Recentering Western Ethics On Emotional Connections, Embodied Others, and Enlivening Practices

The vast scale and complexity of processes and problems within Western society seems insurmountable to address in ethical theory. There are many subcultures within Western society in which and between which moral dilemmas are, with increasingly more virulence, debated. Are there any parallel trends in different Western subcultures that can be used to guide ethical theory? What strategies in living moral lives can be learned from analysis and criticisms of these trends?

This paper uses developments in Humean-inspired naturalized ethics from Frans De Waal and Jonathan Haidt to argue that people are naturally emotional beings. It uses developments in feminist ethics from Virginia Held and Carol Gilligan to argue that people are naturally driven to care for embodied others. It uses the Thomist-Aristotelian thought of Alistair MacIntyre to argue that people should work together in creating practices that uphold virtues and create alternative institutions. And critically, it synthesizes arguments from all of these sources to conclude that the way modern Western society is structured prevents these instincts and possibilities from being fully realized. Suggestions for changing Western society to become more ethical, from these sources as well as from Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Arne Naess, are discussed to conclude the paper.

The field of naturalized ethics, which argues that the natural sciences are the only paths to knowledge about nature and aims to use the natural sciences to solve perennial philosophical problems, has gained much popularity in recent years. Two thinkers in this field, primatologist Frans De Waal and psychologist Jonathan Haidt, claim that intuitive emotions are central to human ethics. They both draw from the observations of 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, who describes the importance of the positive sentiment of humanity and the supporting role of reason: "reason...is not alone sufficient to produce any moral blame or approbation...It is requisite a sentiment should here display itself, in order to give a preference to the useful above the pernicious tendencies...reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour to those which are useful and beneficial" (An Enquiry 83).

Primatologist Frans De Waal provides evidence of humans inheriting a social-emotional basis for ethics through evolution. He argues that human morality is an extension of primate affective social instincts that evolved before we did such as fairness and, especially, cognitive empathy (including targeted helping and consolation). He describes his study of capuchin monkeys, in which they understood that a situation was unfair and refused to continue trading when a fellow capuchin received a better deal or got a reward for no cost (De Waal 26-30). He also describes chimpanzees sharing food with specific other chimpanzees who groomed them earlier, an instance of targeted helping (De Waal 21, 25-26), and younger chimpanzees consoling older chimpanzees who had lost fights (De Waal 19-21). These latter two cases are both examples of cognitive empathy in primates, as cognitive empathy is assessing the situation, finding what reasons might spark another's emotions, and reacting. De Waal argues that cognitive empathy evolved from emotional contagion, automatic emotional impacts (De Waal 22-24) that were documented by R.M. Church in rats (De Waal 17). De Waal argues that human morality is an extension of these instincts and behaviors because we exhibit them, but also have a sense of disinterested concern for others and society at large. He discusses how our emotional morality begins at a young age, with one-year old children in a study from Carolyn Zahn-Waxler comforting others in distress (De Waal 33-34). Along with Haidt, he discusses children distinguishing, at an early age, between rules preventing harm of others and rules setting cultural conventions unrelated to harm (De Waal 33; Haidt 817).

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues for a social intuitionist model, in which “moral judgement is caused by quick moral intuitions and is followed (when needed) by slow, ex post facto moral reasoning” (817). This moral reasoning, under his theory, is usually undertaken in order to confirm a previously-made intuitive moral judgement. Under this model, reasoned persuasion usually only affects people by sparking new moral intuitive judgements in them, not by convincing them of logically sound arguments. Haidt also points out that people are drawn to the beliefs of people in their in-groups, even when reasoned persuasion is not used. However, he leaves room in his theory for morally reasoned judgement, when initial intuition lacks strength and ability to process is high, and private reflection, which includes imagining being in another’s place (Haidt 818-819). Haidt also finds that emotional and self-regulatory processes seem to be more likely factors in determining moral behavior and action than moral reasoning abilities (823-824). After citing De Waal’s work on the origins of moral intuitions, he argues that cultural diversity in morality is shaped by culture causing the selective loss of some intuitions, causing immersion into custom complexes of “explicit and implicit, sensory and propositional, affective, cognitive, and motoric knowledge”, and shaping peer socialization (Haidt 827-828).

Philosopher Virginia Held and psychologist Carol Gilligan both argue for a feminist ethic that highlights the importance of care for others that one is connected with. Virginia Held argues that ethics influenced by patriarchal society, including virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism, has misconstrued the idea of the self. She claims that these traditional ethical philosophies have either focussed on the atomistic individual human or the universal whole of humanity, and that “most standard moral theory has hardly noticed as morally significant the intermediate realm of family relations and relations of friendship, of group ties and family concerns, especially from the point of view of women” (Held 337). She argues that part of what we inherently are is our ties as family members and members of non-universal communities, and that our self-development sometimes comes secondary to the development of relations; these facts make conceptions of the self as highly individualistic problematic (Held 338). Particular embodied others, to Held, do not have to ever be physically near a person, but cannot be simply members of an abstract whole (Held 340). Carol Gilligan expresses the need for society to support the practice of a feminist ethic of care, in which connection is thought of as vital to human life, and the idea of rational autonomy just “signif[ies] a disconnection from emotions and a blindness to relationships which set the stage for psychological and political trouble” and a need for philosophical, political, and legal change (“Hearing the” 122).

Philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, who follows the traditions of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, argues that ethical theory has strayed too far from practice and that new ways of living must promote virtuous practices. He states that “The moral theory of philosophers is almost always pursued at a level of abstraction from the concreteness of everyday life which is exhibited only by the strategy and tactics of those general staffs whose armies are about to be defeated” (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 105). He highlights the importance in self-development of observations of others and of the social group(s) one is in (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 108). In contrast to the Post-Nietzschean focus on subverting current institutions through “intellectual and social guerilla warfare”, MacIntyre argues for the creation of institutions protected from current defective social orders that multiply the individual and collective goods internal to practices (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 122).

Three instances from my time at Clark University this semester provide insights that support these arguments. My professor showed a graphic in Environment and Society class that showed that only a small fraction of Americans are currently worried about climate change, sparking nervous laughter among the audience of environmentally-conscious students. This graphic appealed to the emotions of students because it induced their cognitive bias towards information that shows American failure to address environmental issues (Haidt 821). Nevertheless, multiple studies have shown that a substantial portion of Americans are worried about climate change (Kamarck; Funk and Hefferon). My professor in Miracles of Asia class endeared students to the details of Karl Marx’s personal and professional life. The professor was humanizing Marx in order to show him as an embodied person who was cared for in a relational context (Gilligan 122), not an enigma associated with socio-political viewpoints thought of as terrible by much of Western society. Yet those viewpoints have led to much violence and disunion in many societies, whatever their intentions. I struggled balancing my spiritual upbringing with budding relationships with friends that made jokes poking fun at religion. This struggle resulted from conflict between my emotional intuitions relative to my upbringing and my care for my friends as embodied others (Haidt 821, 827; Held, 337-338).

The naturalized ethicists, the feminist ethicists, and MacIntyre agree that the way current Western society is structured prevents constructive aspects of their theories from being realized.

All three are too extreme in some ways: Naturalized ethicists sometimes claim that moral dilemmas can be solved by appeals to science, but are much more insightful in stating how humans tend to intuitively act than how humans should act. Haidt acknowledges this by stating that “the social intuitionist model is an antirationalist model only in one limited sense: It says that moral reasoning is rarely the direct cause of moral judgment. That is a descriptive claim, about how moral judgments are actually made. It is not a normative or prescriptive claim, about how moral judgments ought to be made” (815). Held calls for a radical transformation in the form of a new feminist ethical theory and correctly cites MacIntyre’s failure to address sexism in his writings, but does not provide a definitive reason why virtue ethics inherantly cannot accomadate a feminist care ethic (339). And MacIntyre’s claims that utility and natural rights are fictions (After Virtue 70) and that the Enlightenment project wholly fails (After Virtue 62) are quite grandiose: I do not see why the ideas of the Enlightenment cannot be restructured as teleological within the alternative institutions MacIntyre envisions.

Haidt argues that the current way American psychological studies function make them biased towards finding that reason is the primary driver of moral judgement. He states that "if the person talking to you is a stranger (a research psychologist) who challenges your judgement on every turn...then you will be forced to engage in extensive, effortful, verbal central processing. Standard moral judgement interviews may therefore create an unnaturally reasoned form of moral judgement" (Haidt 820). This form of research jumpstarted the private reflection-induced loop of the social intuitionist model (Haidt 819, 829), and Haidt argues that post-hoc reasoning may be more common in everyday life (822-823, 829). This hypothesis could be proven, he argues, by allowing psychological interviews to have more “ecological validity” by using real stories, using real people familiar to the subject, conducting interviews like a normal conversation, and conducting interviews in front of an audience (Haidt 829).

Haidt also argues that the social intuitionist model explains why debates in the Western “culture wars over issues such as homosexuality and abortion can generate morally motivated players on both sides who believe that their opponents are not morally motivated.” This occurs because both sides think that the post-hoc reasoning to prove their moral intuitions they use is actually a priori reasoning. When the other side is not convinced by one’s arguments because they do not spark new intuitions, the side one is on believes the other side is “closed minded or insincere” (Haidt 823). One solution Haidt provides to foster better a priori reasoning abilities is an education model tested by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, in which students and teachers were treated as equals so intuitions of justice, fairness, and rights were valued and abilities for reasoned persuasion and private reflection were increased (829).

