CHAPTER 4

FEELINGS AND MORAL DECISION MAKING

“What I feel is right is right, what I feel is wrong is wrong”

-Jean Jacques Rousseau

LESSON OUTCOMES:

At the end of the discussion, the learners can:

• use their feelings to value their life as be a moral agent.
• express their thoughts through evaluating their feelings with their
actions.
• develop resilience to counter their depressing feelings.

LESSON CONTENT:

FEELINGS AND MORAL DECISION MAKING

A. What is a feeling?
• They are mental associations and reactions to an emotion that are
personal and acquired through experience

B. What is an emotion?
• Emotions are physical and instinctive.
• Sample situation: You are in a zoo on your own and on foot, you see a lion
behind bars, and your feelings may range from curiosity to admiration or
bitterness if you believe lions should never be caged.

C. Types of Feelings

• Moral emotions can be categorized into:

• Prosocial emotions which promote morally good behavior such as

empathy, sympathy, concern, or compassion; such as empathy can lead
to intuitive judgments or “affect-laden intuitions,” often referred to as
“gut feelings” about the rightness or wrongness of certain actions. While
pro-social or positive emotions such as empathy are generally associated
with ethical behavior, it may also be the case that positive emotions can
 arise following unethical behavior such as cheating, which can then
reinforce and contribute to additional future unethical behavior.

• Self-blame emotions such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment; For

these emotions, we might not act a certain way because we would
expect to be embarrassed if our actions were discovered or because we
would simply feel guilty.

• Other-blame emotions, such as contempt, anger, and disgust- such as

anger or disgust. When we experience other blame emotions, we tend
to act in a less rational manner, and can end up acting unethically as a
result. This initial moral awareness may then lead to a moral judgment
driven by the emotions of anger and disgust that such behavior is
unacceptable and needs to be addressed.

INDIVIDUALITY EXTENDS TO MORALITY.

a. Individuality is so highly prized that being like others is

considered shameful. Even people who slavishly adopt the views
and values of the majority or of their particular culture manage
to maintain the notion that everything about them is as unique
as their fingerprints.

b. Whatever a person believes to be right is right for that person

and what a person believes to be wrong are wrong for that
person.

c. In conclusion for this reasoning, no one person’s view is

preferable to another’s, and each is good in its own ways.

d. No one other than individuals themselves has any right to pass

judgement. Freedom is the byword; rules and restrictions are the
only heresies.

HOW THE FEELINGS BECAME EMPHASIZED

a. Two individuals are especially important in the development of

moral relativism and are largely responsible for its emphasis on
feelings rather than reasoned judgement.
 According to Jean Jacques Rousseau “What I feel is right is right,
what I feel is wrong is wrong. (In this part, Rousseau thinks that
children are naturally good, and the only corrupting influence is
society with its artificial constraints)

c. Values clarification- this system asserts that there is no universal,

objective moral standard and that the only norm is each person
decides to value. The clear implication being that area of values is
that, no one can ever be mistaken.

ARE FEELINGS RELIABLE?

CAN OUR FEELINGS BE TRUSTED IN OUR BEHAVIOR?

Roger’s implicit faith in feelings, desires and preferences does not prove that
such faith is warranted. Can feelings be trusted to guide human behavior? No
reasonable person would deny that some feelings, desires and preferences are
admirable and therefore make excellent guides.

According to Carl Rogers, feelings as the central role in guiding behavior: one
of the basic things which I was a long time in realizing, and which I am still
learning, is that when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing,
it is worth doing.

According to Rogers, organismic sensing of a situation is more trustworthy

than intellect. These Rogers’s method proceeds in good faith to counsel
millions of people to follow their feelings. Roger emphasis that feeling has
been most enthusiastically embraced.

Feelings have become the dominant ethical standard in space of few decades.
As Allan Bloom concluded, “Our desire… is now the last word, while in the past
it was the questionable and dangerous part of us”.

Right choice- according to Bloom, right choice means that there are no
necessary consequences, that disapproval is only prejudice and guilt only a
neurosis.

(Examples of good and bad situation of using feelings as basis of decision

making)
• Mother Teresa being compassionate for the world’s suffering and
poverty. She inspired our lives with “self-sacrifice”.
• Albert Schweitzer, a talented man who chose missionary over his
scholarly pursuits. He saw the inequality in the African borders.
 • Martin Luther King Jr., his passion for justice made the world and his
nation fight for their rights. He felt unfairness and inequality in the
society which led him to heroic leadership.

UNREASONABLE IDEAS BY ROUSSEAU AND ROGERS

If Rousseau and Rogers are correct in claiming that everything is a matter of

personal preference and whatever feels good is good then the concept of
moral excellence is meaningless and if they are correct, there is no ethical basis
for condemning bad situations and without ethical basis, the laws forbidding
these deeds are no longer valid.

