To date, in this blog, I have addressed the relative strength
of emotions and reasons when it comes to moral thinking. I have so far come to the conclusion that
while one needs to be objective – reasonable – in the quest for moral decisions,
one must first be passionate – emotional – about its pursuit. This posting will address the question of how
our biological make up functions in this concern. Of course, when one considers biology, one is
delving into the nature of such things.
I mean nature is a distinctive factor as opposed to nurture. Our mental wiring is an important
factor. By looking into the natural, we
get a better grasp of this internal juggling between emotion and reason,
because, it turns out, one of them seems to have a more prominent position when
it comes time to making moral decisions, although, as I have already reported,
prominence, in this case, does not mean dominance.
Jonathan Haidt[1] reports
on research that gives us insight into the natural side of this duality. First, he shares the notion that animals of
the ape family have the mental building blocks to think and feel
emotionally. These emotions include
sympathy, anger, fear, and affection. He
goes on to report studies that look at the effects of neural damage among
humans. Specifically, of interest are
the consequences of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). For those of you who are curious, it is the
region just above and behind the bridge of the nose. When damaged, subjects had their emotionality
practically eliminated. This was
ascertained by exposing subjects with such injury to extremely joyous or
gruesome photographs; these subjects indicated no emotional response to such
images. All their other mental
faculties, IQ, memory, and the like, were unaffected. The subjects even scored normally on moral
reasoning tests. These subjects, in
their private lives, were known to have made “foolish” decisions or avoiding
making decisions in their interaction with others. This, in turn, caused them to divorce
themselves from others such as family members, employers, and the like. Of course, this is not the recipe for healthy
relationships with significant people in one’s life. Consequently, these subjects had high
incidents of shattered lives.
What all this means is that this type
of research further bolsters the claim that one needs emotions to think
reasonably. Apparently, the vmPFC acts
to regulate and coordinate the amount of information the brain is receiving, at
various levels of consciousness, and allows our reasoning mechanism to
function. Without its services, a person
is dealing with all possible options in a decision-making situation. It seems, having an emotional function does
filter certain possibilities from consideration. It does this, of course, at a price. But the price is not all bad, necessarily.
Haidt’s own research looked at
subjects responding to situations in which they were asked about certain social
taboos. In one case, he offered a
scenario in which a brother and sister engage in a sexual event, but that was
not repeated nor subject to pregnancy (the sister was taking birth control
pills and the brother used a condom).
Subjects were asked whether the event was immoral. The subjects overwhelmingly responded that it
was. They held on to that conclusion
even when the researcher took on a “devil’s advocate” role and extensively
knocked down every reasonable claim the subjects gave for their opinions. Frustrated, the subjects simply claimed that
that is just how they judged the sibling’s behavior. The implication is that emotional judgments
simply trumped reason even though the scenario indicated that the sexual act
served as a bond for the two “sinners” in their relation – a shared
secret. Believe me; I would be among the
ones who judged this as unacceptable behavior - even atheists among the
subjects responded to the event as did the religious ones. Now, it is hard to believe that such a bias
is inborn; it stands to reason that people are taught such a taboo. Supporting this is the fact that there are
recorded historical incidents when incest has been allowed, even mandated. But the study seems to say we can be so
thoroughly socialized to believe and accept such biases; we are wired to accept
them. And by so doing, we allow
efficient decision-making to take place.
The emotional dispositions place parameters in what will be acceptable
and, therefore, considered.
Given this, the current political
campaigns become even more interesting.
In my lifetime, we have gone from the taboos that we would not elect a
Catholic, a divorced man, a person who used profanity publicly (with the
exception of Harry Truman and his occasional “damn” and “hell”), or a person
who engaged in distasteful (as in crude) attacks on opponents – the other
candidates in the field. The Catholic taboo
fell when I was young and Reagan took care of the divorced disqualifier; with
this election cycle, the rest could very well fall as well. With all that, our options for the presidency
become more numerous. A good thing? Our reason would indicate that it is, yet our
conventional emotions might be trumped by forces beyond their control; that is,
a sea of raw emotions that is overruling a great deal of reason.
[1] Haidt, J.
(2012). The righteous
mind: Why good people are divided by
politics and religion. New York,
NY: Pantheon Books.
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