Shame and Character

It is sometimes assumed that shame is an unnecessary emotion. In this posting I want to challenge this assumption. I will argue that shame is central to both our character and behaviour. What do we mean by shame? Oxford dictionaries define shame as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour”. However if we adopt this definition there seems to be no difference between shame and guilt. If someone does something wrong and feels guilty about his actions he may apologise for these actions. Provided his apology is sincere he ought to be forgiven and allowed back into the moral community. It seems harder to apologise for something one is ashamed of. One of the characteristic reactions to shame is to hide our shame rather than apologise for it. The reason for this is I would suggest is that shame is more directly connected to our character rather than our actions. We find easier to apologise for what we have done than to apologise for what we are. Our character is difficult to change. This difficulty leads to shame being seen as an unnecessary emotion for it appears to follow there is no real point in apologising, for who we are, if we cannot change who we are. Shame serves no real purpose.

Let us accept that shame is connected to our character rather than our acts. Nonetheless acts still matter with regard to shame. When I feel ashamed about some act, the act captures my attention but the focus of my attention is on my character from which the act flows. For instance a drunkard may feel guilty about his actions last night. A drunkard may also feel shame about his actions last night. These actions focus his attention on the fact he is a drunkard. This focus can have two sub focuses, one on how others see the drunkard’s character and secondly how the drunkard sees himself. I have previously argued these different sub focuses give rise to Two Types of Shame. Type one shame is someone’s anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. Type two shame is someone’s anxiety about harming the things he cares about or loves. I will consider each type of shame in turn.

I will consider type two shame first. Before proceeding I will briefly consider the nature and the purpose of the emotions. Michael Brady argues emotions are analogous to alarms (1). Emotions draw our attention to things which are wrong. Emotions capture and focus our attention forcing us to reappraise our situation. For instance if I make a snide remark about someone, my guilt captures and focuses my attention on whether my remark was wrong and perhaps makes me reappraise the situation causing me to apologise. However my shame about the remark captures and focuses my attention on the inadequacies of my character from which my snide remark flowed. My shame may force me to reappraise my character. Unfortunately character is hard to change and even if I don’t hide my character from myself I may seek to hide it from others. A somewhat similar approach is taken by Bennett Helm. Helm holds that someone’s pride and shame are a kind of attention, a kind of vigilance, about himself and his identity and that this attention or vigilance is a form of self-love. Helm argues our values are constitutive of us as persons. With regards to values he argues,

“what is at stake in one’s values are oneself and one’s own wellbeing as this person, and because values involve an implicit understanding of the kind of life it is worth one’s living, the felt evaluations constitutive of this pattern …. are emotions like pride and shame.” (2)

It follows even if our shame is something we may feel we have to hide from others that it is nonetheless constitutive of us as persons. It follows shame is an extremely important emotion.

In order to illustrate the importance of type two shame let us try to imagine someone who feels no type two shame whatsoever. It might be thought that such a person is a happy go lucky person who takes life as it comes and as a result leads a naturally authentic life. Let us accept that someone without type two shame is someone without any anxiety about harming the things he cares about or loves. I would suggest such a person would be a selfish person who wantonly disregards both himself and others. It might be objected that it is possible for someone to care about himself and others without any anxiety about harming the things he loves. He simply has a natural caring nature. I am doubtful whether the above is possible. I will now return to a theme which runs through many posts in this blog. If someone ‘cares about’, loves, something then he must identify himself with what he cares about. He makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending on whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced (3). It seems to me that someone cannot make himself vulnerable, with regard to the things he ‘cares about’, without experiencing some anxiety about harming these things. It follows someone who ‘cares about’ or loves anything must be capable of experiencing some shame. It further follows that someone who cannot experience shame would be a selfish inconsiderate person. Additionally I would suggest such a person is in some ways a deficient person. Helm argues that both pride and shame are constitutive to us as persons. If Helm is correct then someone who can feel no shame is an unbalanced, deficient person whose personality is not truly formed, see my discussion of damaging self-love pride and shame.

