cases of child
maltreatment because of its secretive and hidden nature (Deblinger &
Runyon 2005). The experience of abuse at a young age may instigate
and reinforce shame-inducing thoughts (Andrews
1998). Also, severely punitive parenting practices may engender in
children feelings of helplessness and self-blame, which may then lead to a
globalized sense of shame. Although child maltreatment in its different forms
(physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, harsh parenting) has long been
theorized to engender a vulnerability to shame, systematic empirical research
has been conducted only recently.
A number of studies have found a relationship between childhood physical and
sexual abuse and specific forms of shame, including body shame (Andrews
1995, Andrews
& Hunter 1997) and shame about a traumatic event (Andrews
et al. 2000). In addition, Murray
& Waller (2002) found a relationship between unwanted sexual
experience of any sort and internalized shame. Although Hoglund
& Nicholas (1995) reported no relationship between a history of
physical abuse and shame-proneness, they did find a link between
shame-proneness and history of emotional abuse. In this same vein, Gilbert
et al. (1996) found that put-downs and shaming practices by parents
were associated with adult children’s shame-proneness. Each of these studies,
however, was based on retrospective reports of maltreatment and parenting
practices, which have known weaknesses (Widom et al. 2004).
Nonetheless, when considering studies using prospective or observational
designs, the results for nonsexual abuse and shame are similar. Bennett
et al. (2005) report an association between physical abuse and
nonverbal shame, although there was not a significant relationship for neglect.
In addition, Alessandri
& Lewis (1996) found girls coded as maltreated to have higher
nonverbal shame. More generally, negative or harsh parenting has been
associated with the propensity to experience shame (Alessandri &
Lewis 1993, 1996;
Ferguson
& Stegge 1995; Mills
2003). Stuewig
& McCloskey (2005) report a relationship between harsh parenting
in childhood and shame-proneness in adolescence, a relationship that was
mediated by rejecting parenting practices also measured in adolescence.
The relationship between sexual abuse and shame seems to be less
straightforward. In research studies of individuals who have experienced sexual
abuse, shame has been consistently implicated in poor outcomes such as
depression and PTSD symptoms (Feiring &
Taska 2005; Feiring
et al. 1996, 2002;
Talbot
et al. 2004). Feiring
& Taska (2005) have also found abuse-specific shame to be
moderately stable across time.
However, neither Alessandri
& Lewis (1996), using observational measures of shame, nor Stuewig
& McCloskey (2005), using self-reports of shame-proneness, found
a relationship between history of sexual abuse and shame, but both studied
small samples of sexually abused individuals. Another reason for these null
findings may be that complex emotions surround not only the abusive act but
also how the individual copes with the experience. Using facial coding data for
shame, Bonanno
et al. (2002) found that individuals with a documented history of
sexual abuse who did not disclose the abuse in an interview had higher levels
of observed shame than those individuals who did disclose their sexual abuse
history. There was no difference in shame between those who did disclose and a
nonabused comparison group. In a follow-up (Negrao et al.
2005), individuals who did disclose their sexual abuse history were
higher on shame coded from narratives compared with those who did not disclose
and those in a nonabused comparison group. In other words, individuals who
disclosed their abuse histories expressed more shame verbally, whereas those
who did not disclose expressed more shame nonverbally, relative to control
participants.
In sum, the findings regarding the relationship between childhood abuse and
subsequent difficulties with shame are mixed, no doubt due in part to the fact
that studies have employed different measures and conceptualizations of both
maltreatment and shame (Berliner
2005). Nonetheless, taken together, the weight of evidence suggests
that people who experience maltreatment in childhood are somewhat more
vulnerable to shame issues later in life.
Vicarious or “collective” shame and guilt: group-based self-conscious
emotion
Thus far, this review has focused almost exclusively on shame and guilt
experienced in reaction to one’s own misdeeds. In recent years, a number of
investigators have substantially expanded the literature on self-conscious
emotions by considering “vicarious” or “group-based” shame and guilt—feelings
experienced in response to the transgressions and failures of other
individuals. This research represents an exciting integration of self-conscious
emotions theory with the social psychological literature on social identity,
group, and intergroup processes. To the extent that the self is, in part,
defined by our interpersonal relations and group memberships, it is possible to
construe the behavior of an in-group member as reflecting on the self. Thus,
personal causality is not always a prerequisite for the experience of shame or
guilt.
In many ways, the phenomena of vicarious shame and guilt parallel personal
shame and guilt experiences. Lickel, Schmader, and colleagues (Lickel
et al. 2004, 2005)
have developed a process model linking specific types of appraisals with
vicarious experiences of shame and guilt, respectively. They present compelling
evidence that group-based shame is most likely elicited when a threatened
shared identity is salient—that is, when concerns about maintaining a positive
group identity arise. Vicarious guilt, on the other hand, is more likely when
one’s interpersonal dependence with the perpetrator is salient, and when
relational-based concerns are highlighted by a focus on harm to another group
or individual. For example, Lickel
et al. (2005) found that vicarious shame (but not guilt) experiences
were positively related to their ratings of the relevance of an offending
behavior to the identity shared by the respondent and the perpetrator. The link
between identity concerns and vicarious or group-based shame are evident in
both correlational and experimental studies (Iyer et al. 2006,
Schmader
& Lickel 2006).”
My response: This is all highly technical, and I am out of my depth, but I
could envision that collective shame could warp a community of joiners. If we
teach our young to feel guilty about their bad behaviors and seek to clean up
their behaviors as a route to veridical self-esteeming, then we move the children
out of an orientation to group-thinking, group-identifying and group-valuing
towards individual thinking, individual-identifying and individual-valuing. Thus,
the child will act better, be better able to esteem herself and thus love herself
and act better more often towards herself and others, a significant moral
victory.
A1: “Degree of interdependence with the perpetrator appears to be uniquely
related to vicarious guilt (Lickel
et al. 2005). However, identification with the perpetrating group
can also have implications for vicarious, group-based guilt as well (Branscombe &
Doosje 2004, Doosje et al. 1998), especially when individuals are
prompted to focus on the harm done (Iyer et al. 2003)
Of particular applied relevance to current international conflicts, when
people are provided with ambiguous information about group members’
transgressions, those who are highly identified with the group appear to
capitalize on the ambiguity, reporting less vicarious shame (Johns
et al. 2005) and group-based guilt (Doosje et al. 1998) relative to
those who are less identified, and whose self is presumably less threatened.
As with personal guilt experiences, group-based guilt has been associated
with empathy (Zebel et al. 2004)
and a motivation to repair or make amends (Iyer et al. 2003,
Lickel
et al. 2005, Swim
& Miller 1999, Zebel
et al. 2004). And as with personal shame experiences, vicarious
group-based shame (but not guilt) has been linked to a desire to distance
oneself from the shame-eliciting event (Johns
et al. 2005, Lickel
et al. 2005). Furthermore, the link between anger and shame is
evident when considering vicarious shame (Iyer et al. 2006,
Johns
et al. 2005, Schmader
& Lickel 2006). Nonetheless, there are some indications that
vicarious or group-based shame may have a kinder, gentler side than personal
shame. For example, under some circumstances, group-based shame appears to
motivate a desire to change the image of the group in a proactive fashion (Lickel
et al. 2006).
Embarrassment
Embarrassment appears to be less centrally relevant to the domain of
morality than are shame and guilt. For example, adults’ ratings of personal
shame-, guilt-, and embarrassment-eliciting events indicate that when people
feel embarrassed, they are less concerned with issues of morality than when
they feel shame or guilt (Tangney
et al. 1996a). Nonetheless, certain conditions exist under which
embarrassment may support or undermine people’s efforts to live life in a
manner consistent with their moral standards.
Miller
(1995) defines embarrassment as “an aversive state of mortification,
abashment, and chagrin that follows public social predicaments” (p. 322).
Embarrassment accounts from hundreds of high school students and adults (Miller
1992) indicate that the most common causes of embarrassment are
“normative public deficiencies”—situations in which a person behaves in a
clumsy, absent-minded, or hapless way (tripping in front of a crowd, forgetting
someone’s name, unintended bodily-induced noises). Other common
embarrassment-inducing situations include awkward social interactions and being
conspicuous (e.g., during the “birthday” song). Generally, events causing
embarrassment seem to signal that something is amiss— some aspect of the self
or one’s behavior needs to be carefully monitored, hidden, or changed.
The motivations prompted by embarrassment, however, may have implications
for moral behavior. Research indicates that embarrassed people are inclined to
behave in conciliatory ways in order to win approval and (re)inclusion from
others (Cupach
& Metts 1990, 1992;
Leary
et al. 1996; Miller
1996; Sharkey
& Stafford 1990). In other words, upon feeling embarrassment (or
to avoid embarrassment), people are inclined to conform and curry favor. Thus,
depending on the local norms of the immediate social environment, embarrassment
may prompt adherence to broadly accepted moral standards or to locally endorsed
deviant acts.
As with shame and guilt, there are individual differences in the degree to
which people are prone to experience embarrassment. Research has shown that
embarrassability is associated with neuroticism, high levels of negative
affect, self-consciousness, and a fear of negative evaluation from others (Edelmann &
McCusker 1986, Leary
& Meadows 1991, Miller
1995b). To the extent that embarrassment-prone individuals are
highly aware of and concerned with social rules and standards, they may be
especially vulnerable to the influence of peer pressure.”
My response: It is useful to feel embarrassed when one goofs up in social
settings, but one must control the self, not the pack so we do not want
increased influence by peer pressure to avoid being embarrassed, the price
being to sin with the pack.
A1: “Moral Pride
Thus far, this chapter has focused on negatively valenced moral emotions. We
turn now to one of the long-neglected positively valenced moral
emotions—morally relevant experiences of pride. Of the self-conscious emotions,
pride is the neglected sibling. Mascolo
& Fischer (1995) define pride as an emotion “generated by
appraisals that one is responsible for a socially valued outcome or for being a
socially valued person” (p. 66). From their perspective, pride serves to
enhance people’s self-worth and, perhaps more importantly, to encourage future
behavior that conforms to social standards of worth or merit (see also Barrett
1995).”
My response: As an egoist, I have long argued that individual positive,
merited pride is not only not Luciferian or the worship of one’s human
intellect, which Jordan Peterson rails against, positive, merited self-pride is
a motivating, powerful force at work in the active, strong personal conscience.
The individual pursues his enlightened self-interest, but he must act morally,
loving towards himself or others, and if and when he falls short, he feels
guilty and must amend and regain his moral footing. He will behave more than
not for negative reasons that he does not want to feel and be self-humiliated.
Via positive reasons, he will do well because it is rewarding to have met high
moral and personal behavioral standards, so now he is able to feel veridically
self-esteeming because he has lived and acted according to his high and strict
moral code.
A1: “Most theoretical and empirical research on pride emphasizes
achievement-oriented pride (Tracy
& Robins 2004b). Although pride may most often arise in response
to scholastic, occupational, or athletic achievement, self-conscious
experiences of pride in moral contexts may be an important component of our
moral emotional apparatus. Feelings of pride for meeting or exceeding morally
relevant standards (and for inhibiting impulses to behave immorally) may serve
important motivational functions, rewarding and reinforcing one’s commitment to
ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity.
In parallel to the self-versus-behavior distinction of guilt and shame, it
may be useful to distinguish between two types of pride. Along similar lines, Tangney
(1990) distinguished between “alpha” pride (pride in self) and
“beta” pride (pride in behavior), M.Lewis
(1992) distinguished between hubris (pride-fulness) and pride
(experienced in reference to a specific action or behavior), and Tracy
& Robins (2004b) distinguished between hubris and more
event-specific achievement-oriented pride. Tracy
& Robins (2006), drawing on multiple methods, present compelling
empirical evidence for these two types of pride.”
My response: I give these researchers credit for devising two categories for
pride, a positive kind and a negative kind. Pride in the self may be based on
merit or not, but pride in excellent behavior is more solid and positive, and I
would insert that positive pride is egoistic and merited, and empty, negative
pride is based on group-affiliation, not personal achievement.
A1: “Little empirical research has been conducted on individual differences
in proneness to pride in self (or pride in behavior, for that matter). The
Tests of Self-Conscious Affect (e.g., Tangney
et al. 1989; see Tangney
& Dearing 2002 for details) each contain measures of the
propensity to experience alpha pride and beta pride, respectively. These
sub-scales, however, have very modest reliabilities, largely because they draw
on only a few items. Thus, we and other investigators have made little use of
these ancillary scales. Lewis
(1992) views hubris as largely maladaptive, noting that hubristic
individuals are inclined to distort and invent situations to enhance the self,
which can lead to interpersonal problems. It remains to be seen how individual
differences in pride or hubris relate to the capacity to self-regulate or to
choose the moral path in life. One possibility is that pride and hubris
represent the flip side of guilt and shame—one the “modern,” adaptive moral
emotion and the other, its evil twin.
OTHER-FOCUSED MORAL EMOTIONS
Thus far, our review of theory and research on moral emotion has focused on
the self-conscious emotions of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride. These
emotions vary in valence and in attributions regarding the particular source of
offense (e.g., self versus self’s behavior). But these self-conscious emotions
are similar in that in each case, the emotion is elicited when some aspect of
the self is scrutinized and evaluated with respect to moral standards.
Recently, Haidt
(2000, 2003)
added importantly to our thinking about the nature of “moral emotions.” In his
work, Haidt focuses primarily on the emotions of elevation and
gratitude—emotions that are experienced when observing the admirable deeds of
others, and that then motivate observers to engage in admirable deeds
themselves.
In fact, by crossing the two dimensions of focus (self versus other) and
valence (positive versus negative), one can conceptualize four categories of
moral emotion (see Haidt
2003, following Ortony
et al. 1988). To date most theory and research on moral affect has
emphasized the negatively valenced self-conscious quadrant. With the advent of
the positive psychology movement and Haidt’s groundbreaking work, we anticipate
that the next decade will see exciting new developments in our understanding of
the moral functions of negatively and positively valenced other-directed
emotions.
Righteous Anger, Contempt, and Disgust
Anger is a negatively valenced, other-focused emotion not typically
considered in the morally relevant sphere. People may experience anger for a
very broad range of situations—e.g., when insulted, frustrated, inconvenienced,
or injured in any one of a number of ways. According to appraisal theorists (Lazarus
1991, Roseman
1991, Smith
& Ellsworth 1985), people typically feel angry when they
appraise an event as personally relevant, inconsistent with their goals, and
when the event appears to be caused (often intentionally) by a responsible
other. The emphasis is on perceptions of actual or potential self-harm (e.g., a
personally relevant goal has been thwarted or frustrated, a valued possession
has been threatened or harmed) in conjunction with attributions of
intentionality and/or responsibility on the part of the offending other.
Righteous anger, however, arises in response to a special class of
anger-eliciting events, those in which the perpetrator’s behavior represents a
violation of moral standards. In such cases, the harm need not be personally
experienced. One can feel anger upon witnessing morally repulsive behavior
aimed at a third party. Rozin
et al. (1999) presented evidence that righteous anger tends to occur
more specifically in response to violations of the ethic of autonomy—the ethic
most familiar in Western culture. Righteous anger can serve moral functions in
that it can motivate “third-party” bystanders to take action in order to remedy
observed injustices.
The emotions of contempt and disgust also stem from negative evaluations of
others, but seem somewhat less apt than righteous anger to motivate morally
corrective action. Among participants in both the United States and Japan, Rozin
et al. (1999) found that feelings of contempt were differentially
linked to violations of the ethic of community (e.g., violations of social
hierarchy), whereas feelings of disgust were linked to violations of the ethic
of divinity (e.g., actions that remind us of our animal nature, such as
defecation, problems with hygiene, etc., as well as assaults on human dignity,
such as racism and abuse).
Elevation
Just as disgust is the moral emotion people experience when observing
violations of the ethic of divinity, elevation is the positive emotion elicited
when observing others behaving in a particularly virtuous, commendable, or
superhuman way (Haidt
2000). In a study of college students, Haidt
et al. (2002) explored the phenomenology of elevation, asking
participants to recall “a manifestation of humanity’s ‘higher’ or ‘better’
nature.” Participants reported warm, pleasant, “tingling” feelings in their
chest, they felt open to other people as their attention turned outward, and
they felt motivated to help others and to become better people themselves. In
this respect, elevation appears to be the quintessential positive emotion,
especially apt to foster a “broaden and build” (Frederickson
2000) orientation to the world.”
My response: Elevation seems reasonable, that we are moved to act better
after observing the example of exemplary neighbors around us.
There is also an individualistic version of this, that as we habitually
behave commendably, that make us feel proud and good, and we like the feeling,
so we continue to act in a way commensurate with and which elicits that
desirable feeling.
A1: “Gratitude
Gratitude is another example of an other-oriented, positively valenced moral
affect. People are inclined to feel gratitude specifically in response to
another person’s benevolence—that is, when they are the recipient of benefits
provided by another, especially when those benefits are unexpected and/or
costly to the benefactor. Gratitude is a pleasant affective state, distinct
from indebtedness, which implies an obligation and is often experienced as a
negative state.
McCullough
et al. (2001) classify gratitude as a moral affect, not because the
experience and expression of gratitude is in and of itself “moral,” but because
feelings of gratitude (a) result from moral (e.g., prosocial, helping)
behavior of the benefactor, and (b) engender subsequent moral
motivation on the part of recipients. They observe that grateful people are
often motivated to respond prosocially— both to their benefactor and toward
others not involved in the gratitude-eliciting act. Moreover, expressions of
gratitude can serve as a moral reinforcer, encouraging benefactors’ helping
behavior in the future (Bennett
et al. 1996, Clark
et al. 1988, Goldman
et al. 1982).
Gratitude not only benefits benefactors and relationships. Those who benefit
most from the experience and expression of gratitude are grateful people
themselves. In a series of experimental studies, feelings of gratitude enhanced
psychological resilience, physical health, and the quality of daily life (Emmons
& McCullough 2003). In fact, both dispositional and
situation-specific episodes of gratitude have been linked to psychological
well-being and adaptive behavior in non-clinical samples (Emmons
& Shelton 2002; Frederickson
et al. 2003; Kendler
et al. 2003; McCullough
et al. 2001, 2002)
and among combat veterans with PTSD (Kashdan et al.
2006).
EMPATHY: A MORAL EMOTIONAL PROCESS
Finally, we discuss briefly a morally relevant emotional
process—other-oriented empathy. (For a more complete review, see Eisenberg
et al. 2004, 2006.)
In contrast to the other moral emotions discussed in this review, empathy is
not a discrete emotion. Rather it is an emotional process with substantial
implications for moral behavior. Current conceptualizations of empathy
integrate both affective and cognitive components. Feshbach
(1975), for example, defines empathy as a “shared emotional response
between an observer and a stimulus person.” She suggests that empathic
responsiveness requires three interrelated skills or capacities: (a)
the cognitive ability to take another person’s perspective, (b) the
cognitive ability to accurately recognize and discriminate another person’s
affective experience, and (c) the affective ability to personally
experience a range of emotions (since empathy involves sharing another person’s
emotional experience). Similarly, Coke
and colleagues (1978) proposed a two-stage model of empathic
responding, whereby perspective-taking facilitates empathic concern, which in
turn leads to a desire to help.
Some researchers have made a distinction between “true” empathy and
sympathy. Eisenberg
(1986) explains that sympathy involves feelings of concern for the
emotional state of another, but does not necessarily involve the vicarious
experience of the other person’s feelings or emotions (e.g., emotional
matching). Thus, one may feel concern (sympathy) for an angered individual
without being vicariously angered oneself (an empathic reaction).
Others have distinguished between other-oriented empathy and self-oriented
personal distress (Batson
1990, Batson
& Coke 1981, Davis
1983). Other-oriented empathy involves taking another person’s
perspective and vicariously experiencing similar feelings. These responses
often involve feelings of sympathy and concern for the other person, and often
lead to helping behavior. Importantly, the empathic individual’s focus remains
on the experiences and needs of the other person, not on his or her own
empathic response. In contrast, self-oriented personal distress involves a
primary focus on the feelings, needs, and experiences of the empathizer. Empirical
research underscores the importance of this distinction. Empathic concern for
others has been linked to altruistic helping behavior, whereas self-oriented
personal distress is unrelated to altruism (Batson
et al. 1988) and may in fact inter-fere with prosocial behavior (Davis&Oathout
1987; Eisenberg
et al. 1990, 1993;
Estrada
1995).
Empathy and its close cousin sympathy have been cited as central to the
human moral affective system for at least three reasons (Eisenberg
et al. 2004, 2006).
First, empathic reactions to others’ distress often elicit feelings of concern
for the distressed other (Feshbach 1975).
Second, such empathic concern often prompts behavior aimed at helping the
distressed other (Batson
1991, Eisenberg
& Miller 1987, Feshbach
1987). Third, feelings of empathy are apt to inhibit aggression and
other behaviors that are harmful to others (Feshbach &
Feshbach 1969, Miller
& Eisenberg 1988).”
My response: I did not spend much time on this sentiment of empathy and its
close cousin sympathy, but my hunch is that if the self-loving egoist loves
himself and is empathetic towards his needs, faults, and areas requiring
improvement, that is the best avenue to take to learn, show and enjoy applying
one’s inner feeling of well-being and happiness to the needs and plights of
one’s neighbors: no one can show sympathy and empathy towards a neighbor like
an individuated egoist can.
A1: “SUMMARY AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH
This review has considered the implications of moral standards and moral
emotion for moral decisions and moral behavior. In this sense, the structure of
this review reflects the current state of the field. Little research has
examined the relation between moral standards and moral emotional factors, much
less their interactive influence in moderating the link between moral standards
and people’s moral behavior. Our hope is that this framework will encourage
integrated research along such exciting lines. Future directions for research
include evaluating the relative importance of cognitive and emotional factors
in various domains of morality, as well as the degree to which particular
emotional factors are differentially more important in influencing behavior
among particular subpopulations (e.g., corporate managers, criminal offenders)
and at different points in development.”
My response: I wish to repeat that cognitive or rational morals being
highlighted, along with secondary placing for affective or emotional morals,
should, within egoist ethics, help people better close the gap between their
moral ideals and their personal choices and behavior.
A1: “In addition, this review may help clarify several points of conceptual
confusion evident in portions of the literature. For example, in the guilt
literature, some theory and associated measures have confounded proneness to
guilt with moral standards or other related attitudes and beliefs (e.g., Mosher
1966; see Tangney
1996 for discussion). Although feelings of guilt generally arise
from some failure or violation of moral standards, proneness to guilt (an
affective disposition) is conceptually distinct from moral standards (a set of
beliefs guiding one’s evaluation of behavior). With the advantage of greater
conceptual clarity, future researchers can address many questions about the
functions and costs of various forms of moral emotion. Such research has
potential to pay off substantially, informing educational, judicial, and social
policies that foster adaptive moral processes and ultimately moral behavior
that benefits all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by grant #RO1 DA14694 to the first author from
the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Many thanks to Laura Harty, Walt Swenson,
and members of the Human Emotions Research Lab for their assistance.
Contributor Information
June Price Tangney, Email: jtangney@gmu.edu.
Jeff Stuewig, Email: jstuewig@gmu.edu.
Debra J. Mashek, Email: mashek@hmc.edu.
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C
On or about 6/24/28 I pulled
this article off the Internet in its entirety. I am working with the thesis
that intellect and reasoning, cognitive tools in the hands of an earnest,
benevolent individuator, guided by egoist morality, play a larger role in ethical
decision-making than does the role of emotions, which is still vital to being
rounded and ethical in presuppositions, outlook, choices, and behavior. Here is
the article:
Article 2 (A2 after this): “The role of emotions in ethics according to six
big thinkers
It’s not easy to provide a clear definition of emotions. Philosophers and
psychologists still haven’t agreed on what they are or whether they’re
ethically important.
Most of us have lots of emotions and can name a dozen off the top of our
heads pretty quickly. But there’s a lot more to understand. Why do they matter?
Are we in control of our emotions? Should we prioritise our reason over our
emotion?
Let’s take a look at what philosophy has to say.”
My response: I too have struggled with what emotions are, how to define them
clearly with final decisiveness (not likely to occur), but I have an inescapable
idea that emotions are ethically important but that our reasoning takes
precedent over them—or should once individuating with an incompatibilist free
will and good will operating in the agent at full steam.
It occurred to me that the Divine Couple, the Creators of this world and the
next world, are not purely but are primarily and essentially rational Beings,
whose immaterial principle and power of conceptualization is explained in such
laws and languages as verbal expression and mathematical formulas and
proofs. The Divine Couple are nearly
ethically perfect, so their Logos, their Divine Reason, which runs through
nature and supernature, the cosmos they created, that requires logical
guidance.
Since the Divine Couple, creators of cosmos, imbued their creation with
supernatural law and natural law, and this Couple are so morally perfected,
then it seems likely that an individuating human being, seeking to emulate
these Divine Individuators, would also achieve moral perfection of a small kind
by reasoning about moral matters, and acting in accordance with devised moral
law.
A2: “Plato: reason rules emotion
For Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, emotion was a core part of our mind.
But although it was core, he didn’t think emotions were very useful. He
suggested we imagine our mind like a chariot with two horses. One horse is
noble and cooperative, the other is wild and uncontrollable.
Plato thought the chariot rider was our reason and the two horses were
different kinds of emotions. The noble horse represents our ‘moral emotions’
like righteous anger or empathy. The cranky horse represents more basic
passions like rage, lust and hunger. Plato’s ideas set the precedent for
Western philosophy in placing reason above and in control of our emotions.”
My response: It seems right generally that the moral agent should place her
reason above and in control of her emotions.
A2: “Aristotle: what you feel says something about you
Aristotle
had similar ideas and believed the wise, virtuous person would feel the right
emotions at the right times. They would be depressed by sad things and angered
by injustice. He also believed this appropriate kind of feeling was an
important measure of whether you were a good person. He didn’t think you could
separate the kind of person you were from the way you felt.
So if you find it funny when someone slips over in a puddle, Aristotle would
argue that says something about you. It doesn’t matter whether you then offer
them a towel or ask if they’re okay. The amusement you felt in response to
their suffering reflects your character. He thought your job is to work hard so
instead of laughing at such situations, you feel empathy and concern.”
My response: Both Plato and Aristotle urged that the moral person’s reason
controls his emotions.
A2: “Hume: emotion rules reason
Scottish philosopher David
Hume thought this view was naive. He famously said reason is “the
slave of the passions”. By this he meant our emotions lead our reason – we
never choose to do anything because reason tells us to. We do it because an
emotion pushes us to act. For Hume, reason isn’t the charioteer driving our
emotions, it’s more like the wagon being pulled along with no control over
where it’s headed. It’s the horses – our emotions – calling the shots.”
My response: Hume is more wrong than right, that reason is the slave of the
passions, especially in nonindividuators practicing altruist ethics, and who
think very little or at all. As one maverizes and learns intelligent self-control,
reason assumes the reins of power if one would be a good person, but, even
then, our feelings carry great but not always helpful influence in our choosing
and actions undertaken.
A2: “Hume and his friend Adam Smith
developed a theory of moral sentiments that used emotion as the basis for their
ethical theory. For them, we act virtuously not because our reason tells us
it’s the right thing to do, but because doing the right thing feels good. We
get a kind of ‘moral pleasure’ from acting well.
Kant: emotion strips our agency
Immanuel
Kant thought this whole approach was entirely wrongheaded. He
believed emotion had no place in our ethical thinking. For Kant, emotions were
pathological – a disease on our thinking. Because we have no control over our
emotions, Kant thought allowing them to govern our thinking and action made us
‘automated’, and that it is the only reason that made us autonomous and capable
of making truly free decisions.”
My response: I do not regard emotions as pathological, but they run deep and
could be heteronomous and automated. I agree with Kant that free will,
individualism and rational processes are inextricably bound up with each other.
A2: “Freud: our unconscious drives us
More recent ideas have questioned whether there is such a thing as ‘pure
reason’ (a concept Kant named one of his books after). Psychoanalysts like
Sigmund Freud encouraged us to see our motivations as driven by unconscious
urges and inclinations. More recent work in neuroscience has revealed the role
unconscious bias and heuristics play in our beliefs, thinking and decisions.
This might make us wonder whether the idea that reason and emotion are two
separate, rival forces is accurate. Another mode of thinking suggests our
emotions are part of our reason. They express our judgements about how the
world is and how we’d like it to be. Are we passive victims of our emotions? Do
we spontaneously ‘explode’ with anger? Or is it something we choose? Our answer
will help us determine how we feel about things like ‘crimes of passions’,
impulsive decisions and how responsible we are for the feelings of other
people.
Carol Gilligan: What is this sexist nonsense?
You may have noticed that all the names on this list so far are men. For
psychologist Carol Gilligan, that’s not a coincidence. In her influential work In
a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Gilligan
argued that the widespread suspicion of ethical decisions made on the basis of
emotion, concern for other people and a desire to maintain relationships was
sexist. Most theorists had argued that reason, not emotion, should drive our
decisions. Gilligan pointed out that most of the ‘bad’ ways of making decisions
(like showing care for certain people or using emotion as a guide) tended to be
the ways women reasoned about moral problems. Instead, she argued that a
tendency to pay mind to emotions, value care and connection and prioritise
relationships were different modes of moral reasoning; not suboptimal
ones.
For a long time, reason and emotion have been pitted against one another.
Today, we’re starting to understand that, in many ways, emotions and reason are
the same. Our emotions are judgements about the world. Our reasoning is
informed by our mood, our environment and a range of other factors.
Perhaps the question shouldn’t be “should we listen to our emotions?” but
instead “how do we develop the right emotional responses at the right time?”
That way, we can rely on our emotions as one of many pieces of information we
can use to make better decisions.”
D
I pulled this article off of the Internet on about 6/24/25,
an article by psychologist Rolf Reber. I copied and pasted the article below,
and will comment on it:
Article 3 (A3 after this): “
Rolf
Reber Ph.D.
Critical
Feeling
Do Our Feelings Tell Us What Is Right?
The moral outlook most psychologists endorse is simple – and wrong.”
My response: So, most psychologists believe that our feelings tell us what
is right; wow, I did not know they were emotivists. As an ontological moderate,
I suggest that our reasoning tells us what is right more than our feelings tell
us what is right, but that we require and should heed input from both sources
of input from our consciences and unconscious.
A3: “Posted December
23, 2016
There are two main views on morality.
The traditional one is that there are objective moral norms that tell us
what is right to do. It came from religion and assumed that God provides us
with the rules and virtues a community needs to live together.”
My response: It seems that Reber is equating rational morality with the view
that there are objective moral norms, moral realism.”
A3: “Later, philosophers replaced theologians as moral authorities but they
continued to look for rules and virtues that could objectively determine the
appropriate actions in a given situation. Is it right to steal money to buy medication
to my sick mother when there is no other means to heal her? Under which
circumstances is it right to kill another person, if at all? When do I have the
permission to lie to a friend?
The modern view that became popular among psychologists emerged when it
became clear that different moral views clash and it is difficult to determine
which one holds true. The solution to this conundrum is as simple as it is
false.”
My response: If modern psychologists are emotivists pushing ethical
relativism and ethical subjectivism or ethical anti-realism, then Reber opines
that though moral views clash and its unclear which moral view is the right
one, it is simple and false to no longer seeks morally realist solutions on
metaethical or any other level of ethics, and he seems moderate and correct in
his conclusion.
It would seem that Reber regards ruled-based morality as a form of moral
realism.
A3: “According to this view, called “emotivism”, there are no objective
moral laws. Each man and woman has to decide themselves what is right. What
tells them what is right is their conscience,
that is, the feelings that accompany an action. If we are lying to a friend and
feel badly, then it is morally not permissible to do so. By contrast, if I am
lying and feel well, there is according to this view nothing wrong with my
lying. However, recent research revealed that people may feel a “cheater’s
high”, that is, they enjoy the success of cheating others.
Although popular with psychologists, philosophers identified a major problem
with emotivism, namely, that anything goes – there is no way, from this point
of view – to determine whether an action or a person’s life is morally good. If
a terrorist like the Norwegian Anders Breivik thinks that killing minors is
good, then his act is good, an outcome most people – including psychologists –
not only find counterintuitive but also abominable.”
This is why some scholars advocate new forms of moral realism, that is, the
assumption that moral values are “out there”. Beyond religion and virtue
ethics, our communities and cultures set moral norms that serve as mindsets.
Moral norms do not arise from within, from our minds. We all have grown up in
communities where moral values were given. We learned and internalized them. In
this regard, moral realism describes better how people arrive at moral values
than emotivism that they somehow come from within.
Do feelings play no role whatsoever in assessing the morality of our
behavior?”
My response: Reber is seeking a moral realist ethic which is somewhat
objective, though perhaps culturally constructed, not universal to all peoples
and cultures, though it is well known, and I hope accepted that there are
univseral or objectively moral rules applicable to almost all societies, things
like the Golden Rule, not lying, not stealing, not murdering.
And Reber below surely will suggest that feelings do play a role in
assessing the morality of our behavior.
A3: “
Source: El Greco: Penitent Petrus (Wikimedia, Open Source)
According to classical rule-based morality, feelings would not play a
crucial role. Even in virtue ethics, it remains unclear whether emotions tell
us anything informative about the morality of our behavior. However, we know
from psychological research that feelings provide information, and that such
information might tell us whether our action was right or wrong.
Note the difference to emotivism. In emotivism, our behavior is wrong
because we feel bad while the idea from moral realism is that we feel bad
because our behavior was wrong, and thus our feeling may signal but not justify
that our behavior is wrong.
That means that even if one advocates moral realism and claims that moral
values are not constructions of an individual’s mind, some indications signal
that people are acting against their own values and the values of their
community.”
My response: Reber seems realistic and accurate when he points out that we
do feel approval or disapproval of a moral choice, and that this is
instantaneous and unforced by the agent. This feeling is informative and
sometimes decisive, but it is working in tandem with out lived and adopted
objective moral code, and could decline into being the whimsical, unsystematic,
and even arbitrary sentiment favored under emotivism.
A3: “First, and almost trivially, most people feel scruples when they do
something wrong. If a Sally is not too scrupulous, a bad conscience is a good
indicator that she is not acting virtuously even when she uses her feelings to
achieve a personally desired outcome – say, to sell a bad car for a good price
by not telling the buyer about its deficiencies.
Second, the car selling example is not only about having scruples but also
about concealing information. Having the impression that we have to conceal
facts that would be relevant in the dealings with another person, we should ask
ourselves whether we are acting virtuously. There are some situations where
hiding information is appropriate, such as concealing what present I shall
bestow my wife on Christmas; but often, hiding information or even providing deceiving
information is a sign that we use critical thinking or critical feeling not in
the service of values, but as a technique to give us a cutting
edge.
Third, feelings may come from the wrong source and therefore lead to the
false action. A father who is angry because he lost money in gambling should
not let the steam off at his children. Another kind of wrong source may stem
from education.
When children were made to feel guilty during their upbringing, they may feel
guilty in situations where the community at large would consider this feeling
as unfounded. Critical feeling attempts at least to detect such erroneous
sources in order to align behavior to the values one endorses.”
My response: Reber seems to be some kind of moral moderate, allowing for
feelings to guide our moral choices, though we think about our choices
rationally, informed by the system of norms which we inherited from society,
the community, our parents.
A3: “These first three indicators all pertain to contradictions between
thoughts or actions, and feelings; the contradictions lie within our own mind.
