Morality and Emotion

Sara Graça Da Silva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317308850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Despite the many attempts to disentangle the relationship between morality and emotion, as is clear from the myriad of approaches that try to understand the nature and importance of their connection, the extent of this synergy remains rather controversial.

The multidisciplinary framework of the present volume was specifically designed to challenge self-containing disciplinary views, encouraging a more integrative analysis that covers various methodological angles and theoretical perspectives. Contributions include discussions on the interrelation between moral philosophy, emotion and identity, namely the clash between grand ethical theories and the practicality of human life; philosophical considerations on akrasia or the so called weakness of will, and the factors behind it; anthropological reflections on empathy and prosocial behavior; accounts from artificial intelligence and evolutionary game theory; and literary and artistic dissections of emotional responses to the representational power of fiction and the image.

The inclusion of chapters from varied scientific backgrounds substantially enriches this debate and shows that several core questions, such as the ones related to identity and to the way we perceive the other and ourselves, are transversal. It is therefore valuable and pressing to further explore these common threads, and to encourage disciplinary dialogues across both traditional and emerging fields to help shed new light on the puzzling and fascinating ways in which morality and emotion are mutually imbricated.

1 Emotions, morality, and identity

Jesse Prinz

Moral theory and human life

Morality is grounded in emotions. That was the conclusion of the eighteenth-century philosophers known as sentimentalists. The judgement that something is morally good or bad, they claimed, consists in positive or negative feelings. This is a controversial view, but it has come back into vogue in recent years, and it has become the subject of intense psychological testing. Here I will argue that recent empirical research can be used to support and extend the sentimentalist view of morality. I will also explore two implications: morality is highly variable and also integral to personal identity. Moral variation was recognized in the eighteenth century, though sentimentalists tried to resist it in various ways. The link between morality and identity is a more recent insight, but it may be the most important lesson that we can extrapolate from sentimentalist theories. This link, I will argue, allows us to shed light on moral conflicts that arise in human life. Philosophical work in ethics has often operated at a level of abstraction that makes real-word application difficult. The link between morality, emotion, and identity offers a possible remedy.

Grand ethical theories

Morality is one of the central topics in philosophy. Many of the most important figures in the history of the field have advanced moral theories. The most celebrated theories consist of grand principles of guidelines dictating what it is to act ethically or to conduct a virtuous life. These theories are characteristically presented as universal: governing all human conduct. They are also presented as timeless, abstracting away from historical and geographical contexts. Immanuel Kant even suggested that morality is like mathematics: a set of immutable truths, derived a priori. On the other hand, the architects of these grand theories have also appreciated that morality depends on human psychology. Aristotle tries to derive moral guidelines from a theory of human nature, John Stuart Mill begins with the nature of human happiness, and Kant derives his moral system from an analysis of human agency, focusing on our ability to see ourselves as acting from reason. There is, I believe, a tension between the universalizing and abstract ambitions of moral theory, and this focus on psychology. If we grant that morality has psychological foundations and let the study of human psychology inform our inquiry, we may come to see morality in a different light. Psychology tells us that morality is passionate, personal, and parochial. Grand theories may have a place, but they risk irrelevance if they do not make contact with how morality is actually experienced in human life. Grand theories shed little light on the moral conflicts that divide people and nations, and this failing undercuts their value, both as explanations of human behaviour and as tools for improvement. Here, I want to explore morality as we live it. I will claim that morality is grounded in our emotions, and that these emotions are shaped by culture and history. I will also claim that, as a result, morality is linked to identity, and this link is crucial for grasping how morality plays out in personal and political spheres.

