Disgust, the Emotions and Morality

In this posting I want to use disgust to examine the connection between morality and the emotions. Jesse Prinz argues that our emotions determine our moral reactions all by themselves.

“An action has the property of being morally wrong (right) just in the case there is an observer who has a sentiment of disapprobation (approbation) towards it” (1)

Prinz’s position seems to be supported by Isen and Levin’s classic study which showed someone who had just found a dime was more likely to help a passer by (2). In what follows I will accept our emotions are connected to our moral decisions. Prinz argues our emotions determine our moral response and that cognition plays no part in this determination. I will argue that our emotions initiate a moral response. I will also suggest far from validating a moral response that a lack of emotion does so.

Paul Ekman argued there are six universally recognised emotions, anger, fear disgust, joy, sadness and surprise. Not everyone agrees with Ekman’s list but do agree there are basic emotions. Disgust is a basic emotion which evolution evolved to keep us safe. For instance disgust at bodily fluids or rotting food might have protected us against infection. Such disgust has no moral implications. However disgust at certain sexual practices such as homosexuality and incest seem to have moral implications. Carol Hay wonders whether disgust has any-place in moral reasoning. I will now examine how disgust is connected to moral decisions.

Hay in her article uses the example of a pro-life group who display billboard-sized images of aborted foetuses juxtaposed with gory photos of atrocities such as mass graves and lynchings on her university’s campus in a campaign against abortion. It seems to me someone might use disgust in two ways to affect our moral decisions. Firstly someone might point to one thing we find disgusting and then point to another thing we don’t normally feel disgust about and then suggest the two are analogous. This is the tactic of the pro-life group Hay mentions above. This tactic combines reason and disgust. If we find the analogy reasonable then we should accept the person’s position. In the case of abortion I do not find such an analogy convincing. The photos of atrocities, mass graves and lynchings are photographs of persons whilst I would suggest a foetus is just a clump of cells and not yet a person. In other cases people might find such an analogy more persuasive, perhaps this might be true in the case of capital punishment.

Hume famously argued that reason is the slave of the passions and the second way disgust might be used is in a purely non-cognitive way. Perhaps a pro-life group might only display gory images of aborted foetuses hoping simply to use our disgust to enable us to see the wrongness of abortion. Let us accept that our emotions are connected to our moral reactions. Emotions might be connected in two ways. A non-cognitivist such as Prinz would hold that emotions alone decide the way we should act, decide the outcome. She need not deny reason plays some part in our morality but only after a moral decision has been made in a justificatory roles. Someone else might believe that emotions engage us in the need to decide how to act but that they alone do not decide the outcome. In what follows I want to consider the second type of connection that engages us in the need to decide.

According to Michael Brady emotions are somewhat analogous to alarms. If Brady is correct then when we feel an emotion concerning something moral the emotion is sending us a signal that something is wrong. This signal gives us a prima facie reason to act but it also gives us a reason to facilitate our understanding of the situation. Emotions do so by allowing us to assess or reassess the situation through capturing and focussing our attention (4). It follows from Brady’s position that emotions might initiate reasoning to better understand our situation rather than merely justify our already made decision.

Jonathan Haidt would disagree and use the idea of moral dumbfounding to support the case that our emotions are purely non-cognitive (4). Haidt presented participants in a research survey with an imaginary scenario in which a brother and sister, Julie and Mark, were travelling together on holiday from college. One night they decided it would be interesting and fun to make love. Julie was on the pill and Mark used a condom for extra safety. Both enjoyed the experience which they never repeated. Haidt then asked the participants whether Julie and Mark did something wrong. Most participants said they did but couldn’t give a coherent reason for this wrong. They were morally dumbfounded. Haidt’s research seems to suggest that our emotions alone determine how we should act morally without the need for cognition except in a justificatory role. His research seems to suggest that Brady’s position which I have adopted above is unsound.