There is a fourth indicator that measures the contradiction between our
actions and norms of the family, community, or society. Actions and feelings
may be in perfect agreement, but the action may be wrong nevertheless.
Transgressing norms and values of our group or society may be a sign that we
are on the wrong side. Norms have grown from tradition, and we may assume that
they have some function.
To summarize, we are brought up with moral norms within our family,
community, and culture. These moral norms stem from tradition. Children
internalize those moral norms without questioning them and without even knowing
that there could be alternatives. Although such norms may be outdated, we
should not dismiss them lightly because tradition tells us that they stood the
test of time.”
E
Here is an article I downloaded, copied, and pasted from the
Internet on 6/24/25. It is a 2009 article from the Markula Center Of Applied
Ethics. Here is the article:
Article 4 (A4 after this): “Ethical Reasoning: Student Guide
to a Framework for Thinking Ethically
This document is designed as an introduction to thinking
ethically. We all have
an image of our better selves-of how we are when we act
ethically or are "at our best."
We probably also have an image of what an ethical community,
an ethical business, an
ethical government, or an ethical society should be. Ethics
really has to do with all these
levels-acting ethically as individuals, creating ethical
organizations and governments,
and making our society as a whole ethical in the way it
treats everyone.
What is Ethics?
Simply stated, ethics refers to standards of behavior that
tell us how human
beings ought to act in the many situations in which they
find themselves-as friends,
parents, children, citizens, businesspeople, teachers,
professionals, and so on.”
My response: I like Markula’s definition of ethics as
referring to the standards of behavior that us how human beings ought to act.
A4: “It is helpful to identify what ethics is NOT:
• Ethics is not the same as feelings. Feelings provide
important information for
our ethical choices. Some people have highly developed
habits that make them feel bad
when they do something wrong, but many people feel good even
though they are doing
something wrong. And often our feelings will tell us it is
uncomfortable to do the right
thing if it is hard.”
My response: The Markula approach to ethics is not
emotivism, it is going to be realistic and rule-driven, but there is a place
for emotional hunches which may be more pertinent to the agent, more accurate,
more insightful, though how this works and how reliable it is varies from
person to person, and situation to situation.
A4: “
• Ethics is not religion. Many people are not religious, but
ethics applies to
everyone. Most religions do advocate high ethical standards
but sometimes do not
address all the types of problems we face.
• Ethics is not following the law. A good system of law does
incorporate many
ethical standards, but law can deviate from what is ethical.
Law can become ethically
corrupt, as some totalitarian regimes have made it. Law can
be a function of power
alone and designed to serve the interests of narrow groups.
Law may have a difficult
time designing or enforcing standards in some important
areas, and may be slow to
address new problems.”
My response: It seems that ethics is not religion but it is
useful and beneficial if people worship a good deity and seek to behave.
Ethics is not following the law unless it is a just law.
A4: “• Ethics is not following culturally accepted norms.
Some cultures are quite
ethical, but others become corrupt - or blind to certain
ethical concerns (as the United
States was to slavery before the Civil War). "When in
Rome, do as the Romans do" is not
a satisfactory ethical standard.
• Ethics is not science. Social and natural science can
provide important data to
help us make better ethical choices. But science alone does
not tell us what we ought to
do. Science may provide an explanation for what humans are
like. But ethics provides
reasons for how humans ought to act. And just because
something is scientifically or
technologically possible, it may not be ethical to do it.”
My response: I do approve of the Markula system in
disagreeing that ethics is to be conflated with religion, law, culturally
accepted norms, or science.
A4: “Why Identifying Ethical Standards is Hard
There are two fundamental problems in identifying the
ethical standards we are
to follow:
1. On what do we base our ethical standards?
2. How do those standards get applied to specific situations
we face?
If our ethics are not based on feelings, religion, law,
accepted social practice, or science,
what are they based on? Many philosophers and ethicists have
helped us answer this
critical question. They have suggested at least five
different sources of ethical standards
we should use.”
My response: I approve of how Markula lays out the problem
of what is ethical and how to apply standards to choices and actions optional
and available to the agent.
A4: “Five Sources of Ethical Standards
1. The Utilitarian Approach
Some ethicists emphasize that the ethical action is the one
that provides the most
good or does the least harm, or, to put it another way,
produces the greatest balance of
good over harm. The ethical corporate action, then, is the
one that produces the
greatest good and does the least harm for all who are
affected-customers, employees,
shareholders, the community, and the environment. Ethical
warfare balances the good
achieved in ending terrorism with the harm done to all
parties through death, injuries,
and destruction. The utilitarian approach deals with
consequences; it tries both to
increase the good done and to reduce the harm done.
2. The Rights Approach
Other philosophers and ethicists suggest that the ethical
action is the one that best
protects and respects the moral rights of those affected.
This approach starts from the
belief that humans have a dignity based on their human
nature per se or on their ability
to choose freely what they do with their lives. On the basis
of such dignity, they have a
right to be treated as ends and not merely as means to other
ends. The list of moral
rights -including the rights to make one's own choices about
what kind of life to lead, to
be told the truth, not to be injured, to a degree of
privacy, and so on-is widely debated;
some now argue that non-humans have rights, too. Also, it is
often said that rights imply
duties-in particular, the duty to respect others' rights.
3. The Fairness or Justice Approach
Aristotle and other Greek philosophers have contributed the
idea that all equals
should be treated equally. Today we use this idea to say
that ethical actions treat all
human beings equally-or if unequally, then fairly based on
some standard that is
defensible. We pay people more based on their harder work or
the greater amount that
they contribute to an organization, and say that is fair.
But there is a debate over CEO
salaries that are hundreds of times larger than the pay of
others; many ask whether the
huge disparity is based on a defensible standard or whether
it is the result of an
imbalance of power and hence is unfair.
4. The Common Good Approach
The Greek philosophers have also contributed the notion that
life in community is a
good in itself and our actions should contribute to that
life. This approach suggests that
the interlocking relationships of society are the basis of
ethical reasoning and that
respect and compassion for all others-especially the
vulnerable-are requirements of
such reasoning. This approach also calls attention to the
common conditions that are
important to the welfare of everyone. This may be a system
of laws, effective police and
fire departments, health care, a public educational system,
or even public recreational
areas.
5. The Virtue Approach
A very ancient approach to ethics is that ethical actions
ought to be consistent with
certain ideal virtues that provide for the full development
of our humanity. These
virtues are dispositions and habits that enable us to act
according to the highest
potential of our character and on behalf of values like
truth and beauty. Honesty,
courage, compassion, generosity, tolerance, love, fidelity,
integrity, fairness, self-
control, and prudence are all examples of virtues. Virtue
ethics asks of any action,
"What kind of person will I become if I do this?"
or "Is this action consistent with my
acting at my best?"
Putting the Approaches Together
Each of the approaches helps us determine what standards of
behavior can be
considered ethical. There are still problems to be solved,
however.
The first problem is that we may not agree on the content of
some of these specific
approaches. We may not all agree to the same set of human
and civil rights.
We may not agree on what constitutes the common good. We may
not even
agree on what is a good and what is a harm.
The second problem is that the different approaches may not
all answer the question
"What is ethical?" in the same way. Nonetheless,
each approach gives us important
information with which to determine what is ethical in a
particular circumstance. And
much more often than not, the different approaches do lead
to similar answers.”
My response: I like the blending or moderate approach
Markula offers to mix together these five sources of ethical standards. What
was new to me was Markula’s suggestion that more often than not the different
approaches to lead to similar ethical answers.”
A4: “Making Decisions
Making good ethical decisions requires a trained sensitivity
to ethical issues and
a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a
decision and weighing the
considerations that should impact our choice of a course of
action. Having a method for
ethical decision making is absolutely essential. When
practiced regularly, the method
becomes so familiar that we work through it automatically
without consulting the
specific steps.
The more novel and difficult the ethical choice we face, the
more we need to rely
on discussion and dialogue with others about the dilemma.
Only by careful exploration
of the problem, aided by the insights and different
perspectives of others, can we make
good ethical choices in such situations.
We have found the following framework for ethical decision
making a useful method for
exploring ethical dilemmas and identifying ethical courses
of action.
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
Recognize an Ethical Issue
1. Could this decision or situation be damaging to someone
or to some group? Does this
decision involve a choice between a good and bad
alternative, or perhaps
between two "goods" or between two
"bads"?
2. Is this issue about more than what is legal or what is
most efficient? If so, how?
Get the Facts
3. What are the relevant facts of the case? What facts are
not known? Can I learn more
about the situation? Do I know enough to make a decision?
4. What individuals and groups have an important stake in
the outcome? Are some
concerns more important? Why?
5. What are the options for acting? Have all the relevant
persons and groups been
consulted? Have I identified creative options?
Evaluate Alternative Actions
6. Evaluate the options by asking the following questions:
Which option will produce the most good and do the least
harm? (The Utilitarian
Approach)
Which option best respects the rights of all who have a
stake? (The Rights
Approach)
Which option treats people equally or proportionately?
(The Justice Approach)
Which option best serves the community as a whole, not
just some members?
(The Common Good Approach)
Which option leads me to act as the sort of person I want
to be? (The Virtue
Approach)
Make a Decision and Test It
7. Considering all these approaches, which option best
addresses the situation?
8. If I told someone I respect-or told a television
audience-which option I have
chosen, what would they say?
Act and Reflect on the Outcome
9. How can my decision be implemented with the greatest care
and attention to
the concerns of all stakeholders?
10. How did my decision turn out and what have I learned
from this specific
situation?
This framework for thinking ethically is the product of
dialogue and debate at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara
University. Primary contributors include Manuel Velasquez,
Dennis Moberg, Michael J. Meyer, Thomas Shanks, Margaret R. McLean,
David DeCosse, Claire André, and Kirk O. Hanson. It was last
revised in May 2009. Santa Clara College, Markula Center for Applied
Ethics http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework”
My response: This section of the
Markula approach, of ethically applying one’s blended approach to ethics is
sound and useful for any moral agent, not just children and students.
F
Jordan Peterson has never described himself as an emotivist,
that I know of, but he clearly is promoting altruism, collectivism, utilitarianism,
and perhaps ethical irrationalism or existentialism. The ethical agent must be
humble, selfless, live a life of service to others and beware worshiping his
own intellect, ego and implicitly his individual concerns.
I refute his moral solutions, but his video above studied
triggered in me a need to lay out if intellect or sentiment was to guide our
moral decisions.
Article 5 below copied and pasted on about 6/24/25 from the
Internet. Here it is:
Morality is a complex concept that involves making decisions that reflect
our values, beliefs, and principles. In the process of making moral decisions,
emotions play a crucial role. Emotions shape our experiences and shape the way
we perceive the world around us. They impact our moral judgments, influence our
decision-making processes, and help us to make ethical choices.
How Do Emotions Influence Our Moral Decision Making?
Emotions can have a powerful effect on our moral decision-making processes.
When we experience strong emotions, such as empathy or anger, they can
influence how we perceive a situation, and shape our judgments about what is
right or wrong. Emotions can act as a guide to our moral sense, helping us to
recognize when something is morally wrong, and pushing us to take action to
address the issue.
According to various studies, emotions have a significant impact on our
moral decision-making processes. For instance, a study by Greene and colleagues
(2001) found that participants who were shown images that elicited strong
emotional reactions made faster and more emotional judgments about whether a
particular action was morally acceptable or not. Similarly, a study by
Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) suggested that emotions such as gratitude and
empathy could increase altruistic behavior, leading people to make more moral
decisions in social dilemmas.
Emotions can also influence our perception of the intentions of others. For
instance, if we feel angry, we may be more likely to attribute negative
intentions to others, which can influence our moral assessments. On the other
hand, if we feel empathy, we may be more likely to believe that others have
good intentions and to judge their behavior more favorably.”
My response: Emotions as promoted in Article 5 are overstated as a priority
for making moral decisions, but our feelings will be heard, and should be
heard, even if our reasoning overpowers our sentiment about what we are
experiencing.
A5: “Can We Make Moral Decisions Without Emotions?
It is difficult to make moral decisions without emotions, as emotions are an
integral part of our moral sense. While rational considerations like rules,
norms, and principles play a critical role in moral decision-making, emotions
provide a sense of depth and urgency to those decisions. Emotions help us to
connect more deeply with the moral problem at hand, to understand how it may
affect other people, and to motivate us to take action.:”
My response: I like the author’s stressing that emotional reaction to a
problem can provide a sense of depth and urgency to the problem under
consideration.
I also like the suggestion from the author that our moral sense is part
emotion and likely part rational intuition.
A5: “Furthermore, emotions play a critical role in situations where we are
confronted with moral dilemmas, where we have to choose between two conflicting
moral principles. In such cases, emotions can help us to prioritize our values
and to make decisions that are consistent with our overall moral commitments.
For example, consider the case of the famous American author, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, who wrote the abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe
strongly opposed slavery and was deeply moved by the emotional stories of
ex-slaves she encountered. Her emotional response to the moral dilemma of
slavery motivated her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin and played an instrumental
role in the abolitionist movement in the United States. Her moral decision to
take action against slavery was a product of her emotional response to the
injustice of the situation.
Empathy and Moral Decision Making
Empathy is one of the most powerful emotions that can influence our moral
decision-making processes. Empathy involves putting ourselves in someone else’s
shoes, feeling what they feel, and understanding their experiences. Empathy can
help us to see the world from different perspectives and to understand the
impact of our decisions on others.
Research suggests that empathy can lead to better moral decision making, as
it prompts us to consider how our decisions affect others. For example, a study
by Batson and colleagues (1997) found that participants who were induced to
feel empathy for a person in need were more likely to help that person, even
when it required personal sacrifice.
Empathy can play a critical role in moral decision-making in different
contexts. For instance, consider the case of doctors who have to make
end-of-life decisions for their patients. Empathy can help doctors to
understand their patients’ experiences, to see things from their patients’
perspectives, and to make decisions that are consistent with their patients’
values and preferences.
References
- Batson, C. D., Dyck, J. L.,
Ecklund, E. L., Lehman, D. R., Wagner, H. L., & Toth, E. L. (1986).
Empathic joy and the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 52(4), 781-790.
- Greene, J. D., Sommerville,
R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An fMRI
investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science,
293(5537), 2105-2108.
- Valdesolo, P., &
DeSteno, D. (2006). Manipulations of emotional context shape moral
judgment. Psychological Science, 17(6), 476-477.”
G
Article 6 (A6 after this): “Greater Good
Science
Center • Magazine • In
Action • In Education
Is Morality Based on Emotions or Reason?
A new book takes aim at those who claim moral impulses are
rooted in emotional ones.
By Jill Suttie | June 10, 2015
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Trolley
Problem. It’s a dilemma used to study moral thinking, and it goes
something like this: If you see an out of control trolley bearing down on five
innocent people, will you throw a switch to divert the train to a track where
just one person is standing? Or, given the same dangerous runaway trolley, will
you throw a large person off of a bridge in order to impede the trolley’s
progress and save five lives?
Oxford
University Press, 2015, 217 pages
Most of us would say “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second,
even though there is the same “body count” involved. Psychologists and
neuroscientists like Jonathan
Haidt and Joshua
Greene have used hypothetical moral dilemmas like this one to study
some of the unconscious processes that go into moral decision-making. Their
research has led to some fascinating findings about how emotions and
environmental cues work together to influence our moral choices.
But in a new book, The
Power of Ideals: The Real Story of Moral Choice, renowned moral
development experts William Damon and Anne Colby take aim at views that claim
morality is largely driven by emotions or is the result of environmental
influences beyond our control. Instead, the authors argue, morality is
dependent on conscious, deliberate processes—like reflection, learning, and
aspiration—and any model of moral development that discounts these is both
flawed and disheartening.”
My response: No, morality is not only or mostly driven by emotions—at least
it should not be solely or mostly driven by emotions, but our conscious,
deliberate, rational processes must be engaged and primary.
A6: “‘Moral psychologies that try only to demonstrate the limitations of
everyday morality but ignore people’s authentic search for truth and goodness
capture only the weakest elements in our nature,” they write.
According to Damon and Colby, we should not be looking to neuroscience to
study morality, because findings from such studies are hard to interpret—in
part because they are often conducted on limited populations, like college
students, and focus on dilemmas, like the trolley problem, that one is unlikely
to face in real life. Instead, they point to other research focused on
real-life moral development, like that of Martin Hoffman at New York
University. Hoffman has found that empathy in children develops in conjunction
with increased “moral cognition”—for example, an understanding that what’s fair
in one circumstance may not be fair in another. Damon and Colby believe that
research like his illustrates how cognitions shape our emotional responses,
which in turn can impact “unconscious” moral choices.
“Once [people] acquire new moral insights, even provisionally, these become
background assumptions that influence their moral perceptions, their
interpretations, and their choices without the need to deliberate about them
anew in each instance,” they write.”
My response: It seems likely that our prior cognitions do influence our
unconscious moral choices, and underpin “spontaneous, unrehearsed” emotional
moral choice.
A6: “There is much to be learned by studying historical moral exemplars,
too, according to Damon and Colby, and their book focuses mostly on the lives
of moral exemplars like Eleanor Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela. The authors
identify three character traits that they believe particularly influence moral
character and can be consciously cultivated: truthfulness, humility, and faith.”
My response: These psychologists are onto something when they suggest that
character traits can be cultivated until they become natural, and this reminds
of a Dennis Prager excerpt I observed and wrote down off the Internet the other
day: “You feel how you act. Don’t act how you feel. Let your action induce the
feelings”.
We need be hesitant to just make moral, spontaneous, natural moral choices,
spurred by our feelings at the moment though some hunches are spot on. It may
be more useful to identify character traits that are noble and desirable, and
practice those traits until they are you, so you act nobly and that is how you
feel. Prager wants people to learn to be moral by conscious effort, and to role
play being good until we become good. This might fit well with virtue ethics,
and it certainly seems to fit what Suttie is pushing. Prager exhorts us that
feeling by itself should not guide moral choice, that we need rational, careful
choice selections, grounded in being a moral adult, following some ethical
standard.
A6: “In their definition, truthfulness means more than being honest in
everyday encounters; it also means using deep self-reflection and being open to
new ideas and experiences. They point to the work of Albert Bandura, who found
that people sometimes rationalize immoral behavior by using tactics like denial
or distortion, dehumanizing victims, or assuming someone else is responsible to
for doing the right thing. Deep self-reflection and openness, they argue, can
be an antidote to these and other self-deception tactics, and helps moral
exemplars to find deeper truths and to take moral action. This is all clearly
demonstrated by the life of Nelson Mandela, who used his time in prison to
reflect on larger truths and to find a way to forgive his tormentors.
The importance of truthfulness seems reasonably clear; but when Damon and
Colby move on to articulate a definition of humility, they seem to get somewhat
bogged down. Humility, they write, is hard to measure, as truly humble people
would not claim to be humble. In addition, not all psychologists even agree
that humility is a virtue worth pursuing, in part because it may involve
self-deprecation. And certainly the moral exemplars noted in the book would not
be considered “meek” or “subservient”—both words used synonymously with
humility.
In the end, the authors define humility as “a sense of perspective on
oneself and one’s abilities and achievement, a willingness to admit mistakes
and limitations, open-mindedness and openness to new ideas, an appreciation of
the many different kinds of contribution people from all backgrounds can make
to the world and a relative absence of self-seeking as a driving motive.” To
which I thought: Huh? This doesn’t sound like humility to me—more like a combo
platter of other, worthy psychological constructs.
I wish they’d bypassed this all and gotten straight to the point: moral
exemplars aren’t interested in self-aggrandizement. In fact, they often don’t
see themselves as special. Their humbleness tends to separate them from the
fanatics of the world—those who might also believe that they’re in touch with
“truth,” but whom none of us would consider moral exemplars.”
My response: Damon and Colby’s characterization of humility seems more
compatible with healthy self-pride which is not inflated, puffed up nor
delusional. I want people to be proud, but not braggarts, a sign of insecurity,
A6: “And then there’s the unfortunate use of the word “faith.” Damon and
Colby try to back off from its religious undertones by writing things like,
“Faith means believing in something” and by arguing that even scientists have
faith of a sort. But this clarifies little and obscures what the authors are
really getting at—that many moral exemplars are guided by their personal belief
in a moral universe (often, but not always, connected to religious beliefs) and
have a strong sense of purpose in their lives that helps them transcend
adversity. Why use the word “faith” at all?
In fact, this whole section of the book seemed ungrounded to me. Certainly,
there was little reference to science. Yet, Damon and Colby are excellent
writers and giants in the field of moral development. For these reasons alone
the book is well worth reading. Stories of moral exemplars and what their lives
have to tell us are always uplifting and inspiring.
And even with my quibbles, the book provides ample food for thought—most
notably, the importance of self-reflection and role-modeling in encouraging
future moral exemplars. If we want our kids to know right from wrong, we must
show them that truthfulness is a virtue worth cultivating, that learning and
personal growth are more important than achievement, that doing for others
rather than self-aggrandizement leads to long term happiness, and that
transcending adversity is easier if one lives a principled life.
Fortunately, each of these pathways to moral character can be approached
consciously—without having to imagine throwing anyone off of a bridge.”
H
In this Internet excerpt, it seems that reasoning will help us capture moral
facts about people and the world, and that our emotions can inform and
reinforce decisions logically reached, and choices selected.
Article
7 (A7 after this): “Are there moral facts based on emotion?
· Controversies
about the comparative roles played by reasoning and emotion in moral judgment
have important implications for the nature of moral knowledge. Some
sentimentalists suggest that there are no moral facts to be known, for
ethics is ultimately a matter of merely having or expressing one’s feelings.”
My response: I am a moral realist more than I am a moral
anti-realist so of course I assume that there are knowable moral facts which we
can glean, and this will be critical input into how we make moral decisions.
I
It is my sense that our reasoning can move us to chose and act,
for it is not only our emotions that triggers our will to act.
Article 8 (A8 after this): “
What
is moral reasoning?
Is
morality driven by emotions?
· But
in a new book, The Power of Ideals: The Real Story of Moral Choice, renowned
moral development experts William Damon and Anne Colby take aim at views that
claim morality is largely driven by emotions or is the result of
environmental influences beyond our control.
o
Philosopher David Hume claims that morality is
based more on perceptions than on logical reasoning. [6] This means that
people's morality is based more on their emotions and feelings than on a
logical analysis of any given situation.
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Moral_reasoning.”
My response: If our moral choice is one which we have made
before, and our quick assessment of the perceived situation is habitually
encountered, then we likely will act based on how we feel about what we have
just now perceived.
If the moral problem encountered is new, unique, or complex,
so we in response are unsur how to act, then we mght need a logical analysis of
the pros and cons of the situation.
A8: “Moral reasoning
- Wikipedia
Jun 10, 2015 · But in a new book, The Power of Ideals: The Real
Story of Moral Choice, renowned moral development experts William Damon
and Anne Colby take aim at views that claim morality is largely driven by
emotions or is the result of environmental influences beyond our control.
My response: Here is an article from open
library just above by Scott O’Leary: “
J
Article 9 (A9 after this): “Reason and Emotion in the Moral Life
Scott O'Leary
Scott O’Leary received his Ph.D and M.A. in philosophy from
Fordham University and his undergraduate degree in philosophy and history from
Boston College. He is currently Director of the Honors and Scholars Village at
North Carolina State University. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of
Philosophy and the Honors Director at the University of Saint Mary (Kansas).
Dr. O’Leary’s work focuses on human lived experience and examines the way
emotional experience frames consciousness and decision-making. This has led to
interests in food ethics and human-technology relations. His work has been
published in The American Philosophy Quarterly, Balkan Journal of Philosophy,
and Elements, and he received a Templeton Foundation Cluster Grant to create an
international working group studying emotion and religious experience. Beyond
his academic interests, he spends his free time teaching yoga and mindfulness,
herding his cats, and learning about music from his partner, who is a classical
pianist.
It may seem puzzling that given the numerous debates in philosophy over the
justification of different ethical theories, moral experience often
seems to disappear. In reality, this is less of an omission and more a
question of focus. Many canonical moral philosophers like Aristotle, the
Stoics, Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Mill have much to say about the motivations,
reasoning, and development of moral agents.
Topics like these are the task of the area of philosophy called moral
psychology. Many of the central questions in moral psychology
require clarifying the roles reason and emotion play in moral experience.
These questions involve three interrelated topics: moral motivation, judgment,
and development.
Moral Motivation
Philosophical ethics often places reason at the center of ethical life and
views emotion at odds with reason or a source of error. David Hume
comments upon this picture of Western moral philosophy:
“Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to
talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and
assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its
dictates. Every rational creature, it is said, is obliged to regulate his
actions by reason…” (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part III,
Section III: Of the Influencing Motives of the Will.”)
Hume challenges this priority of reason over emotion. While reason
seems central to moral life, emotions are what actually “move us”. Just
as fear leads to fight or flight, indignation can lead us to rectify injustice,
anger to correct an offense, or shame to avoid wrongdoing. Hume argues
further that not only can passions motivate action, but reason is
impotent and cannot motivate action:
“Abstract or demonstrative reasoning, therefore, never influences any of
our actions, but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and
effects….We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat
of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.” (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part III, Section
III: Of the Influencing Motives of the Will.”)”
My response: It could be that our emotions conflict with our moral
reasoning or lead to error, but a moderate, rounded, integrated moral
motivation if to listen to our feelings and thoughts about actions before we
choose a course of action—if time allows.
A9: “O’Leary: “Inspired by Hume, several scholars have argued for a Humean
Theory of all motivation, including moral motivation (Smith, 1998). On
this account, human actions are caused by a belief-desire pair. The
belief component, such as “I believe stealing from the store is wrong” leads to
the action of resisting the temptation to steal if I also have the desire “to
not harm the business owner”. Similarly, my sympathy to “help
Kevin” combined with the belief “he needs money to pay his bills” is what prompts
me to lend him money to make ends meet.
Others challenge this emotion-based theory of moral motivation, most
famously Immanuel Kant. In the Grounding for the Metaphysics for
Morals, Kant argues that when we act “for the sake of duty”, we can
be motivated by reason. Kant makes the stronger claim that when we
act based on practical reason and not from inclination – his term for desires
and emotions – this shows the motive of duty most clearly. Let’s modify
the example above. Suppose I cannot feel any sympathy to help Kevin, but
loan him money anyway because it’s the right thing to do. Kant argues this
shows that action can be motivated by practical reason alone.””
My response: Human the emotivist vehemently disagrees with Kant the moral
rationalist, but we can be motivated by both and are, and often they may be
difficult to differentiate and separate from each other, for every choice,
every act may be spontaneous, rationally intuited, logically concluded, or
performed from rote moral habit.
Our desires and emotions may move us, but our higher values may guide us to
choose in contrast to what we desire or feel.
A9: “I like that Kant counters Hume by arguing that we can be motivated by
our practical reason if we act for the sake of duty, not from inclination (desires
or emotions),
O’Leary: “Suppose that, when no longer moved by any inclination, he
tears himself out of this deadly insensibility and does the action without any
inclination for the sake of duty alone; then for the first time his action has
its genuine moral worth. [G398].”
What Kant calls genuine moral worth is doing an action because we
believe it is the right thing, not because certain feelings motivate us to
act. If ethics is to be universal, then we have to have a source of
motivation that is itself universal, and this Kant identifies with the will –
that is, practical reason. Since desires and emotions are subject to each
of our own psychological histories, they are too variable and unstable to
morally motivate.
This presents two perspectives on moral motivation based on different roles
assigned to emotion compared to that of reason. Hume’s view aligns with
our basic intuitions about the motivating capacity of emotion. Kant’s view
points to the contingency of emotional life and gains plausibility when we
examine the role of emotion and reason in moral judgment.
Moral Judgment
A widespread view in popular culture suggests emotions distort our judgment
(see Disney’s “Emotion and Reason” linked below). Characters like Data
and Spock in Star Trek are shown judging situations more clearly and
objectively than others because they are unclouded by emotion. This
position is put forward by Stoic philosophers who argued that emotions were
“excessive impulses which are disobedient to reason” (Arius Didymus,
65A). Kant’s ethics also often appear hostile to emotion and desire,
separating these two sources of inclination from reason. Given such
critical views of emotion, it may seem surprising that Aristotle places emotion
at the center of the virtuous life:
“For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity
and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and
in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to
the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the
right way…[that] is characteristic of virtue.”(Book VI Nicomachean Ethics,
emphasis added)
Rather than emotions distorting judgment, Aristotle argues that to be
virtuous, one must feel emotions at the right times, toward the right
object, for the right reason and in the right way. The
courageous person is not fearless, but rather feels the appropriate amount of
fear. In many situations, virtue requires us to feel fear and to feel
unafraid is to be rash, falling short of the mark of virtue.”
My response: It could be that we want to follow Aristotle ethical moderation
to find generally the mean between two emotional contraries, but we might also
need to balance between two rational considerations which could form a false
dichotomy for us.
A9: “Both positions can be supported by the empirical literature on moral
judgment. For instance, the phenomenon of emotional priming suggests
seemingly insignificant emotional cues may affect how harsh or lenient we judge
moral failures in others. In an experiment with subjects playing the role
of a sentencing judge, people judged crimes more harshly when sitting at messy
and cluttered desks (Schnall, Haidt, et al 2008). A similar phenomenon
has been observed in other settings such as parole hearings occurring before a
judge has lunch. Should crimes or parole hearings be judged differently
just because the judge was hungry, frustrated, or sat at a messy desk? If
this is emotion’s role in moral judgment, then the Stoics position seems correct.
Other studies show emotions provide a crucial role in determining salience
and solving what’s called “the frame problem” in philosophy and artificial
intelligence research. Humans constantly and intuitively filter many
sources of information. Setting up an AI algorithm or robot – such as a
bomb defusing robot – to do the same is extremely difficult, if not
impossible. How do we filter and determine what is salient in a
situation?
Recent studies have shown that our emotional experience provides just such a
role (Faucher and Tappolet 2002). As Dylan Evans summarizes in Emotion:
The Science of Sentiment, “[e]motions are often blamed for distracting
us….[but] emotions distract us from one thought only in order to make us pay
attention to another,” (Evans 2002, p. 114). Therefore, while the effects
of emotion in moral experience may be contested, research suggests that
emotions significantly impact our moral judgments and ought to be incorporated
into theories of moral judgment.”
My response: Our feelings do impact our moral judgments and should be
incorporated into our theory of moral judgment.
A9: “Moral Development
In this final section, we will examine the relationship of emotion and
reason in moral development. Each of us should be concerned about the
development of our moral character from children to adults and from those who
waiver in their ethical commitments to those who remain steadfast. Rather
than pose ways past thinkers or contemporary research might answer these
questions, we can examine why these positions in moral psychology are so
important for our understanding of the good life itself.
According to Aristotle, to feel the right emotions in the right way is “characteristic
of virtue.” The virtuous person is one whose moral development
includes the cultivation of the right emotional sensitivity and feels the right
emotions. For Kant, what is essential is to do the right thing for the
right reason, and whether emotions coincide with this or not is generally
irrelevant. In both Bentham and Mill’s accounts of Utilitarianism, the
value of emotional experience depends solely on whether emotions promote
utility or not.
Such diversity in positions reflects different views on what emotions are
and different conceptions of morality itself. For Aristotle, emotions provide
important information about ourselves and the world and so their cultivation is
an important part of moral development. One is not fully virtuous if
one’s emotions and feelings do not align with one’s reasoning and
beliefs. Thus Kant’s unsympathetic benefactor does the right thing but
falls short of virtue because there is a conflict between his action and his
feelings.
Is it too demanding to think that our motivations, moral judgments, and
feelings will always or typically align? Does that require a degree of
control over early stages of moral development that we in fact do not
possess? To what degree should the cultivation of our own moral character
and how we raise our children be centered in our emotional life? The
answer to these questions remains contested; what is not contested is the need
to study the relation between emotion and reason in moral experience.
Additional Resources
Cooper, John. “The
Emotional Life of the Wise,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 43(S1);
176-218 (2005).*”
My response: I do not know if it is desirable or
possible for our emotions and reasons can alight with our motivations and moral
judgements, but it is worth investigating.
K—Article
10
A10: “
Previous/next navigation
Previous:
Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
Next: Virtue
Philosophical
ethics often places reason at the center of ethical life and views emotion at
odds with reason or a source of error. David Hume comments upon this picture of
Western moral philosophy: Hume challenges this priority of reason over emotion.
While reason seems central to moral life, emotions are what actually “move us”.
Just as fear leads...
L
Here is an article on moral rationalism which should give a
clear picture of the one side of the story, that reason is primary in ethical
choosing.
Article 11
(A11 after this): “What is Moral Rationalism? (Principles, Theory, Examples)
What
Is Moral Rationalism
Can
morality be based purely on reason? Moral rationalism argues that it can. This
philosophy claims that moral truths are objective and can be discovered through
logic and reasoning alone. It rejects the idea that morality is based on
emotions, social customs, or religious beliefs.”
My
response: My intuition is that morality is not and should not be based purely
on reason, but it primarily should be so based. Moral truths are mostly
objective, and yet they are somewhat subjective. Still, logic and reasoning are
our best and most productive epistemic tools for uncovering and arriving at
moral truths.
There
is no doubt that subjective, skeptical, and relativistic considerations influence
our moral judgment, that morals are grounded in emotion, social customs, and
religious beliefs, is somewhat true and applicable.
A11:
“Thinkers like Kant, Plato, and Spinoza have defended this view in different
ways. They believe that rational principles guide ethical behavior. Moral
rationalism provides a structured approach to ethics, but it also faces
criticism. Some argue it ignores human emotions or cultural differences.
Understanding this theory helps clarify how reason shapes moral
decision-making.”
My
response: Moral rationalism argues that morality can be based purely on reason,
but it cannot. Morality can be primarily based on reason, but morality receives
needed input from emotions, social customs and religious believes, subjective
considerations. Jordan Peterson is mostly wrong but not entirely: cultural
differences and human emotions must be factored in as contextually relevant.
A11: “Introduction to Moral
Rationalism
What is Moral Rationalism?
Moral
rationalism is the view that moral truths are known through reason alone. It
holds that ethical principles exist independently of human emotions, cultural
norms, or divine commands. According to this theory, moral knowledge is not
based on experience or intuition but on logical deduction. This makes it
similar to mathematical reasoning—just as we discover mathematical truths
through rational thought, we uncover moral truths through reasoning.
This
approach contrasts with moral sentimentalism, which argues that emotions shape
our sense of right and wrong. Moral rationalists believe that ethical rules
must be objective, universal, and logically consistent. They argue that moral
duties can be understood through careful reasoning rather than feelings or
traditions.”
My
response: I as an ethical and ontological moderate will blend these two
paragraphs above together, and it could be that both good people and evil
people are primarily moral sentitmentalists or moral rationalists, in their
moral choices.
A11: “Key Philosophers in Moral
Rationalism
Several
philosophers have shaped moral rationalism. One of the most influential is Immanuel
Kant (1724–1804), who argued that moral obligations are derived from reason
alone. His Categorical Imperative states that an action is moral if it
can be universally applied.
Plato
(427–347 BCE) also contributed to this idea. He
believed that moral truths exist in an abstract, rational world of Forms,
accessible through reason. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) approached ethics
through a geometric method, insisting that moral laws follow from logical
necessity. Other thinkers, like René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz, also supported the idea that moral knowledge comes from rational
reflection rather than sensory experience.”