To begin, I want to elaborate on the contention that grand ethical theories do not make adequate contact with human life. In the history of Western ethics, three grand theories have had vastly more impact than any others. I will briefly introduce these and then indicate why they may be inadequate guides to real moral problems. The first approach I will consider is virtue theory, which was most influentially formulated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. Unlike modern ethical theories, which focus on norms for behaviour, Aristotle focuses on norms for character. Instead of asking ‘How should people act?’, he begins with the question, ‘How should people be?’ By cultivating good character, he says, we can arrive at good action, and we can also lead lives that qualify as living well or flourishing. The details of Aristotle’s account introduce a number of controversial commitments, which his followers have not always accepted. He derives his list of virtues using a doctrine of means, according to which virtuous traits lie midway between excesses and deficits. Courage is a virtue, he says, because it lies between Cowardliness and Recklessness. Though elegant, it is dubious how far this doctrine can go. For example, one might think it is a virtue to be loyal, but is it really a vice to be too loyal? Likewise for kindness, wisdom, empathy, and a sense of justice. Aristotle also makes the contentious and demanding claim that one cannot have any virtuous trait without having them all, and he adds that virtue can only be pursued by the affluent, and cannot be assessed until the end of life. One can reject these commitments, while maintaining the core thesis that ethics is fundamentally concerned with the cultivation of good character. Virtue theories were popular among Medieval European philosophers, and have much currency today. Character-based approaches have also been developed within the Confucian tradition in China.

The second grand theory is Consequentialism, which is associated with the British moralists, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Consequentialist theories define the morally right action as the one with the best (or the one that tends to have the best) consequences. Good consequences are measured in different ways by different theories. Bentham and Mill emphasize pleasure, which they claim is intrinsically good, and thus the best actions are those that maximize pleasure. Some consequentialists find the focus on pleasure too limiting: there are other goods that may be important. Pleasure can be fleeting, and superficial. Instead of pleasure, consequentialists can measure goodness in terms of preference satisfaction.

The third grand theory owes to Kant. He rejects the focus on consequences advocated by Bentham and Mill, and says we should act from duty. A duty is something that applies universally to all, regardless of individual preferences. For Kant, we should do only that which we could coherently command all others to do. This is one formulation of his ‘categorical imperative’. On another, perhaps distinct, formulation Kant says we should always treat others as ends, rather than as means. He calls this the ‘principle of humanity’. There are technical problems with both formulations. The first delivers bizarre results unless we can come up with a set of principled constraints on the appropriate level of abstraction for formulating commands. I might want to go to art school, but I certainly would not command everyone one to do that; if everyone went to art school, there would be no one to take on other jobs that make life (and art!) possible. It does not follow that going to art school is immoral. The principle of humanity looks too demanding on the face of it: whenever someone performs a service for us, we are using that person as a means. One might avoid this problem by interpreting the principle as an injunction to respect people’s autonomy. That, however, may be impossible if it turns out human autonomy is a fiction, as sceptics about free will are inclined to believe. Followers of Kant try to cope with these worries, and they maintain his emphasis on the idea that moral mandates can be derived from universal features of the human will.

In introducing these theories, my goal is not to explain them fully, much less to review the arguments for and against. Rather, I want to recall the gist of each theory (in both traditional and more up-to-date versions), in order to make a more general point about grand ethical theories. That point concerns the challenge of putting such theories to work in the real world.

Can ethical theories be applied?

Consider the moral problems that arise in human life. These can be culled from daily headlines. Consider violent international conflicts, civil wars, ethnic rivalries, and sectarian violence: Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine, India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Tutsi and Hutu, Dinka and Nuer, Turks and Kurds, Hindu and Muslim, Buddhist and Muslim, Shia and Sunni, secular vs. religious, communist and capitalist, and so on. Grand ethical theories all have some resources for condemning violence: violence fails to exhibit virtue, reduces pleasure, and disrespects autonomy. But these theories offer neither remedy nor diagnosis for such violent conflicts. If parties to these battles were to study the classics of Western ethics, they would make little progress. Usually, both sides see the other as blameworthy, and violent reprisal as a justified wrong. Once a violent rivalry has begun, there are urgent practical questions about how to broker peace, and grand ethical theories are not particular suited to this task.

Violent conflicts between groups also have analogues within national boundaries, even when there is no civil war. Consider the battle between Mexican drug lords and the Mexican government. Could the drug lords be criticized using grand ethical theories? Drug selling is an exercise of autonomy, it can increase pleasure in users, and it is a courageous defiance of laws. Or consider the American carceral state: 1 in 100 U.S. citizens is in prison, disproportionately black and poor, often as punishment for non-violent offences. Do grand theories help us see whether or why this is unjust? Do they shed any light on mass incarceration or point to a solution? Such theories are stated at such high-levels of abstraction that it is hard to know how to even begin putting them to work in the real world.

