Is It For Divorce Emotions From Moral Judgement?

What is morality? Where does our sense of morality come from and why is it important for us to know? The cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and scholar, Steven Pinker discusses this in his essay, “The Moral Instinct”. In this essay, Pinker claims that our morality sense is innate, it constantly changes, and it is universal among each culture. Pinker also explains that moral sense shapes our judgement as it is something that we value and seek in other people. The science of the moral sense is important since it shows how morality impacts our actions and it explains why we act in certain ways.

What is really ethical? What is right? What is wrong? What are the factors involved in making the distinction between killing and letting die? What is the difference between killing one to save five and leaving one to die while rescuing five? Philippa Foot created a thought experiment that presents two cases known as Rescue I and Rescue II. In these cases, one must create a dissimilarity between doing and allowing. They must ask themselves what would be the moral thing to do. Philosophers have tried to explain the concept of morals and ethics and create systems to relate the two. John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant are both two of these kind of philosophers. They express conditions on morality which are then applied to an ethical position. These conditions both explained what they believed is right and wrong and who benefits from what, but they are very different. Mill and Kant’s ethical positions foil one another and are very necessary when being applied to Foot’s thought experiment. This begs the question if you will do things to save the greatest number, or if you would do things strictly because it feels right. In Rescue I and Rescue II, Mill would provide happiness for the 5 individuals, while Kant would give life to whomever needed it simply because of his “good will.”

Attempts to define “emotion” have proved to be rather difficult. Instead of searching for a comprehensive definition, Gross (2011) describes the three core features of emotions. First, emotions occur when an individual decides that a situation is relevant to his or her goals. Second, emotions are multi-faceted, and involve both subjective and physiological experiences, as well as behaviors. The third feature involves the authoritative nature of emotions. They have the powerful ability to interrupt ongoing processes, assert their priority over other activities, and force their way into awareness. For example, some traditions describe emotions as “disorganized interruptions of mental activity” (Salovey & Mayer, 1989). Emotions are such an

There are many examples of hard-wired human instincts that help keep us alive. Perhaps the most obvious case is the fight-or-flight response. When humans are faced with danger or stress, a biological trigger helps us decide whether to stay and fight or quickly flee the situation-- flight. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, we see how closely linked human nature and survival are. Elie Wiesel suggests that some people are morally better than others and circumstances greatly affect people’s behavior.

Emotionism according to Jesse Prinz is a set of views according to which emotions are essential to morality. There are two types of emotionism: 1). Metaphysical emotionism is moral properties are essentially related to emotions and facts without mind independence 2). Epistemic emotionism is moral concepts are essentially related to emotions. Concepts such as right or wrong are emotional states of mind. Further epistemic emotionism is divided into two categories: a). Constitutive is moral concepts are constituted by feelings and b). Dispositional is moral concepts dispose one to have certain feelings. Epistemic emotionism is basically how emotions influence moral judgements. The evidence in support of epistemic emotionism is the dumbfounding experiment. This is where moral attitudes on sex between siblings were studied for a group of young people. Most if not all said that is morally wrong to even think about it and is very inappropriate but failed to give an explanation. Another example involves cannibalism where a woman working in a medical lab cooks and eats part of meat, which was donated to the lab for research purposes. Again this is something immoral, nasty and wrong. Other examples were cheating is wrong or stealing is wrong. Both of these being moral concepts are wrong and unacceptable and they align

I infer several conclusions from Smith’s definition and analysis of sympathy. First, sympathy is a mode of perception. The “eye of the mind” or the imagination perceives the situation witch elicits primary sentiments and secondary agreeable or disagreeable sentiments which are the basis of moral judgement. Secondly, I conclude from Smith’s propositions that the mind is a passive recipient, therefore moral knowledge is a by-product of external stimuli. In other words our external sense stimuli provoke a change in our minds, from which our imaginations produce sentiments by which we judge the propriety or merit of another’s conduct.