My
response: It would seem that moral knowledge comes mostly from a priori and a
posteriori rational sources but that our decisions are also informed and
directed from internal or a priori sentimental sources as well as from our
reacting to what we feel about what we experience in the external world, the a
posteriori source of what we feel we choose and act upon.
A11: “Core Principles of Moral
Rationalism
#1. Morality Is Grounded in Reason
Moral
rationalism asserts that reason is the foundation of morality. Ethical
principles are not based on emotions, instincts, or social customs but on
logical analysis. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant argue that moral laws must be
derived from pure reason, independent of personal desires or external
influences.
This
means that moral truths are objective and discoverable through rational
thought. Just as mathematics follows logical principles, moral reasoning
follows strict, universal rules. Rationalists believe that ethical decisions
must be justified by reason rather than subjective feelings or arbitrary
traditions. This ensures consistency in moral judgments.
#2. Moral Truths Are Objective and
Universal
Moral
rationalists claim that ethical truths apply to all people at all times. If a
moral principle is valid, it must hold regardless of personal beliefs or
cultural differences. Kant’s moral philosophy is a prime example—he argues that
moral laws must be universal, meaning they apply to everyone in similar
situations.
This
principle contrasts with moral relativism, which suggests that morality depends
on cultural or individual perspectives. Rationalists reject this view,
insisting that right and wrong are not subjective. Moral principles are
discovered, not invented, through logical reasoning and objective analysis.
#3. Rational Agents Are Morally
Accountable
Moral
responsibility requires rationality. If morality is based on reason, then only
rational beings can be held accountable for their actions. Kant argues that
moral obligations apply to individuals precisely because they have the capacity
for reasoned decision-making.
This
principle excludes animals and individuals lacking rational faculties from full
moral responsibility. However, it also strengthens the case for human moral
duties. Since people can understand ethical principles, they are obligated to
follow them. Ignorance or emotional impulses do not justify immoral actions
when reason provides clear moral guidance.
#4. Ethical Judgments Must Be
Logically Consistent
A
moral principle cannot contradict itself. If a rule applies in one case, it
must apply in all similar cases. Rationalists emphasize the need for
consistency in ethical decision-making. For example, if lying is considered
wrong, it must be wrong in every relevant situation, without exceptions based
on convenience.
Kant’s
Categorical Imperative reinforces this idea, stating that one should act
only on maxims that could be universal laws. This prevents moral contradictions
and ensures fairness in ethical reasoning. A rational moral system demands that
principles be applied consistently, without self-serving exceptions.
#5. Moral Duties Can Be Discovered
Through Rational Reflection
Moral
rationalists argue that ethical obligations are not arbitrary but logically
necessary. Through careful reasoning, individuals can determine their moral
duties without relying on emotions or external authorities. Kant believed that
rational beings, by thinking critically, could recognize their ethical
responsibilities.
For
example, reason tells us that promising something and then breaking the promise
contradicts itself. This logical contradiction reveals that honesty is a moral
duty. Rational reflection allows individuals to evaluate actions based on
universal moral laws rather than personal preferences or societal pressures.
#6. Emotions Should Not Override
Moral Reasoning
Moral
rationalism does not deny emotions but insists they should not dictate ethical
decisions. Feelings can be unreliable and lead to biased or impulsive choices.
A rational approach to ethics ensures that moral judgments are based on reason
rather than fluctuating emotions.
For
instance, anger might make someone seek revenge, but rational moral analysis
would show that revenge is unjust. Kant argued that moral duties must be
followed even when they conflict with personal feelings. Rationalists maintain
that emotions can influence moral awareness but should never replace logical
ethical reasoning.
#7. Autonomy Is Central to Moral
Agency
Moral
rationalism emphasizes autonomy—the ability to act according to reason rather
than external pressure. Kant believed that true morality comes from acting
freely based on rational principles, not from following authority, customs, or
emotions.
This
principle means that moral agents must think for themselves and determine what
is right through logical reasoning. It also implies that morality requires free
will. If someone is forced to act in a certain way, their action lacks moral
worth. Only when individuals choose ethical actions through reason can they be
truly moral.
#8. Universalizability Is a Test for
Moral Principles
A
moral principle must be applicable to all people in similar circumstances. If a
rule cannot be consistently followed by everyone, it fails as a moral law. This
is a core idea in Kant’s philosophy—he argued that before acting, one should
ask, “What if everyone did this?”
For
example, if stealing were universally accepted, trust in society would
collapse. Rationalists use this test to separate legitimate moral duties from
self-serving justifications. Universalizability ensures that morality is based
on principles that apply equally to all rational beings, preventing ethical
double standards.
Examples of Moral Rationalism
#1. Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Immanuel
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a prime example of moral rationalism.
He argued that moral rules must be universally applicable and derived from pure
reason. A key test of morality is whether an action can be made into a
universal law without contradiction. If a rule cannot apply to everyone, it is
not truly moral.
For
example, lying cannot be moral because if everyone lied, trust would collapse.
Kant also emphasized that people should never be treated as mere means to an
end. His ethical system prioritizes reason over emotions, ensuring logical
consistency in moral decisions.
#2. Plato’s Theory of the Good
Plato
believed that moral truths exist independently of human perception. He argued
that the highest moral good is found in the Form of the Good, an
abstract and rational concept accessible only through reason. Moral knowledge,
according to Plato, is not learned through experience but discovered through
intellectual inquiry.
In
The Republic, he presents the Allegory of the Cave, illustrating that
most people see only shadows of reality. Philosophers, through reason, grasp
the true nature of morality. Plato’s theory establishes moral rationalism by
insisting that ethical understanding depends on rational contemplation, not
emotions or social conventions.
#3. Spinoza’s Ethics Based on
Geometric Reasoning
Baruch
Spinoza applied a mathematical structure to ethics, demonstrating how moral
principles follow from reason alone. In Ethics, he used geometric proofs
to establish that human flourishing results from rational understanding. He
argued that emotions often cloud moral judgment, leading to irrational actions.
Spinoza
claimed that true happiness comes from aligning one’s life with rational
principles. He rejected free will in the traditional sense, believing that
understanding necessity leads to ethical behavior. His system provides a
rational foundation for morality, where ethical knowledge emerges from logical
deductions rather than subjective experiences.”
My
response: I admire the author of the above article for his clear, cogent
presentation of the 8 ways that moral reasoning needs to work. In the main, I
concluded that moral reasoning more than moral feeling will motivate us to
reach the right decision most of the time, and that felt reaction to phenomena
inside us or outside is, which is what he refers to as sensory experience, this
feeling should be heeded, though morality is objective and universal more than
not.
A11: “Common Critiques of Moral
Rationalism
#1. Overemphasis on Reason Ignores
Human Emotion
Critics
argue that moral rationalism places too much trust in reason while overlooking
the role of emotions in ethical decision-making. Emotions like empathy, guilt,
and compassion often guide moral behavior. Psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt
suggest that moral judgments are largely driven by intuition rather than
logical reasoning.”
My
response: Sentimentalism does have a place in ethical decision-making. I think
moral judgments or choices made are driven by sensed or felt intuition as well
as by rational intuition and logical reasoning.
It
is easy to forget that the agent has a unitary consciousness if he is sane,
happy, and psychologically healthy, so he will integrate his sentimental
choosing with his rational choosing, and they will influence and exert pressure
and likely alteration or modification upon each other along the way.
A11:
“For example, people often feel moral disgust before they can rationally
explain why something is wrong. If reason alone dictated morality, ethical
decision-making would be mechanical and detached. Moral rationalism struggles
to account for deeply ingrained emotional responses that influence real-world
moral choices.
#2. Fails to Account for Moral
Diversity and Disagreement
Different
cultures and societies have varying moral codes, yet moral rationalism assumes
that universal ethical principles exist. Critics argue that reason alone cannot
resolve deep moral disagreements. Anthropological studies show that concepts of
right and wrong differ widely, challenging the idea of objective moral laws.”
My
response: It is my sense of things that there are moral laws detectable,
definable, universal, and objective which are primary and shared by all
societies, in spite of local color and variations.
A11:
“For instance, some cultures see individual autonomy as central to morality,
while others emphasize collective responsibility. If morality were purely
rational, universal agreement on ethical principles should follow. However, the
existence of ongoing moral disputes suggests that reason alone may be
insufficient to determine moral truth.”
My
response: All peoples with competing moral codes does not negate moral
reasoning because most peoples are irrational, emotional, enjoying their
cultural confirmation bias and ethnocentric chauvinism.
Despite
this, there are universal, shared values, at closer inspection, at work in all
cultures and all moral codes, and this points to moral univeralism and moral
objectivity; still moral relativism and moral subjectivity do inform the
moderated moral agent.
A11: “#3. Neglects the Role of
Culture and Context
Moral
rationalism assumes that ethical principles are independent of social and
historical context. Critics argue that morality is shaped by cultural norms,
traditions, and historical experiences rather than pure reason. Sociologists
like Emile Durkheim emphasize that moral beliefs develop through social
structures, not abstract reasoning.
For
example, the moral status of practices like capital punishment or animal rights
depends on societal attitudes. What is considered morally acceptable in one era
may be condemned in another. This suggests that moral rationalism
underestimates the influence of cultural and historical factors in shaping
ethical views.”
My
response: Yes, the role of culture and context must be accounted for when
devising a set of objective ethical principles for all peoples to live in
accordance with.
A11: “#4. Assumes Morality Is Always
Objective
Moral
rationalists argue that ethical truths are objective and universal. Critics
challenge this by pointing out that moral principles often depend on subjective
perspectives and changing human values. Ethical subjectivists argue that
morality is influenced by personal experiences rather than absolute laws.
For
example, debates over euthanasia or abortion reveal how moral values differ
based on individual worldviews. If moral rationalism were correct, reason alone
should resolve such disputes. However, deep disagreements persist, indicating
that morality may not be as objective and universal as rationalists claim.”
My
response: If warring peoples with clashing ethical codes would seek for
logical, honorable compromise in the spirit of moderate blending of conflicting
codes where possible, in a reasonably consistent manner, then both peoples may
come closer to capturing what is a compromise approaching the desired universal
and objective moral code.
A11: “#5. Cannot Fully Explain Moral
Motivation
Even
if reason identifies moral duties, critics argue that it does not necessarily
motivate people to act morally. David Hume famously claimed that “reason is,
and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” suggesting that emotions, not
reason, drive moral action. Rationalists struggle to explain why knowing the
right thing to do does not always lead to moral behavior.
For
example, someone may rationally understand that lying is wrong but still lie
for personal gain. This suggests that morality involves more than logical
reasoning. Emotional impulses, social influences, and personal incentives often
play a stronger role in ethical choices than abstract principles.”
My
response: People are group creatures guided by altruistic-collectivist
morality, so this makes them more humble and sentimental, so that explains why
emotional impulse, social influences and personal incentive motivate where as
dry abstract principles do not. A generation of rational, intellectual
individuating supercitizens would be better motivated to be motivated ethically
by dry abstract ethical principles.
A11: “#6. Leads to Cold or Detached
Ethical Judgments
Because
moral rationalism prioritizes logic over feelings, critics argue that it can
lead to rigid or emotionally detached moral judgments. Ethical decisions often
require understanding human suffering, something that pure reason may fail to
capture. Moral philosophers like Martha Nussbaum argue that emotions are
essential for moral insight.
For
example, applying Kant’s universal laws strictly might lead to conclusions that
feel morally inadequate. Imagine refusing to lie to protect someone from harm
simply because lying is universally wrong. This highlights the potential
coldness of a purely rational moral framework that ignores compassion and
situational factors.”
My
response: Here it seems that feelings, compassion, and a personal reading of
situational factors would be critical to be informed as how to act.
A11: “#7. Underestimates the
Influence of Intuition
Many
moral decisions happen instantly, without conscious reasoning. Critics argue
that moral intuition, rather than logical analysis, often determines ethical
choices. Studies in moral psychology, such as those by Joshua Greene, show that
people rely on gut feelings rather than slow, rational deliberation.
For
example, when faced with a moral dilemma, most people react instinctively
before forming a rational justification. If reason were the primary guide,
ethical decisions would be made through careful logical reflection. However,
everyday moral behavior suggests that intuition and subconscious processes play
a far greater role than moral rationalism acknowledges.”
My
response: Sentimental intuition and subconscious processes are not be be
ignored.
A11: “”#8. Struggles with Moral
Dilemmas Requiring Compassion
Some
ethical situations require compassion over strict reasoning. Moral rationalism
struggles when rules conflict or when following pure logic results in morally
troubling outcomes. Ethics often requires flexibility, whereas rationalist
approaches demand strict consistency.
For
example, rigid adherence to universal moral laws might prevent morally
acceptable exceptions. A doctor lying to comfort a dying patient may be
ethically justified, yet a strict rationalist might argue that lying is always
wrong. These cases show that morality often depends on empathy and situational
understanding, which pure reason alone cannot always provide.”
My
response: Yes, compassion, common sense, sound judgment and moral sense must
balance out pure reasoning about moral choices.
A11: “Conclusion
Moral
rationalism argues that reason is the foundation of morality. It claims that
ethical truths are objective, universal, and discoverable through logical
analysis. Thinkers like Kant, Plato, and Spinoza built ethical systems based on
rational principles rather than emotions or traditions.
However,
critics argue that moral rationalism overlooks the role of emotions, culture,
and intuition in ethical decision-making. While reason provides consistency and
structure, moral motivation often comes from feelings and social influences.
Understanding
both the strengths and weaknesses of moral rationalism helps in evaluating how
reason shapes morality and where it may fall short in real-world ethics.
©
2025 This is Rationalism “
M
Article 12 (A12 after this) “Chapter
10 Is It Rational to Be Moral?
Shaun Nichols
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198869153.003.0010
Pages
211–226
·
Published:
February 2021
·
Abstract
Why should all rational agents be moral? This is one
ancient and challenging question about moral motivation. But there is another
perhaps more tractable question about moral motivation. Why as a matter of fact
are most of us motivated by moral considerations? What is it about the kind of
creature I am that inclines me to be moral? Moral judgments (e.g. that it’s
right to give to a certain charity) seem to be directly motivating. This
chapter argues that even non-moral normative judgments often are directly
motivating. A primary form of rule representation automatically carries with it
motivation force.”
My response: It seems that the author of this article is
arguing that nonmoral normative judgments can be motivating, and these normoral
judgments might be feeling based and feeling generated.
N
Article 13 (A 13 after this): “
Moral Reasoning
Article, Psychology / November 25, 2023 / By T.
Franklin Murphy / 10 minutes of reading
· Home
· Psychology
· Moral
Reasoning
Moral Reasoning: Understanding the Foundation of Ethical Decision-Making
In the labyrinth of the human psyche, moral reasoning emerges as a beacon of
light, guiding us through the fog of ethical dilemmas. It is the silent whisper
of conscience that speaks when we stand at the crossroads of right and wrong.
This intricate dance of judgment, woven into the very fabric of our being, is
not merely a cognitive process but an emotional symphony that plays out in the
theater of the mind. As we embark on this exploration of moral reasoning, we
delve into the depths of our moral compass, seeking to understand the invisible
forces that shape our decisions and forge our character in the crucible of
life’s complex moral landscapes.”
My response: Murphy seems to promise that the agent as moral reasoner will
follow his head and logic but his heart informs his decisions, and sometimes
outright makes his decisions for him.
A13: “Key Definition:
Moral Reasoning
is a cognitive process of integrating moral and ethical elements into a
decision or behavior.
What is Moral Reasoning?
Moral reasoning refers to the cognitive process through which individuals
determine the morality or ethicality of a particular action or situation. It
involves evaluating various moral principles, values,
and ethical theories to arrive at a moral judgment. Moral reasoning helps us
weigh the consequences of our actions and evaluate whether they align with our
personal values and societal norms.
Moral reasoning requires an interruption in the stimulus response continuum,
allowing for cognitive process to retrieve additional moral and ethical factors
into working
memory before making a decision or proceeding with an impulsive
action. Daniel J. Siegel wrote that “when we are reactive, we revert to
primitive behaviors without flexibility or compassion. We act impulsively,
lose the ability to balance our emotions, and fail to exert moral reasoning” (Siegel, 2009, Kindle
location: 4,489).
Daniel J. Siegel wrote “moral awareness as I’m using it here denotes the
ways in which we both think about and enact behaviors for the social good, and
we have evidence that it requires an intact middle prefrontal region.” He
continues, “moral reasoning seems to require the integrative capacity of this
region of the brain both to sense the emotional meaning of present challenges
and to override immediate impulses in order to create moral action in response
to those challenges” ( Siegel,
2009, Kindle location: 671).
Moral Reasoning and Emotions, and Justification
Siegel “research on emotion, for example, demonstrates the intimate
influence of emotion on all cognitive processes, from attention and perception
to memory and moral reasoning” (Siegel, 2020, Kindle Location: 5,474).
Often, we react to emotional reactions first and engage moral reasoning
afterwards. Emotions may actually be the underlying motivator of ethical
behavior. Basically, when we internalize certain ethics and values, they
function without intentional reasoning. Accordingly, violating these values
indices discomforting emotions and
honoring them brings positive emotions. In behaviorism,
this is referred to as conditioning.”
My response: I am skeptical that our emotions are the underlying motivator
of our ethical behavior.
A13: “Research supports this theory. Leland F. Saunders wrote, “in many
cases it appears that reason has no causal role in moral judgment, and that
emotions alone are a necessary, and often sufficient cause of moral judgment” (Saunders, 2017). Consequently,
it appear that moral reasoning is more than simple practical wisdom and ethics.
Like much of human behavior, complexities intrude and create a slightly less
clear picture than we would prefer. Anthony O’Hear wrote “the acquisition of
practical wisdom requires an intertwined development of character and reason,
alongside a growing…immersion in the complexities and intricacies of life” (O’Hear, 2020).”
My response: Reason has no causal role in moral judgment—I do not buy it.
A13: “Moral Justification
Moral reasoning seems like a beneficial practice that we should all employ.
However, because morals are not universal, the morals we personally draw on may
be flawed. Moreover, we may consciously acknowledge certain morals, yet only
apply them when they build up our ego, ignoring them in other situations that
require more moral courage. We engage in what is termed situational ethics. We
only apply moral reasoning when it fits our situation without extensive
sacrifice. While we allow emotions and circumstances to dictate our behavior,
we typically don’t give others the same latitude.
According to Albert Bandura we internalize laws that regulate our behavior
through self sanctions. However, when our behaviors violate these self
sanctions, shunning the internalized ethical laws, we justify. We address the cognitive
dissonance of conflicting morals and behaviors through a number of defensive
strategies.
According to moral
disengagement theory, moral justification refers to the process of
framing harmful actions or behaviors in a way that makes them seem morally
acceptable or justified. Paradoxically, we may use our morals as a means of
excusing immoral behavior. We choose which moral to use and which one to
ignore.
See Moral Justification
for more on this topic
Support
Free Journalism
The Dangers of Moral Reasoning
One of the problems with moral reasoning is we use it to judge others. We
take our own particular morals or ethics and project in on all others. In some
cases this may be appropriate in a limited fashion. For example, I believe we
shouldn’t harm others except in extreme circumstances. I can moralize hurtful
actions of others as inappropriate in society. However, we often use moral
reasoning in a much broader sense, judging others against or own cultural
upbringing, labelling them as ‘bad’ because they are different.
Steven Pinker warns that “most activities that moral people extol…are
“biological errors” and are utterly unnatural in the rest of the living world.”
Basically, we have certain moral values to guide and explain our personal
behavior and then project those values onto others. Many times biases are
ignorant to biological givens behind behavior. We judge with moralistic
thoughts while ignoring biological correlates motivating the others behaviors.
Pinker adds that, “our network of fuzzy associations naturally reverts to a
stereotype when we first encounter an individual. But our rule-based
categorizer can block out those associations and make deductions based on the
relevant facts about that individual. It can do so either for practical
reasons, when information about a group-wide average is less diagnostic than
information about the individual, or for social and moral reasons, out of
respect for the imperative that one ought to ignore certain group-wide averages
when judging an individual” (Pinker,
2003, Kindle location: 4,466).
The Components of Moral Reasoning
Moral Principles
Moral principles serve as the fundamental basis for moral reasoning. These
principles often vary across cultures and individuals, but some common examples
include honesty, fairness, justice, autonomy, and empathy. Moral reasoning
involves considering these principles and applying them to specific situations
to determine the ethical course of action.
Ethical Theories
Ethical theories provide frameworks or perspectives that help individuals
analyze and evaluate ethical dilemmas. Some widely recognized ethical theories
include utilitarianism,
deontology, virtue ethics, and ethical relativism. These theories offer
different perspectives on how to determine the morality of an action by
considering factors such as the consequences of the action, the intentions
behind it, or the character of the person involved.
Cognitive Processes
Moral reasoning involves cognitive processes such as logical thinking, moral
judgment, ethical analysis, and reflection. These processes enable individuals
to assess the various factors involved in a moral dilemma and consider
different viewpoints. It requires us to engage our critical
thinking skills and evaluate the ethical implications of our
actions.
The Stages of Moral Reasoning
Lawrence Kohlberg, a renowned psychologist, proposed a theory of moral
development that outlines different stages of moral reasoning. While
individuals may not progress through each stage linearly, understanding these
stages can shed light on how moral reasoning evolves and develops.
1. Pre-conventional Level:
At this stage, individuals’ moral reasoning is based on self-interest and
avoiding punishment. Right and wrong are determined by what is beneficial or
harmful to oneself. Individuals focus on the consequences of their actions for
themselves rather than considering broader ethical principles.””
My response: I do not doubt there are progressive levels of moral
development, but right away as an egoist-individualist, I take offense that
Kohlberg assigns his lowest level of adult moral development to an individual
pursuing his self-interest rather than considering broader ethical principles.
Kohlberg is an altruist-collectivist, or utilitarian of some kind. I would
counterargue that the group-loving, group-living, nonindividuating moral agent,
joiner, and conformist, morally reasons as a groupist, and this is the lowest
level of normal adult moral development.
A13: “2. Conventional Level:
During this stage, individuals begin to consider societal norms and
expectations. Moral reasoning is influenced by a desire to maintain social
order and gain acceptance within a community. Right and wrong are determined by
adhering to societal rules and fulfilling one’s social obligations.”
My response This Convention Level of moral development from Kohlberg seems
to be how an ordinary human develops and is socialized as an altruist and moral
adult in everyday society, though I think they could go farther if egoistic and
individuating.
A13: “3. Post-conventional Level:
At the post-conventional level, individuals transcend societal norms and
develop their own moral principles. Moral reasoning is based on universal
ethical principles and a deep understanding of justice, equality, and
individual rights. Individuals at this stage critically evaluate social
conventions and may be willing to disobey unjust laws (Murphy,
2022).”
My response: The Kohlberg Post-conventional Level of moral development seems
like the level most convivial too and correspondent with the ethical
disposition and pondering of an adult maverizer.
Of course this would grow out of more altruistic Conventional Level of
development, complementing and extending rather than vying and replacing
simpler more collective moral choosing.
A13: “Most middle class Americans reach the level of conventional reasoning
by age 36 (Damasio,
2005).
See Kohlberg’ Theory of Moral Development
for more on this theory”
Enhancing Moral Reasoning
Some therapies, such as moral
reconation therapy, focuses on developing stronger morals and
enhanced moral reasoning skills. The idea is that through more effective use of
moral reasoning a person can better direct their lives.
Moral reasoning is not fixed but can be nurtured and enhanced through
continuous self-reflection, learning, and exposure to diverse perspectives.
Here are a few strategies to strengthen your moral reasoning skills:
- Cultivate empathy: Seek to understand and empathize with
different people’s perspectives and experiences. This can broaden your
understanding of ethical dilemmas and help you consider multiple
viewpoints.
- Reflect on
personal values: Reflect on your core values and how they align
with various moral principles. Consider how your values influence your
decision-making and whether they need to be reassessed or expanded.
- Study ethical theories:
Familiarize yourself with different ethical theories to gain insight into
alternative perspectives on moral reasoning. This can enhance your ability
to analyze complex ethical dilemmas and make well-informed decisions.
- Engage in ethical discussions:
Engaging in thoughtful discussions and debates about ethical issues with
others can help refine your moral reasoning skills. It allows you to
consider diverse opinions and challenge your own beliefs.
Rushworth M Kidder suggests that we must emphasize intrinsic values over
instrumental values. Basically, he explains that “they ground themselves in the
really big, intrinsic values, including truth, respect, fairness,
responsibility, and compassion. While they respect instrumental values
(diligence, competitiveness, and so forth), they realize that these are as
important to the Mafia as to themselves” (Kidder, 2009, Kindle location: 4,211).
Associated Concepts
- Moral Disengagement Theory: This theory
developed by Albert Bandura explores cognitive mechanisms enabling
individuals to rationalize and justify unethical actions. It delves into
mental processes used to disengage from moral standards.
- Moral
Justification: This is is a personal strategy we employ to excuse
personal behaviors that conflict with internal ethical laws of behaviors.
- Slippery Slope Fallacy: This is also known as
the Domino Fallacy. This fallacy fallacy occurs when a person argues that
a particular course of action or event will lead to a series of
increasingly undesirable consequences, without sufficient evidence to
support such a claim. This fallacy suggests that taking a small step in a
certain direction will inevitably lead to a drastic or extreme outcome,
often based on fear or speculation rather than logical reasoning.
- Emotional
Reasoning: The fallacy can be a form of emotional reasoning, where
conclusions are drawn based on emotions rather than evidence. This is
a common cognitive distortion in various psychological disorders.
- Confirmation
Bias: When people believe in the slippery slope argument, they may
only seek out information that confirms their belief that the negative
consequences will indeed follow, which is known as confirmation bias.
- Primary
Human Dilemma: This
dilemma involves balancing personal needs with the desire for social
acceptance. This internal conflict highlights the interplay between
individual aspirations and societal expectations, impacting
decision-making across various life aspects.”
My response: We always want to live in the truth,
double-check our rationalizations, and seek further insight. We do not want to
do or condone evil, and we must not use the above-mentioned, manipulative
strategies to justify whatever we desire to do, though the choice is immoral.
A13: “A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic
Bear in mind that the odyssey of moral reasoning is not a sprint but a
marathon without a finish line, a perpetual quest that beckons us to tread the
path of self-examination and maturation. It is through the sharpening of our
moral faculties that we can dissect ethical quandaries with sagacity and
uprightness, steering our actions towards the greater good. As architects of
our moral universe, we hold the power to sculpt a society that mirrors the
highest ideals of justice and morality. So let us embrace this journey with a
steadfast commitment to ethical evolution, for in the grand tapestry of
humanity, each thread of moral reasoning we weave contributes to a more
equitable and virtuous world.
Last Update: November 18, 2024”
O
Article 14: “How we make moral decisions
In some situations, asking “what if everyone did that?” is a
common strategy for judging whether an action is right or wrong.
Anne Trafton | MIT News Office
Publication Date:
October 2, 2020
Caption:
Researchers at MIT and Harvard have shown that people use a
type of reasoning known as universalization to help them make moral decisions
in certain types of situations. This strategy is most applicable in social
dilemmas called “threshold problems,” in which harm can occur if everyone, or a
large number of people, perform a certain action.
Credits:
Image: iStock illustration edited by MIT News
Imagine that one day you’re riding the train and decide to hop the turnstile
to avoid paying the fare. It probably won’t have a big impact on the financial
well-being of your local transportation system. But now ask yourself, “What if
everyone did that?” The outcome is much different — the system would likely go
bankrupt and no one would be able to ride the train anymore.
Moral philosophers have long believed this type of reasoning, known as
universalization, is the best way to make moral decisions. But do ordinary
people spontaneously use this kind of moral judgment in their everyday lives?
In a study of several hundred people, MIT and Harvard University researchers
have confirmed that people do use this strategy in particular situations called
“threshold problems.” These are social dilemmas in which harm can occur if
everyone, or a large number of people, performs a certain action. The authors
devised a mathematical model that quantitatively predicts the judgments they
are likely to make. They also showed, for the first time, that children as
young as 4 years old can use this type of reasoning to judge right and wrong.
“This mechanism seems to be a way that we spontaneously can figure out what
are the kinds of actions that I can do that are sustainable in my community,”
says Sydney Levine, a postdoc at MIT and Harvard and the lead author of the
study.
Other authors of the study are Max Kleiman-Weiner, a postdoc at MIT and
Harvard; Laura Schulz, an MIT professor of cognitive science; Joshua Tenenbaum,
a professor of computational cognitive science at MIT and a member of MIT’s
Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines and Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Fiery Cushman, an assistant professor of
psychology at Harvard. The paper is appearing this week in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
Judging morality
The concept of universalization has been included in philosophical theories
since at least the 1700s. Universalization is one of several strategies that
philosophers believe people use to make moral judgments, along with
outcome-based reasoning and rule-based reasoning. However, there have been few
psychological studies of universalization, and many questions remain regarding
how often this strategy is used, and under what circumstances.
To explore those questions, the MIT/Harvard team asked participants in their
study to evaluate the morality of actions taken in situations where harm could
occur if too many people perform the action. In one hypothetical scenario,
John, a fisherman, is trying to decide whether to start using a new, more
efficient fishing hook that will allow him to catch more fish. However, if
every fisherman in his village decided to use the new hook, there would soon be
no fish left in the lake.
The researchers found that many subjects did use universalization to
evaluate John’s actions, and that their judgments depended on a variety of
factors, including the number of people who were interested in using the
new hook and the number of people using it that would trigger a harmful
outcome.
To tease out the impact of those factors, the researchers created several
versions of the scenario. In one, no one else in the village was interested in
using the new hook, and in that scenario, most participants deemed it
acceptable for John to use it. However, if others in the village were
interested but chose not to use it, then John’s decision to use it was judged
to be morally wrong.
The researchers also found that they could use their data to create a
mathematical model that explains how people take different factors into
account, such as the number of people who want to do the action and the number
of people doing it that would cause harm. The model accurately predicts how
people’s judgments change when these factors change.
In their last set of studies, the researchers created scenarios that they
used to test judgments made by children between the ages of 4 and 11. One story
featured a child who wanted to take a rock from a path in a park for his rock
collection. Children were asked to judge if that was OK, under two different
circumstances: In one, only one child wanted a rock, and in the other, many
other children also wanted to take rocks for their collections.
The researchers found that most of the children deemed it wrong to take a
rock if everyone wanted to, but permissible if there was only one child who
wanted to do it. However, the children were not able to specifically explain
why they had made those judgments.
“What's interesting about this is we discovered that if you set up this
carefully controlled contrast, the kids seem to be using this computation, even
though they can't articulate it,” Levine says. “They can't introspect on their
cognition and know what they're doing and why, but they seem to be deploying
the mechanism anyway.”
In future studies, the researchers hope to explore how and when the ability
to use this type of reasoning develops in children.
Collective action
In the real world, there are many instances where universalization could be
a good strategy for making decisions, but it’s not necessary because rules are
already in place governing those situations.
“There are a lot of collective action problems in our world that can be
solved with universalization, but they're already solved with governmental
regulation,” Levine says. “We don't rely on people to have to do that kind of
reasoning, we just make it illegal to ride the bus without paying.”
However, universalization can still be useful in situations that arise
suddenly, before any government regulations or guidelines have been put in
place. For example, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, before many
local governments began requiring masks in public places, people contemplating
wearing masks might have asked themselves what would happen if everyone decided
not to wear one.
The researchers now hope to explore the reasons why people sometimes don’t
seem to use universalization in cases where it could be applicable, such as
combating climate change. One possible explanation is that people don’t have
enough information about the potential harm that can result from certain
actions, Levine says.
The research was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton
World Charity Foundation, and the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines.
Paper
Paper:
"The logic of universalization guides moral judgment" “
My response: I detect no necessary conflict between
universalization (Would everyone be good if they did what I am thinking of
doing?) and individualism; both loners and egoistic individuators or
nonindividuators, joiners and altruistic, could reason if the considered action
is worthy or not, if all were free to so choose and so act.
P
Article
15: “People also ask
What
is moral reasoning in ethics?
- Inherent
in the study of ethics is a crucial understanding of the concept of
objectivity. Moral reasoning is the series of factors, arguments,
and thinking patterns that humans use or engage in to determine what the
basic values or constructs of proper moral judgments should be.”
My
response: We need moral reasoning to know how to act and how to proceed.
Q
Article 16 (A16 after this):”
Primary Navigation
Analyzing the basics of ethical thinking for leaders and organizations in
society
This chapter will introduce the basic constructs of moral thinking. We will
begin by defining the terms morality and ethics. After creating a working
knowledge of the terminology, we will look at the roots of moral
decision-making in our society by tracing the factors contributing to the
Western societal framework. We will examine the many characteristics, including
inherent tensions, that determine individual morality and societal ethics while
focusing on the inherent legacy and discussion in that interaction. At the end
of this section, different conceptions of the more profound components of moral
theory and its interaction in society will be introduced, with constructive and
practical outcomes that will help us to determine how best to approach ethical
outcomes. This will include suggestions on becoming more aware of moral
decision-making and how to avoid potential problems organizations or leaders
might face as they consider problems that we must address personally,
professionally, and in a societal and/or global sense.
Key Definitions
What is Morality?
The constructs of human conduct and/or values.
What is Ethics?
The study of the constructs that determine what is good and evil in direct
connection with moral principles and values
What is Moral Reasoning?
The factors, arguments, and thinking patterns that determine the constructs
of human conduct and/or values
Let’s begin with basic definitions of the study of moral philosophy and
“good” decision-making. Morality
is the term used to describe the constructs of human conduct and/or
values. At its base, morality is formulated on an understanding of
preferred behavior, in both an individual and societal sense, depending on the
context. It is often in the interaction of personal and societal factors
that thinkers have contemplated the depth and uniqueness of this study. Though
many theorists differ in their interpretation of how morality is derived
personally and collectively, experts generally agree that morality is a
combination of reason and “sense” that we use or fall back on to determine
right from wrong or our expectations of ourselves and others.”
My response: If morality is a combination of reason and sense—and it is—then
sensing the nature of a choice, a person’s character, or an action, all might
be intuited rationally or sentimentally, and that seems right to me.
A16: “Using the writings of Plato in commentary on Socrates, the
definition focuses on morality as the determination of “how we ought to
live.” This understanding of morality coincides with our beliefs about
the future and how we conceive of how the world, the people, and the factors
that determine that reality should come to be and the result we desire.
Ethics is the formal study of the personal and
collective definitions of morality. Ethics focuses on how we, individually or
collectively, conceive or determine morality. It represents the constant
reevaluation and thinking behind the decisions that have led us to these
conclusions.
“Ethics” is derived from the Greek term “ethos.” This term was most closely
connected to the Greek concept of “proper character or manners.” The definition
of ethics, whether used as a discipline or conceptually, is focused on pursuing
objective truth to determine better outcomes daily for everyone, regardless of
the factors or the results. Inherent in the study of ethics is a crucial
understanding of the concept of objectivity.”
My response: I would like to introduce to the reader that a moral egoist
would be someone of proper character and excellent manners. If he is not
courteous to God, others, and himself, he does not love the self, so he is not
good, not his character, nor his will.
A16: “Moral reasoning is the series of factors, arguments, and thinking
patterns that humans use or engage in to determine what the basic values or
constructs of proper moral judgments should be. Moral reasoning focuses on why
and/or how we achieve the result of a proper way of living life. Though
this is complicated, we all engage in this reasoning daily and throughout our
lives, whether we consciously know it or not.