Held and Gilligan both present the viewpoint that Western society is so patriarchal and individualist that it has become hard for a feminist ethic of care for embodied others to take hold. Held, pointing out the work of legal theorist Jennifer Nedelsky, argues that Western liberalism and US constitutional law both dangerously equate autonomy with isolation and fail to account for the importance of one’s relations with other people. Nedelsky argues that childrearing, not the image of walled property, should be the model for fostering autonomy of citizens in relation to governments (Held 342-343). Gilligan argues that Western society has boxed care ethics into a private sphere of women within a patriarchal social system, preventing the equitable realization of a feminist ethic of care. Within the patriarchal feminine ethic of care, obligations towards others necessarily have the cost of a lack of self-development (Gilligan, “Hearing the” 122). She explains that patriarchal society promoting the feminine ethic of care leads many girls to suppress feelings of vitality and courage in forming relationships, causing much psychological trauma. Many women within the feminist movement of the 1970’s therefore, in the process of forming feminist ethics, disliked the notion of care because the feminine ethic of care stuck them in “a psychological and political trap” (Gilligan, “Hearing the” 124). Gilligan, in responding to critics, argues that the dominant models of constructing psychological theory produce results that are at odds with the experiences of many women. This occurs because they use mainly male research subjects, provide a justice based, instead of a care-based, definition of moral problems, and have the false assumption that data is independent from theory (Gilligan, “Reply” 328-329).

MacIntyre argues that “contemporary social realities...offer obstacles to the project of embodying in practice the concepts central to contemporary academic moral philosophy” by distorting philosophical concepts so people cannot reshape their actions to abide by them (“Moral philosophy” 113). He highlights three of these obstacles. The professionalization of procedures causes the definition within deontology of a person as autonomous and rights-bearing to be distorted by a system in which the universal and unfamiliar is favored over the local and familiar. Therefore, restorative justice is ignored (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 114-116). The compartmentalization of role-structured activity distorts virtue theory. It does so by defining virtues as skills that enhance the performance of particular roles morally predetermined by societal forces instead of morally positive ways of living that enhance one’s well-being as a whole. Applied ethics therefore largely focuses on guiding activity within existing societal frameworks instead of envisioning new ways of structuring society so virtues can be better realized (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 117-120). The negotiated aggregation of costs and benefits distorts utilitarianism because decisions framed as impersonal and interest-neutral are actually dependent on the relative power, influence, and weighing of outcomes by societal actors. These actors often do not account for the effects of actions on many parts of society (MacIntyre, “Moral philosophy” 120-121).

Taken together, what do the seemingly disparate theories of naturalized ethics, feminist ethics, and MacIntyrian ethics conclude? At first, it seems as though naturalized ethicists and MacIntyre clash in that the former support the primacy of emotion over reason in human nature while the latter supports, as a member of the Aristotelian tradition, the rational nature of man being the uniquely human function (Aristotle, 11-12). Yet, as has been stated previously in a quote from Haidt, what is the case regarding human nature does not necessarily tell one the particulars how one must act ethically. This reminds me of Hume’s famous statement that you cannot derive an ought from an is, or normative conclusions from descriptive facts (A Treatise): MacIntyre believes this statement can hold, but only with Aristotelian function concepts, chiefly the human function, as exceptions (After Virtue, 56-59). I agree with this idea of MacIntyre’s because having functions helps us fulfill roles that lead both ourselves and those we are close with to have satisfactory, interconnected lives. I therefore believe that naturalized ethicists has proven that emotional, evolutionarily inherited, often intuitive responses primarily drive human moral judgement and reasoning, for better or for worse. I find that Haidt and Aristotle have similar conceptions of rationality being a special quality of humans with much potential, with Haidt pointing out that rationality is limited because it is often post-hoc (Aristotle 19-22; Haidt 823). I therefore believe that the best normative response to challenges in Western societies that often ignore our tendency towards emotions come from a jointly MacIntyrian and feminist lens. From MacIntyre, we can learn that connecting with others in our communities through performing practices and gaining the goods internal to them is important. In a society more focussed than today’s on goal setting, people will use this understanding to make decisions through equitable consensus instead of through division driven by gut responses. From feminist philosophers, we learn that connection with individual others is vital for a good life. In a society more focussed than today’s on community, people will be trained to emotionally connect with each other better, allowing themselves to understand the points of view of other people easier. More people will have Aristotle’s perfect friendship than the all-to-common today friendship only because of pleasure or friendship only because of utility because of this connection (Aristotle 144-147). A focus on equitable community-based learning that fosters collective progress without being excessively forceful, which John Stuart Mill advocates for (32-34) and Haidt says Kohlberg’s program achieved (829), will be common. Enhanced connections with other people will also hopefully spark new intuitions in much of society for identifying with the environment, as Arne Naess hopes (36).

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