It has been assumed that shame is an unimportant emotion because it has no practical consequences. It has no practical consequences because we are unable change our character. Let us assume that we are unable change our character. I will now argue even if this assumption is true that nonetheless shame is important. Someone who is aware of his character, due to shame, might decide not to place himself in situations in which his character is challenged. A drunkard might decide to avoid bars. Moreover someone’s awareness of his character might also guide his career choice. Some who feels shame at his cowardice is unlikely to join the army. I will now argue the assumption that we cannot change our character is false. I accept some of our dispositions have a genetic basis which we cannot alter. But part of our character is determined by what we love or ‘care about’. I accept what we love must have some persistence and cannot be arbitrarily changed by some act of will. However persistence is not the same as permanence. What we love or ‘care about’ can change slowly. It follows some parts of our character can change albeit slowly. Shame might help drive such change.

So far I have dealt with type two shame but type one shame is also important, especially in a social context. I now want to use an example to illustrate how type one shame might work in practice. Recall I defined type one shame as is someone’s anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. Jennifer Saul argues that we should use informal methods to combat sexual harassment when more formal means are inappropriate (4); I agree. One way this might be done is by employing shame. Let us assume someone makes an offensive sexual remark about someone else. Let us also assume such a remark is passed off in a joking manner and as such is the remark should not be dealt with by formal means. Should we just ignore such a remark? Saul believes we should not. She suggests one way of doing this might be to withhold our laughter because by doing so we show don’t approve of the remark. However this lack of approval is not the same as disapproving of the remark. I would suggest one way of disapproving the remark is to employ shame. Perhaps we might ask the harasser to repeat his remark; “did you really say that”. In doing so we are implying such a remark is not the sort of remark which would flow from a good character. If he says he was only joking he is being forced to disassociate his remark from his character, he is being compelled to feel some shame. However care is needed. Sexual harassment is a moral concern and it seems appropriate to me to use shame to address moral concerns. The same might not be true of social concerns. For instance should we employ shame in an attempt to encourage the obese to diet, see Two Types of Shame .

Is it possible to extend the idea of shaming beyond persons to other entities? For instance is it possible to shame governments? Could for instance Israel be shamed for its treatment of Gaza? Could corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks be shamed into paying more tax, see BBC, Tax Shaming . If anxiety about something is an essential part of shame then governments and corporations cannot be shamed. Governments and corporations can’t feel anxiety. However the people who run such organisations might feel anxiety about the nature of their organisation. Recall type one shame means someone feels anxiety about social disqualification because of his character. It seems possible that an executive of some large organisation might feel anxiety about the social disqualification of his organisation due to its nature. Such anxiety might be classed as type three shame. I would be somewhat reluctant to take such a step because if we do so the focus of the shame moves from someone’s character to the nature of an organisation.

1. Michael S. Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press.
2. Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford, page 109.
3. Frankfurt, H. (1988) The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press page 83.
4. Jennifer Saul, 2014, Stop Thinking So Much About ‘Sexual Harassment’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31(3)

Virtual Morality

Mike LaBossiere asks whether we should behave morally to virtual beings. He wonders “whether or not we can have moral obligations to such beings. Or, to put it another way, is it possible for there to be virtually virtuous acts regarding such virtual entities or not,” see talkingphilosophy . Specifically, LaBossiere considers acting virtuously towards Dogmeat in the violent video game Fallout lll. He believes we should act virtuously in such games. Intuitively such a position seems ridiculous for how can we possibly harm a string of ones and zeros. Nonetheless in what follows I will argue LaBossiere is basically correct. I will argue that whilst we have no duties to virtual beings nonetheless that we should treat them in a moral fashion.

Let us accept we cannot harm Dogmeat but that we might harm others or ourselves by playing Fallout lll. LaBossiere bases his argument for virtually virtuous acts on Kant’s argument for treating animals well. Kant argued that as animals are not rational beings we have no duties to animals. However, he argued someone “must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.” It might then be argued by analogy that someone who enjoys violent video games might be more prone to violence in real life. It should be noted that this is an argument based on Kant’s insight rather than Kantian morality because the argument is basically a consequentialist one. There appears to some evidence that people who are cruel to animals are cruel to people but unfortunately for the argument by analogy there is little conclusive evidence that people who play violent video games are more violent in real life.

