Moral Act

Emotions and Reason

Conscience
Role of Mental Frames in Moral Experiments
Developing Will
Principles in Moral Behavior
Negative Golden Rule
Emotions and Reason

• There is no consensus about a standard use of “reason”

• But it is frequently used as a contrast or

complementary term for “faith”
Emotions and Reason
• Reason stands for the:

• faculties of rational reflection,

• sensations and experience,
• memory and
• inference, and any or priori or a posteriori judgement

that may be exercised without relying on a religious faith

that is supported by reason.
Emotions and Reason
• Faith is beyond reason, but it may or may not be
incompatible with reason.

• But the usage of reason is not uniform,

• some philosophers argue that the content of religious
faith is supported by reason.
Emotions and Reason
 Emotions (anger, love, hate, happiness) are sometimes
distinguished from reason in ethical theory and thought to be
in tension.
 But in the study of Robert Solomon and others, treat
emotions as essentially involving reason.

 Example:
 Anger, involves a person condemning or feeling rage
on the basis of reason, (a belief that a wrongly injury
has occurred).
Emotions and Reason
 In religious ethics, there is a debate:
 over the voluntariness of emotions.
 Is a person responsible for his emotion?
 the relationship of emotions and actions
 Perhaps one can have a duty to engage in loving
action, but it is more problematic to suppose that a
person can have a duty to feel love as an emotion)
 ethical status and definition of emotions
 what is the difference between love and lust?
Conscience
Conscience
 is the power to discern
what appears to be
morally right or wrong.

 is an inner feeling or
voice viewed as acting as
a guide to the rightness or
wrongness of one's
behavior.
Conscience
• The function of the conscience in
ethical decision making tends to
complicate matters for us.
• The commandments of God are
eternal, but in order to obey them we
must first appropriate them internally.
• The “organ” of such internalization has
been classically called the conscience.
• Some describe this nebulous inner
voice as the voice of God within.
Conscience
 The conscience is a mysterious part of
man’s inner being.
 Within the conscience, in a secret hidden
recess, lies the personality, so hidden that
at times it functions without our being
immediately aware of it.
 Encountering the conscience can be an
awesome experience.
 The uncovering of the inner voice can be,
as one psychiatrist notes, like “looking into
hell itself.”
Conscience
The conscience can be a
voice from heaven or hell;
it can lie as well as press us
to truth.
It can speak out of both
sides of its mouth, having
the capacity either
to accuse or to excuse.
Conscience
• The conscience is important, but not normative.
• It is capable of distortion and misguidance.
• Though the conscience is not the highest tribunal
of ethics, it is dangerous to act against it.
• Martin Luther “To act against conscience is
neither right nor safe”?
Conscience
• If the conscience can be misinformed or
distorted,

• why should we not act against it?

• Should we follow our consciences into sin?
Conscience
Here we have a dilemma of the double-jeopardy in following
our conscience.
 If we follow our consciences into sin, we are guilty of sin
inasmuch as we are required to have our consciences
rightly informed by the Word of God.
 However, if we act against our consciences, we are also
guilty of sin. The sin may not be located in what we do but
rather in the fact that we commit an act we believe to be
evil.
Conscience
• Example:
The biblical principle of Romans 14:23 comes into play:
“Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

If a person is taught and comes to believe that wearing lipstick is

a sin and then wears lipstick, that person is sinning.

The sin resides not in the lipstick but in the intent to act against
what one believes to be the command of God.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
Framing describes how our responses
to situations, including our ethical
judgments, are impacted just by how
those situations are posed or viewed.