Two questions are at the core of this evaluation:
- What is the best course of
thought and action required to improve our awareness of this reasoning?
- How do we determine the best
outcome personally and as we interact and build community with others?
These terms are crucial to consider as we work towards the conceptual goal
of truth. It includes how to read individuals more carefully and diligently and
how we know ourselves. By paying more close attention to these constructs
and studying them in greater depth, a good thinker can understand the factors
that determine better decisions and, of course, avoid the prospect of decisions
that could be very costly.
Crucial Moral Concepts
What is Virtue?
The concept of moral excellence or proper moral conduct
What are Values?
Characteristics of human thought and action that are intrinsically preferred
or held in high esteem
Building on these definitions, we turn our attention to two concepts that
are crucial to ethical study. Virtue is defined as the concept of moral
excellence or proper moral conduct. This term is also applied to a field
of ethical study called “virtue ethics.” “Virtue” philosophical thinkers
believe there is a core of attributes central to the human condition that we
can determine or “call upon” as preferred attributes of human behavior.
These theories are most widely studied in the framework of Ancient Greek
philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who is perhaps the most
famous. We will look at their views in the future. Many of these
thinkers believe that ethical thinking becomes self-evident as individuals
learn more about themselves and their world.
From that wisdom development, concepts of preferred behavior emerge. A good
example is courage. Using reason, it becomes clear that being courageous is
always more desirable than being uncourageous. Though people can be
“courageous” or “uncourageous,” conceptually, courageous behavior is often
believed to be more virtuous or an element of proper moral conduct. In
our study, we pay particular attention or think about what determines a better
or wiser thinker and what it requires of us. In Damon
Horowitz’s 3-minute talk on teaching philosophy in prison, listen to
his assessment of the importance and power of philosophical training and
thought as it relates to determining the practical nature of the definition of
virtue. What essential components of this conversation should we consider
as we contemplate what it means to pursue ethical thinking? Those
components of wisdom or attributes observed in human experience often coincide
with the concepts that thinkers of the ages have determined are central to the
“virtue” ethical excellence elements.
The other term essential to the discussion of morality and decision-making
is the definition of values. The baseline definition of the term “values”
pertains to human thought and action characteristics that are intrinsically
preferred or held in high esteem. For our purposes, consider the term
“values” or “value” as the individual characteristics, like courage, that make
up the concept of virtuous or proper moral conduct. These two terms
remind us that ideals or concepts may be present in our daily decision-making.
The key is to identify them, ensure those ideals are central to objective truth
and not just what we want, and consciously allow them to guide us in all
aspects of our lives.”
R
Article 17 (A17 after this): “Basic Constructs of Ethical Study
Descriptive Ethics + Analytical Ethics = Normative Ethics
The determination of values and/or virtues can be seen in the struggle of
leaders and organizations over time. In the Twentieth Century and the
Twenty-First Century, unethical decisions have dominated the world, resulting
in unethical outcomes. In the wake of such damaging outcomes, people are
more astutely focusing on ethics and ethical practice. In doing so, they
consider greater thoughtful procedures as they scope through risk management,
organizational function and productivity, market positioning, and civic
responsibility. What has emerged in greater clarity is the understanding that
profits and ethical decision-making, at all levels, can be integrated partners
if consistent and committed to long-term success is kept at the forefront of
individual consciousness.
At the beginning of the study of ethical options, we need to define a
framework to understand how to study ethics. In doing this, it becomes
clear that ethics is complicated and not merely a formulation of what is only
“wrong” or “right” but a concentrated and in-depth study of the various
segments of human thought and behavior. I term this complexity the
equation of ethical study. There are three components:
- Descriptive ethics is the
branch of ethical study that considers ethical analysis in the context of
a neutral representation of the perceptions or facts of any ethical
situation. It involves a lengthy and careful attempt to identify the
ethical issues and values inherent in the evaluation process.
- Analytical ethics centers
on the argument and logic in the ethical opinions and assessments used to
determine the ethical issues, values, or outcomes. This approach
builds on descriptive ethics by considering the construct of ethical
determination in greater depth. Analytical ethics considers the
ethical outcome based upon other decisions, especially those decisions
that are disconnected from others and the impact such decisions or
outcomes might have in that consideration.
- Normative ethics
approaches the study of ethics with the belief, according to Kitson and
Campbell in Case Studies in Business Ethics
(2001), of seeking “to develop and defend judgments of right and wrong,
good and bad, and virtue and vice, to arrive at an understanding of
truth.” This final evaluation tool process focuses on determining
the best possible outcome after solid and productive consideration of
descriptive and analytical components. Normative is usually the
stage of the ethical evaluation process that most people are familiar
with, as it often leads to a decision or determination of what is “right”
or “wrong” for an individual, group, organization, or society.
As May describes in Case Studies in Organizational Communication,
these three layers make up the many different conceptualizations inherent in
ethical analysis. All are equally important, but we must consider the
ethical layers when considering descriptive and analytical ethical standing to
make the best possible decision.”
A17: “Prominent Ethical Tensions
Foundational vs. Situational Tensions
Individual vs. Community Tensions
Beyond these layers of ethical study, good critical thinkers must be aware
of inevitable tensions between individuals crucial to ethical study
evaluation. Such tensions exist in our world and are at the root of
ethical dilemmas.
The first tension focuses on the interaction between foundational and
situational arguments.
- Foundational ethical
arguments are built upon the idea that proper ethical formulation is based
upon “universal” constructs of ethical thinking or objective
conceptualization. From this standpoint, ethical evaluation is determined
by an objective assessment that the individual or organization using this
approach deems accurate, regardless of context or situation.”
My
response: This sounds like moral realism.
A17:
“
- Situational ethical
arguments are formulated on the belief that ethical thinking is a product
of consistent change and subjective conceptualizations based upon unique
circumstances or each instance in which an ethical evaluation must occur.
This presents tension as each perspective can often be at the root of
ethical differences and misunderstandings.”
My response This sounds like
moral anti-realism.
A17: “The other tension highlights the moral stances of ideologies linked to
individualism and collectivism.
- Individualistic ideology
argues that proper ethical evaluation and determination are inherently
formulated on the individual, entity, and responsibility.
- The collective ethical
perspective argues the opposite.”
My
response: Collective morality is of secondary rank for the individual and
society than is individual morality, but both are needed, and,
counterintuitively, what is moral desirable is attainable by individual
moralizing where the person is more rational, universalizing a potential
behavior as the agent imagines objectively how such an action would causally
impact the world, and what would be its consequences. He can be emotional,
situational, subjective, and relativistic, but others have gone through this
moral dilemma before, not just him—he is not that unique.
A17: “Ethical decision-making is best constructed through understanding the
soundest course of thought and evaluation through group affiliation and
agreement. Thinkers must consider the interplay of the rights and
responsibilities of individuals with the rights and responsibilities of
communities found in any society or organization (of people).”
My response: I disagree.
A17: “ A better understanding of the framework of ethical interaction
allows us to contemplate productive outcomes more deeply for some of our most
difficult moral problems. Awareness of these tensions is a start to becoming
more productive in arriving at more ethical outcomes and defraying possible
misunderstandings around the thoughts and behavior of those involved.
Moral Reasoning and Determination are not only… A matter of
opinion or personal taste.
This essential question is central to the discussion of moral
decision-making: isn’t morality simply a matter of opinion or personal
taste? This question represents a standard assumption on the part of
many. Other people view morality, ethical thinking, moral reasoning,
virtue, and value or values, as simply relativistic or subjective. “Relativistic”
refers to the belief that our understanding of truth (or what we believe in) is
based on our evaluation or perspective. It can be argued that truth comes from
a subjective conception, and this viewpoint carries great merit as we
understand perception, thinking, and uniqueness. It is also true that moral
reasoning or morality must probe more deeply than simply a belief or opinion we
possess. Good thinking requires that we investigate, process and evaluate
as many components of possible ethical dilemmas and not only the use of our
background, quick assessments, or sole emotional reactions to determine better
practices or outcomes.
Relativistic statements of individuals must go further than a simple
assertion that they might have on a subject; instead, as the philosopher Dr.
James Rachels explains in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, we must
employ moral reasoning and virtuous decision-making solidly and constructively,
building on the reasoning that is supported by the soundness of thought and
consistency of action. This Starburst candy
advertisement demonstrates how important it is to determine when an
opinion or personal taste should lead us to evaluate the Truth and how we might
begin to use reason to help us transcend evaluations that might be problematic
or untrue.”
S
Article 18 (A 18 after this): “
Basic Ethical Constructs of the Western World
Though there are many codes of moral conduct and varying traditions of
ethical perspective we could study, I have limited the scope of this course to
a series of very strong contributors to our Western world to illustrate how
ethical theory and conception have come to define our reality. These factors
have become prominent in some ethical determinations in the Western World
and the world at large. As we consider the climate of increasing
globalized networks built upon some of these notions, it is increasingly
essential to constructively understand and evaluate the roots of such basic
conceptions of morality.
The long conversational history becomes apparent in tracing the background
of morality and ethical conduct. We can find those essential modern
conceptions linked to the world of the ancient world of the Greeks and
Romans. Our presumptions of good business, proper conduct, and even the
truth of reality have been shaped by the writings and beliefs of individuals
predating the fourth century BC. Central to the Greco-Roman world was the
philosophical viewpoint that the meaning of life was somehow connected to this
idea of creating a “better life” or moving towards a greater sense of
“progress.”
This idea is still present in almost every aspect of our world and can be
fundamentally seen in Western culture. This concept of “betterment”
or “good” living has impacted our decision-making, creating a society that
focuses on growth and the belief that there are better ways to approach various
subjects and our lives.
One key component of this Greek belief of “betterment” can be traced to
their solid ethical notion of the citizenry and civic responsibility.
Citizens have rights given to them by circumstance or situation, but with
rights come responsibilities required of those with privilege. The Romans
took this concept further, believing that the true notion of justice was
steeped in ethical importance. They attempted to set up courts and
impartial authority figures connected with the Roman authorities who were tasked
with helping those in conflict resolve their issues through productive and just
outcomes. The idea was that society only operates ethically when people
are treated fairly and problems are solved to diminish conflict.”
My response This last paragraph is acceptable but egoistic individuals more
than altruistic joiners are the most moral, the most likely to take
responsibility for themselves, others, and society.
A18: “The second component is the influence of Christian
values and virtues on the development of accepted social norms
of thought and behavior in the Western world. Regardless of one’s
religious affiliation, the Western world has been developed using the beliefs
Christian principles passed down since the Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic
Church.
During this time, many social norms espoused by the Christian establishment
became the backbone of European society. They laid the foundation for
individual and organizational behavior through law or cultural
expectations. Many of those expectations often associated with Hebraic
belief expectations, such as the Ten Commandments, were combined with the
teachings of Jesus Christ found in the New Testament. Those expectations
became encapsulated in Christian creeds and lists of behavioral expectations,
such as The Seven Deadly Sins, decided by Christian leaders through
council decisions. These decisions were often instituted as laws that
kingdoms adopted. Many concepts of societal values, such as true justice
and characteristics of personal values, were taught, reinforced, and passed
down from generation to generation, both societally and individually. In
addition, these values or moral expectations were also taught and reinforced in
direct conjunction with the Church’s practices.
Beyond the first earlier Western influences we have discussed, there have
also been economic ideologies that have come to shape moral thinking and
evaluation. Milton Friedman, one of the most prominent economists of the
twentieth century, argued, in a famous 1970 essay termed Friedman’s Thesis,
as well as his early text Capitalism and Freedom, “the social
responsibility of business is to increase its profits” arguing that the role of
a business should be to maximize profits and not to be concerned with elements
of moral responsibility or participate in determining moral “rights” and
“wrongs’ within society. According to his evaluation, institutions,
especially for-profit organizations, should only concern themselves with
economic decisions that would increase the profitability of shareholders. In
this way, morality and market interaction would dictate proper moral
decision-making.”
My response: The business of business is business and profits rule supreme,
but ethical conduct must be factored in too.
A18: “Organizations’ freedom to pursue their best interest, namely profit,
should determine organizational attitude and behavior as long as they obey the
law. This belief functioned under the assumption that moral assessments
should be reserved for the citizens who would make those decisions by
purchasing the products or services presented and through the regulations
created by legislators who represented those citizens. This approach
profoundly influenced how Western society determined the best moral course of
action, arguing that the market would be the best assessor of moral attitude
and behavior.
Another layer of this debate centers itself on the tension between
philanthropy and charity. Philanthropy, the offering of financial or
resource help to an individual, organization, or society in need with some
benefit for the giving organization or individual, has often been interpreted
by many as a productive way to invest in a beneficial, moral manner to address
critical ethical problems. It has been argued as the best option for
addressing moral and social needs. In doing so, though, the belief is that
what is beneficial for those who need the help should be linked to the benefit
of the participating organization. Charity, in contrast, is centered on
the idea that benefits of any kind should be offered without the mutual
requirement of exchange. The debate over what is proper and productive
“help” and the morality of how to best offer it as we consider economic results
have been at the crux of moral evaluation in the Western world and linked to
the debate around Friedman’s Thesis. Some of that debate has been
influenced by moral presumptions connected with the value of work and
individual responsibility. This also includes the assumption that
profitability is most important and should influence how we evaluate the most
moral course of action.
The moral complexity of individual and society in Western
society…Pluralism, dualism, and monism
As alluded to in the last section, the complexity of the interaction of
individual and societal beliefs is critical in understanding the context of
Western ethical thinking. Western society has consistently attempted,
through the institution of such documents as the Magna Carta, the English Bill
of Rights 1688, and The Constitution of the United States, to define the
relationship more clearly between what is individually acceptable behavior and
what is collectively accepted as permissible
Rousseau, the famous French-Swiss philosopher of the eighteenth century,
referred to this as the concept of a social contract. At the heart of
this interaction is a societal moral value called justice. Perhaps one of
the most controversial legal thinkers of the twentieth century, John Rawls, a
prominent professor of law and philosophy at Harvard, asserts that we must know
the role of “institutions” or groups of people in moral decision-making.
At the root of the interaction of personal, institutional (which is best
defined as any group of individuals), and society at large is the philosophical
conception of whether Truth, defined objectively, can be found in a dualistic
thinking framework or a monistic thinking conceptualization.
Dualism is the belief that two concepts, ideals,
or factors determine truth by their interplay or lack therein, while monism
refers to the belief that truth reflects one concept, ideal, or factor.
For a thinker, it is imperative to determine whether problem-solving considers
a more dualistic, or perhaps even pluralistic, or multiple-factor approach or a
more monistic framework. As we struggle with proper judgments, one will
inevitably conclude that proper conduct and decision-making, as well as good
critical thinking, must incorporate a solid and reliable set of rules of
conduct or expectations that is inclusive of as many approaches or perspectives
as possible while considering the need to determine ethical goals or ideals to
progress towards.”
My response: As a moral moderate, it would seem to be that dualistic or
pluralistic rival theories of moral ideals should be blended together, under
one monistic, primary moral ideal.
A18: “Dilemmas at the Heart of Ethical Thinking…
- Justice vs. mercy
- Truth vs. Loyalty
- Individual vs. community
- Short-term goals vs.
long-term goals
To further our understanding of ethical thinking, it is useful to dissect
moral problems within the context of “value pairings.” To highlight some
of the more critical Western societal values, Rushworth Kidder breaks ethical
issues into four major categories that should help us assess moral
decision-making. In How Good People Make Tough Choices:
Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (1995), he argues that all
complex ethical dilemmas have, at their core, many of the following series of
troubling pairings that make it challenging to determine the best moral
outcome.
Justice versus mercy forces us to consider how
we should uphold proper expectations for attitudes and behaviors, emphasizing
that everyone should receive what they deserve within society. This
includes the belief that taking responsibility for oneself is important while
balancing the belief that it is valuable to consider when to offer leniency to
those who might not deserve it or someone who hasn’t taken responsibility.
Truth (objective) versus loyalty presents the
dilemma of determining when we or society should adhere to the truth regardless
of loyalty and when loyalty to ourselves, others, or institutions might be the
most moral course of action.
The construct of individual versus community
tension compels us to consider the varied interests of the individual versus
the needs and/or desires of a greater community. This moral dilemma can
be present in many different facets of society.
Finally, Kidder iterates that the final dilemma we should consider is the
clash between short-term and long-term goal-setting.
There are often compelling cases for when we should choose short-term over
long-term goals or vice versa, but knowing when to make the right decision in
the right situation is often difficult to determine. Considering these
four dilemmas can not be understated when we evaluate the importance of better
critical thinking with the result of more ethical outcomes. Listen to Patrick
Awuah’s discussion (17 minutes) as he uses his experience to
emphasize the importance of being a “thinking, moral” leader and how one should
look for opportunities to encourage those traits in others. Making
ethical decisions is not easy, but it is necessary.”
My response: All four of these pairings are useful.
A18: “The Origin of Ethical Determination
Differing perspectives on moral determination have been considered in
Western society for centuries. As a result, many different viewpoints
have emerged over time. It is essential to contemplate the thoughts of
some of the greatest thinkers to analyze what is truly at the core of proper
moral reasoning and understand what many people today might conclude.
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher of the
Eighteenth Century, espoused the viewpoint that people determine what is
“right” or “wrong” through experiences filtered by their senses. Hume’s
famous statement that humans are nothing more than “a bundle of perceptions”
claims that the core of who we are as individuals is directly tied to our
perceptions or how we interpret the world. Though perception, as a
process, may be considered universal in the sense that we, as humans, all
participate in it or employ the phenomena, he is quick to point out that each
one of us is diverse in those experiences.
Karl Marx, the famous Mid-Nineteenth Century
philosopher, is known primarily for his work The Communist Manifesto. Marx
wrote that the root of ethical thinking is humans’ economic constraints. The
struggle over material goods between those who have and those who have not and
how that relationship is worked in society outlines and determines ethical
thinking or morality.
The last and most controversial is the work of psychologist and
psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Freud believed that ethical thinking is directly tied to our subconscious and
found that we find the real motivations for ethical decision-making in the
interaction of the id, ego, and superego. Therefore, morality is based
upon our “hidden desires” or “what we really want” when played out against
other influences such as societal expectations and/or the interests of others;
this reflects the central feature of who we are as individuals but also the
weighs that interest against the interest of others.
By contemplating the potential motivating factors that determine ethical
thinking in people, we become much more careful in thinking through matters
pertaining to decision-making. In Western society, many thinkers have
come to radically different perspectives on what determines ethical thought and
action.
Questions at the Root of the Ethical Decision-Making Process
At the root of ethical decision-making are four initial questions that must
be contemplated to find answers.
- What does it mean to be
good?
- What makes a life a good
life?
- What characteristics make
up a good human?
- What duties do we have to
each other and ourselves?
Critical thinkers may use the following suggestions when confronted with
questions.
First, there are no easy answers; attaining satisfactory answers is
ongoing. These questions must be revisited to gain insight and enhance
growth over time.
Second, strong and solid reasons require significant thought and the ability
to continually question notions that might even be held dear. Process and
result must both be considered. Last, these questions require us to keep
ourselves in check by considering the interest of others.”
My response: These four questions are critically important, and each
individual must answer them for herself, and live in accordance with her
answers to them.
A18: “Tough Outcomes May Emerge
Several potential outcomes emerge when important ethical questions are
asked. These questions can cause people to come to certain conclusions
that may be unnerving. Additionally, the answers that people often struggle
with produce actions and outcomes that present obstacles to moving along with
better ethical thinking and problem-solving.
The first problem is the issue of blame.
At the root of blame is the shared realization that change is needed.
Change is often scary and threatening. As individuals think about ethical
issues, they are often confronted by their conscience or reason, prompting them
to feel troubled by their thoughts or behaviors. When integrated with the
need to enact some form of change, discomfort can cause people to feel
unmotivated or agitated. It is probably safe to say that most humans do
not like change, and this factor alone can cause uncomfortable situations or
outcomes, but when we add the topic of moral assessment, there is added
pressure and stress. This video of a dog illustrates
the humorous interaction between the dog “Denver” and his master. This is
a microcosm (in a more humorous manner) of what people might experience.
The second potential problem centers on the issue of obligation or
duty. Ethical issues naturally imply that the change
required might dictate a strong sense of obligation that may cause people not
to think and act unfairly. Think of a person who has a renewed view of an issue
or problem and throws themselves completely into that new approach without
realizing that that renewed perspective may not solve ethical issues. The
complexities of obligation can create a crisis as people, in their new
understanding, might be torn between loyalties to multiple viewpoints or
viewpoints—thus causing even more potential dismay.
The third factor to consider is the issue of the emotional
investment of those involved. Ethical issues often carry
with them inherent strong viewpoints and feelings that can surface and may
cause individuals to avoid an accurate understanding of the outcomes
present. This emotional investment may lead to false admiration for those
involved in the decision or leaders who enact what is perceived to be the
better moral decision or process. This can lead to an inaccurate result
or view of the situation.
Last might be the ethical dilemma of not knowing the
result that an ethical decision might produce. How does
one truly know that they are correct, or what we have come to think is the
proper outcome will indeed yield that result? The prospect of this can be
frightening for many people. The more we know how people react in
circumstances linked to ethical tensions and outcomes, the better we identify
these tendencies in ourselves and others and work to allay those fears.
This is perhaps one of the most important factors to consider and why an
ethics-based education is essential.
My response: It is well for the agent to realize that tough outcomes might
arise should he undertake to change his choices, behavior, and character, but
he must do what is right.
A18: “References
Awuah, P. (2007, June). How to educate leaders? Liberal arts. Retrieved
from https://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_awuah_on_educating_leaders
Denver Official Guilty Dog Video. (2011, March 08). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=B8ISzf2pryI
Horowitz, D. (2011, March). Philosophy in prison. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/damon_horowitz_philosophy_in_prison
Kitson, A., & Campbell, R. (2001). Case studies in business ethics. In
A. Malachowski (Ed.), Business ethics: Critical perspectives on business and
management (Vol. IV, pp. 7–12). London: Routledge.
May, S. (2012). Case studies in organizational communication: Ethical
perspectives and practices. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. (2019). The
elements of moral philosophy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Ronda, N. (2011, June 19). Starburst- Commercial
[funny]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jodb9lkwnd8
T
Article
19 (A19 after this): “Do we really need to reason morally?”
My
response: Yest, we really do need to reason morally.
A19:
“What are some examples of moral reasoning?
- These
principles often vary across cultures and individuals, but some common
examples include honesty, fairness, justice, autonomy, and empathy.
Moral reasoning involves considering these principles and applying them to
specific situations to determine the ethical course of action.
What
is moral reasoning influenced by?
- Moral
reasoning is influenced by a desire to maintain social order and gain
acceptance within a community. Right and wrong are determined by
adhering to societal rules and fulfilling one’s social obligations. 3.
Post-conventional Level:
How
do you think about people morally reasoning with each other?
- There
are two salient and distinct ways of thinking about people morally reasoning
with one another: as members of an organized or corporate body that is
capable of reaching practical decisions of its own; and as autonomous
individuals working outside any such structure to figure out with each
other what they ought, morally, to do.”
U
Article 20 (A20 after this): “
Moral Reasoning:
Moral reasoning refers to the process of making decisions based on
moral principles and values. It involves evaluating different moral
perspectives and considering the ethical implications of various choices or
actions. Moral reasoning helps individuals determine what is right or wrong,
just or unjust, and guides their behavior accordingly.”
My response: I admire and accept this paragraph as a definition of moral
reasoning.
A20: “Components of Moral Reasoning:
1. Moral Principles:
Moral reasoning is built upon a foundation of moral principles, which are
fundamental beliefs or rules that govern ethical behavior. These principles
serve as guides for making moral judgments and may include concepts such as
honesty, fairness, justice, compassion, and respect for others.
2. Ethical Dilemmas:
Ethical dilemmas are situations where individuals have to choose between
conflicting moral values or courses of action. Moral reasoning enables
individuals to analyze these dilemmas, consider the consequences of different
choices, and arrive at a morally justifiable decision.
3. Ethical Reasoning Strategies:
Moral reasoning involves employing different strategies to evaluate ethical
dilemmas. These strategies may include utilitarianism, deontological ethics,
virtue ethics, and other ethical frameworks. Utilitarianism focuses on
maximizing overall happiness or utility, while deontological ethics emphasizes
adherence to moral duties and principles. Virtue ethics emphasizes developing
virtuous character traits to guide ethical decision-making.
Stages of Moral Reasoning:
1. Pre-Conventional Reasoning:
In this stage, individuals make moral decisions based on self-interest and
fear of punishment. Their reasoning is motivated by personal gain and the
desire to avoid negative consequences. This stage is typically observed in
young children.
2. Conventional Reasoning:
In the conventional stage, individuals base their moral judgments on social
norms, rules, and expectations. They seek to maintain social order, gain
approval from others, and uphold existing societal standards. This stage is
often seen in adolescents and adults who prioritize societal expectations.
3. Post-Conventional Reasoning:
In the post-conventional stage, individuals develop their own ethical
principles and reasoning independent of societal norms. They critically
evaluate societal customs and laws, and prioritize universal ethical principles
such as justice, equality, and human rights. This stage is reached by some
adults who have undergone moral development beyond conventional reasoning.
Importance of Moral Reasoning:
Moral reasoning is crucial for individuals to navigate complex moral
situations and make ethical decisions. It helps foster empathy, fairness, and
respect for others, thereby contributing to the establishment of a just and
harmonious society. Through moral reasoning, individuals can consider the
consequences of their actions and align their behavior with ethical values,
promoting moral growth and personal integrity.”
V
Since
this entire blog entry is a take on my account of how human intellect, in each
agent, can guide her to be a good person, that moral rationalism and moral
sentimentalism both guide her ethical choosing, the heart is more evil than the
head, but both can be abused, and both are needed to make wise, virtuous moral
choices.
The
agent’s conscience is integrated and interlocking if she is sane and
functioning well, so the head and the heart work together to inspire her
decision-making.
It
seems to me that that the term will is near being a brute fact, that it may
have an explanatory story, but it is hard to lay out with precision and
certainty. Having said that, I will use the word will to serve as that moral
faculty which is synonymous with the agent’s integrated consciousness in
decision making.
If
the individual is self-realizing, individual-living and guide by egoist ethics,
then she will command and build a good will, under which she will utilize the
hunches and realization from both her head and her heart to make generally,
most of the time, wise moral choices, and this will help her stay on the
straight and narrow path, applying her practical reasoning to choose the right
choice, and to implement and carry out her choice selection, efficiently, with
minimal negative consequences.
With
her good will in place, operating and functioning on all burners, she will be a
creature of love and loving, loving God, herself and others, and her veridical,
high-self esteem and her solid but moderated self-pride, modestly displayed and
communicated, will suffuse her with love, and love makes for possessing a good
will, and a good will informs rationally and emotionally the agent how to make
ethical decisions, and to better detect which choice is preferable.
Here
is an entry from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Moral Reasoning: let us
see if this amateur thinker can make sense of a technical paper on moral
reasoning. Here is the article:
Article 21(A21 after this): “Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
Moral Reasoning
First published Mon Sep 15,
2003; substantive revision Mon Aug 27, 2018
While moral reasoning can be undertaken on another’s behalf, it is
paradigmatically an agent’s first-personal (individual or collective) practical
reasoning about what, morally, they ought to do. Philosophical examination of
moral reasoning faces both distinctive puzzles – about how we recognize moral
considerations and cope with conflicts among them and about how they move us to
act – and distinctive opportunities for gleaning insight about what we ought to
do from how we reason about what we ought to do.”
My response: It seems that we in first-person engage in moral reasoning
about our individual needs and goals, versus our reasoning about collective
needs and goals being met. We likely, if we are egoists, concentrate our moral
reasoning about our individual interests, and if we are joiners, we as
altruists focus on group plans and needs.
A21: “Part I of this article characterizes moral reasoning more fully,
situates it in relation both to first-order accounts of what morality requires
of us and to philosophical accounts of the metaphysics of morality, and
explains the interest of the topic. Part II then takes up a series of
philosophical questions about moral reasoning, so understood and so situated.
1. The Philosophical Importance of Moral Reasoning
1.1 Defining “Moral Reasoning”
This article takes up moral reasoning as a species of practical reasoning –
that is, as a type of reasoning directed towards deciding what to do and, when
successful, issuing in an intention (see entry on practical
reason).”
My response: If this article on moral reasoning is limited to practical
reasoning, then the thrust of the article seems less metaethical, and more
about applied ethics.”
A21: “Of course, we also reason
theoretically about what morality requires of us; but the nature of purely
theoretical reasoning about ethics is adequately addressed in the various
articles on ethics.
It is also true that, on some understandings, moral reasoning directed towards
deciding what to do involves forming judgments about what one ought, morally,
to do. On these understandings, asking what one ought (morally) to do can be a
practical question, a certain way of asking about what to do. (See section
1.5 on the question of whether this is a distinctive practical
question.) In order to do justice to the full range of philosophical views
about moral reasoning, we will need to have a capacious understanding of what
counts as a moral question. For instance, since a prominent position about
moral reasoning is that the relevant considerations are not codifiable, we
would beg a central question if we here defined “morality”
as involving codifiable principles or rules. For present purposes, we may
understand issues about what is right or wrong, or virtuous or vicious, as
raising moral questions.”
My response: I demur if philosophers generally deny morality as listing codifiable
principles. That does not seem correct.
A21: “Even when moral questions explicitly arise in daily life, just as when
we are faced with child-rearing, agricultural, and business questions,
sometimes we act impulsively or instinctively rather than pausing to reason,
not just about what to do, but about what we ought to do. Jean-Paul Sartre
described a case of one of his students who came to him in occupied Paris
during World War II, asking advice about whether to stay by his mother, who
otherwise would have been left alone, or rather to go join the forces of the
Free French, then massing in England (Sartre 1975). In the capacious sense just
described, this is probably a moral question; and the young man paused long
enough to ask Sartre’s advice. Does that mean that this young man was reasoning
about his practical question? Not necessarily. Indeed, Sartre used the case to
expound his skepticism about the possibility of addressing such a practical
question by reasoning. But what is reasoning?”
My response: A sentimentalist would advance that it is acceptable to make
moral decisions based upon our instincts, or feelings, and I cannot fault that,
though choosing impulsively is a risky venture.
A21: “Reasoning, of the sort discussed here, is active or explicit thinking,
in which the reasoner, responsibly guided by her assessments of her reasons
(Kolodny 2005) and of any applicable requirements of rationality (Broome 2009,
2013), attempts to reach a well-supported answer to a well-defined question
(Hieronymi 2013). For Sartre’s student, at least such a question had arisen.
Indeed, the question was relatively definite, implying that the student had
already engaged in some reflection about the various alternatives available to
him – a process that has well been described as an important phase of practical
reasoning, one that aptly precedes the effort to make up one’s mind (Harman
1986, 2).
Characterizing reasoning as responsibly conducted thinking of course does
not suffice to analyze the notion. For one thing, it fails to address the
fraught question of reasoning’s relation to inference (Harman 1986, Broome
2009). In addition, it does not settle whether formulating an intention about
what to do suffices to conclude practical reasoning or whether such intentions
cannot be adequately worked out except by starting to act. Perhaps one cannot
adequately reason about how to repair a stone wall or how to make an omelet
with the available ingredients without actually starting to repair or to cook
(cf. Fernandez 2016). Still, it will do for present purposes. It suffices to
make clear that the idea of reasoning involves norms of thinking. These norms
of aptness or correctness in practical thinking surely do not require us to
think along a single prescribed pathway, but rather permit only certain
pathways and not others (Broome 2013, 219). Even so, we doubtless often fail to
live up to them.”
My response: Practical reasoning as responsibly conducted reasoning is
acceptable, and Stanford is correct that following the plan out inferentially
helps, and getting started might clarify for the agent what to do in cases
where she is unclear as how to proceed, or where to aim.
A21: “1.2 Empirical Challenges to Moral Reasoning
Our thinking, including our moral thinking, is often not explicit. We could
say that we also reason tacitly, thinking in much the same way as during
explicit reasoning, but without any explicit attempt to reach well-supported
answers. In some situations, even moral ones, we might be ill-advised to
attempt to answer our practical questions by explicit reasoning. In others, it
might even be a mistake to reason tacitly – because, say, we face a pressing
emergency. “Sometimes we should not deliberate about what to do, and just
drive” (Arpaly and Schroeder 2014, 50). Yet even if we are not called upon to
think through our options in all situations, and even if sometimes it would be
positively better if we did not, still, if we are called upon to do so, then we
should conduct our thinking responsibly: we should reason.”
My response: If our pathway to action is not explicitly clear, reasoned-out
or defined for us, or if an emergency arises, often we just have to choose and
then act, hoping our moral theory, our instincts, our guiding assumptions, and
luck allow us to have chosen wisely. Often, we just have to move, for there is
no time left.
A21: “Recent work in empirical ethics has indicated that even when we are
called upon to reason morally, we often do so badly. When asked to give reasons
for our moral intuitions, we are often “dumbfounded,” finding nothing to say in
their defense (Haidt 2001). Our thinking about hypothetical moral scenarios has
been shown to be highly sensitive to arbitrary variations, such as in the order
of presentation. Even professional philosophers have been found to be prone to
such lapses of clear thinking (e.g., Schwitzgebel & Cushman 2012). Some of
our dumbfounding and confusion has been laid at the feet of our having both a
fast, more emotional way of processing moral stimuli and a slow, more cognitive
way (e.g., Greene 2014). An alternative explanation of moral dumbfounding looks
to social norms of moral reasoning (Sneddon 2007). And a more optimistic
reaction to our confusion sees our established patterns of “moral consistency
reasoning” as being well-suited to cope with the clashing input generated by our
fast and slow systems (Campbell & Kumar 2012) or as constituting “a
flexible learning system that generates and updates a multidimensional
evaluative landscape to guide decision and action” (Railton, 2014, 813).”
My response: If we are individuating egoist, that love ourselves, we then
will more likely be in touch with our rational processes, and thus know better
how to think and reason, and if are authentic, we will have a strong, clear
conscience and so moral sense will generate directions for us that we will be
confident to follow, though neither the cognitive and slow way of making moral
decisions, or the emotional and fast way of making decisions are foolproof or
infallible.
A21: “Eventually, such empirical work on our moral reasoning may yield
revisions in our norms of moral reasoning. This has not yet happened. This
article is principally concerned with philosophical issues posed by our current
norms of moral reasoning. For example, given those norms and assuming that they
are more or less followed, how do moral considerations enter into moral
reasoning, get sorted out by it when they clash, and lead to action? And what
do those norms indicate about what we ought to do do?”
My response: Since most people are joiners, illusion-lovers, and
altruist-collectivists, the social norms they obey and reinforce will often
lead to them making poor decisions, growing out of bad practical reasoning.
A21: “1.3 Situating Moral Reasoning
The topic of moral reasoning lies in between two other commonly addressed
topics in moral philosophy. On the one side, there is the first-order question
of what moral truths there are, if any. For instance, are there any true
general principles of morality, and if so, what are they? At this level
utilitarianism competes with Kantianism, for instance, and both compete with
anti-theorists of various stripes, who recognize only particular truths about
morality (Clarke & Simpson 1989).”
My response: Metaphysically, I am mostly a cognitivist, a moral objectivist,
and a Modernist, from which it follows that moral theories are the grand
narratives of ethics, mostly meaningful and helpful in normative and applied
ethical situations.
