More
seriously, it is certainly true that there is no reference to emotion in my development
of the ethical structure. However,
emotion was not considered for the same reason that childhood experience was
not considered. It’s not strictly
relevant.
I
shall try to explain.
First
and foremost, we should not even consider applying emotion to an ethical
structure without understanding what emotion is and why we have it. We probably all believe that we know what
emotions are: those things we feel, or – for the psychopaths among us – those
things that other people feel. However,
when we start to think about it in depth, the exact nature of emotions
becomes a little less clear.
One
thing that strikes me when reviewing philosophical ponderings about emotions is
that, throughout history, they have had a bit of a bad reputation – Plato and
Aristotle looked at emotions as undesirable (evil even!), while the Ancient
Chinese thought they damaged your qi and even modern Buddhists tend to eschew
emotions as indicative of attachment. In
the modernising West emotions were seen, until relatively recently, as
unhealthy and certainly inferior to reason.
During
the Middle Ages, at least according to Yana Suchy, emotions were actually thought
to be immoral (Suchy,
Yana (2011). Clinical neuropsychology of emotion. New York, NY: Guilford
– per Wikipedia). If such thinking were
to be correct, it would eliminate emotions as worthy of any consideration with respect
to the development of ethical structures.
There have been a number of theories
regarding emotions. Early theories
posited some sort of fluid or essence associated with each type of emotion – in
Ancient Mesopotamia, and later Ancient Greece, we had “humors” corresponding with four fundamental temperaments. Anger was related to an overabundance of
yellow bile while melancholia was due to too much black bile. Blood was about courage, hope and love while
phlegm was about cool, calm reason (hence “phlegmatic”). The Greeks, who took a rather dodgy idea from
Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia and developed it into something approaching a
science, managed to get the whole thing terribly wrong – they thought that blood
was associated with the liver, and that phlegm was created in the brain (the
latter is only true in slightly more than fifty percent of normal people and approximately
ninety five percent of apologists).
Sometimes, however, we only really
recognise our emotions as a result of our physiological reactions – for
example, we might only realise that we have become angry or frightened when we
later notice that we are shaking, or shamed when we redden.
Similarly, we might catch a glimpse
of our reflection and note that our expression reveals an emotional response
that we weren’t otherwise aware of. When
doing so, we are using an ability associated with reading the emotional states
of other creatures. This ability to read
emotional state is not limited to humans: we ourselves can read the emotions of
an extensive range of animals while our emotions can be read by certain
animals, for example our pets and, to a lesser extent, even wild animals.
We
also reveal our emotions in our speech, much as other animals do in their somewhat
more limited vocalisations. (In fact,
some animals only vocalise when afraid or in pain.)
Modern
theorists have identified a number of individual emotional states that are
consistently recognised by all humans, irrespective of their cultural and
educational backgrounds (colour coded – Ekman, Plutnik, Ekman/Plutnik):
Happy – Joyous
Tender
Trusting (Admiring)
Scared – Fearful
Surprised
Sad
Disgusted
Angry
Excited – Interested
To
my way of thinking, Plutnik’s wheel is a little strained by the
attempt to maintain such attractive symmetry, with what might be described as
“excitement” being diluted across many categories. Ekman’s range of emotions on the other hand is somewhat lacking, for
example disgust is missing. Even so, we
can see that each of the emotions listed can be recognised uniquely – along
with this one, which seems to be missing from both categorisations:
(For
anyone who is emotionally challenged, that expression is pride.)
So,
if we can agree that emotions are recognisable states like fear, pride, joy,
anger and sadness, the next question is – why do we have them?
It
should come as no surprise that in my opinion the emotions we have are those
which promote survival. If a species had
a suite of emotions that were more likely to bring death to members of that
species, then that species would not be long for this world.
Note
that I refer to a suite of emotions, by which I mean a sort of balanced
portfolio of emotions that is appropriate to the species in question. As a rather large, omnivorous, social animal,
the human needs a different range of emotions to survive to, say, a sand cat or
a goldfish.
Each of the emotions listed above have a survival-related aspect:
Happiness
– social signal (approval)
Tenderness
– social binding (e.g. mutual grooming, hugging)
Trust
– social binding (e.g. willingness to engage)
Fear – danger avoidance (preparedness to flee)
Fear – danger avoidance (preparedness to flee)
Surprise
– heightened state of alert at unusual situations
Sadness
– social signal (disapproval)
Disgust
– danger avoidance (e.g. revulsion at the idea of eating rotten food)
Anger
– defence mechanism (preparedness to fight)
Excitement
– motivation mechanism (e.g. interest in hunting)
Pride
– motivation mechanism (e.g. training and educating young)
I’ve
seen all these demonstrated clearly by dogs (although their tolerance for
disgust seems quite high until you start trying to give them something like
worming paste). Cats, while not quite as
demonstrative, indicate the same range of emotions – although their primary
emotion in relation to humans tends to be “distain”, they are much more likely
to indicate disgust (particularly with respect to cat-food) and, with more than
a few cats, the warm glow of mutual trust and understanding tends to be
short-lived before turning into skin-shredding anger.