This is equally true when it comes to public policy. Consider morally contested laws concerning wealth redistribution, corporal punishment, marriage, and abortion. Much work in applied ethics tries to bring grand theories to bear on these issues, but the same theory can deliver different verdicts. Does corporal punishment reduce happiness overall or increase it? If there were a clear answer (which seems unlikely), would that settle the question of whether it should be tolerated? Do bans on gay marriage violate autonomy? Presumably yes, but Kant used his framework to condemn homosexuality, and also masturbation, restricting sexuality to procreative ends. Likewise, Aristotle has been interpreted as opposing abortion (when his outmoded embryology is updated), while also supporting infanticide. Bentham and Mill favoured free markets, but their ideas were adapted by reformers such as Robert Owen and J. A. Hobson to defend socialism. Finding a consistent message on public policy in grand ethical theories is difficult. Diverging sides of a policy debate will each claim that their position has good consequences and respects autonomy. All parties believe themselves to be virtuous, and thus assume that virtuous people would favour their perspective.

One obstacle for applicability is bad psychology. Leading ethical theorists recognize that there is a relationship between morality and human psychology, but they often build on psychological assumptions that are dubious, or make recommendations that are in tension with how human minds work. Aristotle says that we are by nature rational, and then characterizes virtues as governed by reason. But human beings are not perfectly rational: we are petty, hypocritical, impulsive, impatient, selfish, and passionate. Temperaments also differ from person to person, and there are cultural differences in views about which traits are constrictive of flourishing (e.g., do we flourish more when we are independent or interdependent?). Virtue Theory demands that we alter our predispositions in fairly dramatic ways. Consequentialists traditionally characterize human beings as hedonists, who work to increase pleasure, or at least to satisfy preferences. In reality, we often act arbitrarily, or out of habit, inculcation, laziness, compulsion, and caprice. We get fixed in routines, because repetition comes more naturally than change. We are self-destructive, rash, and fickle. We are ignorant of our desires, and bad at forecasting what will make us happy. Kant recognizes that each of us has personal urges and inclinations that may be incompatible with the universalizing demands of his theory. He nevertheless instructs us to bracket off those inclinations and adopt a more universal perspective. This sounds noble, but it may be difficult, or even impossible: if we could bracket off preference, moral apathy might follow.

Unrealistic psychology and unrealistic demands make grand ethical theories utopian. It also deprives them of explanatory purchase on core aspects of human life. I noted that these theories cannot account for the moral conflicts that dominate headlines. By focusing on idealized conceptions of how we should be, these theories say too little about how we actually are. This suggests that we ought to look for ethical theories that make more effort to accurately characterize human psychology.

Normative versus descriptive?

I just suggested that grand ethical theories – like those of Aristotle, Mill, and Kant – do a poor job accounting for the moral conflicts that arise in the actual world. Against this, it will surely be objected that these theories are not intended for such explanatory work. Their aim is not to characterize how things are, but rather to specify how they should be. To use the standard jargon, these theories are normative, not descriptive. My plea for theories that are more psychologically accurate might appear to run afoul of this fundamental distinction. A theory that describes moral psychology well may provide no guidance about how we ought to act. After all, we cannot derive an ought from an is. Thus, such a theory would be even worse off than the grand theories I have been considering. It would provide no advice. It would account for the conflicts of human life without offering any solutions.

I grant that a descriptively adequate theory would not tell us how to act, but I want to nevertheless suggest that such a theory can contribute in important ways to normative inquiry, and would have advantages over the grand ethical theories. Three points deserve attention. First, and most obviously, any normative theory should be consistent with human psychology. A theory that makes unrealistic demands will violate the stricture that ‘ought’ entails ‘can’. All the grand theories I have considered run this risk. Aristotle restricts virtue to a select view. Mill and Bentham reduce moral deliberation to a hedonic calculus in which we are asked to maximize ends regardless of the means, and Kant asks us to ignore personal preferences and rely on dispassionate reason alone. We must be saints, calculators, or zombies on these accounts.