Yes, the moderate in me allows for some moral noncognitivism, moral
subjectivity, and postmodernist skepticism about moral narratives or theories,
but the majority emphasis must be on ethical cognitivism, moral objectivity and
Modernist love of overarching stories or narratives.
Immoral or wicked people want moral systems to be rejected and dismantled so
they can be engage in wicked and immoral ways without being condemned, hindered
or socially ridiculed. They want their immoral actions and choices allowed,
tolerated, and perhaps popularized as moral choices whose bracketing is
privileged only by the individual actor or his clique—only that individual and
his gang can label an action moral or immoral, and any action which they
characterize as good is good, not matter its normative status in objective
reality.
Moral narratives are cardinal and mandatory. They are fitting, proper, relevant
to moral practice and are conceptually productive generalized guides to human
behavior and need be binding on an entire people, for that is what God is doing
with the Ten Commandments.
These theories provide relief and assistance for people, real help. To some,
every person is peerless, and their moral challenges are somewhat singular. But
more often, to perhaps to a larger extent, their problems fit within universal
moral guidelines, so ethical theories can provide through practical reasoning
applicable answers over.
The individualism is less centered in the subjectivity claim that each life
and its moral dilemmas are so unique that others cannot understand it nor offer
advice stemming from an ethical theory that is timely, relevant, and offering
relief and a pathway to good choosing.
As individuators, people meet their individualism needs, applying universal
moral principles by thinking more than feeling, but then ironically then the individual
choices become more personal and customized as the individuator lives as an
objective, existent avatar of the ideal individuating hero, the living angel.
Moral theories can cover most of the difficulties, exceptions borderline
cases and concrete issues bedeviling people.
To believe in moral theories is to assert that we can have universal moral
laws that govern and regulate human conduct, that we can judge people, their
characters, actions and choices in meangiful, knowledgeable ways most of the
time, though not all the time, that we need to be pro-life, pro-love- pro-God,
pro-cosmos most of the time, that these vying and various ethical theories be blended
in more or less emphases to form a personalized grand moral theory, with the
idea that one promotes goodness in the will in line with fielding a good will,
guided by God, so most of the time people can come to agree how to move forward.
We must live in the real world but our noble theory our moral grand
narrative can be helpful more than not if we do not rigidly seek to impose it
al specific people and particular cases.
Ethical theory is more useful than not. A theory gives us a rational model
or guideline to test our potential choices and actions. Our moral theory
provides us with a standard of beavhiro to live by.
There are universal moral scenarios that apply in most but not particular
instances in human lives. It is usually not inapplicable. It is a recipe for
action generally it is helpful more than not.
Our metaethical theory or presuppositions give us theoretical perspective so
we have an rational framework with which to place a moral choice so we can
quickly see the pros and cons to it
If we can set up a moral theory which most of a culture’s population—its
majority--subscribe to and live by, then we can build a cultural story a
civilization promoting social cohesion, where the masses share and
affectionately, loyally live out their grand narrative: this engenders a
harmonious peaceful society with law and order, coexistence and a way to
resolve peacefully and legally disputes which arise.
As a moderate I propose that one blend together the perhaps contradictory,
competing ethical theories, that ethical dialetheia and true contradictions;
exist: pluralistically we are to blend them together.
Even if we just follow one moral theory, okay but be so as an egoist individuators,
and that will give people a grand narrative in and of itself.
My version of virtue ethics: we are born evil so if learn to have a virtuous
character or a good will we practice being good until we overcome our evil
natures and have a good nature and a good will which is adopted, cultivated and
unnatural but works.
A21: “On the other side, a quite different sort of question arises from
seeking to give a metaphysical grounding for moral truths or for the claim that
there are none. Supposing there are some moral truths, what makes them
true? What account can be given of the truth-conditions of moral statements?
Here arise familiar questions of moral
skepticism and moral
relativism; here, the idea of “a reason” is wielded by many hoping
to defend a non-skeptical moral metaphysics (e.g., Smith 2013). The topic of
moral reasoning lies in between these two other familiar topics in the
following simple sense: moral reasoners operate with what they take to be
morally true but, instead of asking what makes their moral beliefs
true, they proceed responsibly to attempt to figure out what to do in
light of those considerations. The philosophical study of moral reasoning
concerns itself with the nature of these attempts.
These three topics clearly interrelate. Conceivably, the relations between
them would be so tight as to rule out any independent interest in the topic of
moral reasoning. For instance, if all that could usefully be said about moral
reasoning were that it is a matter of attending to the moral facts, then all
interest would devolve upon the question of what those facts are – with some
residual focus on the idea of moral attention (McNaughton 1988). Alternatively,
it might be thought that moral reasoning is simply a matter of applying the
correct moral theory via ordinary modes of deductive and empirical reasoning.
Again, if that were true, one’s sufficient goal would be to find that theory
and get the non-moral facts right. Neither of these reductive extremes seems
plausible, however. Take the potential reduction to getting the facts right,
first.
Contemporary advocates of the importance of correctly perceiving the morally
relevant facts tend to focus on facts that we can perceive using our ordinary
sense faculties and our ordinary capacities of recognition, such as that
this person has an infection or that this person needs my medical help.
On such a footing, it is possible to launch powerful arguments against the
claim that moral principles undergird every moral truth (Dancy 1993) and for
the claim that we can sometimes perfectly well decide what to do by acting on
the reasons we perceive instinctively – or as we have been trained – without
engaging in any moral reasoning. Yet this is not a sound footing for
arguing that moral reasoning, beyond simply attending to the moral facts, is
always unnecessary. On the contrary, we often find ourselves facing novel
perplexities and moral conflicts in which our moral perception is an inadequate
guide.”
My response: I am not an epistemological dogmatist, that moral principles
undergird every moral proposition, but the noncognitivists and sentimentalists
either cynically or unintentionally seek to and do grow evil in the world, when
they deny that general acceptance of and adherence to a moral theory—any
reasonable moral theory--undergirds the great majority of human chocies, and we
can about 85% of the time identify what is evil and what is good.
A21: “In addressing the moral questions surrounding whether society ought to
enforce surrogate-motherhood contracts, for instance, the scientific and
technological novelties involved make our moral perceptions unreliable and
shaky guides. When a medical researcher who has noted an individual’s illness
also notes the fact that diverting resources to caring, clinically, for
this individual would inhibit the progress of my research, thus harming the
long-term health chances of future sufferers of this illness, he or she
comes face to face with conflicting moral considerations. At this juncture, it
is far less plausible or satisfying simply to say that, employing one’s
ordinary sensory and recognitional capacities, one sees what is to be done,
both things considered. To posit a special faculty of moral intuition that
generates such overall judgments in the face of conflicting considerations is
to wheel in a deus ex machina. It cuts inquiry short in a way that
serves the purposes of fiction better than it serves the purposes of
understanding. It is plausible instead to suppose that moral reasoning comes in
at this point (Campbell & Kumar 2012).
For present purposes, it is worth noting, David Hume and the moral sense
theorists do not count as short-circuiting our understanding of moral reasoning
in this way. It is true that Hume presents himself, especially in the Treatise
of Human Nature, as a disbeliever in any specifically practical or moral
reasoning. In doing so, however, he employs an exceedingly narrow definition of
“reasoning” (Hume 2000, Book I, Part iii, sect. ii). For present purposes, by
contrast, we are using a broader working gloss of “reasoning,” one not
controlled by an ambition to parse out the relative contributions of (the
faculty of) reason and of the passions. And about moral reasoning in this
broader sense, as responsible thinking about what one ought to do, Hume has
many interesting things to say, starting with the thought that moral
reasoning must involve a double correction of perspective (see section
2.4) adequately to account for the claims of other people and of the
farther future, a double correction that is accomplished with the aid of the
so-called “calm passions.””
My response: Moral reasoning or practical reasoning should guide our moral
choices, but if we feel or intuitively sense (should that intuition be
rational, conceptual, and linguistically expressible, or is just a nonverbal,
felt, reaction of approval or disapproval to what we have encountered or
experienced), strongly, that moral sensation should be taken seriously, perhaps
as the decisive conscious reaction to a potential action.
A21: “If we turn from the possibility that perceiving the facts aright will
displace moral reasoning to the possibility that applying the correct moral
theory will displace – or exhaust – moral reasoning, there are again reasons to
be skeptical. One reason is that moral theories do not arise in a vacuum;
instead, they develop against a broad backdrop of moral convictions. Insofar as
the first potentially reductive strand, emphasizing the importance of
perceiving moral facts, has force – and it does have some – it also tends to
show that moral theories need to gain support by systematizing or accounting
for a wide range of moral facts (Sidgwick 1981). As in most other arenas in
which theoretical explanation is called for, the degree of explanatory success
will remain partial and open to improvement via revisions in the theory (see section
2.6). Unlike the natural sciences, however, moral theory is an
endeavor that, as John Rawls once put it, is “Socratic” in that it is a subject
pertaining to actions “shaped by self-examination” (Rawls 1971, 48f.). If this
observation is correct, it suggests that the moral questions we set out to
answer arise from our reflections about what matters. By the same token – and
this is the present point – a moral theory is subject to being overturned
because it generates concrete implications that do not sit well with us on due
reflection. This being so, and granting the great complexity of the moral
terrain, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever generate a moral theory on
the basis of which we can serenely and confidently proceed in a deductive way
to generate answers to what we ought to do in all concrete cases. This
conclusion is reinforced by a second consideration, namely that insofar as a
moral theory is faithful to the complexity of the moral phenomena, it will
contain within it many possibilities for conflicts among its own elements. Even
if it does deploy some priority rules, these are unlikely to be able to cover
all contingencies. Hence, some moral reasoning that goes beyond the deductive
application of the correct theory is bound to be needed.
In short, a sound understanding of moral reasoning will not take the form of
reducing it to one of the other two levels of moral philosophy identified
above. Neither the demand to attend to the moral facts nor the directive to
apply the correct moral theory exhausts or sufficiently describes moral
reasoning.
1.4 Gaining Moral Insight from Studying Moral Reasoning
In addition to posing philosophical problems in its own right, moral
reasoning is of interest on account of its implications for moral facts and
moral theories. Accordingly, attending to moral reasoning will often be useful
to those whose real interest is in determining the right answer to some
concrete moral problem or in arguing for or against some moral theory. The
characteristic ways we attempt to work through a given sort of moral quandary
can be just as revealing about our considered approaches to these matters as
are any bottom-line judgments we may characteristically come to. Further, we
may have firm, reflective convictions about how a given class of problems is
best tackled, deliberatively, even when we remain in doubt about what should be
done. In such cases, attending to the modes of moral reasoning that we
characteristically accept can usefully expand the set of moral information from
which we start, suggesting ways to structure the competing considerations.
Facts about the nature of moral inference and moral reasoning may have
important direct implications for moral theory. For instance, it might be taken
to be a condition of adequacy of any moral theory that it play a practically
useful role in our efforts at self-understanding and deliberation. It should be
deliberation-guiding (Richardson 2018, §1.2). If this condition is accepted,
then any moral theory that would require agents to engage in abstruse or
difficult reasoning may be inadequate for that reason, as would be any theory
that assumes that ordinary individuals are generally unable to reason in the
ways that the theory calls for. J.S. Mill (1979) conceded that we are generally
unable to do the calculations called for by utilitarianism, as he understood
it, and argued that we should be consoled by the fact that, over the course of
history, experience has generated secondary principles that guide us well
enough. Rather more dramatically, R. M. Hare defended utilitarianism as well
capturing the reasoning of ideally informed and rational “archangels” (1981).
Taking seriously a deliberation-guidance desideratum for moral theory would
favor, instead, theories that more directly inform efforts at moral reasoning
by we “proletarians,” to use Hare’s contrasting term.
Accordingly, the close relations between moral reasoning, the moral facts,
and moral theory do not eliminate moral reasoning as a topic of interest. To
the contrary, because moral reasoning has important implications about moral
facts and moral theories, these close relations lend additional interest to the
topic of moral reasoning.
1.5 How Distinct is Moral Reasoning from Practical Reasoning in General?
The final threshold question is whether moral reasoning is truly distinct
from practical reasoning more generally understood. (The question of whether
moral reasoning, even if practical, is structurally distinct from theoretical
reasoning that simply proceeds from a proper recognition of the moral facts has
already been implicitly addressed and answered, for the purposes of the present
discussion, in the affirmative.) In addressing this final question, it is
difficult to overlook the way different moral theories project quite different
models of moral reasoning – again a link that might be pursued by the moral
philosopher seeking leverage in either direction. For instance, Aristotle’s
views might be as follows: a quite general account can be given of practical
reasoning, which includes selecting means to ends and determining the
constituents of a desired activity. The difference between the reasoning of a
vicious person and that of a virtuous person differs not at all in its
structure, but only in its content, for the virtuous person pursues true goods,
whereas the vicious person simply gets side-tracked by apparent ones. To be
sure, the virtuous person may be able to achieve a greater integration of his
or her ends via practical reasoning (because of the way the various virtues
cohere), but this is a difference in the result of practical reasoning and not
in its structure. At an opposite extreme, Kant’s categorical imperative has
been taken to generate an approach to practical reasoning (via a “typic of practical
judgment”) that is distinctive from other practical reasoning both in the range
of considerations it addresses and its structure (Nell 1975). Whereas
prudential practical reasoning, on Kant’s view, aims to maximize one’s
happiness, moral reasoning addresses the potential universalizability of the
maxims – roughly, the intentions – on which one acts. Views intermediate
between Aristotle’s and Kant’s in this respect include Hare’s utilitarian view
and Aquinas’ natural-law view. On Hare’s view, just as an ideal prudential
agent applies maximizing rationality to his or her own preferences, an ideal
moral agent’s reasoning applies maximizing rationality to the set of everyone’s
preferences that its archangelic capacity for sympathy has enabled it to
internalize (Hare 1981). Thomistic, natural-law views share the Aristotelian
view about the general unity of practical reasoning in pursuit of the good,
rightly or wrongly conceived, but add that practical reason, in addition to
demanding that we pursue the fundamental human goods, also, and distinctly,
demands that we not attack these goods. In this way, natural-law views
incorporate some distinctively moral structuring – such as the distinctions
between doing and allowing and the so-called doctrine
of double effect’s distinction between intending as a means and
accepting as a by-product – within a unified account of practical reasoning
(see entry on the natural
law tradition in ethics). In light of this diversity of views about
the relation between moral reasoning and practical or prudential reasoning, a
general account of moral reasoning that does not want to presume the
correctness of a definite moral theory will do well to remain agnostic on the
question of how moral reasoning relates to non-moral practical reasoning.”
My response: It would seem obvious that one’s metaethical or theoretical
moral reasoning should be coherent and
consistent with one moral choices, and as coherent and consistent as possible, with
one’s practical moral reasoning to complete the selected action.
A21: “2. General Philosophical Questions about Moral Reasoning
To be sure, most great philosophers who have addressed the nature of moral
reasoning were far from agnostic about the content of the correct moral theory,
and developed their reflections about moral reasoning in support of or in
derivation from their moral theory. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions that
are somewhat agnostic about the content of moral theory have arisen around
important and controversial aspects of moral reasoning. We may group these
around the following seven questions:
- How do relevant
considerations get taken up in moral reasoning?
- Is it essential to moral
reasoning for the considerations it takes up to be crystallized into, or
ranged under, principles?
- How do we sort out which
moral considerations are most relevant?
- In what ways do
motivational elements shape moral reasoning?
- What is the best way to
model the kinds of conflicts among considerations that arise in moral
reasoning?
- Does moral reasoning
include learning from experience and changing one’s mind?
- How can we reason, morally,
with one another?
The remainder of this article takes up these seven questions in turn.
2.1 Moral Uptake
One advantage to defining “reasoning” capaciously, as here, is that it helps
one recognize that the processes whereby we come to be concretely aware of
moral issues are integral to moral reasoning as it might more narrowly be
understood. Recognizing moral issues when they arise requires a highly trained
set of capacities and a broad range of emotional attunements. Philosophers of
the moral sense school of the 17th and 18th centuries stressed innate emotional
propensities, such as sympathy with other humans. Classically influenced virtue
theorists, by contrast, give more importance to the training of perception and
the emotional growth that must accompany it. Among contemporary philosophers
working in empirical ethics there is a similar divide, with some arguing that
we process situations using an innate moral grammar (Mikhail 2011) and some
emphasizing the role of emotions in that processing (Haidt 2001, Prinz 2007,
Greene 2014). For the moral reasoner, a crucial task for our capacities of
moral recognition is to mark out certain features of a situation as being
morally salient. Sartre’s student, for instance, focused on the competing
claims of his mother and the Free French, giving them each an importance to his
situation that he did not give to eating French cheese or wearing a uniform. To
say that certain features are marked out as morally salient is not to imply
that the features thus singled out answer to the terms of some general
principle or other: we will come to the question of particularism, below. Rather,
it is simply to say that recognitional attention must have a selective focus.
What will be counted as a moral issue or difficulty, in the sense requiring
moral agents’ recognition, will again vary by moral theory. Not all moral
theories would count filial loyalty and patriotism as moral duties. It is only
at great cost, however, that any moral theory could claim to do without a layer
of moral thinking involving situation-recognition. A calculative sort of
utilitarianism, perhaps, might be imagined according to which there is no need
to spot a moral issue or difficulty, as every choice node in life
presents the agent with the same, utility-maximizing task. Perhaps Jeremy
Bentham held a utilitarianism of this sort. For the more plausible
utilitarianisms mentioned above, however, such as Mill’s and Hare’s, agents
need not always calculate afresh, but must instead be alive to the possibility
that because the ordinary “landmarks and direction posts” lead one astray in
the situation at hand, they must make recourse to a more direct and critical
mode of moral reasoning. Recognizing whether one is in one of those situations
thus becomes the principal recognitional task for the utilitarian agent.
(Whether this task can be suitably confined, of course, has long been one of
the crucial questions about whether such indirect forms of utilitarianism,
attractive on other grounds, can prevent themselves from collapsing into a more
Benthamite, direct form: cf. Brandt 1979.)
Note that, as we have been describing moral uptake, we have not implied that
what is perceived is ever a moral fact. Rather, it might be that what is
perceived is some ordinary, descriptive feature of a situation that is, for
whatever reason, morally relevant. An account of moral uptake will
interestingly impinge upon the metaphysics of moral facts, however, if it holds
that moral facts can be perceived. Importantly intermediate, in this respect,
is the set of judgments involving so-called “thick” evaluative concepts – for
example, that someone is callous, boorish, just, or brave (see the entry on thick
ethical concepts). These do not invoke the supposedly “thinner”
terms of overall moral assessment, “good,” or “right.” Yet they are not
innocent of normative content, either. Plainly, we do recognize callousness
when we see clear cases of it. Plainly, too – whatever the metaphysical
implications of the last fact – our ability to describe our situations in these
thick normative terms is crucial to our ability to reason morally.
It is debated how closely our abilities of moral discernment are tied to our
moral motivations. For Aristotle and many of his ancient successors, the two
are closely linked, in that someone not brought up into virtuous motivations
will not see things correctly. For instance, cowards will overestimate dangers,
the rash will underestimate them, and the virtuous will perceive them correctly
(Eudemian Ethics 1229b23–27). By the Stoics, too, having the right
motivations was regarded as intimately tied to perceiving the world correctly;
but whereas Aristotle saw the emotions as allies to enlist in support of sound
moral discernment, the Stoics saw them as inimical to clear perception of the
truth (cf. Nussbaum 2001). “
My response: I approve of the author’s take that our moral discernment
abilities are tied to our moral motivations, so the egoist will be more
inclined to make sound morally sensed and morally reasoned discernments than
the altruist.
A21:”2.2 Moral Principles
That one discerns features and qualities of some situation that are relevant
to sizing it up morally does not yet imply that one explicitly or even
implicitly employs any general claims in describing it. Perhaps all that one
perceives are particularly embedded features and qualities, without saliently
perceiving them as instantiations of any types. Sartre’s student may
be focused on his mother and on the particular plights of several of his fellow
Frenchmen under Nazi occupation, rather than on any purported requirements of
filial duty or patriotism. Having become aware of some moral issue in such
relatively particular terms, he might proceed directly to sorting out the
conflict between them. Another possibility, however, and one that we frequently
seem to exploit, is to formulate the issue in general terms: “An only child
should stick by an otherwise isolated parent,” for instance, or “one should
help those in dire need if one can do so without significant personal
sacrifice.” Such general statements would be examples of “moral principles,” in
a broad sense. (We do not here distinguish between principles and rules. those
who do include Dworkin 1978 and Gert 1998.)
We must be careful, here, to distinguish the issue of whether principles
commonly play an implicit or explicit role in moral reasoning, including
well-conducted moral reasoning, from the issue of whether principles
necessarily figure as part of the basis of moral truth. The latter issue is
best understood as a metaphysical question about the nature and basis of moral
facts. What is currently known as moral
particularism is the view that there are no defensible moral
principles and that moral reasons, or well-grounded moral facts, can exist
independently of any basis in a general principle. A contrary view holds that
moral reasons are necessarily general, whether because the sources of their
justification are all general or because a moral claim is ill-formed if it
contains particularities. But whether principles play a useful role in moral
reasoning is certainly a different question from whether principles play a necessary
role in accounting for the ultimate truth-conditions of moral statements. Moral
particularism, as just defined, denies their latter role. Some moral
particularists seem also to believe that moral particularism implies
that moral principles cannot soundly play a useful role in reasoning. This
claim is disputable, as it seems a contingent matter whether the relevant
particular facts arrange themselves in ways susceptible to general summary and
whether our cognitive apparatus can cope with them at all without employing
general principles. Although the metaphysical controversy about moral
particularism lies largely outside our topic, we will revisit it in section
2.5, in connection with the weighing of conflicting reasons.”
My response: I do not know if I am following this argument successfully, but
my intuition as a moral theorist is that ethical theory and the moral
principles which comprise it are important for moral reasoning, and we should
be able to infer deductively guiding rules from such principles.
A21: “With regard to moral reasoning, while there are some self-styled
“anti-theorists” who deny that abstract structures of linked generalities are
important to moral reasoning (Clarke, et al. 1989), it is more common to find
philosophers who recognize both some role for particular judgment and some role
for moral principles. Thus, neo-Aristotelians like Nussbaum who emphasize the
importance of “finely tuned and richly aware” particular discernment also
regard that discernment as being guided by a set of generally describable
virtues whose general descriptions will come into play in at least some kinds
of cases (Nussbaum 1990). “Situation ethicists” of an earlier generation (e.g.
Fletcher 1997) emphasized the importance of taking into account a wide range of
circumstantial differentiae, but against the background of some general
principles whose application the differentiae help sort out. Feminist ethicists
influenced by Carol Gilligan’s path breaking work on moral development have
stressed the moral centrality of the kind of care and discernment that are
salient and well-developed by people immersed in particular relationships (Held
1995); but this emphasis is consistent with such general principles as “one
ought to be sensitive to the wishes of one’s friends”(see the entry on feminist
moral psychology). Again, if we distinguish the question of whether
principles are useful in responsibly-conducted moral thinking from the question
of whether moral reasons ultimately all derive from general principles, and
concentrate our attention solely on the former, we will see that some of the
opposition to general moral principles melts away.
It should be noted that we have been using a weak notion of generality,
here. It is contrasted only with the kind of strict particularity that comes
with indexicals and proper names. General statements or claims – ones that
contain no such particular references – are not necessarily universal
generalizations, making an assertion about all cases of the mentioned
type. Thus, “one should normally help those in dire need” is a general
principle, in this weak sense. Possibly, such logically loose principles would
be obfuscatory in the context of an attempt to reconstruct the ultimate
truth-conditions of moral statements. Such logically loose principles would
clearly be useless in any attempt to generate a deductively tight “practical
syllogism.” In our day-to-day, non-deductive reasoning, however, such logically
loose principles appear to be quite useful. (Recall that we are understanding
“reasoning” quite broadly, as responsibly conducted thinking: nothing in this
understanding of reasoning suggests any uniquely privileged place for deductive
inference: cf. Harman 1986. For more on defeasible or “default” principles, see
section
2.5.)
In this terminology, establishing that general principles are essential to
moral reasoning leaves open the further question whether logically tight, or
exceptionless, principles are also essential to moral reasoning. Certainly,
much of our actual moral reasoning seems to be driven by attempts to recast or
reinterpret principles so that they can be taken to be exceptionless.
Adherents and inheritors of the natural-law tradition in ethics (e.g. Donagan
1977) are particularly supple defenders of exceptionless moral principles, as
they are able to avail themselves not only of a refined tradition of casuistry
but also of a wide array of subtle – some would say overly subtle –
distinctions, such as those mentioned above between doing and allowing and
between intending as a means and accepting as a byproduct.
A related role for a strong form of generality in moral reasoning comes from
the Kantian thought that one’s moral reasoning must counter one’s tendency to
make exceptions for oneself. Accordingly, Kant holds, as we have noted, that we
must ask whether the maxims of our actions can serve as universal laws. As most
contemporary readers understand this demand, it requires that we engage in a
kind of hypothetical generalization across agents, and ask about the
implications of everybody acting that way in those circumstances. The grounds
for developing Kant’s thought in this direction have been well explored (e.g.,
Nell 1975, Korsgaard 1996, Engstrom 2009). The importance and the difficulties
of such a hypothetical generalization test in ethics were discussed the
influential works Gibbard 1965 and Goldman 1974.
2.3 Sorting Out Which Considerations Are Most Relevant
Whether or not moral considerations need the backing of general principles,
we must expect situations of action to present us with multiple moral
considerations. In addition, of course, these situations will also present us
with a lot of information that is not morally relevant. On any realistic
account, a central task of moral reasoning is to sort out relevant
considerations from irrelevant ones, as well as to determine which are
especially relevant and which only slightly so. That a certain woman is Sartre’s
student’s mother seems arguably to be a morally relevant fact; what
about the fact (supposing it is one) that she has no other children to take
care of her? Addressing the task of sorting what is morally relevant from what
is not, some philosophers have offered general accounts of moral relevant
features. Others have given accounts of how we sort out which of the relevant
features are most relevant, a process of thinking that sometimes goes
by the name of “casuistry.”
Before we look at ways of sorting out which features are morally relevant or
most morally relevant, it may be useful to note a prior step taken by
some casuists, which was to attempt to set out a schema that would capture all
of the features of an action or proposed action. The Roman Catholic casuists of
the middle ages did so by drawing on Aristotle’s categories. Accordingly, they
asked, where, when, why, how, by what means, to whom, or by whom the action in
question is to be done or avoided (see Jonsen and Toulmin 1988). The idea was
that complete answers to these questions would contain all of the features of
the action, of which the morally relevant ones would be a subset. Although
metaphysically uninteresting, the idea of attempting to list all of an action’s
features in this way represents a distinctive – and extreme – heuristic for
moral reasoning.
Turning to the morally relevant features, one of the most developed accounts
is Bernard Gert’s. He develops a list of features relevant to whether the
violation of a moral rule should be generally allowed. Given the designed
function of Gert’s list, it is natural that most of his morally relevant
features make reference to the set of moral rules he defended. Accordingly,
some of Gert’s distinctions between dimensions of relevant features reflect
controversial stances in moral theory. For example, one of the dimensions is
whether “the violation [is] done intentionally or only knowingly” (Gert 1998,
234) – a distinction that those who reject the doctrine of double effect would
not find relevant.
In deliberating about what we ought, morally, to do, we also often attempt
to figure out which considerations are most relevant. To take an issue
mentioned above: Are surrogate motherhood contracts more akin to agreements
with babysitters (clearly acceptable) or to agreements with prostitutes (not
clearly so)? That is, which feature of surrogate motherhood is more relevant:
that it involves a contract for child-care services or that it involves payment
for the intimate use of the body? Both in such relatively novel cases and in
more familiar ones, reasoning by analogy plays a large role in ordinary moral
thinking. When this reasoning by analogy starts to become systematic – a social
achievement that requires some historical stability and reflectiveness about
what are taken to be moral norms – it begins to exploit comparison to cases
that are “paradigmatic,” in the sense of being taken as settled. Within such a
stable background, a system of casuistry can develop that lends some order to
the appeal to analogous cases. To use an analogy: the availability of a widely
accepted and systematic set of analogies and the availability of what are taken
to be moral norms may stand to one another as chicken does to egg: each may startbe
an indispensable moment in the genesis of the other.”
My response: Casuistry seems to be applying a generalized abstract principle
to one moral act, and then generalizing it and applying it to another moral
act, but there is a taint of corrupt rationalization to justify evil deeds
which goes along with this.
It is better to morally reason from an act, make a generalization about it,
and then by analogy apply that conclusion or theoretical reason to a new
instance of behavior without all of this historical baggage, of warped moral
reasoning, painting all theoretical moral reasoning a suspect as it surely is
not?
A21: “Casuistry, thus understood, is an indispensable aid to moral
reasoning. At least, that it is would follow from conjoining two features of
the human moral situation mentioned above: the multifariousness of moral
considerations that arise in particular cases and the need and possibility for
employing moral principles in sound moral reasoning. We require moral judgment,
not simply a deductive application of principles or a particularist bottom-line
intuition about what we should do. This judgment must be responsible to moral
principles yet cannot be straightforwardly derived from them. Accordingly, our
moral judgment is greatly aided if it is able to rest on the sort of heuristic
support that casuistry offers. Thinking through which of two analogous cases
provides a better key to understanding the case at hand is a useful way of
organizing our moral reasoning, and one on which we must continue to depend. If
we lack the kind of broad consensus on a set of paradigm cases on which the
Renaissance Catholic or Talmudic casuists could draw, our casuistic efforts
will necessarily be more controversial and tentative than theirs; but we are
not wholly without settled cases from which to work. Indeed, as Jonsen and
Toulmin suggest at the outset of their thorough explanation and defense of
casuistry, the depth of disagreement about moral theories that characterizes a
pluralist society may leave us having to rest comparatively more
weight on the cases about which we can find agreement than did the classic
casuists (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988).”
My response I know very little about casuistry, but if this analytical
framework of studying a problem and framing an analogous or different moral
problem in light of his framework might make this heuristic applied method
useful, instructive and illuminating. Compare/ contrast excises are often
helpful.
A21: “Despite the long history of casuistry, there is little that can
usefully be said about how one ought to reason about competing analogies. In
the law, where previous cases have precedential importance, more can be said.
As Sunstein notes (Sunstein 1996, chap. 3), the law deals with particular
cases, which are always “potentially distinguishable” (72); yet the law also
imposes “a requirement of practical consistency” (67). This combination of
features makes reasoning by analogy particularly influential in the law, for
one must decide whether a given case is more like one set of precedents or more
like another. Since the law must proceed even within a pluralist society such
as ours, Sunstein argues, we see that analogical reasoning can go forward on
the basis of “incompletely theorized judgments” or of what Rawls calls an
“overlapping consensus” (Rawls 1996). That is, although a robust use of
analogous cases depends, as we have noted, on some shared background agreement,
this agreement need not extend to all matters or all levels of individuals’
moral thinking. Accordingly, although in a pluralist society we may lack the
kind of comprehensive normative agreement that made the high casuistry of
Renaissance Christianity possible, the path of the law suggests that
normatively forceful, case-based, analogical reasoning can still go on. A
modern, competing approach to case-based or precedent-respecting reasoning has
been developed by John F. Horty (2016). On Horty’s approach, which builds on
the default logic developed in (Horty 2012), the body of precedent
systematically shifts the weights of the reasons arising in a new case.
Reasoning by appeal to cases is also a favorite mode of some recent moral
philosophers. Since our focus here is not on the methods of moral theory, we do
not need to go into any detail in comparing different ways in which
philosophers wield cases for and against alternative moral theories. There is,
however, an important and broadly applicable point worth making about ordinary
reasoning by reference to cases that emerges most clearly from the
philosophical use of such reasoning. Philosophers often feel free to imagine
cases, often quite unlikely ones, in order to attempt to isolate relevant
differences. An infamous example is a pair of cases offered by James Rachels to
cast doubt on the moral significance of the distinction between killing and
letting die, here slightly redescribed. In both cases, there is at the outset a
boy in a bathtub and a greedy older cousin downstairs who will inherit the
family manse if and only if the boy predeceases him (Rachels 1975). In Case A,
the cousin hears a thump, runs up to find the boy unconscious in the bath, and
reaches out to turn on the tap so that the water will rise up to drown the boy.
In Case B, the cousin hears a thump, runs up to find the boy unconscious in the
bath with the water running, and decides to sit back and do nothing until the
boy drowns. Since there is surely no moral difference between these cases,
Rachels argued, the general distinction between killing and letting die is
undercut. “Not so fast!” is the well-justified reaction (cf. Beauchamp 1979).
Just because a factor is morally relevant in a certain way in comparing one
pair of cases does not mean that it either is or must be relevant in the same
way or to the same degree when comparing other cases. Shelly Kagan has dubbed
the failure to take account of this fact of contextual interaction when
wielding comparison cases the “additive fallacy” (1988). Kagan concludes from
this that the reasoning of moral theorists must depend upon some theory that
helps us anticipate and account for ways in which factors will interact in
various contexts. A parallel lesson, reinforcing what we have already observed
in connection with casuistry proper, would apply for moral reasoning in
general: reasoning from cases must at least implicitly rely upon a set of
organizing judgments or beliefs, of a kind that would, on some understandings,
count as a moral “theory.” If this is correct, it provides another kind of
reason to think that moral considerations could be crystallized into principles
that make manifest the organizing structure involved.
2.4 Moral Reasoning and Moral Psychology
We are concerned here with moral reasoning as a species of practical
reasoning – reasoning directed to deciding what to do and, if successful,
issuing in an intention. But how can such practical reasoning succeed? How can
moral reasoning hook up with motivationally effective psychological states so
as to have this kind of causal effect? “Moral psychology” – the traditional
name for the philosophical study of intention and action – has a lot to say to
such questions, both in its traditional, a priori form and its newly
popular empirical form. In addition, the conclusions of moral psychology can
have substantive moral implications, for it may be reasonable to assume that if
there are deep reasons that a given type of moral reasoning cannot be
practical, then any principles that demand such reasoning are unsound. In this
spirit, Samuel Scheffler has explored “the importance for moral philosophy of
some tolerably realistic understanding of human motivational psychology”
(Scheffler 1992, 8) and Peter Railton has developed the idea that certain moral
principles might generate a kind of “alienation” (Railton 1984). In short, we
may be interested in what makes practical reasoning of a certain sort
psychologically possible both for its own sake and as a way of working out some
of the content of moral theory. “
My response: If moral reasoning is practical reasoning (applied ethics use),
then theoretical reasoning is needed too to be rounded to guarantee that what
the actor intended is effectiveand if he
acted to complete his intention is ethically and situationally relevant.
A21: “The issue of psychological possibility is an important one for all
kinds of practical reasoning (cf. Audi 1989). In morality, it is especially
pressing, as morality often asks individuals to depart from satisfying their
own interests. As a result, it may appear that moral reasoning’s practical
effect could not be explained by a simple appeal to the initial motivations
that shape or constitute someone’s interests, in combination with a
requirement, like that mentioned above, to will the necessary means to one’s
ends. Morality, it may seem, instead requires individuals to act on ends that
may not be part of their “motivational set,” in the terminology of Williams
1981. How can moral reasoning lead people to do that? The question is a
traditional one. Plato’s Republic answered that the appearances are
deceiving, and that acting morally is, in fact, in the enlightened
self-interest of the agent. Kant, in stark contrast, held that our transcendent
capacity to act on our conception of a practical law enables us to set ends and
to follow morality even when doing so sharply conflicts with our interests.