"Mental Framing is how you see a

situation that occurs when you
position yourself or your thought in
such positive ways as to convince
yourself when it comes into difficult
or a hard situation.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• In any kind of decision making, context
accounts.
• A simple reframing of the situation or a question
can produce totally different answer for the same
person.
• For example, people would rather buy a
hamburger made of meat labelled 75% fat free
than meat labelled 25% fat.
• In fact, these people would tell you that 75% fat
free burger taste better than 25% fat burger, even
though, they are actually identical.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• Framing is a feature of our brain’s architecture.
• Our minds react to the context in which something is embedded
(experiences), not just to the thing itself.
• There is always a battle going in our life. We always have major
consequences for us:
• Our health, Our wealth, Our feelings and Our behavior
• And yet we are not even aware of it, even though it is happening
mostly right inside our own brain.
• Therefore, it is one of the fundamental struggles that define human
existence: The framing battle.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• Framing is a feature of our brain’s architecture.
• Our minds react to the context in which something is embedded
(experiences), not just to the thing itself.
• There is always a battle going in our life. We always have major
consequences for us:
• Our health, Our wealth, Our feelings and Our behavior
• And yet we are not even aware of it, even though it is happening
mostly right inside our own brain.
• Therefore, it is one of the fundamental struggles that define human
existence: The framing battle.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• The meaning of reality is:
• Not set, but rather dynamic
• Not absolute, but its is contextual
• Not passively observed but actively constructed
• The construction process involves decision about:
• What to include in the experience?
• Which parts are relevant?
• Which are more important?
• What are more important?
• What’s the background? What’s the foreground
• The framing choices you make determine the boundaries,
appearance, meaning, and value of your experience.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• Let us take the famous illusion, it
demonstrate how our decision about
what will be the background influence
what we see.
• If you choose to view the black as
background, you will see a base.
• If you choose the white as the
background, you see two profiles
facing each other.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• In the Shepard Illusion”,
the tops of the table are
identical.
• But, because of how
contextual visual cues
are manipulated, they
appear to be very
different.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• Framing is one way the brain
finds patterns in chaos (its
primarily survival function) and
creates meaning out of
meaningless.
• For example, the image of Black
Nazarene exist solely in your
brain.
• The image formed in the
abandoned broken concrete
fence, will look like the same.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment

The Sleeping Beauty Mountain of Kalinga

Mt. Banahaw Sleeping Beauty Mountain (also known as Mount Patukan,
Mount Mating-oy Dinayao, Mount Mantingoy)
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
• The principle of framing can be manipulated knowingly by
social players – like the organization, corporation and
individuals around you, to promote their own interest.
• On the national level, political parties fight over what will
become an issue, and then how to frame it.
• Example:
• If enough people buy into the frame of abortions as
“killing innocent babies,” then abortion will be illegal.
Developing the Will
Will is the center
of who we are.

Will is who we are.

You are his will.

Developing the Will
• Everything we do is done by will.
• Usually we think of will in the active sense,
• of self control,
• of working toward and attaining goals.
• Will that are departing from standard are driven by
centeredness, like
• Self-will
• Identification.
Developing the Will
• Natural modes of will are:
• Active
• Active modes take action or exhibit an outgoing
movement, as toward a goal or object.
• Receptive
• Receptive modes receive, show openness to what is
coming in, or may be passive.
• Synergic combination of active and receptive.
Developing the Will
• The fundamental way to develop our will involves:
• setting a goal,
• working toward that goal, and
• monitoring our progress.

• Each of these steps requires skill and intelligence.