I will now argue that if we don’t act morally to virtual beings we damage ourselves. We damage our character. We damage our character by splitting it. We act morally in one domain and act without any moral scruples in another. It might be objected the virtual domain simply isn’t of moral concern. Violence in a virtual world causes no destruction in the real world. Nonetheless we cannot explain violence in the virtual world without invoking our concept of real violence. One of the main differences between playing chess and Fallout lll depends on the concept of violence. I would suggest that we cannot explain acting morally to virtual beings without appealing to our moral sentiments and these sentiments are real sentiments not virtual sentiments.

I will argue that that our underlying moral sentiments are identical in the real and virtual worlds. Let us assume someone behaves in the virtual world in a way that in the real world that we would regard as wrong. It seems to me that in the virtual world he overrides or ignores his natural moral sentiments such as empathy. It might be objected that acting in the virtual world doesn’t just involve no virtual moral sentiments, it involves no moral sentiments at all. However, I would argue the ideas of rescuing, loving or punishing someone in the virtual world are nonsensical without reference to our natural moral sentiments. If my argument is accepted then someone who acts badly in the virtual world must override or ignore these sentiments. It seems to me that there are two main dangers associated with overriding or ignoring these sentiments.

Firstly, someone who overrides these sentiments in the virtual world might find herself inadvertently overriding these sentiments in the real world. Such overriding in the real world might cause harm to others. I will not pursue this danger further as the evidence that such games cause harm is as yet inconclusive as noted above. Let us assume someone is able to override these sentiments in the virtual world but does not override them in the real world. It might then be suggested that this overriding in the virtual world does no harm. I will now argue this overriding might still be harmful; it might harm the agent herself.

I will pursue an argument I have previously used with respect to pornography, see pornography and the corrosion of character . Frankfurt argues that,

“the health of the will is to be unified and in this sense wholehearted. A person is volitionally robust when he is wholehearted in his higher order attitudes and inclinations, in his preferences and decisions, and in other movements of the will.” (1).

Now if someone behaves in the virtual world in a way we would regard as wrong and behaves morally in the real world she splits the way she reacts to her natural moral sentiments in these different worlds. I would suggest this split threatens the unity of her will, the health of her will, and as a result is damaging to her identity, to her character.

Two objections might be raised to the above. Firstly, it objected that even if acting badly in video games, whilst acting well in real life, is inconsistent it does not split the player’s will. Secondly he might argue that even if the player’s will is split her reason should allow her to manage this split without any harm to her character. Let us consider the first objection. My objector might argue that someone’s will is determined by what she cares about and finds important. He might then suggest the playing of video games, like a liking for ice cream, is something someone finds enjoyable but is not something she cares about or finds important. In response to this objection I would suggest if someone continually buys ice cream that her liking for ice cream plays a part, albeit a small part, in the creation of her identity. I would also suggest if someone continually plays video games these games form part of her identity to some degree. One of my grandsons suffers from asperger’s syndrome and the playing of video games is definitely part of his identity. My objector might now point out many things matter to us besides moral constraints. He might proceed to argue that reason may allow the player to manage this split. Reason might allow someone to see it is appropriate to disregard her moral sentiments in some situations and inappropriate in others. If my objector is correct, then because we are able to manage this split, it will not corrode our character. I am not sure this split can easily be managed because we don’t always apply reason. I am however prepared to accept the possibility.

I will now present a second argument as to why acting badly to virtual creatures might corrode our character. Let us accept that for someone to be a person of any sort she must care about something. Let us also accept a person must have some values. I have argued this means she must care about what he cares about. I would suggest such meta-caring about must involve feelings of pride and shame, see Helm (2). I would then suggest how someone treats Dogmeat must involve to some small degree feelings of pride and shame. If she treats Dogmeat badly she will feel some shame. This shame is not anxiety about social disqualification. It is anxiety about harming the things she cares about, in this case her meta-cares, see two types of shame. Prima facie this sort of shame corrodes someone’s character.

It might be thought that the playing of violent video games and the possible splitting of character is of no practical importance. However, I believe violence and the splitting of character matters. Consumers of pornography might also harm their character by splitting it. Moreover, soldiers kill in war but not at home. This killing leads to a similar splitting of character to that described above and may lead to moral injuries, see aeon .

1. Harry Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press. Page 100
2. Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship, & the Self, Oxford University Press, page 128

What do we mean by true self?

