Emotions as reasons

When it comes to making moral decisions, how reliable are our emotions?

My main reason for giving up meat was that I knew some cattle very well and eating them 'felt' wrong.

But then there's the idea in Will Davies' Nervous States that feelings can overwhelm reasons: societies can lose track of what's rationally for the best and opt for what feels best.

So, let's look at an example. We see a person who is always and without cause treated with disrespect and cruelty in the workplace, while others who perform no better are not. We 'feel' anger at the injustice and wrongness of the act; or shame (that we are working for an organisation like this or that we are not speaking up); or compassion (for the suffering of the worker), or a mixture of all of these. Are we 'right' to take these emotions as reasons for moral disapproval?

Well, no, one might say. What makes the act wrong is that it breaks certain axiomatic rules - that all people should be treated equally (justice); that all people should be accorded respect as humans (human rights); we could say that it shows a lack of the virtues that should be in evidence in the workplace; we could say that the lack of sound reasons for the treatment mean it is irrational, unfair and therefore inappropriate; we could say that creating a workplace where rational rules of treating people are not instantiated or respected leads to a lessening of overall utility.

But here's the thing, those emotions were saying all that. They just said it in a different way.

Now it could be that we saw a person in the workplace praised for good work and we could feel anger because we do not like him and are jealous, shame that we did not earn such praise and compassion for ourselves, who perform poorly and do not get praised. Thus we could feel that such praise for the colleague was wrong.

Would these emotions be a reliable guide? Well, clearly not.

So doesn't that mean that emotions are unreliable?

OK, but let's consider reason. And for that, a different example.

It is wrong to kill an innocent human. A foetus is an innocent human. Therefore abortion is wrong. Or, a person is a conscious, sentient being with a sense of self that is ongoing in time. A foetus is not by this definition a person. Therefore abortion is morally justifiable in the interests of the person who is carrying the foetus.

Notice that reason depends on beliefs. Notice also that the person who holds each belief will 'feel' very different emotions faced with the prospect of a foetus being aborted.

Emotions 'feel' primary and powerful, consequently people will be very persuaded of a certain course of action by strong emotions. Something that 'feels' so wrong, surely cannot be right?

Emotions are guides not to perfectly moral truths per se but to the moral beliefs held by a subject. So, does that mean they don't matter?

The utilitarian, though she gives pre-eminence to 'happiness' (which surely is a value or an emotion, though perhaps we should regard it as 'potential for well-being'?), seems to think so.

Consider this. You are on an island with a powerful jeep. A tsunami is coming. You can either save three friends on one side of the island or five strangers on the other. Do the 'calculus of utility'. The units for the calculation are utiles. You get ten utiles for saving lives and how good you feel. Another thirty if you save your friends. However, a life saved from certain death allows the lifespan of potential happiness and that is worth, say, a hundred utiles. So, save your friends and the total is 340. Save the strangers and the total is 510. Clearly, you save the strangers.

This also allows you to say that the life of a child, with a long lifespan ahead, is worth more than the life of an old person. But, what if the child has a very limited mind through some severe learning disability, but the old person is a sage who can guide humanity to a wiser and better place? The utilitarian can't answer.

So, another thought experiment. Jim visits a lost tribe. The day he appears is a ritual day when, every year, 20 innocent people are killed. But, the arrival of a stranger is so special that the tribe say that if Jim kills one of the innocent people himself, the rest will go free. Clearly, the utilitarian whets her blade and strikes.

Now, for a deontologist, who believes in a rule-based morality, it is never right to kill an innocent person. Kant justifies this by saying that you cannot count on consequences - you could kill the one and the tribe could still kill the other 19. Or, they could kill an extra one too for whatever reason. As you can't rationally know the future, all that you can judge is yourself. Therefore, sheathe your knife.

There's another problem. Jim could be traumatised for the rest of his life by having killed someone. Utilitarians don't care about that. 19 lives were saved. Jim's emotions are irrelevant.

It's as bad though in the deontologist's story: Jim could be traumatised for life by having been involved in the killing of 20 innocents because he could not kill one.

In both cases, the subject's emotional responses are irrational and irrelevant.

This presents a problem because we are not zombies.

Of course, these are hypotheticals, thought experiments. Such things don't happen. They do, though, point to a problem with ethical systems.

I've started to explore other views which bring emotions to the party and will report back!

In the meantime, check out this article on Aeon - a case for emotions to play a part in political decision making.