(Some
people claim that cats are neurotic, because of their tendency to flip suddenly
from cuddly little creature that adores the attention being provided by its pet
human to crazed killer intent on doing as much damage as possible to said
human’s hand. Ignorant people such as
these are unlikely to make good pets for a cat and should be encouraged to keep
alternative pets such as hermit crabs,
slugs, ants or
possibly sea-monkeys.)
In
Morality as Playing Games and
An Ethical Structure, I
argue that morality is about survival.
If emotions are also about survival, then they are parallel mechanisms –
and this is what I believe to be the case.
Emotions
can operate on the ethical structure in at least two ways.
Firstly,
the rules and guidelines in the lowest tier of the structure are arbitrary and
can, therefore, be guided by emotions.
For example, the disgust of some at the idea of men kissing each other
can lead to a societal more against homosexuality. Equally,
disgust at the idea of being covered in diseased phlegm can lead to guidelines
about politely sneezing into handkerchiefs or tissues.
Secondly,
when confronted with a moral dilemma in which moral imperatives or injunctions
are in conflict, emotions can be used to resolve the dilemma. For example, when making the snap decision as
to whether to divert a runaway train from its current path (which will kill 20
people in a stationary carriage) onto a side track (that will kill 5 people who
would otherwise have survived), you can use your emotional response as a guide.
Your
emotional response is, probably, about the only thing you can use if there is no
time in which to make a fully informed decision. It is, however, often a poor basis on which
to make a decision, especially if other options are available. For example, with time to sift all the
relevant data, you might come to know that the 20 were all single, balding,
highly anti-social, middle-aged orphans, all of whom were soon to die from a
drug resistant, highly virulent form of tuberculosis contracted from the orphanage
and who were just about jump into separate planes to deliberately spread their
tuberculosis as a sick form of revenge on the injustice of the world. The 5, on the other hand, were all young
newlywed belles, all currently pregnant (with twins) and all born into large loving
families, with scads of relatives and friends who adored them. If the 20 died, no-one would miss them and
the world would be spared a plague of tuberculosis while hundreds would mourn
the 5, or 15, if you count their unborn twins (at least, they would mourn those
deaths until they contracted tuberculosis at which time they’d be likely to
start worrying more about their own problems …)
In
both the setting of moral standards and in the assessment of moral dilemmas,
rationality, rather than emotion, is highly likely to be your better guide.
If
men kissing each other can really cause a problem, then we can reasonably consider
banning such behaviour. But if there is
nothing rational supporting someone’s feeling of disgust, then we should use our
rationality to address the origins of that feeling of disgust rather than
punishing those who inadvertently trigger it.
We know that harm can come from sneezing (it’s one of the vectors for the
transmission of tuberculosis, for example,
admittedly along with speaking and singing) so we can throw our support behind the
guidelines vis a vis handkerchiefs – on the basis of rationality, without
having to resort to emotions at all.
So,
in answer to the (slightly rephrased) question “what do emotions have to do
with morality?” the rational answer is “as little as possible, thank you very
much”.
--------------------------------
A
little coda:
Perhaps
the best application of emotion in making a moral decision is associated with
self-awareness. It’s quite likely that,
after making an important moral decision, you will later reflect on the options
that were available and the choice you made from those options. It’s probably a good idea to make sure that any
decision you make (moral or otherwise) is the one that will cause the least
regret. This requires a level of self-awareness
and understanding not only of your current emotional state but of your
likely future emotional states – many a decision made in anger is
regretted in a later moment of quiet reflection. What this self-awareness does, however, is to
provide you with some ability to recognise and filter out, or to counteract
your current emotions.
Unfortunately,
most people aren’t really aware of their emotions and not completely aware of
what effect their emotions have. Here
are some pointers from research on the topic:
The
upshot of all this is that, if you are happy, you’ll take more risks because
you don’t perceive them as risks and you will overestimate the potential
benefits, but you are likely to be overly cautious when you are sad. If you are angry you may recognise risks in a
course of action but may court disaster by continuing with it anyway while if
you are afraid you will simply avoid risks by taking the safest possible path
(thus missing out on opportunities).
The
happy medium can be struck by not letting any emotion sway you (not even the
ecstatic joy that invariably follows landing a really good blow on a happy
medium).