In this posting I want to examine what we mean by true self, indeed even wether the concept is a meaningful one. Buddhists and David Hume would suggest that true self is an illusion. Perhaps anti-vaxxers suggest otherwise? Their decisions seem to be based on the need to identify as a certain sort of person rather than the facts In an interesting piece posted in peasoup Joshua Knobe wonders whether the notion of a 'true self' really is best cashed out in terms of certain distinctive features of an agent's psychology. He suggests that our notion of a true self is a value-laden one and that we partly determine what lies within an agent's true self by making value-judgments of our own. In this posting I will firstly wonder whether the idea of a true self is even a meaningful one. I will conclude it is. This conclusion will open up the idea of a true self that can be cashed out in certain distinctive features of an agent's psychology. I will suggest these distinctive features are the agent’s pride and shame.

Let us examine Knobe’s position. Knobe asks us to consider someone,

“who is addicted to heroin but who desperately wants to kick the habit. He has a craving for another hit, but when he reflects, he rejects this craving and wishes he could get rid of it. Now ask yourself: Which part of this person constitutes his true self -- his craving for another hit or his desire to quit?”

Knobe suggests that intuitively we would link his true self with his desire to quit. He then asks us to consider an evangelical Christian called Mark

“He believes that homosexuality is morally wrong. In fact, Mark now leads a seminar in which he coaches homosexuals about techniques they can use to resist their attraction to people of the same-sex. However, Mark himself is attracted to other men. He openly acknowledges this to other people and discusses it as part of his own personal struggle.”

Knobe suggests in this case our intuitions are not so clear. Perhaps if someone is a born again Christian his intuitions would link Mark’s true self to his belief that homosexuality is wrong. Whilst someone of a more liberal nature would link Mark’s true self to his underlying sexual desires. The above leads Knobe to suggest that our idea of someone else’s true self is dependent on our values.

My first reaction to Knobe’s suggestion is to question whether such a concept of a true self is a useful one. Perhaps we should simply say we have a self and leave David Hume would suggest  that the whole idea of a self is an illusion. I would not go as far as that because everyone is different. Moreover everyone remains different even when we disregard their physical attributes. People are different because they have differing dispositions, abilities and personalities. If we define someone’s self by a set of non physical attributes such as, his dispositions, abilities and personality then he has a self. Let us accept that someone’s self is a meaningful concept, but is the idea of someone’s will meaningful? Many experiments have demonstrated that our decisions are partly determined by the situations we find ourselves in. For instance in a classic experiment Alice Isen and Paula Levin showed being made to feel good greatly influenced someone’s subsequent actions. In this experiment Isen and Levin showed that someone who dropped papers outside a phone booth was much more likely to be helped to pick them up if the person in the booth had just found a dime in the slot (1). Such experiments do not show we don’t have a will. However in the light of them someone might suggest our will is irrelevant when it comes to decision making. In response I would simply point out that not everyone makes the same decision in the same situation and that this difference in decision making is best explained by our differing dispositions, abilities and personalities, our self. The way in which our decisions are affected by our self is our will. I accept of course that many of the decisions, we think we consciously make, are made unconsciously and that sometimes our consciousness merely endorses these decisions. It follows that in many ways our will is not always under our conscious control. Let us accept our self and our will are as defined above.

 If we accept it makes sense to talk about someone’s self and his will does it also make sense to talk of his true self? I accept the idea of someone’s self can be cashed out in certain distinctive features of his psychology but are there any additional distinctive features of his psychology that mark out his true self? My initial reaction was that there are not. However on reflection it seems to me there might be. What then could be the distinctive features of someone’s psychology that mark out his true self? In what follows I will argue those distinctive features are his pride and shame. Prior to making my argument I must make it clear what I mean by pride and shame.

