What about our moral beliefs, those pertaining to what we consider virtuous? Our daily conversations with others presuppose the need to provide justification for our beliefs. But what exactly counts as justification?
Indeed, what will legitimately serve as adequate grounds for our beliefs and actions is often disputed. Many times the contention revolves around what one party thinks is based on reason (i.e., conclusions reached by deduction or induction from concepts or empirical data) rather than emotion (i.e., internal sentiments, impulses, or feelings). And the other party might take sentiment to be quite adequate grounding, or at least part of it.
At issue in these disputes is the nature of rationality itself. Disputants contest the demarcation of its contours. Is it "rational," for instance, to include emotions among reasons? Or do emotions inform, or prompt, the beliefs that we subsequently give "rational" reasons for holding? In some of our daily disputes, moreover, both parties sense in the tension and assume throughout the dialogue the normative force that is at work in claims to knowledge just as much as they sense it in claims about ethics. We debate about not just what someone believes but also what someone ought to believe given the justification provided. As Michael Williams puts it,
‘know’ is a ‘success-term’ like ‘win’ or ‘pass’ (a test). Knowing is not just a factual state or condition but a particular normative status. ... To characterize someone’s claim as expressing or not expressing knowledge is to pass judgement on it. Epistemic judgements are thus a particular kind of value-judgement. ... [The basic epistemological problems] all possess this normative or evaluative dimension. They are not just about [ ] what we do believe but what (in some sense) we must, ought, or are entitled to believe; not just with how we in fact conduct our inquiries but how we should or may conduct them. In this respect, epistemology is like ethics... (Problems of Knowledge, p. 11)
Hilary Putnam makes much the same point when he writes that "epistemic values guide us in pursing right descriptions of the world" (The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, p. 32).
For some time I have been interested in this question about the interaction between emotion and reason in forming moral views. Thinking about it has often led me to the British sense theorists Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), David Hume (1711-1776), and Adam Smith (1723-1790). Perhaps to be specific, I should say Scottish advocates of moral sense theory, at least with this list of philosophers. (Wouldn't want to stoke their Scottish passions!) Often also included in the group is the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). There are others. In any event, these philosophers all, in their particular ways, offer ethical theories based on empirical observations of how humans feel and respond to their own thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, or those of other people.
On the one hand, these luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment are precisely seeking to provide explanations for how moral values shape or stem from people's perceptions of themselves or others in the world. On the other hand, the epistemic and moral values of these theorists themselves shape their own descriptions of the same. What we may find in an examination of the theories of these philosophers of morals is just what Williams says of philosophers of knowledge: "Epistemology concerns the standards we should adopt, not just whatever procedure we happen to follow," and "the line between description and prescription is never a sharp one" (Problems of Knowledge, p. 252). Further, we may find suggestive reflections on the interplay between rational and emotional explanations for moral approval that the dichotomy apparent in the cartoon above does not allow.
This interest of mine has stemmed both from a curiosity about metaethics in general and about the intersection of emotions and moral decisions in particular. It is the latter that we see play out practically every day in our lives. What is going on when we feel emotions like anger or envy so strongly? These are moral emotions inasmuch as we feel anger out of a sense having been wronged, and we feel envy out of a sense of having been unfairly left out: "Why not me?!" Of course, envy, to follow this example, is complex, because whether the perceived deficiency resulted from actual unfairness, envy's motive is malicious and "intent on the destruction of the happiness of others" (Kant), "hatred always accompanies envy" (Schopenhauer), and if envy "cannot level things up, it will level them down" (Sayers) (see Epstein, Envy, pp. xx, 7). If emotions like anger and envy affect us biologically both in terms of elevating our heart rate and blood pressure, and if those emotions influence our motives and intentions, then it seems valid to explore the degree to which emotions may also affect our beliefs and actions towards ourselves and others -- our ethics. Here we have returned to the interaction between emotion and reason in forming moral views.
Not long ago I decided to revisit the section on these British moral sense theorists in Alasdair MacIntyre's A Short History of Ethics. I thought it might be worthwhile to summarize Prof. MacIntyre's discussion of each of the three main philosophers to help me to note better the distinctions among them. How did these three thinkers conceive of the role that emotions play in morality? How should we?
