The End of Moral Philosophy?
David Brooks’s latest is thought-provoking as always, but ultimately it’s a rather puzzling read. He begins with the idea, which will of course be familiar to readers of this blog, that our basic moral convictions are the product less of Socratic reasoning than of a system that throws up moral judgments in a more automatic fashion and allows us simply to perceive, as it were, the rightness and wrongness in the situations we encounter. As someone who’s presently working through Hume’s theory of the moral sentiments with a few dozen undergrads, it’s so far, so good for me. But it’s where Brooks goes from there that leaves me scratching my head:
Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.
In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”
Now in the first place, note that these stronger claims are true only if our moral judgments are not only not guided by, but also ultimately impervious to, input from our more “purely” rational faculties; and even if this isn’t so it could still be that reason manages to influence our moral judgments in more indirect ways, perhaps by spreading memes that help to shape our moral intuitions via the process of cultural evolution that Brooks describes in his column’s second part. Reasoning may not have the kind of role in the practical domain that Kant for example might have hoped for it, but it can nevertheless be more than an epiphenomenon.
But in addition to all of this, I think it’s important to see that the role of servant to the high priest of emotion involves a good deal more than mere bowing and scraping. Even if we credit the emotions with the kind of role that Brooks follows Haidt and others in envisioning for them, that still leaves to be done all the work of systematizing all those axiomatic intuitions into a rationally cohesive structure; of working out the tensions, lacks, and – perhaps – outright contradictions among them; of developing a robust theoretical understanding of the good that respects those intuitions even as it moves beyond them toward an articulation of the deeper principles that make them true in the first place; and so on. For it’s not, of course, just the realm of morals that has the sort of inescapably perception-driven status that Brooks is describing here: our understandings of space and time, of quantity and number, of matter and color and life and death, are ultimately shaped by our more basic modes of access to the world in very similar sorts of ways, but by no means does that entail the impossibility of using science and philosophy as tools to deepen and, at times, significantly refine those understandings in precisely the sorts of ways that Socrates envisioned. Philosophy can come in toward the end even if it’s not that relevant at the beginning, and so granting the emotions the first word in the human grasp of morality doesn’t require conceding that they also have the last.
(Cross-posted at Upturned Earth.)
I don’t know what Socrates Brooks thinks he’s describing with that opening paragraph—or with “People are not discrete units coolly formulating moral arguments”—, but it certainly isn’t the one Plato and Alcibiades knew.
— Tony · Apr 7, 04:12 PM · #
Tony: Well put; and of course it was Aristotle who thought that the virtuous man was able simply to see the right thing to do in any given situation, without needing to resort to abstract reasoning. That said, I do think that there are some significant differences between that classical picture and the contemporary one that Brooks is developing; it’s just not true, however, that moral philosophy has no significant role to play in the latter.
— John Schwenkler · Apr 7, 05:00 PM · #
“The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”
What Brooks has possibly not grokked is that the same reasoning would seem to apply (or not apply) to the same extent to all acts of reasoning, not just ones related to morality. Do we make any decisions less emotionally and more rationally than we do moral decisions? I don’t see the prima facie case.
Speaking as one who has experienced rationally wrestling through moral decisions, though, I for one find that moral decisions can be as reason-governed as any other decisions. That’s not to say that emotions aren’t involved, but the “servant masquerading as a high priest” stuff is overly reductionistic and anti-rational.
— SDG · Apr 7, 05:38 PM · #
duh.
There is a biological basis for all behavior.
Evo Theory of Culture, Cognitive Anthropology, “vulgar” Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Biology.
— matoko_chan · Apr 7, 05:42 PM · #
“There is a biological basis for all behavior.”
Yes. But it doesn’t follow that all behavior is biologically determined.