Many other answers have been given. In recent times, philosophers have defended
what has been called “internalism” about morality, which claims that there is a
necessary conceptual link between agents’ moral judgment and their motivation.
Michael Smith, for instance, puts the claim as follows (Smith 1994, 61):
If an agent judges that it is right for her to Φ in
circumstances C, then either she is motivated to
Φ in C or she is practically irrational.”
My response: I am not understanding or following the
argument well at this point, but it seems to me that our moral judgment, based
in deciding based on one’s moral reasoning and feelings, judges in line with
one’s motivation, be it self-centered or other-centered, good or evil.
Generally, one’s
motivation will run parallel to one’s will, a kindly motivation will emanate
from a good will, and that brings about moral judgements. If one’s motivation
is cruel, sadistic or power-grasping, then it is in line with one’s bad will,
and will be reflected as one makes immoral judgements.
A21: “Even this defeasible version of moral judgment internalism may be too
strong; but instead of pursuing this issue further, let us turn to a question
more internal to moral reasoning. (For more on the issue of moral judgment
internalism, see moral
motivation.)
The traditional question we were just glancing at picks up when moral
reasoning is done. Supposing that we have some moral conclusion, it asks how
agents can be motivated to go along with it. A different question about the
intersection of moral reasoning and moral psychology, one more immanent to the
former, concerns how motivational elements shape the reasoning process itself.
A powerful philosophical picture of human psychology, stemming from Hume,
insists that beliefs and desires are distinct existences (Hume 2000, Book II,
part iii, sect. iii; cf. Smith 1994, 7). This means that there is always a
potential problem about how reasoning, which seems to work by concatenating
beliefs, links up to the motivations that desire provides. The paradigmatic
link is that of instrumental action: the desire to Ψ links with the belief that
by Φing in circumstances C one will Ψ. Accordingly, philosophers who
have examined moral reasoning within an essentially Humean, belief-desire
psychology have sometimes accepted a constrained account of moral reasoning.
Hume’s own account exemplifies the sort of constraint that is involved. As Hume
has it, the calm passions support the dual correction of perspective
constitutive of morality, alluded to above. Since these calm passions are seen
as competing with our other passions in essentially the same motivational
coinage, as it were, our passions limit the reach of moral reasoning.”
My response: Again, it seems obvious to me that moral beliefs can and often
do conflict with our base desires. As moral, virtuous adults of self-love and
good will, our moral reasoning must lead to action conclusions and choices
chosen which match those action conclusions, and our motivation and desires
must be made to come into line with moral choices consistent with having and
maintaining our good will and good reputation. Base desires which we seek to
fulfill cannot be our moral motivation and then lead to moral judgments to
match those base desires and motivation.
A21: “An important step away from a narrow understanding of Humean moral
psychology is taken if one recognizes the existence of what Rawls has called
“principle-dependent desires” (Rawls 1996, 82–83; Rawls 2000, 46–47). These are
desires whose objects cannot be characterized without reference to some
rational or moral principle. An important special case of these is that of
“conception-dependent desires,” in which the principle-dependent desire in
question is seen by the agent as belonging to a broader conception, and as
important on that account (Rawls 1996, 83–84; Rawls 2000, 148–152). For
instance, conceiving of oneself as a citizen, one may desire to bear one’s fair
share of society’s burdens. Although it may look like any content, including
this, may substitute for Ψ in the Humean conception of desire, and although
Hume set out to show how moral sentiments such as pride could be explained in
terms of simple psychological mechanisms, his influential empiricism actually
tends to restrict the possible content of desires. Introducing
principle-dependent desires thus seems to mark a departure from a Humean
psychology. As Rawls remarks, if “we may find ourselves drawn to the
conceptions and ideals that both the right and the good express … , [h]ow is
one to fix limits on what people might be moved by in thought and deliberation
and hence may act from?” (1996, 85). While Rawls developed this point by
contrasting Hume’s moral psychology with Kant’s, the same basic point is also
made by neo-Aristotelians (e.g., McDowell 1998).
The introduction of principle-dependent desires bursts any would-be
naturalist limit on their content; nonetheless, some philosophers hold that
this notion remains too beholden to an essentially Humean picture to be able to
capture the idea of a moral commitment. Desires, it may seem, remain
motivational items that compete on the basis of strength. Saying that one’s
desire to be just may be outweighed by one’s desire for advancement may seem to
fail to capture the thought that one has a commitment – even a non-absolute one
– to justice. Sartre designed his example of the student torn between staying
with his mother and going to fight with the Free French so as to make it seem
implausible that he ought to decide simply by determining which he more
strongly wanted to do.
One way to get at the idea of commitment is to emphasize our capacity to
reflect about what we want. By this route, one might distinguish, in the
fashion of Harry Frankfurt, between the strength of our desires and “the
importance of what we care about” (Frankfurt 1988). Although this idea is
evocative, it provides relatively little insight into how it is that
we thus reflect. Another way to model commitment is to take it that our
intentions operate at a level distinct from our desires, structuring what we are
willing to reconsider at any point in our deliberations (e.g. Bratman 1999).
While this two-level approach offers some advantages, it is limited by its
concession of a kind of normative primacy to the unreconstructed desires at the
unreflective level. A more integrated approach might model the psychology of
commitment in a way that reconceives the nature of desire from the ground up.
One attractive possibility is to return to the Aristotelian conception of
desire as being for the sake of some good or apparent good (cf. Richardson
2004). On this conception, the end for the sake of which an action is done
plays an important regulating role, indicating, in part, what one will not
do (Richardson 2018, §§8.3–8.4). Reasoning about final ends accordingly has a
distinctive character (see Richardson 1994, Schmidtz 1995). Whatever the best
philosophical account of the notion of a commitment – for another alternative,
see (Tiberius 2000) – much of our moral reasoning does seem to involve
expressions of and challenges to our commitments (Anderson and Pildes 2000).
Recent experimental work, employing both survey instruments and brain
imaging technologies, has allowed philosophers to approach questions about the
psychological basis of moral reasoning from novel angles. The initial brain
data seems to show that individuals with damage to the pre-frontal lobes tend
to reason in more straightforwardly consequentialist fashion than those without
such damage (Koenigs et al. 2007). Some theorists take this finding as tending
to confirm that fully competent human moral reasoning goes beyond a simple
weighing of pros and cons to include assessment of moral constraints (e.g.,
Wellman & Miller 2008, Young & Saxe 2008). Others, however, have argued
that the emotional responses of the prefrontal lobes interfere with the more
sober and sound, consequentialist-style reasoning of the other parts of the
brain (e.g. Greene 2014). The survey data reveals or confirms, among other
things, interesting, normatively loaded asymmetries in our attribution of such
concepts as responsibility and causality (Knobe 2006). It also reveals that
many of moral theory’s most subtle distinctions, such as the distinction
between an intended means and a foreseen side-effect, are deeply built into our
psychologies, being present cross-culturally and in young children, in a way
that suggests to some the possibility of an innate “moral grammar” (Mikhail
2011).
A final question about the connection between moral motivation and moral
reasoning is whether someone without the right motivational commitments can
reason well, morally. On Hume’s official, narrow conception of reasoning, which
essentially limits it to tracing empirical and logical connections, the answer
would be yes. The vicious person could trace the causal and logical
implications of acting in a certain way just as a virtuous person could. The
only difference would be practical, not rational: the two would not act in the
same way. Note, however, that the Humean’s affirmative answer depends on
departing from the working definition of “moral reasoning” used in this
article, which casts it as a species of practical reasoning. Interestingly,
Kant can answer “yes” while still casting moral reasoning as practical. On his
view in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason,
reasoning well, morally, does not depend on any prior motivational commitment,
yet remains practical reasoning. That is because he thinks the moral law can
itself generate motivation. (Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and Religion
offer a more complex psychology.) For Aristotle, by contrast, an agent whose
motivations are not virtuously constituted will systematically misperceive what
is good and what is bad, and hence will be unable to reason excellently. The
best reasoning that a vicious person is capable of, according to Aristotle, is
a defective simulacrum of practical wisdom that he calls “cleverness” (Nicomachean
Ethics 1144a25).
2.5 Modeling Conflicting Moral Considerations
Moral considerations often conflict with one another. So do moral principles
and moral commitments. Assuming that filial loyalty and patriotism are moral
considerations, then Sartre’s student faces a moral conflict. Recall that it is
one thing to model the metaphysics of morality or the truth conditions of moral
statements and another to give an account of moral reasoning. In now looking at
conflicting considerations, our interest here remains with the latter and not
the former. Our principal interest is in ways that we need to structure or
think about conflicting considerations in order to negotiate well our reasoning
involving them.
One influential building-block for thinking about moral conflicts is W. D.
Ross’s notion of a “prima facie duty”. Although this term misleadingly
suggests mere appearance – the way things seem at first glance – it has stuck.
Some moral philosophers prefer the term “pro tanto duty” (e.g., Hurley
1989). Ross explained that his term provides “a brief way of referring to the
characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act
has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g., the keeping of a promise), of
being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of
another kind which is morally significant.” Illustrating the point, he noted
that a prima facie duty to keep a promise can be overridden by a prima
facie duty to avert a serious accident, resulting in a proper, or
unqualified, duty to do the latter (Ross 1988, 18–19). Ross described each prima
facie duty as a “parti-resultant” attribute, grounded or explained by one
aspect of an act, whereas “being one’s [actual] duty” is a “toti-resultant”
attribute resulting from all such aspects of an act, taken together (28; see
Pietroski 1993). This suggests that in each case there is, in principle, some
function that generally maps from the partial contributions of each prima
facie duty to some actual duty. What might that function be? To Ross’s
credit, he writes that “for the estimation of the comparative stringency of
these prima facie obligations no general rules can, so far as I can
see, be laid down” (41). Accordingly, a second strand in Ross simply
emphasizes, following Aristotle, the need for practical judgment by those who
have been brought up into virtue (42).
How might considerations of the sort constituted by prima facie
duties enter our moral reasoning? They might do so explicitly, or only
implicitly. There is also a third, still weaker possibility (Scheffler 1992,
32): it might simply be the case that if the agent had recognized a prima
facie duty, he would have acted on it unless he considered it to be
overridden. This is a fact about how he would have reasoned.
Despite Ross’s denial that there is any general method for estimating the
comparative stringency of prima facie duties, there is a further
strand in his exposition that many find irresistible and that tends to undercut
this denial. In the very same paragraph in which he states that he sees no
general rules for dealing with conflicts, he speaks in terms of “the greatest
balance of prima facie rightness.” This language, together with the
idea of “comparative stringency,” ineluctably suggests the idea that the
mapping function might be the same in each case of conflict and that it might
be a quantitative one. On this conception, if there is a conflict between two prima
facie duties, the one that is strongest in the circumstances should be
taken to win. Duly cautioned about the additive fallacy (see section
2.3), we might recognize that the strength of a moral consideration
in one set of circumstances cannot be inferred from its strength in other
circumstances. Hence, this approach will need still to rely on intuitive
judgments in many cases. But this intuitive judgment will be about which prima
facie consideration is stronger in the circumstances, not simply about
what ought to be done.
The thought that our moral reasoning either requires or is benefited by a
virtual quantitative crutch of this kind has a long pedigree. Can we really
reason well morally in a way that boils down to assessing the weights of the
competing considerations? Addressing this question will require an excursus on
the nature of moral reasons. Philosophical support for this possibility
involves an idea of practical commensurability. We need to distinguish, here,
two kinds of practical commensurability or incommensurability, one defined in
metaphysical terms and one in deliberative terms. Each of these forms might be
stated evaluatively or deontically. The first, metaphysical sort of value
incommensurability is defined directly in terms of what is the case. Thus, to state
an evaluative version: two values are metaphysically incommensurable just in
case neither is better than the other nor are they equally good (see Chang
1998). Now, the metaphysical incommensurability of values, or its absence, is
only loosely linked to how it would be reasonable to deliberate. If all values
or moral considerations are metaphysically (that is, in fact) commensurable,
still it might well be the case that our access to the ultimate commensurating
function is so limited that we would fare ill by proceeding in our
deliberations to try to think about which outcomes are “better” or which
considerations are “stronger.” We might have no clue about how to measure the
relevant “strength.” Conversely, even if metaphysical value incommensurability
is common, we might do well, deliberatively, to proceed as if this were not the
case, just as we proceed in thermodynamics as if the gas laws obtained in their
idealized form. Hence, in thinking about the deliberative implications of incommensurable
values, we would do well to think in terms of a definition tailored
to the deliberative context. Start with a local, pairwise form. We may say that
two options, A and B, are deliberatively commensurable just in case there is
some one dimension of value in terms of which, prior to – or logically
independently of – choosing between them, it is possible adequately to
represent the force of the considerations bearing on the choice.
Philosophers as diverse as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill have argued
that unless two options are deliberatively commensurable, in this sense, it is
impossible to choose rationally between them. Interestingly, Kant limited this
claim to the domain of prudential considerations, recognizing moral reasoning
as invoking considerations incommensurable with those of prudence. For Mill,
this claim formed an important part of his argument that there must be some
one, ultimate “umpire” principle – namely, on his view, the principle of
utility. Henry Sidgwick elaborated Mill’s argument and helpfully made explicit
its crucial assumption, which he called the “principle of superior validity”
(Sidgwick 1981; cf. Schneewind 1977). This is the principle that conflict between
distinct moral or practical considerations can be rationally resolved only on
the basis of some third principle or consideration that is both more general
and more firmly warranted than the two initial competitors. From this
assumption, one can readily build an argument for the rational necessity not
merely of local deliberative commensurability, but of a global deliberative
commensurability that, like Mill and Sidgwick, accepts just one ultimate umpire
principle (cf. Richardson 1994, chap. 6).
Sidgwick’s explicitness, here, is valuable also in helping one see how to
resist the demand for deliberative commensurability. Deliberative
commensurability is not necessary for proceeding rationally if conflicting
considerations can be rationally dealt with in a holistic way that does not
involve the appeal to a principle of “superior validity.” That our moral
reasoning can proceed holistically is strongly affirmed by Rawls. Rawls’s
characterizations of the influential ideal of reflective
equilibrium and his related ideas about the nature of justification
imply that we can deal with conflicting considerations in less hierarchical
ways than imagined by Mill or Sidgwick. Instead of proceeding up a ladder of
appeal to some highest court or supreme umpire, Rawls suggests, when we face
conflicting considerations “we work from both ends” (Rawls 1999, 18). Sometimes
indeed we revise our more particular judgments in light of some general
principle to which we adhere; but we are also free to revise more general
principles in light of some relatively concrete considered judgment. On this
picture, there is no necessary correlation between degree of generality and
strength of authority or warrant. That this holistic way of proceeding (whether
in building moral theory or in deliberating: cf. Hurley 1989) can be rational
is confirmed by the possibility of a form of justification that is similarly
holistic: “justification is a matter of the mutual support of many
considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view” (Rawls
1999, 19, 507). (Note that this statement, which expresses a necessary aspect
of moral or practical justification, should not be taken as a definition or
analysis thereof.) So there is an alternative to depending, deliberatively, on
finding a dimension in terms of which considerations can be ranked as
“stronger” or “better” or “more stringent”: one can instead “prune and adjust”
with an eye to building more mutual support among the considerations that one
endorses on due reflection. If even the desideratum of practical coherence is
subject to such re-specification, then this holistic possibility really does
represent an alternative to commensuration, as the deliberator, and not some
coherence standard, retains reflective sovereignty (Richardson 1994, sec. 26).
The result can be one in which the originally competing considerations are not
so much compared as transformed (Richardson 2018, chap. 1)
Suppose that we start with a set of first-order moral considerations that
are all commensurable as a matter of ultimate, metaphysical fact, but that our
grasp of the actual strength of these considerations is quite poor and subject
to systematic distortions. Perhaps some people are much better placed than
others to appreciate certain considerations, and perhaps our strategic
interactions would cause us to reach suboptimal outcomes if we each pursued our
own unfettered judgment of how the overall set of considerations plays out. In
such circumstances, there is a strong case for departing from maximizing
reasoning without swinging all the way to the holist alternative. This case has
been influentially articulated by Joseph Raz, who develops the notion of an “exclusionary
reason” to occupy this middle position (Raz 1990).
“An exclusionary reason,” in Raz’s terminology, “is a second order reason to
refrain from acting for some reason” (39). A simple example is that of Ann, who
is tired after a long and stressful day, and hence has reason not to act on her
best assessment of the reasons bearing on a particularly important investment
decision that she immediately faces (37). This notion of an exclusionary reason
allowed Raz to capture many of the complexities of our moral reasoning,
especially as it involves principled commitments, while conceding that, at the
first order, all practical reasons might be commensurable. Raz’s early strategy
for reconciling commensurability with complexity of structure was to limit the
claim that reasons are comparable with regard to strength to reasons of a given
order. First-order reasons compete on the basis of strength; but conflicts
between first- and second-order reasons “are resolved not by the strength of
the competing reasons but by a general principle of practical reasoning which
determines that exclusionary reasons always prevail” (40).
If we take for granted this “general principle of practical reasoning,” why
should we recognize the existence of any exclusionary reasons, which by
definition prevail independently of any contest of strength? Raz’s principal
answer to this question shifts from the metaphysical domain of the strengths
that various reasons “have” to the epistemically limited viewpoint of the
deliberator. As in Ann’s case, we can see in certain contexts that a
deliberator is likely to get things wrong if he or she acts on his or her
perception of the first-order reasons. Second-order reasons indicate, with
respect to a certain range of first-order reasons, that the agent “must not act
for those reasons” (185). The broader justification of an exclusionary
reason, then, can consistently be put in terms of the commensurable first-order
reasons. Such a justification can have the following form: “Given this agent’s
deliberative limitations, the balance of first-order reasons will likely be
better conformed with if he or she refrains from acting for certain of those
reasons.”
Raz’s account of exclusionary reasons might be used to reconcile ultimate
commensurability with the structured complexity of our moral reasoning. Whether
such an attempt could succeed would depend, in part, on the extent to which we
have an actual grasp of first-order reasons, conflict among which can be
settled solely on the basis of their comparative strength. Our consideration,
above, of casuistry, the additive fallacy, and deliberative incommensurability
may combine to make it seem that only in rare pockets of our practice do we
have a good grasp of first-order reasons, if these are defined, à la Raz, as
competing only in terms of strength. If that is right, then we will almost
always have good exclusionary reasons to reason on some other basis than in
terms of the relative strength of first-order reasons. Under those assumptions,
the middle way that Raz’s idea of exclusionary reasons seems to open up would
more closely approach the holist’s.
The notion of a moral consideration’s “strength,” whether put forward as
part of a metaphysical picture of how first-order considerations interact in
fact or as a suggestion about how to go about resolving a moral conflict,
should not be confused with the bottom-line determination of whether one
consideration, and specifically one duty, overrides another. In Ross’s example
of conflicting prima facie duties, someone must choose between
averting a serious accident and keeping a promise to meet someone. (Ross chose
the case to illustrate that an “imperfect” duty, or a duty of commission, can
override a strict, prohibitive duty.) Ross’s assumption is that all well
brought-up people would agree, in this case, that the duty to avert serious
harm to someone overrides the duty to keep such a promise. We may take it, if
we like, that this judgment implies that we consider the duty to save a life,
here, to be stronger than the duty to keep the promise; but in fact this claim
about relative strength adds nothing to our understanding of the situation. Yet
we do not reach our practical conclusion in this case by determining
that the duty to save the boy’s life is stronger. The statement that this duty
is here stronger is simply a way to embellish the conclusion that of the two prima
facie duties that here conflict, it is the one that states the
all-things-considered duty. To be “overridden” is just to be a prima facie
duty that fails to generate an actual duty because another prima facie
duty that conflicts with it – or several of them that do – does generate an
actual duty. Hence, the judgment that some duties override others can be
understood just in terms of their deontic upshots and without reference to
considerations of strength. To confirm this, note that we can say, “As a matter
of fidelity, we ought to keep the promise; as a matter of beneficence, we ought
to save the life; we cannot do both; and both categories considered we ought to
save the life.”
Understanding the notion of one duty overriding another in this way puts us
in a position to take up the topic of moral
dilemmas. Since this topic is covered in a separate article, here we
may simply take up one attractive definition of a moral dilemma.
Sinnott-Armstrong (1988) suggested that a moral dilemma is a situation in which
the following are true of a single agent:
- He ought to do A.
- He ought to do B.
- He cannot do both A and B.
- (1) does not override (2)
and (2) does not override (1).
This way of defining moral dilemmas distinguishes them from the kind of
moral conflict, such as Ross’s promise-keeping/accident-prevention case, in
which one of the duties is overridden by the other. Arguably, Sartre’s student
faces a moral dilemma. Making sense of a situation in which neither of two
duties overrides the other is easier if deliberative commensurability is
denied. Whether moral dilemmas are possible will depend crucially on whether
“ought” implies “can” and whether any pair of duties such as those comprised by
(1) and (2) implies a single, “agglomerated” duty that the agent do both A
and B. If either of these purported principles of the logic of duties
is false, then moral dilemmas are possible.
Jonathan Dancy has well highlighted a kind of contextual variability in
moral reasons that has come to be known as “reasons holism”: “a feature that is
a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, in
another” (Dancy 2004). To adapt one of his examples: while there is often moral
reason not to lie, when playing liar’s poker one generally ought to lie;
otherwise, one will spoil the game (cf. Dancy 1993, 61). Dancy argues that
reasons holism supports moral particularism of the kind discussed in section
2.2, according to which there are no defensible moral principles.
Taking this conclusion seriously would radically affect how we conducted our
moral reasoning. The argument’s premise of holism has been challenged (e.g.,
Audi 2004, McKeever & Ridge 2006). Philosophers have also challenged the
inference from reasons holism to particularism in various ways. Mark Lance and
Margaret Olivia Little (2007) have done so by exhibiting how defeasible
generalizations, in ethics and elsewhere, depend systematically on
context. We can work with them, they suggest, by utilizing a skill that is
similar to the skill of discerning morally salient considerations, namely the
skill of discerning relevant similarities among possible worlds. More
generally, John F. Horty has developed a logical and semantic account according
to which reasons are defaults and so behave holistically, but there are
nonetheless general principles that explain how they behave (Horty 2012). And
Mark Schroeder has argued that our holistic views about reasons are actually
better explained by supposing that there are general principles (Schroeder
2011).
This excursus on moral reasons suggests that there are a number of good
reasons why reasoning about moral matters might not simply reduce to assessing
the weights of competing considerations.
2.6 Moral Learning and the Revision of Moral Views
If we have any moral knowledge, whether concerning general moral principles
or concrete moral conclusions, it is surely very imperfect. What moral
knowledge we are capable of will depend, in part, on what sorts of moral
reasoning we are capable of. Although some moral learning may result from the
theoretical work of moral philosophers and theorists, much of what we learn
with regard to morality surely arises in the practical context of deliberation
about new and difficult cases. This deliberation might be merely instrumental,
concerned only with settling on means to moral ends, or it might be concerned
with settling those ends. There is no special problem about learning what
conduces to morally obligatory ends: that is an ordinary matter of empirical
learning. But by what sorts of process can we learn which ends are morally
obligatory, or which norms morally required? And, more specifically, is
strictly moral learning possible via moral reasoning?
Much of what was said above with regard to moral uptake applies again in
this context, with approximately the same degree of dubiousness or
persuasiveness. If there is a role for moral perception or for emotions in
agents’ becoming aware of moral considerations, these may function also to
guide agents to new conclusions. For instance, it is conceivable that our
capacity for outrage is a relatively reliable detector of wrong actions, even
novel ones, or that our capacity for pleasure is a reliable detector of actions
worth doing, even novel ones. (For a thorough defense of the latter
possibility, which intriguingly interprets pleasure as a judgment of value, see
Millgram 1997.) Perhaps these capacities for emotional judgment enable strictly
moral learning in roughly the same way that chess-players’ trained
sensibilities enable them to recognize the threat in a previously unencountered
situation on the chessboard (Lance and Tanesini 2004). That is to say, perhaps
our moral emotions play a crucial role in the exercise of a skill whereby we
come to be able to articulate moral insights that we have never before
attained. Perhaps competing moral considerations interact in contextually
specific and complex ways much as competing chess considerations do. If so, it
would make sense to rely on our emotionally-guided capacities of judgment to
cope with complexities that we cannot model explicitly, but also to hope that,
once having been so guided, we might in retrospect be able to articulate
something about the lesson of a well-navigated situation.
A different model of strictly moral learning puts the emphasis on our
after-the-fact reactions rather than on any prior, tacit emotional or
judgmental guidance: the model of “experiments in living,” to use John Stuart
Mill’s phrase (see Anderson 1991). Here, the basic thought is that we can try
something and see if “it works.” For this to be an alternative to empirical
learning about what causally conduces to what, it must be the case that we
remain open as to what we mean by things “working.” In Mill’s terminology, for
instance, we need to remain open as to what are the important “parts” of
happiness. If we are, then perhaps we can learn by experience what some of them
are – that is, what are some of the constitutive means of happiness. These
paired thoughts, that our practical life is experimental and that we have no
firmly fixed conception of what it is for something to “work,” come to the fore
in Dewey’s pragmatist ethics (see esp. Dewey 1967 [1922]). This experimentalist
conception of strictly moral learning is brought to bear on moral reasoning in
Dewey’s eloquent characterizations of “practical intelligence” as involving a
creative and flexible approach to figuring out “what works” in a way that is
thoroughly open to rethinking our ultimate aims.
Once we recognize that moral learning is a possibility for us, we can
recognize a broader range of ways of coping with moral conflicts than was
canvassed in the last section. There, moral conflicts were described in a way
that assumed that the set of moral considerations, among which conflicts were
arising, was to be taken as fixed. If we can learn, morally, however, then we
probably can and should revise the set of moral considerations that we
recognize. Often, we do this by re-interpreting some moral principle that we
had started with, whether by making it more specific, making it more abstract,
or in some other way (cf. Richardson 2000 and 2018).
2.7 How Can We Reason, Morally, With One Another?
So far, we have mainly been discussing moral reasoning as if it were a
solitary endeavor. This is, at best, a convenient simplification. At worst, it
is, as Jürgen Habermas has long argued, deeply distorting of reasoning’s
essentially dialogical or conversational character (e.g., Habermas 1984; cf.
Laden 2012). In any case, it is clear that we often do need to reason morally
with one another.
Here, we are interested in how people may actually reason with one another –
not in how imagined participants in an original position or ideal speech
situation may be said to reason with one another, which is a concern for moral
theory, proper. There are two salient and distinct ways of thinking about
people morally reasoning with one another: as members of an organized or
corporate body that is capable of reaching practical decisions of its own; and
as autonomous individuals working outside any such structure to figure out with
each other what they ought, morally, to do.
The nature and possibility of collective reasoning within an organized
collective body has recently been the subject of some discussion. Collectives
can reason if they are structured as an agent. This structure might or might
not be institutionalized. In line with the gloss of reasoning offered above,
which presupposes being guided by an assessment of one’s reasons, it is
plausible to hold that a group agent “counts as reasoning, not just rational,
only if it is able to form not only beliefs in propositions – that is,
object-language beliefs – but also belief about propositions” (List
and Pettit 2011, 63). As List and Pettit have shown (2011, 109–113),
participants in a collective agent will unavoidably have incentives to
misrepresent their own preferences in conditions involving ideologically
structured disagreements where the contending parties are oriented to achieving
or avoiding certain outcomes – as is sometimes the case where serious moral
disagreements arise. In contexts where what ultimately matters is how well the
relevant group or collective ends up faring, “team reasoning” that takes
advantage of orientation towards the collective flourishing of the group can
help it reach a collectively optimal outcome (Sugden 1993, Bacharach 2006; see
entry on collective
intentionality). Where the group in question is smaller than the set
of persons, however, such a collectively prudential focus is distinct from a
moral focus and seems at odds with the kind of impartiality typically thought
distinctive of the moral point of view. Thinking about what a
“team-orientation” to the set all persons might look like might bring us back
to thoughts of Kantian universalizability; but recall that here we are focused
on actual reasoning, not hypothetical reasoning. With regard to actual reasoning,
even if individuals can take up such an orientation towards the “team” of all
persons, there is serious reason, highlighted by another strand of the Kantian
tradition, for doubting that any individual can aptly surrender their moral
judgment to any group’s verdict (Wolff 1998).
This does not mean that people cannot reason together, morally. It suggests,
however, that such joint reasoning is best pursued as a matter of working out
together, as independent moral agents, what they ought to do with regard to an
issue on which they have some need to cooperate. Even if deferring to another
agent’s verdict as to how one morally ought to act is off the cards, it is
still possible that one may licitly take account of the moral testimony of
others (for differing views, see McGrath 2009, Enoch 2014).
In the case of independent individuals reasoning morally with one another,
we may expect that moral disagreement provides the occasion rather than an
obstacle. To be sure, if individuals’ moral disagreement is very deep, they may
not be able to get this reasoning off the ground; but as Kant’s example of
Charles V and his brother each wanting Milan reminds us, intractable
disagreement can arise also from disagreements that, while conceptually
shallow, are circumstantially sharp. If it were true that clear-headed
justification of one’s moral beliefs required seeing them as being ultimately
grounded in a priori principles, as G.A. Cohen argued (Cohen 2008, chap. 6),
then room for individuals to work out their moral disagreements by reasoning
with one another would seem to be relatively restricted; but whether the nature
of (clearheaded) moral grounding is really so restricted is seriously doubtful
(Richardson 2018, §9.2). In contrast to what such a picture suggests,
individuals’ moral commitments seem sufficiently open to being re-thought that
people seem able to engage in principled – that is, not simply loss-minimizing
– compromise (Richardson 2018, §8.5).
What about the possibility that the moral community as a whole – roughly,
the community of all persons – can reason? This possibility does not raise the
kind of threat to impartiality that is raised by the team reasoning of a
smaller group of people; but it is hard to see it working in a way that does
not run afoul of the concern about whether any person can aptly defer, in a
strong sense, to the moral judgments of another agent. Even so, a residual
possibility remains, which is that the moral community can reason in just one
way, namely by accepting or ratifying a moral conclusion that has already
become shared in a sufficiently inclusive and broad way (Richardson 2018, chap.
7).
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W
Here
is a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Hume’s Moral Philosophy.
Article
22 (A22 after this): “
Hume’s Moral Philosophy
First published Fri Oct 29,
2004; substantive revision Mon Aug 20, 2018
Hume’s position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist
theory of the mind, is best known for asserting four theses: (1)
Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the
passions” (see Section
3)”
My response: Reason is not the only motive to will, but it is the primary
one.
A22: “(2) Moral distinctions are not derived from reason (see Section
4). (3) Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments:
feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by
spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section
7). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section
13), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section
9). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these
theses and how he argues for them. He articulates and defends them within the
broader context of his metaethics and his ethic of virtue and vice.”
My response: There may be both natural and artificial virtues and vices, for
I had not much considered this.
A22: “Hume’s main ethical writings are Book 3 of his Treatise of Human
Nature, “Of Morals” (which builds on Book 2, “Of the Passions”), his Enquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals, and some of his Essays. In
part the moral Enquiry simply recasts central ideas from the moral
part of the Treatise in a more accessible style; but there are
important differences. The ethical positions and arguments of the Treatise
are set out below, noting where the moral Enquiry agrees; differences
between the Enquiry and the Treatise are discussed
afterwards.
Hume inherits from his predecessors several controversies about ethics and
political philosophy.
One is a question of moral epistemology: how do human beings become aware
of, or acquire knowledge or belief about, moral good and evil, right and wrong,
duty and obligation? Ethical theorists and theologians of the day held,
variously, that moral good and evil are discovered: (a) by reason in some of
its uses (Hobbes, Locke, Clarke), (b) by divine revelation (Filmer), (c) by
conscience or reflection on one’s (other) impulses (Butler), or (d) by a moral
sense: an emotional responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or
disapproval (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson). Hume sides with the moral sense
theorists: we gain awareness of moral good and evil by experiencing the
pleasure of approval and the uneasiness of disapproval when we contemplate a
character trait or action from an imaginatively sensitive and unbiased point of
view. Hume maintains against the rationalists that, although reason is needed
to discover the facts of any concrete situation and the general social impact
of a trait of character or a practice over time, reason alone is insufficient
to yield a judgment that something is virtuous or vicious. In the last
analysis, the facts as known must trigger a response by sentiment or “taste.””
My response: As a moderate I believe we can discover what is moral goodness
and moral evil by reason, divine
revelation, conscience (the internal voice of God) and moral sense. Hume the
sentimentalist concludes moral judgement are felt sentiment or personal taste
in in reaction to what one has perceived or experienced.
A22: “A related but more metaphysical controversy would be stated thus
today: what is the source or foundation of moral norms? In Hume’s day this is
the question what is the ground of moral obligation (as distinct from what is
the faculty for acquiring moral knowledge or belief). Moral rationalists of the
period such as Clarke (and in some moods, Hobbes and Locke) argue that moral
standards or principles are requirements of reason — that is, that the very
rationality of right actions is the ground of our obligation to perform them.
Divine voluntarists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Samuel
Pufendorf claim that moral obligation or requirement, if not every sort of
moral standard, is the product of God’s will. The moral sense theorists (Shaftesbury
and Hutcheson) and Butler see all requirements to pursue goodness and avoid
evil as consequent upon human nature, which is so structured that a particular
feature of our consciousness (whether moral sense or conscience) evaluates the
rest. Hume sides with the moral sense theorists on this question: it is because
we are the kinds of creatures we are, with the dispositions we have for pain
and pleasure, the kinds of familial and friendly interdependence that make up
our life together, and our approvals and disapprovals of these, that we are
bound by moral requirements at all.
Closely connected with the issue of the foundations of moral norms is the
question whether moral requirements are natural or conventional. Hobbes and
Mandeville see them as conventional, and Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Locke, and
others see them as natural. Hume mocks Mandeville’s contention that the very
concepts of vice and virtue are foisted on us by scheming politicians trying to
manage us more easily. If there were nothing in our experience and no
sentiments in our minds to produce the concept of virtue, Hume says, no lavish
praise of heroes could generate it. So to a degree moral requirements have a
natural origin. Nonetheless,Hume thinks natural impulses of humanity and
dispositions to approve cannot entirely account for our virtue of justice; a
correct analysis of that virtue reveals that mankind, an “inventive species,”
has cooperatively constructed rules of property and promise. Thus he takes an
intermediate position: some virtues are natural, and some are the products of
convention.”
My response: The foundations of moral norms are supernatural, natural, and
then social.
A22: “Linked with these meta-ethical controversies is the dilemma of
understanding the ethical life either as the “ancients” do, in terms of virtues
and vices of character, or as the “moderns” do, primarily in terms of
principles of duty or natural law. While even so law-oriented a thinker as
Hobbes has a good deal to say about virtue, the ethical writers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries predominantly favor a rule- or
law-governed understanding of morals, giving priority to laws of nature or
principles of duty. The chief exception here is the moral sense school, which
advocates an analysis of the moral life more like that of the Greek and
Hellenistic thinkers, in terms of settled traits of character — although they
too find a place for principles in their ethics. Hume explicitly favors an
ethic of character along “ancient” lines. Yet he insists on a role for rules of
duty within the domain of what he calls the artificial virtues.