I only wish now to introduce what will be a series of posts about the major Scottish moral sense theorists, one each on Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. In two final posts (part 1 & part 2) I will offer some reflections both about these eighteenth-century figures and about what we might glean from them in our twenty-first century lives.
Hutcheson has in some ways the simplest view: moral sense is akin to aesthetic sense, an unjustifiable feeling, a distinct way or organ of perceiving moral matters, and humans approve as morally good those actions that reflect benevolence. The theories of Hume and of Smith are distinctive and more complex in their own ways. Hume "defines virtue to be whatever mental action of quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary" (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I). Smith identifies sympathy, or "fellow-feeling," with others as the foundation of morals, and his more developed device of an imagined impartial spectator, someone who would evaluate the propriety of our actions, helps us to imagine and foster our social embeddedness. What all of the moral theories advanced by Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith share in common is an anti-rationalist approach to moral philosophy. Reason alone does not compel or justify moral action.
For some time I have been interested in this question about the interaction between emotion and reason in forming moral views. Thinking about it has often led me to the British sense theorists Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), David Hume (1711-1776), and Adam Smith (1723-1790). Perhaps to be specific, I should say Scottish advocates of moral sense theory, at least with this list of philosophers. (Wouldn't want to stoke their Scottish passions!) Often also included in the group is the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). There are others. In any event, these philosophers all, in their particular ways, offer ethical theories based on empirical observations of how humans feel and respond to their own thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, or those of other people.
On the one hand, these luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment are precisely seeking to provide explanations for how moral values shape or stem from people's perceptions of themselves or others in the world. On the other hand, the epistemic and moral values of these theorists themselves shape their own descriptions of the same. What we may find in an examination of the theories of these philosophers of morals is just what Williams says of philosophers of knowledge: "Epistemology concerns the standards we should adopt, not just whatever procedure we happen to follow," and "the line between description and prescription is never a sharp one" (Problems of Knowledge, p. 252). Further, we may find suggestive reflections on the interplay between rational and emotional explanations for moral approval that the dichotomy apparent in the cartoon above does not allow.
This interest of mine has stemmed both from a curiosity about metaethics in general and about the intersection of emotions and moral decisions in particular. It is the latter that we see play out practically every day in our lives. What is going on when we feel emotions like anger or envy so strongly? These are moral emotions inasmuch as we feel anger out of a sense having been wronged, and we feel envy out of a sense of having been unfairly left out: "Why not me?!" Of course, envy, to follow this example, is complex, because whether the perceived deficiency resulted from actual unfairness, envy's motive is malicious and "intent on the destruction of the happiness of others" (Kant), "hatred always accompanies envy" (Schopenhauer), and if envy "cannot level things up, it will level them down" (Sayers) (see Epstein, Envy, pp. xx, 7). If emotions like anger and envy affect us biologically both in terms of elevating our heart rate and blood pressure, and if those emotions influence our motives and intentions, then it seems valid to explore the degree to which emotions may also affect our beliefs and actions towards ourselves and others -- our ethics. Here we have returned to the interaction between emotion and reason in forming moral views.
Not long ago I decided to revisit the section on these British moral sense theorists in Alasdair MacIntyre's A Short History of Ethics. I thought it might be worthwhile to summarize Prof. MacIntyre's discussion of each of the three main philosophers to help me to note better the distinctions among them. How did these three thinkers conceive of the role that emotions play in morality? How should we?
I only wish now to introduce what will be a series of posts about the major Scottish moral sense theorists, one each on Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. In two final posts (part 1 & part 2) I will offer some reflections both about these eighteenth-century figures and about what we might glean from them in our twenty-first century lives.
Hutcheson has in some ways the simplest view: moral sense is akin to aesthetic sense, an unjustifiable feeling, a distinct way or organ of perceiving moral matters, and humans approve as morally good those actions that reflect benevolence. The theories of Hume and of Smith are distinctive and more complex in their own ways. Hume "defines virtue to be whatever mental action of quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary" (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I). Smith identifies sympathy, or "fellow-feeling," with others as the foundation of morals, and his more developed device of an imagined impartial spectator, someone who would evaluate the propriety of our actions, helps us to imagine and foster our social embeddedness. What all of the moral theories advanced by Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith share in common is an anti-rationalist approach to moral philosophy. Reason alone does not compel or justify moral action.
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