I will deal with shame first. David Velleman suggests shame is anxiety about social exclusion (2). I have argued that there are two types of shame . Type one is as suggested by Velleman. Type two shame is someone’s anxiety about harming the things he loves or values. I would further suggest that, with the exception of sociopaths, all people feel type two shame. When considering shame with regard to someone’s true self I am only interested in type two shame. Let us now consider pride. Pride might be very roughly defined as someone’s pleasure or satisfaction with his belief that he possesses some property which he values. Unlike shame I believe there is only one sort of pride. However there are deficient forms of pride as shown by Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, see damaging self love pride and shame. Firstly pride may be empty when someone’s pride is focussed on himself, rather than some of the attributes he possesses or values he holds. Secondly pride may be exclusive when a proud person is incapable of feeling any shame. I would class such forms of pride as deficient pride and when considering someone’s true self I only interested in non- deficient pride.

  will now suggest our true self is defined by a subset of our actions, those actions that cause us to feel pride or shame. It is sometimes suggested that someone’s true self is defined by the beliefs and values which he reflectively endorses. I accept someone’s true self is connected to his beliefs and values. However I do not believe someone’s beliefs and values are simply defined by his endorsement following some reflection. Someone might believe he will act in a certain way but when the time for action comes finds he cannot do so in that way. What he thought he believed or valued doesn’t give him reason to act. I would suggest that someone the beliefs and values which define his true self are determined by what he feels proud or ashamed of. Indeed someone might not be fully aware of his beliefs and values and can come to a better understanding of himself not by reflection, but by those of his actions of which he is proud or ashamed of. If the above is accepted then others can also make sense of his true self by those of his actions which he is proud or ashamed of. Additionally I would suggest that actions which make someone proud are actions he can defend even if sometimes his defence can sometimes only be mounted retrospectively. Similarly someone must be able to give some reason for his shame. An objector at this point might object that a retrospective defence is simply a justification. I will not pursue his point here.

 Let us return to Knobe’s two examples using the above definition. In the case of the heroin addict our intuitive ideas of someone’s true self and his true self coincide. Let us now consider Mark. Let us assume that even though Mark openly acknowledges he is attracted to other men, to other people and discusses it as part of his own personal struggle, he feels some shame about this fact. Let us also assume that Mark feels some pride about his coaching homosexuals in techniques they can use to resist their homosexual inclinations. Knobe suggests our intuitions about Mark’s true self depend upon whether we believe homosexuality is acceptable or not. I would suggest provided, we know what Mark is proud or ashamed of in his thoughts and actions concerning homosexuality, our intuitions about Mark’s true self do not depend on our beliefs about homosexuality. In order to see this let us consider someone who believes homosexuality is acceptable. Let us assume he accepts that Mark is ashamed about his feelings for other men and that he can account for his shame by referring to his beliefs and values. Let us further assume he also accepts that Mark is proud he coaches homosexuals in order to change their sexual inclinations and that he can defend this coaching by referring to his beliefs and values. I would suggest that such a person would find it difficult not to associate Mark’s true self with coaching of homosexuals rather than his desire for other men irrespective the person’s own values. It should also be possible to set up an experiment to test the validity of my suggestion.

I have argued the idea of someone’s true self is a meaningful concept. However not all meaningful concepts are useful ones. I will now use a real life example to tentatively suggest that someone’s true self might be a useful concept. I will use the example of MB, see General Medical Concuil's consent guidelines . MB was twenty-three years old and was thirty-three weeks pregnant. She visited her local health clinic twice and on each occasion was asked for a sample of blood. On both occasions she refused consent saying she was frightened of needles. At a later visit to the health clinic it was suspected that her baby was in a breech position and this was later confirmed by ultrasound.  Breech position carries the risk of prolapse. If prolapse occurs there is a risk that the baby’s umbilical cord might get entangled in the membranes after they have ruptured causing the baby’s blood supply to be obstructed during birth. This obstruction might cause death or brain damage to the baby due to lack of oxygen. The above was explained to MB and she was admitted to hospital where she consented to a caesarean section but she again refused to consent to a venepuncture to provide blood samples. However, when she was taken to operating theatre and the anaesthetist wished to insert a veneflon, MB refused consent and was returned to the ward. Later, when her GP visited her, she again consented to the caesarean section. However she again refused consent when taken to operating theatre. The Hospital trust applied to the courts and MB was found to be of unsound mind due to her ambivalence caused by her needle phobia and hence her refusal of consent was incompetent. In cases of ambivalence such as that of MB it makes sense to ask which decision represents the patient’s true self. If a patient can coherently defend his decision based on his beliefs and values then provided he has a true self his decision should be accepted. If however his ambivalence extends to his beliefs and values and these conflict it might be questioned if he really has a true self. In the case of MB her refusal of consent to a venepuncture was not a decision she could defend, it was not a decision that reflected her true self and as such was not a competent decision.