Hume’s predecessors famously took opposing positions on whether human nature
was essentially selfish or benevolent, some arguing that man was so dominated
by self-interested motives that for moral requirements to govern us at all they
must serve our interests in some way, and others arguing that uncorrupted human
beings naturally care about the weal and woe of others and here morality gets
its hold.”
My response: Observe that, those that condemn humans and their basic natures
as evil, equate being evil with being selfish, and those who insist human
nature is basically good, present that human goodness of nature naturally, or
achieved by willing upbringing, is benevolently and unselfishly defined.
I describe human nature as basically evil and that is the same as being
unselfish and selfless. We learn to be self-interested and self-concerned and
that is virtue.
Humans require some rewards to behave, things like social approval or faith
in the afterlife.
The altruists describe human nature as neutral or benevolent, that society
corrupts the natural inclination to care for others.
A22: “Hume roundly criticizes Hobbes for his insistence on psychological
egoism or something close to it, and for his dismal, violent picture of a state
of nature. Yet Hume resists the view of Hutcheson that all moral principles can
be reduced to our benevolence, in part because he doubts that benevolence can
sufficiently overcome our perfectly normal acquisitiveness. According to Hume’s
observation, we are both selfish and humane. We possess greed, and also
“limited generosity” — dispositions to kindness and liberality which are more
powerfully directed toward kin and friends and less aroused by strangers. While
for Hume the condition of humankind in the absence of organized society is not
a war of all against all, neither is it the law-governed and highly cooperative
domain imagined by Locke. It is a hypothetical condition in which we would care
for our friends and cooperate with them, but in which self-interest and
preference for friends over strangers would make any wider cooperation
impossible. Hume’s empirically-based thesis that we are fundamentally loving,
parochial, and also selfish creatures underlies his political philosophy.
In the realm of politics, Hume again takes up an intermediate position. He
objects both to the doctrine that a subject must passively obey his government
no matter how tyrannical it is and to the Lockean thesis that citizens have a
natural right to revolution whenever their rulers violate their contractual
commitments to the people. He famously criticizes the notion that all political
duties arise from an implicit contract that binds later generations who were
not party to the original explicit agreement. Hume maintains that the duty to
obey one’s government has an independent origin that parallels that of
promissory obligation: both are invented to enable people to live together
successfully. On his view, human beings can create a society without government,
ordered by conventional rules of ownership, transfer of property by consent,
and promise-keeping. We superimpose government on such a pre-civil society when
it grows large and prosperous; only then do we need to use political power to
enforce these rules of justice in order to preserve social cooperation. So the
duty of allegiance to government, far from depending on the duty to fulfill
promises, provides needed assurance that promises of all sorts will be kept.
The duty to submit to our rulers comes into being because reliable submission
is necessary to preserve order. Particular governments are legitimate because
of their usefulness in preserving society, not because those who wield power
were chosen by God or received promises of obedience from the people. In a
long-established civil society, whatever ruler or type of government happens to
be in place and successfully maintaining order and justice is legitimate, and
is owed allegiance. However, there is some legitimate recourse for victims of
tyranny: the people may rightly overthrow any government that is so oppressive
as not to provide the benefits (peace and security from injustice) for which
governments are formed. In his political essays Hume certainly advocates the
sort of constitution that protects the people’s liberties, but he justifies it
not based on individual natural rights or contractual obligations but based on
the greater long-range good of society.
According to Hume’s theory of the mind, the passions (what we today would
call emotions, feelings, and desires) are impressions rather than ideas
(original, vivid and lively perceptions that are not copied from other
perceptions). The direct passions, which include desire, aversion, hope, fear,
grief, and joy, are those that “arise immediately from good or evil, from pain
or pleasure” that we experience or think about in prospect (T 2.1.1.4, T
2.3.9.2); however he also groups with them some instincts of unknown origin,
such as the bodily appetites and the desires that good come to those we love
and harm to those we hate, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure but
produce them (T 2.3.9.7). The indirect passions, primarily pride, humility
(shame), love and hatred, are generated in a more complex way, but still one
involving either the thought or experience of pain or pleasure. Intentional
actions are caused by the direct passions (including the instincts). Of the
indirect passions Hume says that pride, humility, love and hatred do not
directly cause action; it is not clear whether he thinks this true of all the
indirect passions.
Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and
determinism, because in his discussion in the Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding he argues that if we understand the doctrines of liberty and
necessity properly, all mankind consistently believe both that human actions
are the products of causal necessity and that they are free. In the Treatise,
however, he explicitly repudiates the doctrine of liberty as “absurd... in one
sense, and unintelligible in any other” (T 2.3.2.1). The two treatments,
however, surprisingly enough, are entirely consistent. Hume construes causal
necessity to mean the same as causal connection (or rather, intelligible
causal connection), as he himself analyzes this notion in his own theory of
causation: either the “constant union and conjunction of like objects,” or that
together with “the inference of the mind from the one to the other” (ibid.). In
both works he argues that just as we discover necessity (in this sense) to hold
between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much necessity to
hold between human motives, character traits, and circumstances of action, on
the one hand, and human behavior on the other. He says in the Treatise
that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense;
this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with
chance or randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the Treatise
and the first (epistemological) Enquiry. Human actions are not free in
this sense. However, Hume allows in the Treatise that they are
sometimes free in the sense of ‘liberty’ which is opposed to violence or
constraint. This is the sense on which Hume focuses in EcHU: “a power of
acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will;” which
everyone has “who is not a prisoner and in chains” (EcHU 8.1.23, Hume’s
emphasis). It is this that is entirely compatible with necessity in Hume’s
sense. So the positions in the two works are the same, although the polemical
emphasis is so different — iconoclastic toward the libertarian view in the Treatise,
and conciliatory toward “all mankind” in the first Enquiry.
Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is not only
compatible with moral responsibility but requisite to it. To hold an agent
morally responsible for a bad action, it is not enough that the action be
morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of the fleeting act to the
enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden actions incur blame for the agent;
those done by accident, for example, do not. It is only when, and because, the
action’s cause is some enduring passion or trait of character in the agent that
she is to blame for it.
According to Hume, intentional actions are the immediate product of
passions, in particular the direct passions, including the instincts. He does
not appear to allow that any other sort of mental state could, on its own, give
rise to an intentional action except by producing a passion, though he does not
argue for this. The motivating passions, in their turn, are produced in the
mind by specific causes, as we see early in the Treatise where he
first explains the distinction between impressions of sensation and impressions
of reflection:
An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us
perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some kind or
other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains
after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or
pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and
aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called impressions of
reflection, because derived from it. (T 1.1.2.2)
Thus ideas of pleasure or pain are the causes of these motivating passions.
Not just any ideas of pleasure or pain give rise to motivating passions,
however, but only ideas of those pleasures or pains we believe exist or will
exist (T 1.3.10.3). More generally, the motivating passions of desire and
aversion, hope and fear, joy and grief, and a few others are impressions
produced by the occurrence in the mind either of a feeling of pleasure
or pain, whether physical or psychological, or of a believed idea of
pleasure or pain to come (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2). These passions, together with
the instincts (hunger, lust, and so on), are all the motivating passions that
Hume discusses.
The will, Hume claims, is an immediate effect of pain or pleasure (T
2.3.1.2) and “exerts itself” when either pleasure or the absence of pain can be
attained by any action of the mind or body (T 2.3.9.7). The will, however, is
merely that impression we feel when we knowingly give rise to an action (T
2.3.1.2); so while Hume is not explicit (and perhaps not consistent) on this
matter, he seems not to regard the will as itself a (separate) cause of action.
The causes of action he describes are those he has already identified: the
instincts and the other direct passions.
Hume famously sets himself in opposition to most moral
philosophers, ancient and modern, who talk of the combat of passion and reason,
and who urge human beings to regulate their actions by reason and to grant it
dominion over their contrary passions. He claims to prove that “reason alone
can never be a motive to any action of the will,” and that reason alone “can
never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T 413). His view is not, of
course, that reason plays no role in the generation of action; he grants that
reason provides information, in particular about means to our ends, which makes
a difference to the direction of the will. His thesis is that reason alone
cannot move us to action; the impulse to act itself must come from passion. The
doctrine that reason alone is merely the “slave of the passions,” i.e., that
reason pursues knowledge of abstract and causal relations solely in order to
achieve passions’ goals and provides no impulse of its own, is defended in the Treatise,
but not in the second Enquiry, although in the latter he briefly
asserts the doctrine without argument. Hume gives three arguments in the Treatise
for the motivational “inertia” of reason alone.
The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational
functions of the understanding. The understanding discovers the abstract
relations of ideas by demonstration (a process of comparing ideas and finding
congruencies and incongruencies); and it also discovers the causal (and other
probabilistic) relations of objects that are revealed in experience.
Demonstrative reasoning is never the cause of any action by itself: it deals in
ideas rather than realities, and we only find it useful in action when we have
some purpose in view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our inferences
about (and so enable us to manipulate) causes and effects. Probable or
cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in deciding what to do, but we see
that it only functions as an auxiliary, and not on its own. When we anticipate
pain or pleasure from some source, we feel aversion or propensity to that
object and “are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us” the pain or
pleasure (T 2.3.3.3). Our aversion or propensity makes us seek the causes of
the expected source of pain or pleasure, and we use causal reasoning to
discover what they are. Once we do, our impulse naturally extends itself to
those causes, and we act to avoid or embrace them. Plainly the impulse to act
does not arise from the reasoning but is only directed by it. “’Tis from the
prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises...”
(ibid.). Probable reasoning is merely the discovering of causal connections,
and knowledge that A causes B never concerns us if we are indifferent to A and
to B. Thus, neither demonstrative nor probable reasoning alone causes action.
The second argument is a corollary of the first. It takes as a premise the
conclusion just reached, that reason alone cannot produce an impulse to act.
Given that, can reason prevent action or resist passion in controlling the
will? To stop a volition or retard the impulse of an existing passion would
require a contrary impulse. If reason alone could give rise to such a contrary
impulse, it would have an original influence on the will (a capacity to cause
intentional action, when unopposed); which, according to the previous argument,
it lacks. Therefore reason alone cannot resist any impulse to act. Therefore,
what offers resistance to our passions cannot be reason of itself. Hume later
proposes that when we restrain imprudent or immoral impulses, the contrary
impulse comes also from passion, but often from a passion so “calm” that we
confuse it with reason.
The third or Representation argument is different in kind. Hume offers it
initially only to show that a passion cannot be opposed by or be
contradictory to “truth and reason”; later (T 3.1.1.9), he repeats and expands
it to argue that volitions and actions as well cannot be so. One might suppose
he means to give another argument to show that reason alone cannot provide a
force to resist passion. Yet the Representation Argument is not empirical, and
does not talk of forces or impulses. Passions (and volitions and actions), Hume
says, do not refer to other entities; they are “original existence[s],” (T
2.3.3.5), “original facts and realities” (T3.1.1.9), not mental representations
of other things. Since Hume here understands representation in terms of copying,
he says a passion has no “representative quality, which renders it a copy of
any other existence or modification” (T 2.3.3.5). Contradiction to truth and
reason, however, consists in “the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies,
with those objects, which they represent” (ibid.). Therefore, a passion (or
volition or action), not having this feature, cannot be opposed by truth and
reason. The argument allegedly proves two points: first, that actions cannot be
reasonable or unreasonable; second, that “reason cannot immediately prevent or
produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T3.1.1.10). The point
here is not merely the earlier, empirical observation that the rational
activity of the understanding does not generate an impulse in the absence of an
expectation of pain or pleasure. The main point is that, because passions,
volitions, and actions have no content suitable for assessment by reason,
reason cannot assess prospective motives or actions as rational or irrational;
and therefore reason cannot, by so assessing them, create or obstruct them. By
contrast, reason can assess a potential opinion as rational or
irrational; and by endorsing the opinion, reason will (that is, we will) adopt
it, while by contradicting the opinion, reason will destroy our credence in it.
The Representation Argument, then, makes a point a priori about the
relevance of the functions of the understanding to the generation of actions.
Interpreters disagree about exactly how to parse this argument, whether it is
sound, and its importance to Hume’s project.
Hume allows that, speaking imprecisely, we often say a passion is
unreasonable because it arises in response to a mistaken judgment or opinion,
either that something (a source of pleasure or uneasiness) exists, or that it
may be obtained or avoided by a certain means. In just these two cases a
passion may be called unreasonable, but strictly speaking even here it is not
the passion but the judgment that is so. Once we correct the mistaken judgment,
“our passions yield to our reason without any opposition,” so there is still no
combat of passion and reason (T 2.3.3.7). And there is no other instance of
passion contrary to reason. Hume famously declaims, “’Tis not contrary to
reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my
finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent
the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as
little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my
greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.”
(2.3.3.6)
Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a skeptic
about practical reason. Either way, Hume denies that reason can evaluate the
ends people set themselves; only passions can select ends, and reason cannot
evaluate passions.”
My response: I disagree that only passions select ends. Humans are
hopelessly complicated.
A 22: Instrumentalists understand the
claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow that reason not only
discovers the causally efficacious means to our ends (a task of theoretical
causal reasoning) but also requires us to take them. If Hume regards the
failure to take the known means to one’s end as contrary to reason, then on
Hume’s view reason has a genuinely practical aspect: it can classify some
actions as unreasonable. Skeptical interpreters read Hume, instead, as denying
that reason imposes any requirements on action, even the requirement to take
the known, available means to one’s end. They point to the list of extreme
actions that are not contrary to reason (such as preferring one’s own lesser
good to one’s greater), and to the Representation Argument, which denies that
any passions, volitions, or actions are of such a nature as to be contrary to
reason. Hume never says explicitly that failing to take the known means to
one’s end is either contrary to reason or not contrary to reason (it is not one
of the extreme cases in his list). The classificatory point in the
Representation Argument favors the reading of Hume as a skeptic about practical
reason; but that argument is absent from the moral Enquiry.”
My response: Hume may in fact be silent about being a practical reasoning
skeptic, but his being such a skeptic seems intuitively fitting.
Hume claims that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather
from sentiment. His rejection of ethical rationalism is at least two-fold.
Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties are discovered by
reason, and also that what is morally good is in accord with reason (even that
goodness consists in reasonableness) and what is morally evil is unreasonable.”
My response: What is morally good is reasonable, and what is wicked is
unreasonable. Reason can discover moral properties, and what is morally good
must be reasonable, sane, moderate, and prudent.
A22: “Hume rejects both theses. Some of his arguments are directed to one
and some to the other thesis, and in places it is unclear which he means to
attack.
In the Treatise he argues against the epistemic thesis (that we discover
good and evil by reasoning) by showing that neither demonstrative nor
probable/causal reasoning has vice and virtue as its proper objects.
Demonstrative reasoning discovers relations of ideas, and vice and virtue are
not identical with any of the four philosophical relations (resemblance,
contrariety, degrees in quality, or proportions in quantity and number) whose
presence can be demonstrated. Nor could they be identical with any other
abstract relation; for such relations can also obtain between items such as
trees that are incapable of moral good or evil. Furthermore, were moral vice
and virtue discerned by demonstrative reasoning, such reasoning would reveal
their inherent power to produce motives in all who discern them; but no causal
connections can be discovered a priori. Causal reasoning, by contrast,
does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their causes
and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not found in its
causes or effects, but is only apparent when we consult the sentiments of the
observer. Therefore moral good and evil are not discovered by reason alone.”
My response: Hume’s skepticism about moral reasoning and that we can choose
based on our conclusion of a practical, moral syllogism, is not without sting,
but I can imagine that Ayn Rand would have dismissed him out of hand.
A22: “Hume also attempts in the Treatise to establish the other
anti-rationalist thesis, that virtue is not the same as reasonableness and vice
is not contrary to reason. He gives two arguments for this. The first, very
short, argument he claims follows directly from the Representation Argument,
whose conclusion was that passions, volitions, and actions can be neither
reasonable nor unreasonable. Actions, he observes, can be laudable or
blamable. Since actions cannot be reasonable or against reason, it follows that
“[l]audable and blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable” (T
458). The properties are not identical.”
My response: As an ontological and moral moderate, I counter-argue against
Hume that laudable is close to being reasonable, and blamable is close to be
unreasonable, but, as a minority moral stance, he has a point that our innate
conscience or moral sense, if we are truth-oriented, realistic, and
truth-bound, can immediately and precisely detect which action is laudable and
or blamable, so moral sentiment plays a significant if minor moral choice role.
A22: “The second and more famous argument makes use of the conclusion
defended earlier that reason alone cannot move us to act. As we have seen,
reason alone “can never immediately prevent or produce any action by
contradicting or approving of it” (T 458). Morality — this argument goes on —
influences our passions and actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from
action by our opinions of obligation or injustice. Therefore morals cannot be
derived from reason alone. This argument is first introduced as showing it
impossible “from reason alone... to distinguish betwixt moral good and evil” (T
457) — that is, it is billed as establishing the epistemic thesis. But Hume
also says that, like the little direct argument above, it proves that “actions
do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a
contrariety to it” (T458): it is not the reasonableness of an action that makes
it good, or its unreasonableness that makes it evil.”
My response: Hume has a point in denying what is blamable or praiseworthy is
not the same as being unreasonable or reasonable.
A22: “This argument about motives concludes that moral judgments or
evaluations are not the products of reason alone. From this many draw the
sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not beliefs or opinions
of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. That is, they take the argument to
show that Hume holds a non-propositional view of moral evaluations — and
indeed, given his sentimentalism, that he is an emotivist: one who holds that
moral judgments are meaningless ventings of emotion that can be neither true
nor false. Such a reading should be met with caution, however. For Hume, to say
that something is not a product of reason alone is not equivalent to saying it
is not a truth-evaluable judgment or belief. Hume does not consider all our (propositional)
beliefs and opinions to be products of reason; some arise directly from sense
perception, for example, and some from sympathy.”
My response: This is a cautionary not for the reader—that Hume to say that
something being not a product of reason is equivalent to saying it is not a
truth-evaluable judgment or belief, because some propositional beliefs or
opinion arise directly from sense perception or sympathy, Hume decided and
wrote.
Hume likely is not a pure noncognitivist about moral judgements or
evaluations lacking any rational input, if only as modest opinions or beliefs,
and with his leaning towards a non-propositional view of moral evaluations, his
sentimentalism creeps towards the boundary tipping over into skeptical,
subjective, relativistic emotivism.
He did call reason the slave of the passions. And it is for nonindividuating
groupists, far too often, but the reverse is desirable, not that the passions
are the slave of the agent’s moral reasoning, but then feelings are felt and
heeded by every self, but guided by the firm, temperate, sober hand of the
logical superego, running the personal moral show.
The writer of this article sees Hume as some kind of moral moderate, that
not all moral judgments are meaningless venting of emotions which can be
neither true or false, but Hume leads that direction hard. Our propositional
beliefs do rise from our sense perception (moral sense) and sympathy, but from
antipathy towards ourselves and others, based on social clique ranking or not,
the evil side of altruism enforced in the community.
On one hand I am overwhelmed by the expertise of the author of this
professional ethical article, and do not comprehend all that is written; on the
other hand, my rich, deep, truth-bounded Mavellonialist moral code grounds me
in my own metaethical view of the landscape of moral theories out there. It
occurs to me that Humean sentimentalism easily drifts over into postmodernist
moral nihilism. In fact without moral realism moral theory being the norm for a
people that there is no or not much of a is-ought gap at work epistemologically,
ontologically or normatively, people, basically evil, basically insane, and
basically addicted to and seeking suffering, without a realist, egoist moral
code and a benevolent deity in their lives, they are in bondage to the Dark
Couple and evil will continue to reign supreme on earth, and in most human
hearts.
A22: “Also, perhaps there are
(propositional) beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not by such
reasoning alone. One possible example is the belief that some object
is a cause of pleasure, a belief that depends upon prior impressions as well as
probable reasoning.”
My response: Here is where the author reveals that reasoning and a sensed
impression contribute to the agent’s belief and choice about some object, fact,
or choice. Likely we think and feel in the moral choices we make, sometimes
more one than the other but both at the same time; we are complex creatures.
A22: “Another concern about the famous argument about motives is how it
could be sound. In order for it to yield its conclusion, it seems that its
premise that morality (or a moral judgment) influences the will must be
construed to say that moral evaluations alone move us to action,
without the help of some (further) passion. This is a controversial claim and
not one for which Hume offers any support. The premise that reason alone cannot
influence action is also difficult to interpret. It would seem, given his prior
arguments for this claim (e.g. that the mere discovery of a causal relation
does not produce an impulse to act), that Hume means by it not only that the
faculty of reason or the activity of reasoning alone cannot move us, but also
that the conclusions of such activity alone (such as recognition of a relation
of ideas or belief in a causal connection) cannot produce a motive. Yet it is
hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no mental
item of a certain type (such as a causal belief) can possibly cause motivating
passion or action. Such a claim could not be supported a priori. And
in Treatise 1.3.10, “Of the influence of belief,” he seems to assert
very plainly that some causal beliefs do cause motivating passions,
specifically beliefs about pleasure and pain in prospect. It is possible that
Hume only means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence
action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their logical
conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, since he surely does not
mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as
their logical conclusions. The transition from premises to conclusion also
seems to rely on a principle of transitivity (If A alone cannot produce X and B
produces X, then A alone cannot produce B), which is doubtful but receives no
defense.
Commentators have proposed various interpretations to avoid these
difficulties. One approach is to construe ‘reason’ as the name of a process or
activity, the comparing of ideas (reasoning), and to construe ‘morals’ as Hume
uses it in this argument to mean the activity of moral discrimination (making a
moral distinction). If we understand the terms this way, the argument can be
read not as showing that the faculty of reason (or the beliefs it generates)
cannot cause us to make moral judgments, but rather as showing that the
reasoning process (comparing ideas) is distinct from the process of moral
discrimination. This interpretation does not rely on an assumption about the
transitivity of causation and is consistent with Hume’s theory of causation.”
My response: Here is where my lack of professional training as an analytic
philosopher thwarts my comprehension of what the writer wrote just about the
transivity of causation; he feels that he cannot allow equivocation to
undermine Hume’s moral theory that reasoning is involved in moral
decision-making merely as the process of comparing ideas, but that it is the
passions of approval-pleasure or disapproval-pain concerning moral choices that
push the will of the agent to choose. It is murky, I believe, for reasoning is
giving us a logical train to explore about moral ideas, but it is also causal
in moral choosing, and our sentiments or moral sense might well help us connect
moral premises as well as inform us consciously as to what option to choose.
These intertwined and perhaps not fully, intellectually
separable-from-each-other means of laying out moral arguments for ourselves, is
both rational and sentimental, and the moral thinker who is cruder and less
developed will only sense his options, whereas the individuated moralist likely
will both sense and logically conclude or determine which option to select.
Hume famously closes the section of the Treatise that argues
against moral rationalism by observing that other systems of moral philosophy,
proceeding in the ordinary way of reasoning, at some point make an unremarked
transition from premises whose parts are linked only by “is” to conclusions
whose parts are linked by “ought” (expressing a new relation) — a deduction
that seems to Hume “altogether inconceivable” (T3.1.1.27). Attention to this
transition would “subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see,
that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations
of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason” (ibid.).
Few passages in Hume’s work have generated more interpretive controversy.
According to the dominant twentieth-century interpretation, Hume says here
that no ought-judgment may be correctly inferred from a set of premises
expressed only in terms of ‘is,’ and the vulgar systems of morality commit this
logical fallacy. This is usually thought to mean something much more general:
that no ethical or indeed evaluative conclusion whatsoever may be validly
inferred from any set of purely factual premises. A number of present-day
philosophers, including R. M. Hare, endorse this putative thesis of logic,
calling it “Hume’s Law.” (As Francis Snare observes, on this reading Hume must
simply assume that no purely factual propositions are themselves evaluative, as
he does not argue for this.) Some interpreters think Hume commits himself here to
a non-propositional or noncognitivist view of moral judgment — the view that
moral judgments do not state facts and are not truth-evaluable. (If Hume has
already used the famous argument about the motivational influence of morals to
establish noncognitivism, then the is/ought paragraph may merely draw out a
trivial consequence of it. If moral evaluations are merely expressions of
feeling without propositional content, then of course they cannot be inferred
from any propositional premises.) Some see the paragraph as denying ethical
realism, excluding values from the domain of facts.”
My response: With his is-ought gap proposal, if Hume does not commit himself
to the view that moral judgements do not state facts and are not
truth-evaluable, that his view of moral judgment is non-propositional and
non-cognitivist, he sure fools me.
Hume the skeptic and moral anti-realist, sure seems to convey the opinion
that moral evaluations are subjective, mere expressions of feelings, without
propositional content. They cannot be inferred from propositional premises, and
ethical realism is to be denied, and values are divorced irrevocably from the
domain of facts.
Either Hume allows sometimes that what is is the basis for what ought to be,
or he is a straight up anti-realist.
A22: “Other interpreters — the more cognitivist ones — see the paragraph
about ‘is’ and ‘ought’ as doing none of the above. Some read it as simply
providing further support for Hume’s extensive argument that moral properties
are not discernible by demonstrative reason, leaving open whether
ethical evaluations may be conclusions of cogent probable arguments. Others
interpret it as making a point about the original discovery of virtue and vice,
which must involve the use of sentiment. On this view, one cannot make the
initial discovery of moral properties by inference from nonmoral premises using
reason alone; rather, one requires some input from sentiment. It is not simply
by reasoning from the abstract and causal relations one has discovered that one
comes to have the ideas of virtue and vice; one must respond to such
information with feelings of approval and disapproval. Note that on this
reading it is compatible with the is/ought paragraph that once a person has the
moral concepts as the result of prior experience of the moral sentiments, he or
she may reach some particular moral conclusions by inference from causal,
factual premises (stated in terms of ‘is’) about the effects of character
traits on the sentiments of observers. They point out that Hume himself makes
such inferences frequently in his writings.”
My response: Some cognitivists take a middle way, that Hume with is-ought is
only denying that moral properties are discernible by demonstrative reasoning,
that cogent probable arguments are achievable, sensible and applicable. When
the agent’s prior experience of approving or disapproving of a similar
experience is reintroduce in the practical syllogism being crafted, the agent
can muddle through to a right conclusion.
On Hume’s view, what is a moral evaluation? Four main interpretations have
significant textual support. First, as we have seen, the nonpropositional view
says that for Hume a moral evaluation does not express any proposition or state
any fact; either it gives vent to a feeling, or it is itself a feeling (Flew,
Blackburn, Snare, Bricke). (A more refined form of this interpretation allows
that moral evaluations have some propositional content, but claims that for
Hume their essential feature, as evaluations, is non-propositional.) The
subjective description view, by contrast, says that for Hume moral evaluations
describe the feelings of the spectator, or the feelings a spectator would have
were she to contemplate the trait or action from the common point of view.
Often grouped with the latter view is the third, dispositional interpretation,
which understands moral evaluations as factual judgments to the effect that the
evaluated trait or action is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or
disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator (Mackie, in one of his
proposals). On the dispositional view, in saying some trait is good we
attribute to the trait the dispositional property of being such as to elicit
approval. A fourth interpretation distinguishes two psychological states that
might be called a moral evaluation: an occurrent feeling of approval or
disapproval (which is not truth-apt), and a moral belief or judgment that is
propositional. Versions of this fourth interpretation differ in what they take
to be the content of that latter mental state. One version says that the moral
judgments, as distinct from the moral feelings, are factual judgments about the
moral sentiments (Capaldi). A distinct version, the moral sensing view, treats
the moral beliefs as ideas copied from the impressions of approval or
disapproval that represent a trait of character or an action as having whatever
quality it is that one experiences in feeling the moral sentiment (Cohon). This
last view emphasizes Hume’s claim that moral good and evil are like heat, cold,
and colors as understood in “modern philosophy,” which are experienced directly
by sensation, but about which we form beliefs.”
My response: The introduced, four main interpretation of Hume’s view of what
is a moral evaluation is outside the scope of my interest in this blog entry,
but would be prospective to study and ponder.
Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, on Hume’s
positive view, arise from our sentiments. The virtues and vices are those
traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and
disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the trait, whether the
trait’s possessor or another. These moral sentiments are emotions (in the
present-day sense of that term) with a unique phenomenological quality, and
also with a special set of causes. They are caused by contemplating the person
or action to be evaluated without regard to our self-interest, and from a
common or general perspective that compensates for certain likely distortions
in the observer’s sympathies, as explained in Section
8. Approval (approbation) is a pleasure, and disapproval
(disapprobation) a pain or uneasiness. The moral sentiments are typically calm
rather than violent, although they can be intensified by our awareness of the
moral responses of others. They are types of pleasure and uneasiness that are
associated with the passions of pride and humility, love and hatred: when we
feel moral approval of another we tend to love or esteem her, and when we
approve a trait of our own we are proud of it. Some interpreters analyze the
moral sentiments as themselves forms of these four passions; others argue that
Hume’s moral sentiments tend to cause the latter passions. We distinguish which
traits are virtuous and which are vicious by means of our feelings of
approval and disapproval toward the traits; our approval of actions is
derived from approval of the traits we suppose to have given rise to them. We
can determine, by observing the various sorts of traits toward which we feel
approval, that every such trait — every virtue — has at least one of the
following four characteristics: it is either immediately agreeable to the
person who has it or to others, or it is useful (advantageous over the longer
term) to its possessor or to others. Vices prove to have the parallel features:
they are either immediately disagreeable or disadvantageous either to the
person who has them or to others. These are not definitions of ‘virtue’ and
‘vice’ but empirical generalizations about the traits as first identified by
their effects on the moral sentiments.
In the Treatise Hume details the causes of the moral sentiments, in
doing so explaining why agreeable and advantageous traits prove to be the ones
that generate approval. He claims that the sentiments of moral approval and
disapproval are caused by some of the operations of sympathy, which is not a
feeling but rather a psychological mechanism that enables one person to receive
by communication the sentiments of another (more or less what we would call
empathy today).
Sympathy in general operates as follows. First, observation of the outward
expression of another person’s “affection” (feeling or sentiment) in his
“countenance and conversation” conveys the idea of his passion into my mind. So
does observing the typical cause of a passion: for example, viewing the
instruments laid out for another’s surgery will evoke ideas in me of fear and
pain. We at all times possess a maximally vivid and forceful impression of
ourselves. According to Hume’s associationism, vivacity of one perception is
automatically transferred to those others that are related to it by
resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. Here resemblance and contiguity
are primary. All human beings, regardless of their differences, are similar in
bodily structure and in the types and causes of their passions. The person I
observe or consider may further resemble me in more specific shared features
such as character or nationality. Because of the resemblance and my contiguity
to the observed person, the idea of his passion is associated in my mind with
my impression of myself, and acquires great vivacity from it. The sole
difference between an idea and an impression is the degree of liveliness or
vivacity each possesses. So great is this acquired vivacity that the idea of
his passion in my mind becomes an impression, and I actually experience the
passion. When I come to share in the affections of strangers, and feel pleasure
because they are pleased, as I do when I experience an aesthetic enjoyment of a
well-designed ship or fertile field that is not my own, my pleasure can only be
caused by sympathy (T 2.2.2–8, 3.3.1.7–8). Similarly, Hume observes, when we
reflect upon a character or mental quality knowing its tendency either to the
benefit or enjoyment of strangers or to their harm or uneasiness, we come to
feel enjoyment when the trait is beneficial or agreeable to those strangers,
and uneasiness when the trait is harmful or disagreeable to them. This reaction
of ours to the tendency of a character trait to affect the sentiments of those
with whom we have no special affectionate ties can only be explained by
sympathy.
We greatly approve the artificial virtues (justice with respect to property,
allegiance to government, and dispositions to obey the laws of nations and the
rules of modesty and good manners), which (Hume argues) are inventions
contrived solely for the interest of society. We approve them in all times and
places, even where our own interest is not at stake, solely for their tendency
to benefit the whole society of that time or place. This instance confirms that
“the reflecting on the tendency of characters and mental qualities, is
sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and blame” (T 3.3.1.9). The
sympathy-generated pleasure, then, is the moral approbation we feel
toward these traits of character. We find the character traits — the causes —
agreeable because they are the means to ends we find agreeable as a result of
sympathy. Hume extends this analysis to the approval of most of the natural
virtues. Those traits of which we approve naturally (without any social
contrivance), such as beneficence, clemency, and moderation, also tend to the
good of individuals or all of society. So our approval of those can be
explained in precisely the same way, via sympathy with the pleasure of those
who receive benefit. And since the imagination is more struck by what is
particular than by what is general, manifestations of the natural virtues,
which directly benefit any individual to whom they are directed, are even more
apt to give pleasure via sympathy than are the manifestations of justice, which
may harm identifiable individuals in some cases though they contribute to a
pattern of action beneficial to society as a whole (T 3.3.1.13).
As we saw, the moral sentiments are produced by sympathy with those affected
by a trait or action. Such sympathetically-acquired feelings are distinct from
our self-interested responses, and an individual of discernment learns to
distinguish her moral sentiments (which are triggered by contemplating
another’s character trait “in general”) from the pleasure or uneasiness she may
feel when responding to a trait with reference to her “particular interest,”
for example when another’s strength of character makes him a formidable
opponent (T 3.1.2.4).
However, the sympathetic transmission of sentiments can vary in
effectiveness depending upon the degree of resemblance and contiguity between
the observer and the person with whom he sympathizes. I receive the sentiments
of someone very much like me or very close to me in time or place far more
strongly than I do those of someone unlike me or more remote from me in
location or in history. Yet the moral assessments we make do not vary depending
upon whether the person we evaluate resembles us in language, sex, or
temperament, or is near or far. Indeed, our moral assessments of people remain
stable even though our position with respect to them changes over time.
Furthermore, sympathy only brings us people’s actual sentiments or what we
believe to be their actual sentiments; yet we feel moral approval of character
traits that we know produce no real happiness for anyone, because, for example,
their possessor is isolated in a prison. To handle these objections to the
sympathy theory, and to explain more generally how, on a sentiment-based
ethical theory, moral evaluations made by one individual at different times and
many individuals in a community tend to be fairly uniform, Hume claims that
people do not make their moral judgments from their own individual points of
view, but instead select “some common point of view, from which they might
survey their object, and which might cause it to appear the same to all of
them” (T 3.3.1.30). At least with respect to natural virtues and vices, this
common point of view is composed of the intimate perspectives of the various
individuals who have direct interactions with the person being evaluated. To
make a moral evaluation I must sympathize with each of these persons in their
dealings with the subject of my evaluation; the blame or praise I give as a
result of this imaginative exercise is my genuine moral assessment of the
subject’s character. In that assessment I also overlook the small external
accidents of fortune that might render an individual’s trait ineffectual, and
respond to traits that render a character typically “fitted to be beneficial to
society,” even if circumstances do not permit it to cause that benefit (T
3.3.1.20). Thus I acquire by sympathy the pleasure or uneasiness that I imagine
people would feel were the trait able to operate as it ordinarily
does. “Experience soon teaches us this method of correcting our sentiments, or
at least, of correcting our language, where the sentiments are more stubborn
and inalterable” (T 3.3.1.16).