I now want to defend Brady’s position. Firstly we must be clear what the position involves. Basically Brady holds that our emotions give us a provisional non-cognitive reason to act and focus our attention on how we should act. Sometimes we must act quickly and do not have time to attend to how we should act. If the fire alarm goes off we vacate the building without first checking the fire alarm. It follows in some cases, but not all, that our emotions alone can determine how we should act morally in a non-cognitive way. I now want to consider the problems raised By Haidt’s dumbfounding experiment. I would suggest whether an emotion focuses our attention depends not only on the time the available but also on how important we perceive the decision to be. Perhaps for the participants in Haidt’s survey might have considered the decision as unimportant and as a result decided in a non-cognitive way. However for Julie and Mark the decision was very important and perhaps this importance focussed their attention. It seems to me if we have time when making an important decision and we simply accept our emotional reaction and fail to more fully consider our position that we can be accused of cognitive laziness. Indeed if by deciding we constitute ourselves we might be further accused of being lazy people. Lastly the need for justification for non-cognitive decisions suggests we need reasons for our decisions. If reasons have no bearing on our moral decisions why do we seek justificatory reasons? I fully accept that our search for reasons might be biased by our already made decision but what happens if we can’t find any reasons to support our provisional decision based on our emotions? If we are unable to find reasons to justify our position doesn’t the fact we are searching for reasons mean we must re-examine our position? In the light of the above I would suggest that we make moral decisions based solely on our emotions when we have little time to consider further and when the decision is of little importance. In these situations emotions determine our moral response in a non-cognitive way. However if the decision is an important one or we have time to consider it then we should seek unbiased reasons before deciding. Not to do so would be both intellectually and morally lazy. In situations of this sort our emotions give us a reason to facilitate a better understanding of our situation.

Let us assume we have made a decision and we are content with that decision I will now suggest that a lack of emotion validates our decision. If emotions are indeed analogous to alarms then if we are content with our decision there should be no emotion connected to that decision. This would be the position of Frankfurt who argues that satisfaction with a decision entails an absence of restlessness or resistance to that decision, someone may be willing to change her decision but she has no active interest in bringing about a change (5). Lastly in the light of the above let us reconsider disgust. Disgust of bodily fluids and rotting things is automatic and helped us survive in the past. Disgust at aborted foetuses is such an emotion, such survival disgust is not a moral emotion. Disgust at some sexual practices such as homosexuality or incest might the past may have had evolutionary advantages but once again such disgust is not a moral emotion. In an age of overpopulation and contraception disgust at homosexuality or incest offers few evolutionary advantages. It might be such disgust is a moral alarm but the value of the disgust is instrumental, that of an alarm, and is not of direct moral value.

1. Jesse Prinz, 2007, THE EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF MORALS, Oxford University press, page 92.
2. Isen A and Levin P, 1972, The Effect of Feeling Good on Helping; Cookies and Kindness, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21
3. Michael Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press
4. Haidt, J. 2001: The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108.
5. Harry Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press, page 103.

Gratitude and the Emotions

Recent research has shown that wisdom and gratitude go hand in hand suggesting it makes sense to be grateful, see is it wise to be grateful? Research also shows that gratitude appears to increase someone’s happiness, see for instance how to increase positive emotions . In the light of the above it would appear we have reason to cultivate a disposition to be grateful. Unfortunately cultivating this disposition might not be easy. In previous postings I have argued it is beneficial to us to love. However if someone simply seeks to love, for the benefits love confers on him, then he isn’t really loving at all. A similar state of affairs would seem to pertain to gratitude. If someone attempts to be grateful in order to in order to boost his happiness he isn’t being grateful. For instance if he receives a present and expresses his thanks merely to boost his happiness or intelligence then he is not really being grateful he’s simply attempting to boost his happiness or intelligence. In this posting in the light of the above worry I want to examine if it is even possible in practice to increase our disposition to be grateful and in doing so examine our emotions in general.

Before I commence my examination I must make it clear what I mean by gratitude. Being grateful can have several meanings. Among these meanings it can for instance mean, acting virtuously, experiencing a certain kind of emotion or simply having good manners. Let us consider whether a well mannered person is a grateful person. Such a person is likely to be thankful for things that benefit him. He certainly expresses his gratitude but his expressions of gratitude do not mean he feels gratitude. He may have been taught his good manners from an early age and these have become purely automatic. When expressing his thanks for some benefit he may feel no positive emotion. Christine Korsgaard likens such a person to a good dog whose desires and inclinations have been trained to perfection (1). It seems clear that good manners or mere expressions of gratitude expressed in isolation are only a small part of gratitude; gratitude shorn of its essence. Intuitively to be grateful someone must feel grateful and this feeling must include some positive emotion.

However gratitude is not simply just some positive emotion. After all someone can feel a positive emotion contemplating the supper he’s cooked for himself. Gratitude is a positive emotion framed by a particular set of circumstances. Let us assume X feels grateful to Y and consider the circumstances which validate her positive emotion. Firstly Y must have done or given something to X which seems good to her. This something could be help in solving a problem, giving good advice or perhaps a present. Secondly Y must have sought to benefit X by giving her something. For instance even if Y passes on an unwanted gift as a present when this present benefits X and is intended to benefit X then this present might still possibly provide a reason for X to be grateful. Thirdly Y’s actions must have gone beyond the call of duty and self interest. Giving someone a gift simply because conventions demand it or the giving of a gift in hope of a return of the favour should not be a cause for gratitude. It follows the giving of an unwanted gift as a present when this present benefits X and is intended to benefit X merely to get rid of the gift would not be a reason for X to be grateful. Of course good manners may require the expression of gratitude but as I have suggested above this expression is only a small part of gratitude. Basically I would suggest that gratitude is connected to the recognition of the love of someone else and reaction to this love, provided we regard love as simply ‘caring about’.

