EMOTIONS AND MORALITY

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?

Are constitutive of being human on personal and collective levels.

Are momentary feelings; unsuitable to moral decision making
Are unwilled and subjective; are fleeting feelings hence, there can hardly be accountability
 Conscious mental reaction subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically
accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body
 PHILOSOPHERS convinced that EMOTIONS play crucial role in moral decision-making.
 BLAISE PASCAL: “The HEART knows what the MIND does not.”
o The mind is not the sole arbiter of what is right! and wrong.
o Emotions operate with precision and Consistency of its own.
 Two schools of thought on emotions:
o Emotion is a hindrance and a help.
o Emotions should be guided by reason.

EMOTIONS AND REASON PRINCIPLES

1) Emotions should be guided by reason.

2) When moral claims could not be supported by reasonable arguments, then such claims would in no way resolve a moral issue.
3) The neutral position (relativism) carried out by feelings implies a double standard.
4) Emotions unaided by reason do away with critical analysis for objectivity, disconnecting ethics.

ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF EMOTION IN ETHICS

 He believed that virtue is expressed in fine emotions as well as fine actions.

o Both are morally praiseworthy aspects of character.
 Emotions aren't just "feelings", but cognitively rich mental states. They are about something that we represent in thought. For
example:
o Anger requires an evaluation that you have been unjustly slighted.

ST. AUGUSTINE SAYS:

 Animal passion is different from human rationality.

o Animals - instinctive tendencies
o Humans – control instinct with reason.

Feelings maybe helpful but it should be guided by reason.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. - Blaise Pascal