Over the years, both philosophers and average people alike have contemplated the concept of free will. Usually, people would not contemplate free will. The common man usually just makes choices and does not wonder if this choice is truly a free one. Like many principles, the question of free will is not answered in consensus. This leads to the question “what are humans able to do?” Van Iwagen discusses free will in his essay The Powers of Rational Beings. He states that free will and determinism brings about a mystery.

Rebecca Saxe’s Do the Right Thing: Cognitive Science’s Search for a Common Morality analyzes multiple research studies performed on the ethical ideas of morality. Saxe uses three current studies to validate her argument, including a Harvard internet study, research on the cognitive activity in the brains of an infant, and analysis of brain imaging using an fMRI. She uses logos and ethos in this essay to support her argument that scientific research will never fully explain the process that a human takes to make a sound, moral judgement, despite all of the innovative studies being performed. Saxe begins her argument by presenting a scenario that helps the reader to further understand the topic being discussed: moral dilemmas. The scenario includes

Although it sounds appealing to make one's own decision freely, it is actually an impractable goal as the society has exerted significant influence and restrictions on individuals and has shaped one's value of what they should do and what they should not do. In today's society, people are more free to make our own choices than we were before, but it is true that we canno indulge our interests at the cost of transgressing the basic rules of the society.

An individual with “Free Will” is capable of making vital decisions and choices in life with own free consent. The individual chooses these decisions without any outside influence from a set of “alternative possibilities.” The idea of “free will” imposes a certain kind of power on an individual to make decisions of which he or she is morally responsible. This implies that “free will” would include a range of aspects such as originality, moral value, and self-governance. However, in life, individuals may not be free in making decisions. The aspect of freedom could entail remarkably a high status action and achievement in an individual’s life whose attainment could be close to impossibility. Often, people make

Emotions are used in everyday life, whether it be just a simple smile that makes happiness disperse in your brain, or a death of a loved one that causes sadness. The basic emotions are joy, interest, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt. The way we see emotion in ourselves and others can be very complex because we sometimes assume they feel a certain way just based on their actions or even facial expressions. When emotion is discussed in psychological terms, it is not based on one thing, instead it’s a mix of bodily arousal, expressive behaviors, conscious experience. Many theories try to explain how emotion works.

Morality is a complicated matter, one which requires rationality, but is often driven by emotions. A person’s behavior is almost completely driven by emotions and often times emotions are what tell us when something might be wrong or right. Motivation also comes from emotions, so without feelings of anger, depression, frustration and the like we would hardly ever do anything in order to change things in our lives (Shafer-Landau, 2015, p. 258). Virtue ethics then is concerned with what makes a person virtuous versus vicious when it comes to making moral decisions, with emotions playing an important role. In this paper, I support Aristotle’s emphasis on emotions as a key to being virtuous, especially since emotions tell us what is important and motivate us to act (Shafer-Landau, 2015, p. 257-258).

“When we make an ethical judgment, we must extricate ourselves from the emotions of a particular situation to look at the matter objectively” (Robison & Reeser, 2002, p. 22-23). Although in an ideal

When people hear the term “ethics,” most of their minds turn to dilemmas discussed by figures such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Aristotle, and other famous philosophers. These men debated what is considered to be morally good and how a person can become ethical. Operating under normative ethics, these philosophers did not question whether or not ethics even existed, but rather if they exist, what are they? The branch of ethics that questions the foundation of ethics and morality is metaethics. There are three standpoints when debating metaethics: moral realism, moral relativism, and moral skepticism. I will be discussing my argument for moral realism and contend that moral relativism and skepticism are inaccurate. I will prove the

No man can be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt how he will react in any given situation. One can know how he would hope to react; however, until the circumstances are in place behavior can not be entirely predicted. A person’s reaction in the direst of moments is in fact the heart of who they are. While reactions are spontaneous, actions are not and the decisions to act or not to act