Let us accept that an essential element of gratitude has to be the feeling of some positive emotion in the circumstances outlined above. Let us also accept that a grateful person is one who has a disposition to feel this emotion framed by the circumstances outlined above. The answer to the question as to whether someone can increase his disposition for gratitude seems dependent on the nature of emotion. Some philosophers such as Jesse Prinz (2) argue an emotion is simply a bodily sensation reliably caused by a set of circumstances. Fear for instance might be an unpleasant bodily sensation caused by the approach of a mugger. Gratitude might then be seen simply as a pleasant bodily sensation caused by someone benefiting us for beneficent reasons and these reasons go beyond the requirements of duty. If we accept such a definition of the nature of the emotions it is hard to see what someone could do to increase his disposition to feel any particular emotion including gratitude.

However I am attracted to a different concept of an emotion as developed by Michael Brady (2). I will very briefly outline Brady’s concept. Brady argues that emotions are somewhat analogous to fire alarms. Emotions draw our attention to the things that are important to us. This is done in two ways. Firstly emotions capture our attention and point it in a certain direction. This capture means the attention we pay to other things diminishes. For instance, if I hear a noise downstairs in the dark at night when I’m going to sleep this noise will make me anxious and capture my attention making my dreamy contemplation of a pleasant day vanish. Secondly emotions have some persistence or as Brady puts it consume our attention. For instance whilst I lie in bed listening for further noises I start thinking whether my anxiety is justified and what could explain the noise. In this case my anxiety might be increased or diminished by further thought or information. Perhaps my wife calls out she is home and my anxiety vanishes as I remember she was going out tonight. Perhaps I hear a breaking sound and this sound increases my fear and further focuses my attention. How might Brady’s ideas work when I experience a feeling of gratitude? If I feel the emotion of gratitude this emotion consumes my attention making me consider the reasons why I’m grateful. Accepting the above explains why very young children are not truly grateful, they have not yet fully acquired the abilities needed to consider the reasons for their gratitude. Accepting the above would also suggest that my initial worry that we cannot increase our disposition to be grateful is unfounded. For if Brady is correct and we give serious consideration to the reasons as to why we are grateful then we should be able to increase our disposition to be grateful. If when I feel the emotion connected to gratitude and I reflect on how someone has gone beyond the call of duty to benefit me then this reflection is likely to increase my disposition to reflect in a similar manner in a similar situation.

Unfortunately the situation appears not to be as simple as I have painted it above. Let us accept that negative emotions do cause us to focus our attention more selectively. However this might not be true of positive emotions. Many positive emotions appear to give us a broad feel good factor with a broad focus of attention; see for instance positive affect increases the breadth of attentional selection . Gratitude is a positive emotion. It might then be argued because the feeling of gratitude is a positive emotion that any reflections caused by gratitude are unlikely to narrowly focus on our reasons to be grateful and hence are unlikely to increase someone’s disposition to feel gratitude. Brady suggests that the way in which attention is connected to emotion is complex. He further suggests that there is attention which is constitutive of the emotion involved and attention which focuses on the consequences of that emotion. He then goes on to suggest that the broad focus of positive emotions only involves consequential attention (4). If this is so then the attention that is constitutive of positive emotions need not differ from that of negative ones. I have some doubts about Brady’s suggestions for it seems to me evolution may well have evolved us to pay more attention to some emotions than others. For instance if one of our ancestors saw a lion approaching her this would grab her attention much more than any shame she felt at wandering off and not helping with childcare. In general it seems to me that primitive negative emotions are much more likely to capture and consume our attention than positive or social emotions. Moreover I am not sure we can constitutive attention and consequential attention. Nonetheless even if I am correct this does not mean we pay no attention to the reasons for positive or social emotions. We pay such attention, just a little less urgently. It follows we can still cultivate a disposition to feel gratitude. Tiberius suggests that if we wish to live well we should cultivate a disposition to change our reflective perspective from a broad one to narrow one (5). Such a disposition might aid us to become more attentive to the positive emotions such as gratitude.

1.  Christine Korsgaard, 2009, Self-Constitution, Oxford University Press, page 3.
2.  Jesse Prinz, 2007, THE EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF MORALS, Oxford University Press
3.  Michael Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press.
4.  Brady, page 181.  
5. Valerie Tiberius, 2008, The Reflective Life, Oxford University Press, Chapter 4.