Developing the Will
• The first hurdle in setting a goal is to choose wisely.
• In most cases it should be unambiguous and
attainable.
• Our goal needs to be defined clearly enough to
enable us to monitor our progress and our
attainment of it.
• Without that self-feedback we cannot truly
exercise our will.
 Developing the Will
• Another major issue is the degree of difficulty.
• The goal or task should be something within our power and the right size.
• If the task is too big, we will fail.
• If too easy, it does not exercise our will.
• Our experimentation with this dimension of difficulty helps us understand
our own capacities and limitations, helps us see why we need to develop
our will.
• The goal or task should not depend on any other person.
• We cannot control other people and making our will exercise
contingent on their cooperation or action may well put us on a
course toward failure
Developing the Will
• We have the further choice of time scale.
 The goal or task may only be concerned with something immediate
and brief:
 an ad hoc,
 short-term effort
 like maintaining self-awareness for the next ten steps while
you are walking, maintaining your attention for the
remainder of a lecture, or keeping your anger in check while
dealing with a difficult person.
 We also work with goals and tasks lasting a day, a week, or some
longer period. The biblical forty days is a typical time-period for
more serious undertakings.
Developing the Will
• Finally, we set the goal and commit ourselves to carry it out.
• We often have thoughts such as “I’d like to that” or “I should do
that.”
• But random intentions do not rise to the level of organized,
effective will.
• For that we need to choose consciously and then agree with
ourselves that we will carry out what we have chosen to do.
• Without that inner assent, that agreement to commit ourselves to a
particular course of action, our will is never set on the task.
• Since no decision has been made, we cannot count on fulfilling it.
Developing the Will
• After choosing and setting our task or goal, we work to achieve it.
• We do what we have set out to do. Otherwise we weaken ourselves.
• Self-confidence comes from knowing that you can set yourself to
do something and then actually do it.
• Not following through with the will exercise, with working toward
the goal or doing the task, breaks that self-confidence.
• Inevitably, though, failures come, usually by overextending
ourselves, taking on something beyond our capacity.
• When that happens, we start over again with something easier, to
rebuild our will and our confidence.
Developing the Will
• With a clear goal or task, we can bring self-awareness to bear on our
activities related to it.
• We can monitor our progress and verify the accomplishment of the
task.
• This self-feedback is an essential factor: it closes the loop and brings
wholeness to our consciously-willed actions.
• This monitoring also allows us to adjust our efforts and get back on course
when we stray.
• Implicit in self-monitoring is the more general self-awareness, which itself
organizes our energies and rectifies our actions.
• Seeing changes what we see. When we see ourselves, we change ourselves
for the better, even though the seeing may be uncomfortable.
Developing the Will
• At other times, rather than choosing a goal, we may find that
a goal has chosen us.
• We may come to realize that some inner imperative, perhaps
coupled with our life circumstances, has fully committed us
to a course of action.
• The decision was a gradual one, coming in increments.
• Yet here we are, pursuing that direction. Again, our will
determines how far and how well we travel that road.
Principles in Moral Behavior
• The principle in moral behavior is based on the Golden Rule:
• The Golden Rule states that:
• “Do unto others what you would have them do unto
you”
• It is commonly perceived as one of Jesus’s greatest moral
teachings. It’s over-rated.
• “ So, whatever you wish that men would do you, do so to
them; for this is the ne law and the prophets (Matt 7:12)
• “And so as you wish that men would do to you, do so to
them (Luke 6:31)
Principles in Moral Behavior
• The golden rule is a primitive guideline to moral behavior.
• It tells us to measure our actions by our personal values, which
saves the trouble of considering the values of others.
• So, when a person wishes others to be more to his likings, it’s
easy to rationalize aggressive action as being for his own good.
• Example: A moral society needs more religion, therefore, we
must do more to get public schools to teach the word of God.
• The Golden Rule has even been used to justify the invasion of
Iraq, on the grounds that a westernized style democracy would
be good for them.
Principles in Moral Behavior
• The Golden Rule Stresses benevolence or the lack
of it.
• A person accustomed to refusing help during times of
hardship could use the Golden Rule to refuse to help
others experiencing hardship.
• On the receiving side, there is practically no limit to the
benefits most of us would be willing to accept from others,
at what ever cost to them.
The Negative Golden Rule
• The negative Golden Rule is an improvement
over the Golden Rule.
• As stated in Confucius Analects:
Do not do to others what you would not like
yourself. There will be no resentment against you,
either in the family or in the state.
(Analects 12.2)
The Negative Golden Rule
• The negative Golden Rule:
• emphasis on restrain,
• it cuts down on the aggressive act which the
Golden Rule enables.
• it shifts aggression in the opposite direction
toward asceticism (refraining from worldly
pleasure).
The Negative Golden Rule
• The Ten Commandments provides some examples:
• “Do not worship other Gods”
• Would compel you to accept one God.
• “Do not cover your neighbor’s wife”
• Gets into thought control
• It is in Law where we find the Negative Golden Rule most applicable
• Law carry penalties.
• Law can be used to plunder.
• Law provide the basis by which a minority can wield control over a
majority.
The Negative Golden Rule

• The Negative Golden Rule provides the

justification for maintaining tradition,
such as religious traditions.
• Whether this is good or bad depends on
how much it is enforced against your will.