BALABAT, Julie Marie B.

LEARNING MODULE 2
THE MORAL ACT
Unit 1: Feelings and Moral Decision-Making

A. Feelings as instinctive and trained response to

moral dilemma
B. Why can they be obstacles to making the right
decisions? / How can they help in making the right
decisions?
 A. Feelings as Instinctive and Trained
Response to Moral Dilemmas
Engage

1. How did your feelings influence your decision?

Feelings play a major role in most of the ethical decisions we

make. Feelings has always been part of my decision making.
Whenever I make a decision, I’ll be using my feelings as my
basis in making my decision and feelings matters most
whenever we decide for ourselves.
2. Do you agree to use only reason in making moral decisions,
and that feelings should be ignored? Defend your viewpoint.

Sometimes feelings might get ignored in making moral decisions

because reason exists at the same time. If you have a reason, you
might use it in a more sense of making moral decisions. A reason
gives a more reasonable sense of making moral decisions. Most
of the time reason is more usable in making moral decisions.
Explore
Ask from a friend a family or anybody on the question: Is it okay
to make moral decisions based on what we feel? Have you done
something good as a result of what you feel?

I asked my mother with this questions; my mother’s answer to

the first question, for her, it is okay to make moral decisions
based on what we feel because sometimes feelings will be the
basis of making moral decisions , it is also to avoId getting
emotionally hurt. And she also said, “Yes, I have done something
good as a result of what I feel.”
Evaluate
1. What are feelings and emotions?
Feelings and Emotions are both emotional experiences and
physical sensations, and all traits that we share as humans. And
also it is a cognitive evaluation about certain situations. The
emotional reaction is usually fast and spontaneous. There are
many types of emotions which are shared universally: love, joy,
pity, sympathy, sadness, hatred, anger, bitterness, and disgust.
2. Summarize Hume’s description of feelings

According to Hume’s “Theory of Mind”, humans have

what we called passions. He further classified
passion as direct and indirect. The direct passions
are cased directly by the sensation of pain or
pleasure; the passion that “arises immediately from
good or evil, from pain or pleasure” that we
experience or expect to experience. And Indirect
passions are caused by the sensation of pain or
pleasure derived from some other idea or impression.
3. Summarize Scheler’s description of feelings
According to Scheler, human feelings are not chaotic. It is actually
strict, exact, and objective. It follows a peculiar form of laws that
you cannot avoid in the subconscious and asserted that it is
actually the “purest sphere” of human consciousness. He
presented four strata of feelings. He claimed that these strata or
levels are constant and it follows and exact order of importance.
He called these levels of feelings as the “stratification model of
emotive life”. These are the sensual feelings, vital feelings,
psychic feelings, and spiritual feelings. Sensual feelings involve
bodily pleasures or pain. Vital feelings are the life functions such
as health, sickness, energy, fatigue, etc. Psychic feelings are about
aesthetics, justice, and knowledge (scientific). Lastly, Spiritual
feelings deal with the Divine. Among the four, according to Scheler,
it is the Spiritual feelings alone that is intentional. This means
spiritual feelings are directed to the particular special object or a
higher being that he attributed to as the Divine.
4. How should we manage our emotions whenever we are
confronted with surprising situations that cause negative feelings?
It is necessary to manage our emotions whenever we are
confronted with surprising situations that cause negative
feelings because if we’re able to manage our emotions properly
in an emotional battleground, we can keep ourselves in
composure and prevent it from becoming a complicated
situation. To navigate the emotional battleground, we need to
make some important ways on how we can manage our
emotions: Think about it seriously, don’t let your emotions
swallow you. Reflect on what you feel. We have lots of choices,
with this choices, we can think of possible ways to prevent the
situation from becoming complicated. It’s not too late to make
things right, (apologize if you have to) you need to think of ways
on how to solve a certain problem. Prepare the right words and
reaction you’ll express. But you need to calm yourself first
before you react. Think before you react.