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THE ROLE OF FEELINGS IN MAKING
CM ETHICS
MORAL DECISIONS
John D. Banja, PhD
D uring the past decade,
the field of ethics has
witnessed a great deal
of interest in the role of
emotions and feelings in
making moral decisions.
There are a number of reasons for this,
perhaps beginning with the appearance
of feminist, or “care,” approaches to
ethics in the 1980s. This model emerged
as a counterpoint to 2500 years of West-
ern moral philosophy, whose major fig-
ures, such as Plato and Immanuel Kant,
were very concerned about feelings
influencing moral decisions. They
argued that allowing feelings to sway
ethical reflection would distort moral
reasoning and that if anything is impor-
tant about making moral decisions, it is
that moral reasoning be pristinely logical
and not “contaminated” by emotions,
passions, and sentiments.
In response, scholars such as Carol Gilli-
gan and Nel Noddings have argued
that a wholesale distrust of feelings
neglects the importance of relationships
in our moral life and that purely logical
or rational approaches to ethical situa-
tions ignore the degree to which empa-
thy, emotional attachments, communal
ties, and respecting another ’s feelings
inform the moral dimensions of those
relationships.
Perhaps the primary reason a great deal
of ethical attention has recently turned
toward feelings and emotions in our
moral life is the continuing contributions
of neuroscientists who demonstrate that
all thinking and reasoning, not just
moral contemplation, is laced with feel-
ing (or affect). Neurologist Antonio
Damasio, one of the leading figures in
this research, has offered convincing
findings that whenever reasoning and
decision making are occurring, the
brain’s feeling circuits are coactive with
its reasoning or thinking circuits. In fact,
dissociating feeling from thinking is
largely a neurological impossibility. As
we consciously (and mostly unconscious-
ly) process our thoughts, beliefs, percep-
tions, imaginings, memories, anticipa-
tions, and action plans, the brain’s feel-
ing and reasoning circuits are working
together to arrive at a plan that “feels
right” to the organism.
Immensely impressive about Damasio’s
work is the way in which he and his
colleagues have shown that when the
brain’s feeling circuits have been dam-
aged by trauma or disease, decisional
ability becomes severely impaired. In
contrast to the Kantian or Platonic
repudiation of feelings in making deci-
sions, Damasio and his ken have shown
that damage to the brain’s feeling cir-
cuitry often disposes the individual to
extremely poor or maladaptive deci-
sion-making, especially in important
life matters involving relationships,
finances, and job performance. As I will
discuss below, feelings are increasingly
being understood as a kind of “com-
pass” for the brain’s reasoning.
Feelings direct reason or the intellect
toward what is and isn’t important; they
prioritize the factors or elements in a
moral situation such that our decision
making is efficient and not haphazard;
they appraise an object or situation as
desirable, undesirable, dangerous, or
neutral; and they help to encode memo-
ries (eg, “That was awful” or “That was
marvelous”). Consequently, behaviors
that end with satisfying results are rein-
forced, and those that don’t become
“learning experiences” that shouldn’t be
repeated. (Thus, sociopaths, who cannot
seem to learn from trial and error or
from the consequences of their actions,
have been consistently found to have
serious malfunctioning in the circuitry
that connects the feeling with the think-
ing parts of the brain, primarily in the
amygdala-anterior cingulate-frontal and
prefrontal cortical loops.)
Now, it is certainly true that feelings can
occasionally distort reasoning, especially
when we argue backwards, that is, when
we already know the conclusion we
want—usually because that conclusion is
infused with a passionate commitment,
whereas its contrary strikes us as disgust-
ing—and we select and adapt our evi-
dence to suit the very conclusion we
want to adopt. As I will discuss, these
cases are all too familiar.
On the other hand, especially as we go
about the mundane activities of daily
life, the brain’s feeling circuits are utterly
indispensable in making decisions that
manifest our “values,” what we believe is
important. So I want to spend this article
reclaiming the significance of feelings in
making moral decisions. Because I don’t
want to get too neurologically technical,
I consistently use the word “feeling” in
the following, although “emotion” might
occasionally be more accurate, whereas
the safest, all-purpose technical word to
use is probably “affect.” Even so, I think
the points will come across intelligibly
and fairly accurately. Also, although the
following material can apply to any pro-
fession, I offer examples familiar to case
managers so that my readers’ feeling cir-
cuitry will be positively disposed.
Feelings and Attention
An interesting distinction between feel-
ings and moods is that feelings (and
emotions) are about things, situations, or
objects, whereas moods are largely dif-
fuse, generalized sensations that aren’t
about anything in particular. Thus,
moods tend to be cognitively trouble-
some, as they often shape whatever we
are thinking about into the mold of the
mood. So when I am gloomy, everything
I think about is colored with negativity,
but when I am upbeat, everything in my
world is marvelous or hopeful.
Feelings and especially emotions, how-
ever, tend to be object oriented, or about
September/October 2006 TCM 17