— SDG · Apr 7, 07:41 PM · #
It may be that Gazzaniga (whom I knew a little when I was at Santa Barbara and respect very much) is looking in the wrong places. Max Weber, famously, did quite a nice job pointing out how, over time, a certain set of theological ideas produced certain kinds of behavior. One could list endless examples. One simply cannot argue that moral reasoning has no bearing on behavior. The question, rather, is how. Perhaps, rather than Socrates, Brooks might have called to mind Aristotle, who understood that moral education is a slow, steady process of mimicry, reflection, and the cultivation of habits—too slow, probably, to show up in an undergraduate subject after an afternoon’s cognitive science study.
I’m all for using cognitive science as a tool for uncovering new dimensions to moral education and moral dilemmas. But we cannot mistake the tool for, in itself, either a question or an answer. These are privileges we can and should retain for ourselves: the right to think, to decide, to reflect, and to discuss. When we give them up, we abandon both the responsibility for the consequences and the adventure of agency.
More on <a href=“http://www.therowboat.com/2009/04/the-end-of-philosophy-in-cognitive-science/”>The Row Boat</a>.
— Nathan Schneider · Apr 7, 08:50 PM · #
Damn you, Schwenkler! Every time I think I’m out, you pull me back in.
Actually, I don’t have anything to add to this. Everything you wrote is correct, both scientifically and philosophically (tsokay, ahim zeh ekspuht — or something). Very, very nice.
— JA · Apr 7, 10:19 PM · #
“There is a biological basis for all behavior.”
Yes. But it doesn’t follow that all behavior is biologically determined.
Oh but A LOT of it is.
For example, that glorious religious “morality” applies in general to only members of ones own immediate genetic and/or memetic tribe.
Historically moral behavior is not extended to individuals outside ones tribe.
In The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition Tomasello has shown that the concept of “other” is one of the very first emergent properties of human cognition, occurring quite early in child development.
— matoko_chan · Apr 8, 02:58 AM · #
Thanks, JA. And Matoko: all you’ve just given evidence for is biological basing, not biological determinism. Try again, please.
— John Schwenkler · Apr 8, 03:47 AM · #
??
The jury is still out on determinism.
I’m not claiming determinism……yet. ;)
But if you like, philosophy is necessary to overcome the limitations of religious of biologically based “instinctual”, “emotional” or learned religious morality.
— matoko_chan · Apr 8, 11:54 AM · #
??
The jury is still out on determinism.
I’m not claiming determinism……yet. ;)
But if you like, philosophy is necessary to overcome the limitations of biologically based “instinctual”, “emotional” or learned religious morality.
— matoko_chan · Apr 8, 12:14 PM · #
John, excellent post.
Is it just me, or does Brooks’ entire column elide the distinction between morality’s origin and its justification?
— Lee · Apr 8, 01:42 PM · #
Nope, it’s not just you. I mean, I do think that there are some very challenging philosophical issues that can arise after recognitions of the sort that Brooks is pushing, but he’s not doing a very good job of articulating them.
— John Schwenkler · Apr 8, 02:46 PM · #
John: I do think that there are some very challenging philosophical issues that can arise after recognitions of the sort that Brooks is pushing, but he’s not doing a very good job of articulating them.
One such problem: what epistemic value do we place on moral belief. If we evolved the perception of right and wrong, are there “moral facts” about which we can have true beliefs. I think the answer is clearly ‘no’, but the takeaway is complicated.
Another issue: if we assume the science is right about what our moral instinct is ‘for’ (i.e., to keep us together to keep us alive), and if we assume we’re right about its ‘deep grammar’ (i.e., its agent-centered activation cues, its logic), then mightn’t there be lessons for political philosophy somewhere in there? Here I think the answer is clearly ‘yes’.
Another: if morality’s purpose is vertically oriented (and it is), and all the problems which attend moral heteroglossia are horizontal, then shouldn’t ethics be developed along the vertical axis, from the system’s frame of reference?
— JA · Apr 8, 04:38 PM · #
Yes, those are the sorts of issues I had in mind.
Well we evolved the perception of square and circle as well, didn’t we? The takeaway is complicated indeed …
— John Schwenkler · Apr 8, 05:22 PM · #