Second, the failure of grand theories to explain social woes may also limit their capacity to provide solutions. In medicine, correct diagnosis is important for finding remedies. Accounts that do not provide realistic theories of human psychology offer little insight into why, for example, sectarian violence is so widespread. It is no surprise, then, that such accounts offer no special insight into how such violence can be addressed.

Third, it is important to accept that grand ethical theories may not be true. Each aspires to find some firm, universal foundation for morality, but they make dubious assumptions, and none enjoys anything approximating consensus support. The best minds in ethical theory pick sides and offer little hope for adjudication. We cannot afford to wait for the right moral theory to magically emerge from centuries of dispute. We must operate under the assumption that even if there were a single true grand moral theory, we do not currently know what it is, and we are unlikely to find out.

This last point raises a crucial question: what can we do about moral conflict if we cannot rely on grand ethical theories? From the perspective of philosophy, this may look like an insurmountable problem. But, in the real world, it is a problem we face every day, and we look for practical solutions. Instead of relying on grand theories, we try to find ways for competing sides to get along in the absence of any over-arching truth. Doing this well would benefit from an accurate understanding of moral psychology.

One might put the point by saying that the distinction between normative and descriptive theories is based on a mistake. It is based on the premise that normative theories must be universal, and thus descriptive theories cannot play a normative role. Suppose we replace this notion of normativity with another one, grounded in practical reason. On this alternative conception, normativity – the investigation of what we ought to do – comes down to questions about how we can make human life go better in the real world. In cases of conflict, all sides tend to agree that things could be better. The exception would be cases where one side has a clear upper hand and is thriving at the expense of others. In that situation, the side that has been exploited or oppressed will recognize that things could be better. Thus, in every case, at least some parties involved feel dissatisfied, and they engage in efforts to improve their lot. This, I am suggesting, is a kind of normativity. It is not a transcendental precept about how to behave, but rather a deep aspiration, grounded in human experience, to live more comfortably. This kind of normativity does not eschew descriptive projects. It depends on a clear understand of how things are, how we want things to be, and how to bring these two into better alignment. Of course, the ‘we’ here can refer to different groups. Each of us has our own goals, and thus the normative project is also a project of coping with diversity. How do we (for each we) achieve our goals when some of those goals conflict with the goals of others? Normative questions in the real world are, to that extent, questions of social coordination.

Morality, emotion, and culture

The emotional turn

I have been suggesting that a moral theory for the real world must begin with a descriptive moral psychology. To understand and address moral conflicts, we must investigate the psychological processes that underlie moral decision-making and behaviour. While many philosophical ethicists have invested their energy in grand theories, others have been more concerned with the psychological basis of moral judgements. I want to begin with one strand in that tradition, and then describe how recent work in the cognitive sciences has added new detail and support.

The historical strand I want to take up begins with the British moralists in the eighteenth century. This, of course, was the time of Enlightenment. One consequence of the new outlook was a secularization of moral theories. Hobbes and Locke had already done much to secularize moral thinking in England during the nineteenth century, but their concerns were mostly with political questions: the legitimacy of sovereignty in the case of Hobbes, and the nature of natural rights in the case of Locke. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Locke’s friend, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, began to shift attention from the political to the psychological. In 1711, Shaftesbury (as he is known), published a compendious, though unsystematic work called Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, which includes an account of how people arrive at moral judgements. The account made central refere...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: morality and emotion or ‘well, that’s another fine mess you got me into’
• 1 Emotions, morality, and identity
• 2 Weakness of will and self-control: the role of emotions in impulsive behaviour
• 3 Emotions and akratic feelings: insights into morality through emotions
• 4 Morality and empathy vs empathy and morality: a quest for the source of goodness in phylogenetic and ontogenetic contexts
• 5 Software sans emotions but with ethical discernment
• 6 Moral feelings from rocky fictional ground
• 7 Emotional rescue and, au ralenti, some stories about images
• Index