We don’t mean that you are not allowed to ignore these implications but
rather, we claim that we need to evaluate ideas by their implications and
therefore in this case, judging Rousseau’s and Rogers’s idea to be
unreasonable.

Example Situation:
o A student may feel like spreading a lie about her roommate to avenge a real
or imagined wrong. (This action is a questionable rightness, despite the
feelings and desires of the person involved.

o A man was walking in a street. There is an area where the workmen had
placed orange cones for construction. As the man passed by, the teenage
boy knocking over each cone as he passed by. The man spoke to him and
the conversation went like this.
• Man: I’m curious. Do you know why those cones were put up there?
• Teenager: To warn people
• Man: Do you realize that by knocking them over you increase the chance
that someone might fall and get hurt? Teenager: Yeah
• Man: Then why are you doing it?
• Teenager: Because I feel like it.

THE MISCONCEPTION IN USING FEELINGS IN DECISION MAKING

According to other psychologist, they addressed these theories by Rousseau

and Rogers as an error. According to William Doherty, moral beliefs are not
equally created. Religions and Golden role “do unto others as you would have
others do unto you” is far better guide to moral living than the reflexive
morality of self-interest.
If the majority view does not determine the rightness of an action, should each
person decide on the basis of her or his own feelings, desires, and preferences?

Morality by feelings completely ignores other people’s feelings. Those who are
acted against surely have feelings too but their feelings presumably counter to
the feelings of those committing the actions. To say that we should be free to
do as we wish without regard for others is to say that others should be free to
do as they wish without regard for us and if we follow this rule, the result would
be social chaos.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

• Conscience - Is the concrete particular judgment by which, in a given

particular situation, man knows what he ought to do (Aquinas, cited by
Ramon Reyes, 1989).
• Empathy - It is a skill that strengthens with practice and encourages
people to both give and receive it often (Brown, 2014).
• Emotions a person’s positive or negative “feeling state” that arises from
the appraisal of an arousing situation
• Feelings - They are mental associations and reactions to an emotion that
are personal and acquired through experience. (Ruggiero, 2008)
• Freedom - morality addresses man as a being who can truly act, who can
truly be the cause, the origin and initiator of action, and in this sense free
(Reyes, 1989).
• Happiness - Is to be attained by developing one's potential for a life of
reason.
• Honesty - Derived from the Latin word for "honorable". This entails being
truthful to others and refusing to mislead or deceive (Ruggeiro, 2007).
• Humanistic Psychology - It emphasized the active role of the individual in
shaping their internal and external worlds. Rogers advanced the field by
stressing that the human person is an active, creative, experiencing being
who lives in the present and subjectively responds to current perceptions,
relationships, and encounters.
• Moral - Which is good or right, such as a good person or a right action
(Edgar et.al., 1996).
• Morality - refers to that dimension of human existence whereby man
confronts of finds himself, an ideal vision of man or an ideal state and goal
of his existence which he finds himself oriented toward (Reyes, 1989)
• Moral Judgement - Referred to as the "voice of conscience", the "feelings
of remorse" (Reyes, 1989).
 • Sympathy - described as a superficial acknowledgment of suffering,
invoking a pity-based response that failed to sufficiently acknowledge the
person who was suffering (Palliat, 2017)
• Values clarification - This system asserts that there is no universal,
objective moral standard and that the only norm is each person decides to
value. The clear implication being that area of values is that, no one can
ever be mistaken.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READINGS

Brown, B. (2012). Men, women & worthiness: [the experience of shame and the power of being enough]. Boulder, CO :
Sounds True.

Elder, L. PhD & Paul, R. P. (2001). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life. (Pearson
Education & Pearson Education, Ed.) (1st Edition).

Gangemi, A. & Mancini, F. (2005). Guilt and focusing in decision making. Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1).
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.536

Katz, L. D. (2005). “Pleasure.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia (Winter 201). Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University.
Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure/

Korsgaard, C. (2013). Rationality. Personhood, Animals, and the Law, 2–9. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000018

Moynihan, S., Lynch, R., & Mannix McNamara, P. (2016). Physical Education Student Teachers Behaviours and Attitudes
towards Drinking in Ireland: Implications for Health Education. Health Education and Care, 1(1).
https://doi.org/10.15761/hec.1000103

Ruggiero, V. (2008). Thinking Critical About Ethical Issues (1st Editio). 1221 Avenue of the Americans, New York: McGraw-
Hill, imprint of McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Reyes, R. C. (1989). Ground and Norm of Morality: Ethics for College Students. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Schroeder, Tim, "Desire", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL
=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries /desire/ . Retrieved date January 25, 2019

Schwartz, M. S. (2017). The Ethical Decision-Making Process. Business Ethics Quarterly.