The standard object of moral evaluation is a “quality of mind,” a character
trait. (As we have seen, for Hume evaluation of an action is derived
from evaluation of the inner quality we suppose to have given rise to it.) The
typical moral judgment is that some trait, such as a particular person’s
benevolence or laziness, is a virtue or a vice. A character trait, for Hume, is
a psychological disposition consisting of a tendency to feel a certain
sentiment or combination of sentiments, ones that often move their possessor to
action. We reach a moral judgment by feeling approval or disapproval upon
contemplating someone’s trait in a disinterested way from the common point of
view. So moral approval is a favorable sentiment in the observer elicited by
the observed person’s disposition to have certain motivating sentiments. Thus
moral approval is a sentiment that is directed toward sentiments, or the
dispositions to have them.
In the Treatise Hume emphasizes that “our sense of every kind of
virtue is not natural; but … there are some virtues, that produce pleasure and
approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the
circumstances and necessities of mankind” (T 3.2.1.1). He divides the virtues
into those that are natural — in that our approval of them does not depend upon
any cultural inventions or jointly-made social rules — and those that are
artificial (dependent both for their existence as character traits and for
their ethical merit on the presence of conventional rules for the common good),
and he gives separate accounts of the two kinds. The traits he calls natural
virtues are more refined and completed forms of those human sentiments we could
expect to find even in people who belonged to no society but cooperated only
within small familial groups. The traits he calls artificial virtues are the
ones we need for successful impersonal cooperation; our natural
sentiments are too partial to give rise to these without intervention. In the Treatise
Hume includes among the artificial virtues honesty with respect to property
(which he often calls equity or “justice,” though it is a strangely narrow use
of the term), fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under “justice”),
allegiance to one’s government, conformity to the laws of nations (for
princes), chastity (refraining from non-marital sex) and modesty (both
primarily for women and girls), and good manners. A great number of individual
character traits are listed as natural virtues, but the main types discussed in
detail are greatness of mind (“a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if
well-concealed and well-founded,” T 3.2.2.11), goodness or benevolence (an
umbrella category covering generosity, gratitude, friendship, and more), and
such natural abilities as prudence and wit, which, Hume argues, have a
reasonably good claim to be included under the title moral virtue, though
traditionally they are not. Hume does not explicitly draw a distinction between
artificial and natural virtues in the moral Enquiry.
In the Treatise Hume argues in turn that the virtues of material
honesty and of faithfulness to promises and contracts are artificial, not
natural virtues. Both arguments fall into at least two stages: one to show that
if we suppose the given character trait to exist and to win our approval
without help from any cooperative social arrangement, paradoxes arise; and
another, longer stage to explain how the relevant convention might have come
into being and to refute those with a different genetic story. He also explains
the social construction of the other artificial virtues and what social good
they serve.
Hume offers a rather cryptic argument to show that our approval of material
honesty must be the product of collaborative human effort (convention). When we
approve an action, he says, we regard it merely as the sign of the motivating
passion in the agent’s “mind and temper” that produced it; our evaluation of
the action is derived from our assessment of this inner motive. Therefore all
actions deemed virtuous derive their goodness only from virtuous motives —
motives we approve. It follows from this that the motive that originally
“bestows a merit on any action” can never be moral approval of that action
(awareness of its virtue), but must be a non-moral, motivating psychological
state — that is, a state distinct from the “regard to the virtue” of an action
(moral approval or disapproval) (T 3.2.1.4). For if the virtue-bestowing motive
of the action were the agent’s sense that the act would be virtuous to do — if
that were why he did it, and why we approved it — then we would be reasoning in
a vicious circle: we would approve of the action derivatively, because we
approve of the agent’s motive, and this motive would consist of approval of the
action, which can only be based on approval of a motive... The basis of our
approval could not be specified. For every virtue, therefore, there must be
some non-moral motive that characteristically motivates actions expressive of
that virtue, which motive, by eliciting our approval, makes the actions so
motivated virtuous. The virtue of an action of this species would be established
by its being done from this non-moral motive, and only then could an agent also
or alternatively be moved so to act by her derivative concern for the virtue of
the act. However, Hume observes that there is no morally approved (and
so virtue-bestowing), non-moral motive of honest action. The only approved,
reliable motive that we can find for acts of “equity” is a moral one, the sense
of virtue or “regard to the honesty” of the actions. The honest individual
repays a loan not (merely) out of self-interest or concern for the well-being
of the lender (who may be a “profligate debauchee” who will reap only harm from
his possessions), but from a “regard to justice, and abhorrence of villainy and
knavery” (T 3.2.1.9, 13). This, however, is “evident sophistry and reasoning in
a circle…” Now nature cannot have “establish’d a sophistry, and render’d it
necessary and unavoidable…”; therefore, “the sense of justice and injustice is
not deriv’d from nature, but arises artificially… from education, and human conventions”
(T 3.2.1.17). Whatever, exactly, the logic of this argument is supposed to be,
Hume’s intent is to show that if we imagine equity to be a natural virtue we
commit ourselves to a sophistry, and therefore honesty is instead man-made.
Hume offers an account of the genesis of the social convention that creates
honesty with respect to property, and this is meant to cope in some way with
the circularity he identifies. How it does so is a matter of interpretive
controversy, as we will see.
Hume next poses two questions about the rules of ownership of property and
the associated virtue of material honesty: what is the artifice by which human
beings create them, and why do we attribute moral goodness and evil to the
observance and neglect of these rules?
By nature human beings have many desires but are individually ill-equipped
with strength, natural weapons, or natural skills to satisfy them. We can
remedy these natural defects by means of social cooperation: shared strength,
division of labor, and mutual aid in times of individual weakness. It occurs to
people to form a society as a consequence of their experience with the small
family groups into which they are born, groups united initially by sexual
attraction and familial love, but in time demonstrating the many practical
advantages of working together with others. However, in the conditions of
moderate scarcity in which we find ourselves, and given the portable nature of
the goods we desire, our untrammeled greed and naturally “confined generosity”
(generosity to those dear to us in preference to others) tends to create
conflict or undermine cooperation, destroying collaborative arrangements among
people who are not united by ties of affection, and leaving us all materially
poor. No remedy for this natural partiality is to be found in “our natural
uncultivated ideas of morality” (T 3.2.2.8); an invention is needed.
Hume argues that we create the rules of ownership of property originally in
order to satisfy our avidity for possessions for ourselves and our loved ones,
by linking material goods more securely to particular individuals so as to
avoid conflict. Within small groups of cooperators, individuals signal to one
another a willingness to conform to a simple rule: to refrain from the material
goods others come to possess by labor or good fortune, provided those others
will observe the same restraint toward them. (This rule will in time require
more detail: specific rules determining who may enjoy which goods initially and
how goods may be transferred.) This signalling is not a promise (which cannot
occur without another, similar convention), but an expression of conditional
intention. The usefulness of such a custom is so obvious that others will soon
catch on and express a similar intention, and the rest will fall in line. The
convention develops tacitly, as do conventions of language and money. When an
individual within such a small society violates this rule, the others are aware
of it and exclude the offender from their cooperative activities. Once the
convention is in place, justice (of this sort) is defined as conformity with
the convention, injustice as violation of it; indeed, the convention defines
property rights, ownership, financial obligation, theft, and related concepts,
which had no application before the convention was introduced. So useful and
obvious is this invention that human beings would not live for long in isolated
family groups or in fluctuating larger groups with unstable possession of
goods; their ingenuity would quickly enable them to invent property, so as to
reap the substantial economic benefits of cooperation in larger groups in which
there would be reliable possession of the product, and they would thus better
satisfy their powerful natural greed by regulating it with rules of justice.
Greed, and more broadly, self-interest, is the motive for inventing
property; but we need a further explanation why we think of justice (adherence
to the rules of ownership) as virtuous, and injustice (their violation) as
vicious. Hume accounts for the moralization of property as follows. As our
society grows larger, we may cease to see our own property violations as a
threat to the continued existence of a stable economic community, and this
reduces our incentive to conform. But when we consider violations by others, we
partake by sympathy in the uneasiness these violations cause to their victims
and all of society. Such disinterested uneasiness, and the concomitant pleasure
we feel on contemplating the public benefits of adherence, are instances of
moral disapproval and approval. We extend these feelings to our own behavior as
a result of general rules. This process is “forwarded by the artifice of
politicians” (T 3.2.2.25), who assist nature by cultivating widespread esteem
for justice and abhorrence of injustice in order to govern more easily. Private
education assists in this further artifice. Thus material honesty becomes a
virtue.
Does this account resolve the circularity problem? Is there any non-moral
motive of honest action? Some interpreters say yes, it is greed redirected,
which removes the circle. But this presents two difficulties: first, our greed
is not in fact best satisfied by just action in every case, and second, Hume
denies that this motive is approved. Some interpret Hume as coping with the
first difficulty by supposing that politicians and parents deceive us into
thinking, falsely, that every individual just act advances the interests of the
agent; or they claim that Hume himself mistakenly thought so, at least in the Treatise
(see Baron, Haakonssen, and Gauthier). Others claim that Hume identifies a
non-moral motive of honest action (albeit an artificial one) other than
redirected greed, such as a disposition to treat the rules of justice as
themselves reason-giving (Darwall) or having a policy of conforming to the
rules of justice as a system (Garrett). Still others say there is no non-moral
motive of honest action, and Hume escapes from the circle by relaxing this
ostensibly universal requirement on virtuous types of behavior, limiting it to
the naturally virtuous kinds. These interpreters either claim that there is no
particular motive needed to evoke approval for conformity to the rules of
property — mere behavior is enough (Mackie) — or that we approve of a
motivating form of the moral sentiment itself, the sense of duty (Cohon).
Hume’s genetic account of property is striking for its lack of patriarchal
assumptions about the family, its explicit denial that the creation of
ownership does or can depend on any promise or contract, and its concept of
convention as an informal practice of mutual compromise for mutual advantage
that arises incrementally and entirely informally, without the use of central
authority or force.
Fidelity is the virtue of being disposed to fulfill promises and contracts.
Hume has in mind promises made “at arm’s length” that parties undertake to
promote their own interest, not affectionate exchanges of favors between
friends. While he identifies the same circularity puzzle about the approved
motive of fidelity that he tackles at length in connection with honesty, in the
case of fidelity he concentrates on a different conundrum that arises with the
misguided attempt to analyze fidelity as a non-conventional (natural) virtue.
Unlike Hobbes and Locke, who help themselves to the concept of a promise or
contract in their imagined state of nature, Hume argues that the performative
utterance “I promise” would be unintelligible in the absence of background social
conventions, and that the moral obligation of a promise is dependent upon such
conventions as well.
Suppose the practice of giving and receiving promises did not depend on a
socially-defined convention. In that case, what could we mean by the utterances
we use to make them, and what would be the origin of our obligation to fulfill
them? Where the words are used (uncharacteristically) in a way that does not purport
to reveal the agent’s will (as when the person is joking or play-acting), we do
not think a promise is really being made; we only take a speaker to have
promised, and so to be bound to perform, if he understands the words he uses,
in particular as purporting to obligate him. Thus for effective use there must
be some act of the speaker’s mind expressed by the special phrase “I promise”
and its synonyms, and our moral obligation results from this act of the mind.
(This seems to be Hobbes’s assumption in Leviathan, where the implicit
signs of covenant — as distinct from the explicit ones — are clear signs of the
person’s will.) The requisite mental act or mental state, though, could not be
one of mere desire or resolution to act, since it does not follow from our
desiring or resolving to act that we are morally obligated to do so; nor could
it be the volition to act, since that does not come into being ahead of time
when we promise, but only when the time comes to act. And of course, one can
promise successfully (incur obligation by promising) even though one has no
intention to perform; so the mental act requisite to obligation is not the
intention to perform. The only likely act of mind that might be expressed in a
promise is a mental act of willing to be obligated to perform the
promised action, as this conforms to our common view that we bind ourselves by
choosing to be bound.
But, Hume argues, it is absurd to think that one can actually bring an
obligation into existence by willing to be obligated. What makes an action
obligatory is that its omission is disapproved by unbiased observers. But no
act of will within an agent can directly change a previously neutral act into
one that provokes moral disapproval in observers (even in the agent herself).
Sentiments are not subject to such voluntary control. Even on a moral
rationalist view the thesis would be absurd: to create a new obligation would
be to change the abstract relations in which actions and persons stand to one
another, and one cannot do this by performing in one’s own mind an act of
willing such a relation to exist. Thus, there is no such act of the mind. Even
if people in their natural (pre-conventional) condition “cou’d perceive each
other’s thoughts by intuition,” they could not understand one another to bind
themselves by any act of promising, and could not be obligated thereby. Since
the necessary condition for a natural obligation of promises cannot be
fulfilled, we may conclude that this obligation is instead the product of group
invention to serve the interests of society.
Promises are invented in order to build upon the advantages afforded by
property. The invention of mere ownership suffices to make possession stable.
The introduction of transfer by consent permits some trade, but so far only
simultaneous swapping of visible commodities. Great advantages could be gained
by all if people could be counted on to provide goods or services later for
benefits given now, or exchange goods that are distant or described
generically. But for people without the capacity to obligate themselves to
future action, such exchanges would depend upon the party who performs second
doing so out of gratitude alone; and that motive cannot generally be relied on
in self-interested transactions. However, we can devise better ways to satisfy
our appetites “in an oblique and artificial manner...” (T 3.2.5.9). First,
people can easily recognize that additional kinds of mutual exchanges would
serve their interests. They need only express this interest to one another in
order to encourage everyone to invent and to keep such agreements. They devise
a form of words to mark these new sorts of exchanges (and distinguish them from
the generous reciprocal acts of friendship and gratitude). When someone utters
this form of words, he is understood to express a resolution to do the action
in question, and he “subjects himself to the penalty of never being trusted
again in case of failure” (T 3.2.5.10), a penalty made possible by the practice
of the group, who enforce the requirement to keep promises by the simple expedient
of refusing to contract with those whose word cannot be trusted . This “concert
or convention” (ibid.) alters human motives to act. One is moved by
self-interest to give the promising sign (in order to obtain the other party’s
cooperation), and once one has given it, self-interest demands that one do what
one promised to do so as to insure that people will exchange promises with one
in the future. Some interpreters say that this enlightened self-interest
remains the only motive for keeping one’s promise, once the practice of
promising has been created. But Hume says the sentiment of morals comes to play
the same role in promise-keeping that it does in the development of honesty
with respect to property (T 3.2.5.12); so there is evidence he thinks the moral
sentiment not only becomes “annex’d” to promise-keeping but further motivates
it. In larger, more anonymous communities, a further incentive is needed
besides the fear of exclusion; and a sentiment of moral approval of
promise-keeping arises as the result of sympathy with all who benefit from the
practice, aided by a “second artifice,” the well-meaning psychological
manipulation of the people by parents and politicians, which yields a
near-universal admiration of fidelity and shame at breaking one’s word (T
3.2.5.12). This may provide a moral motive for promise-keeping even in
anonymous transactions.
A small society can maintain a subsistence-level economy without any
dominion of some people over others, relying entirely on voluntary compliance
with conventions of ownership, transfer of goods, and keeping of agreements,
and relying on exclusion as the sole means of enforcement. But an increase in
population and/or material productivity, Hume thinks, tends to stimulate a
destabilizing rate of defection from the rules: more luxury goods greatly
increase the temptation to act unjustly, and more anonymous transactions make
it seem likely that one will get away with it. Though people are aware that
injustice is destructive of social cooperation and so ultimately detrimental to
their own interests, this knowledge will not enable them to resist such strong
temptation, because of an inherent human weakness: we are more powerfully drawn
to a near-term good even when we know we will pay for it with the loss of a
greater long-term good. This creates the need for government to enforce the
rules of property and promise (the “laws of nature,” as Hume sometimes rather
ironically calls them, since on his view they are not natural). This is the
reason for the invention of government. Once in power, rulers can also make
legitimate use of their authority to resolve disputes over just what the rules
of justice require in particular cases, and to carry out projects for the
common good such as building roads and dredging harbors.
Hume thinks it unnecessary to prove that allegiance to government is the
product of convention and not mere nature, since governments are obviously
social creations. But he does need to explain the creation of governments and
how they solve the problem he describes. He speculates that people who are
unaccustomed to subordination in daily life might draw the idea for government
from their experience of wars with other societies, when they must appoint a
temporary commander. To overcome the preference for immediate gain over
long-term security, the people will need to arrange social circumstances so
that the conformity to justice is in people’s immediate interest. This cannot
be done with respect to all the people, but it can be done for a few. So the
people select magistrates (judges, kings, and the like) and so position them
(presumably with respect to rank and wealth) that it will be in those
magistrates’ immediate interest not only to obey but to enforce the rules of
justice throughout society. Hume is vague about the incentives of the
magistrates, but apparently they are so pleased with their own share of wealth
and status that they are not tempted by the possessions of others; and since
they are “indifferent… to the greatest part of the state,” they have no
incentive to assist anyone in any crimes (T3.2.7.6). Thus the magistrates’ most
immediate interest lies in preserving their own status and wealth by protecting
society. (Perhaps more directly, they stand to lose their favored status if
they are found by the people not to enforce the rules of justice.)
It is possible for the people to agree to appoint magistrates in spite of
the incurable human attraction to the proximal good even when smaller than a
remote good, because this predilection only takes effect when the lesser good
is immediately at hand. When considering two future goods, people always prefer
the greater, and make decisions accordingly. So looking to the future, people
can decide now to empower magistrates to force them to conform to the rules of
justice in the time to come so as to preserve society. When the time comes to
obey and individuals are tempted to violate the rules, the long-range threat
this poses to society may not move them to desist, but the immediate threat of
punishment by the magistrates will.
We initially obey our magistrates from self-interest. But once government is
instituted, we come to have a moral obligation to obey our governors; this is
another artificial duty that needs to be explained. On Hume’s view it is
independent of the obligation of promises. We are bound to our promises and to
obey the magistrates’ commands on parallel grounds: because both kinds of
conformity are so manifestly beneficial for all. Governors merely insure that
the rules of justice are generally obeyed in the sort of society where purely
voluntary conventions would otherwise break down. As in the case of fidelity to
promises, the character trait of allegiance to our governors generates sympathy
with its beneficiaries throughout society, making us approve the trait as a
virtue.
The duty of allegiance to our present governors does not depend upon their
or their ancestors’ divine right to govern, Hume says, nor on any promise we
have made to them or any contract that transfers rights to them, but rather on
the general social value of having a government. Rulers thus need not be chosen
by the people in order to be legitimate. Consequently, who is the ruler will
often be a matter of salience and imaginative association; and it will be no
ground for legitimate rebellion that a ruler was selected arbitrarily. Rulers
identified by long possession of authority, present possession, conquest,
succession, or positive law will be suitably salient and so legitimate,
provided their rule tends to the common good. Although governments exist to serve
the interests of their people, changing magistrates and forms of government for
the sake of small advantages to the public would yield disorder and upheaval,
defeating the purpose of government; so our duty of allegiance forbids this. A
government that maintains conditions preferable to what they would be without
it retains its legitimacy and may not rightly be overthrown. But rebellion
against a cruel tyranny is no violation of our duty of allegiance, and may
rightly be undertaken.
Hume does advocate some forms of government as being preferable to others,
particularly in his Essays. Governments structured by laws are
superior to those controlled by the edicts of rulers or ruling bodies (“That
Politics May Be Reduced to a Science”). Representative democracy is superior to
direct democracy, and “free” (popular) governments are more hospitable to trade
than “absolute” governments (ibid.). Hume speculates that a perfect government
would be a representative democracy of property-holders with division of powers
and some features of federalism (“Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth”). He defends
his preferences by arguing that certain forms of government are less prone to
corruption, faction (with the concomitant threat of civil war), and oppressive
treatment of the people than others; that is, they are more likely to enforce
the rules of justice, adjudicate fairly, and encourage peace and prosperity.
Hume famously criticizes the social contract theory of political obligation.
According to his own theory, our duty to obey our governors is not reducible to
an instance of our duty to fulfill promises, but arises separately though in a
way parallel to the genesis of that duty. Hume denies that any native citizen
or subject in his own day has made even a tacit promise to obey the government,
given that citizens do not think they did any such thing, but rather think they
are born to obey it. Even a tacit contract requires that the will be engaged,
and we have no memory of this; nor do governments refrain from punishing
disloyalty in citizens who have given no tacit promise.
In the Treatise Hume’s principle interest in the natural virtues
lies in explaining the causes that make us approve them. The mechanism of
sympathy ultimately accounts for this approval and the corresponding
disapproval of the natural vices. Sympathy also explains our approval of the
artificial virtues; the difference is that we approve of those as a result of
sympathy with the cumulative effects produced by the general practice of the
artificial virtues on the whole of society (individual acts of justice not
always producing pleasure for anyone); whereas we approve each individual
exercise of such natural virtues as gratitude and friendship because we
sympathize with those who are affected by each such action when we consider it
from the common point of view. As we saw, he argues that the traits of which we
approve fall into four groups: traits immediately agreeable to their possessor
or to others, and traits advantageous to their possessor or to others. In these
four groups of approved traits, our approval arises as the result of sympathy
bringing into our minds the pleasure that the trait produces for its possessor
or for others (with one minor exception). This is especially clear with such
self-regarding virtues as prudence and industry, which we approve even when
they occur in individuals who provide no benefit to us observers; this can only
be explained by our sympathy with the benefits that prudence and industry bring
to their possessors.
According to Hume, different levels and manifestations of the passions of
pride and humility make for virtue or for vice. An obvious and “over-weaning
conceit” is disapproved by any observer (is a vice) (T 3.3.2.1); while a
well-founded but concealed self-esteem is approved (is a virtue). Hume explains
these opposite reactions to such closely related character traits by means of
the interplay of the observer’s sympathy with a distinct psychological
mechanism he calls comparison. The mechanism of comparison juxtaposes a
sympathetically-communicated sentiment with the observer’s own inherent
feeling, causing the observer to feel a sentiment opposite to the one she
observes in another (pleasure if the other is suffering, pain if the other is
pleased) when the sympathetically-communicated sentiment is not too strong. A
person who displays excessive pride irritates others because, while others come
to feel this person’s pleasant sentiment of pride (to some degree) via
sympathy, they also feel a greater uneasiness as a result of comparing that
great pride (in whose objects they do not believe) with their own lesser pride
in themselves; this is why conceit is a vice. Self-esteem founded on an
accurate assessment of one’s strengths and politely concealed from others,
though, is both agreeable and advantageous to its possessor without being
distressing to others, and so is generally approved. (Thus the professed
preference of Christians for humility over self-esteem does not accord with the
judgments of most observers.) Although excessive pride is a natural vice and
self-esteem a natural virtue, human beings in society create the artificial
virtue of good breeding (adherence to customs of slightly exaggerated mutual
deference in accordance with social rank) to enable us each to conceal our own
pride easily so that it does not shock the pride of others.
Courage and military heroism are also forms of pride. Though the student of
history can see that military ambition has mostly been disadvantageous to human
society, when we contemplate the “dazling” character of the hero, immediate
sympathy irresistibly leads us to approve it (T 3.3.2.15).
Our approval of those traits that may be grouped together under the heading
of goodness and benevolence, such as generosity, humanity, compassion, and
gratitude, arises from sympathy with people in the individual’s “narrow circle”
of friends and associates, since, given natural human selfishness, we cannot
expect people’s concerns to extend farther (T 3.3.3.2). By adopting the common
point of view we correct for the distortions of sympathy by entering into the
feelings of those close to the person being evaluated even if they are remote
from us. The vice of cruelty is most loathed because the suffering of the
person’s victims that reaches us via sympathy readily becomes hatred of the
perpetrator.
Although natural abilities of the mind are not traditionally classified as
moral virtues and vices, the difference between these types of traits is
unimportant, Hume argues. Intelligence, good judgment, application, eloquence,
and wit are also mental qualities that bring individuals the approbation of
others, and their absence is disapproved. As is the case with many of the
traditionally-recognized virtues, the various natural abilities are approved
either because they are useful to their possessor or because they are
immediately agreeable to others. It is sometimes argued that moral virtues are
unlike natural abilities in that the latter are involuntary, but Hume argues
that many traditional moral virtues are involuntary as well. The sole
difference is that the prospect of reward or punishment can induce people to
act as the morally virtuous would (as justice requires, for example), but
cannot induce them to act as if they had the natural abilities.
Late in his life Hume deemed the Enquiry concerning the Principles of
Morals his best work, and in style it is a model of elegance and subtlety.
His method in that work differs from that of the Treatise: instead of
explicating the nature of virtue and vice and our knowledge of them in terms of
underlying features of the human mind, he proposes to collect all the traits we
know from common sense to be virtues and vices, observe what those in each
group have in common, and from that observation discover the “foundation of
ethics” (EPM 1.10). The conclusions largely coincide with those of the Treatise.
Some topics in the Treatise are handled more fully in the moral Enquiry;
for example Hume’s account of the motive to just action is enriched by his
discussion of a challenge from a “sensible knave.” However, without the
detailed background theories of the mind, the passions, motivation to action,
and social convention presented in the Treatise, and without any
substitute for them, some of the conclusions of the moral Enquiry
stand unsupported.
In the latter work, Hume’s main argument that reason alone is not adequate
to yield moral evaluations (in Appendix 1) depends on his having demonstrated
throughout the book that at least one foundation of moral praise lies in the
usefulness to society of the praised character trait. We use reason extensively
to learn the effects of various traits and to identify the useful and
pernicious ones. But utility and disutility are merely means; were we
indifferent to the weal and woe of mankind, we would feel equally indifferent
to the traits that promote those ends. Therefore there must be some sentiment
that makes us favor the one over the other. This could only be humanity, “a
feeling for the happiness of mankind, and resentment of their misery” (EPM App.
1.3). This argument presupposes that the moral evaluations we make are
themselves the expression of sentiment rather than reason alone. (The
alternative position would be that while of course we do feel approval and
disapproval for vice and virtue, the judgment as to which is which is itself
the deliverance of reason.) So Hume appends some arguments directed against the
hypothesis of moral rationalism. One of these is an enriched version of the
argument of Treatise 3.1.1 that neither demonstrative nor causal reasoning has
moral distinctions as its proper object, since moral vice and virtue cannot
plausibly be analyzed as either facts or relations. He adds that while in our
reasonings we start from the knowledge of relations or facts and infer some
previously-unknown relation or fact, moral evaluation cannot proceed until all
the relevant facts and relations are already known. At that point, there is
nothing further for reason to do; therefore moral evaluation is not the work of
reason alone but of another faculty. He bolsters this line of argument by
expanding his Treatise analogy between moral and aesthetic judgment,
arguing that just as our appreciation of beauty awaits full information about
the object but requires the further contribution of taste, so in moral evaluation
our assessment of merit or villainy awaits full knowledge of the person and
situation but requires the further contribution of approbation or
disapprobation. He also offers the argument that since the chain of reasons why
one acts must finally stop at something that is “desirable on its own account…
because of its immediate accord or agreement with sentiment…” (EPM App.1.19),
sentiment is needed to account for ultimate human ends; and since virtue is an
end, sentiment and not reason alone must distinguish moral good and evil.
In the moral Enquiry Hume omits all arguments to show that reason
alone does not move us to act; so the Representation Argument about the
irrelevance of reason to passions and actions is absent. Without it he has no
support for his direct argument that moral goodness and evil are not identical
with reasonableness and unreasonableness, which relies on it for its key
premise; and that too is absent from EPM. On the whole in EPM Hume does not
appeal to the thesis that reason cannot produce motives in order to show that
morals are not derived from reason alone, but limits himself to the epistemic
and descriptive arguments showing that reason alone cannot discern virtue and
vice in order to reject ethical rationalism in favor of sentimentalism.
However, at Appendix I.21 he does assert (without support) that “Reason, being
cool and disengaged, is no motive to action,” and perhaps this is intended to
be a premise in a revised version of the famous argument that reason cannot
produce motives but morals can, though what he writes here is tantalizingly
different from that argument as it appears repeatedly in the Treatise.
Why did Hume omit the more fundamental arguments for the motivational
inertia of reason? He may have reconsidered and rejected them. For example, he
may have given up his undefended claim that passions have no representative
character, a premise of the Representation Argument on which, as we saw, some
of his fundamental anti-rationalist arguments depend. Or he may have retained
these views but opted not to appeal to anything so arcane in a work aimed at a
broader audience and intended to be as accessible as possible. The moral Enquiry
makes no use of ideas and impressions, and so no arguments that depend on that
distinction can be offered there, including the Representation Argument.
Apparently Hume thought he could show that reason and sentiment rule different
domains without using those arguments.
Thus, not surprisingly, the causal analysis of sympathy as a mechanism of
vivacity-transferal from the impression of the self to the ideas of the
sentiments of others is entirely omitted from the moral Enquiry. Hume
still appeals to sympathy there to explain the origin of all moral approval and
disapproval, but he explains our sympathy with others simply as a manifestation
of the sentiment of humanity, which is given more prominence. He is still
concerned about the objection that sympathetically-acquired sentiments vary
with spatial and temporal distance from the object of evaluation while moral
assessments do not; so he addresses it in the moral Enquiry as well,
and resolves it by appealing once again to the common point of view. In the Enquiry
he places more emphasis on sympathy with the interests of the whole of society,
in part achieved by conversation using shared moral vocabulary, as a way to
correct our initial sentiments to make them genuinely moral (Taylor 2002). He
also attends more explicitly to the role of reason and reflection in moral
evaluation. Some interpreters see him as offering an account of how to arrive
at reliable moral judgment superior to that in the Treatise (Taylor
2015).
The distinction between artificial and natural virtues that dominates the
virtue ethics of the Treatise is almost entirely absent from the moral
Enquiry; the term ‘artificial’ occurs in the latter only once in a
footnote. Gone are the paradoxes of property and promises intended to prove
that particular virtues are devised on purpose; also missing is what some
commentators think Hume’s most original contribution to the theory of justice,
his account of convention. Yet Hume briefly sketches part of the same quasi-historical
account of the origin of justice that he gives in the Treatise; and
while the emphasis has shifted, Hume not only tries to show that justice has
merit only because of its beneficial consequences, but that “public utility is
the sole origin of justice” — were we not to find it useful (and in
some conditions we might not) we would not even have such a thing (EPM 3.1.1).
While any explanation of this shift and these omissions is merely speculative,
here it seems that Hume does not change his mind about the arguments of the Treatise
but chooses to lead the reader to the same conclusions by more subtle and
indirect means while avoiding provocative claims.
In the moral Enquiry Hume is more explicit about what he takes to
be the errors of Christian (or, more cautiously, Roman Catholic) moralists. Not
only have they elevated craven humility to the status of a virtue, which he
hints in the Treatise is a mistake, but they also favor penance,
fasting, and other “monkish virtues” that are in fact disapproved by all
reasonable folk for their uselessness and disagreeableness, and so are in fact
vices.
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Copyright © 2018
by
Rachel
Cohon <rcohon@albany.edu>
“
X
Objectivist Professor Stephen Hicks, like all Randians, would counterargue
against Jordan Peterson that the human worship of and glorification of the
human intellect in and of itself is the source of Luciferian evil, or is a
source of general evil in the world.
Hicks the atheist and conservative secular humanist does not believe in God
or Lucifer nor in spiritual good or spiritual evil. He talks repeatedly about
how each person possesses a powerful intellect and is able to reason and think
for herself. It is not too far a leap from there to my stance that each of the
average-abilitied masses are laden with intelligence and talent, which they
should and can maverize as individuators.
Neither Hicks or I accept that intellect qua intellect is inherently evil
let alone leading to Proud Luciferian lifestyle for human intellect worshipers,
proud and vain, that putative state of evil so castigated by Jordan Peterson.
This is not to deny that wicked humans and geniuses like Stalin, Mao, and
Hitler, used their intellect and reasoning faculties to bring about great
wickedness and harm in the world. Any tool can be used for good or for evil
purposes.
I hope that Hicks would agree with me that the passions, (not to be
repressed, nor allowed to run amok, especially in the pack setting), if not
trained, limited, and redirected, by the individual agent, responsible, moral
and conscience-guided, are the major source of evil unleashed in the world.
Hicks would refer to it as social or natural evil, and I would add that such
evils, are spiritual at the bottom of each.
Hicks wrote Explaining Postmodernism (Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau
to Foucalt). I will quote a couple of paragraphs from Page 9 of his Expanded
Edition, and then comment on them. My objective is to demonstrate how Hicks and
Objectivists link human individualism and reasoning with ethics, liberty,
prosperity, human advancement and the Enlightenment, that the sovereign
individual, using his intellect, his merited pride, and by asserting his
egoistic prerogative is not only a net good for the world, but the rational
individualist is the source of goodness in action being carried out on earth, the
source of human improvement and happiness, and this is quite the opposite of
what Jordan Peterson is coming with.
Here are Hick’s paragraphs: Article 23: “The modern philosophers disagreed
among themselves about many issues, but their core agreements outweighed the
disagreements. Descartes’s account of reason, for example is rationalist while
Bacon’s and Locke’s are empiricist, thus placing them at the heads of competing
schools. But what is fundamental to all three is the central status of reason
as objective and competent—in contrast to faith, mysticism, and intellectual
authoritarianism of earlier ages. Once reason is given pride of place, the
entire Enlightenment project follows.”
My response: One could argue that faith and mysticism can be metaphysically
productive too, but there is little doubt that the Modern era, when reason was
give pride of place, then the entire Enlightenment project followed, giving us
the American system and way of life, and much of what is cherished about
Western culture. If reasoning gave us some of the best times which humans have
ever experienced, I cannot see with Peterson how intellect is the core of
Luciferian dark pride in the world. Rather, emotion as unbridled passion, is
the core of Luciferian pride in the world. That is the dismal legacy of
irrationalism in most of human history.
Hicks-A23: “If one emphasizes that reason is a faculty of the individual,
then individualism becomes a key theme in ethics. Locke’s A Letter Concerning
Toleration (1689) and Two Treatises of Government (1690) are landmark texts in
the modern history of individualism. Both link the human capacity for reason to
ethical individualism and its social consequences: the prohibition of force
against another’s independent judgment or action; limiting the power of
government, and religious toleration.”
My response: Note the logical entailment necessitating the connectiveness of
these four concepts: reason-individual-individualism-ethics versus
passion-collective-collectivism-immorality. Hicks and Objectivists correctly
concluded and link reasoning and thinking with being causal agents spurring the
occurrence of the Age of Englightenment, a time when the individual came to be
regarded as sovereign, that his personal power of reasoning was a potent
faculty of innovation and inquiry, which he was allowed, even encouraged to
indulge and exercise vigorously. With the rise of thinking individualists, what
also arose was the advance of human civilization, when, for the first time, it
came to be realized that the thinking individual, the average citizen, could
serve as the ethical ideal for every citizen to emulate.
This world view of the Objectivists, favoring the rational individualist as
an ethical exemplar who can be rightly proud of his merited achievement, almost
violently contradicts Peterson’s example of the individual as an egotist, who,
when and if he worships his own ego above worshiping the Divinity, he is a
monster of Luciferian Pride, and Pride goeth before the Fall.
Hick-A23: “ . . . Individualism and science thus are the consequences of an
epistemology of reason. Both applied systematically have enormous
consequences.”
My response: It seems to me that the Objectivists’s objection to Peterson’s
view on pride as from the Devil is the right response to Peterson.
Against Peterson, again I counter-suggest that humility in humans is what
breed the presence both of the Devil, and Luciferian pride in the moral agent.