1. Alice Isen, Paula Levin, 1972, Effect of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 21(3), Mar, 384-388.
2. David Velleman, 2009, How We Get Along, Cambridge University Press, page 95.

The Obese and Two Types of Shame

Daniel Callahan calls for an “edgier” strategy in order to reduce obesity levels in the United States (1). One element of his suggested edgier strategy would be to put social pressure on the obese. One way of putting social pressure would be to shame the obese. I have argued in a previous posting that shame could play a greater part in regulating our society and that this regulation might reduce the need for some legislation, see guilt shame and society . It might appear that I should support employing shame, however I am reluctant to do so for three reasons.

Firstly as Susan Apel points out it is important how shame is directed. It should be directed at the behaviour that leads to obesity rather than directed at the obese. It follows we must be careful when employing shame. Secondly Apel argues shaming must produce weight loss. Apel quotes her own personal experience of weight gain after having had cancer and going through the menopause. Clearly it is wrong to shame someone about her weight even if this is effective in altering her altered behaviour but produces weight loss. My third concern questions some of our underlying motives in shaming the obese. Lastly I will suggest that if we do exert social pressure on the obese that we should employ guilt rather than shame.

Let us now consider my first concern. What is shame is directed at. What do we mean by shame? Velleman defines shame as “anxiety about social disqualification” (2). It is possible that in a hunter gatherer society someone who was born crippled might feel shame due to his inability to play an active part in the tribe. Using Velleman’s definition it is also possible that someone who is obese due to some genetic condition might feel shame in our society. It might be objected no one would actually feel shame if his being obese was really due to a genetic condition. Unfortunately people may well feel such unwarranted shame. For instance when my father lost his sight as he aged he not only worried about his difficulty in seeing, but he also worried about others being able to see his difficulty. It appears to follow if we want to encourage shame in order to counteract obesity in our society we must direct our shame at the behaviour of the obese rather than the obese themselves. In practice it might prove to be difficult to direct our disapproval purely at someone’s behaviour without involving the person. For this reason it might be thought we should try to encourage guilt rather than shame. What is the difference between guilt and shame? Shame as defined above is unease with about social disqualification and disqualification requires an audience. Guilt is unease with something one has or has not done and can be private. Unfortunately, as with shame it is possible to feel unwarranted guilt. For as Velleman points out someone who has done nothing wrong may feel survivor guilt for having survived some catastrophe that has killed others (3).

It might appear that there are reasons not to encourage either guilt or shame when attempting to combat obesity. However, I would suggest the usual definition of shame fails to fully capture our intuitive ideas about shame. Perhaps there are really two types of shame. Firstly we might feel a natural shame given to us by evolution. This type might have helped our hunter gatherer ancestors to form cohesive groups. Is any other type of shame possible? Could Robinson Crusoe feel shame? In other words is private shame possible? Perhaps any shame felt by Crusoe would have been based on the culture he grew up in nonetheless I would suggest his shame was private shame. The second type of shame might help to form us to be persons, to be authentic. Velleman suggests guilt might be connected to someone’s conscience (4). Shame might also be defined as someone’s anxiety about harming the things he cares about or loves and is linked to character. Perhaps the second of this second type of shame should be encouraged in order to combat obesity and other social ills. This second type of shame is connected to what someone loves. Loving as usual in my postings simply means to ‘care about’. I would now suggest that this second type of shame acts as a guardian of what someone loves. Let us assume someone loves something. If what he loves is harmed and he could have done something to prevent this harm and he feels no shame then I would question whether his love was genuine love. It might be objected that the second kind of shame defined above isn’t really shame and should be classed as guilt. In response to my objector I would point out guilt is linked to a specific event. Type two shame as I have defined it is linked to what we love and what someone loves defines what kind of person he is. Type two shame is connected to someone’s character and as a result differs from guilt. Type two shame seems of necessity to be directed at a person and cannot simply be directed at someone’s behaviour. If we employ the second type of shame in order to combat obesity we are shaming obese persons rather than directing shame at their behaviour.

Let us now address my second concern is shaming the obese effective in reducing obesity. Clearly we ought not to shame the obese if this is ineffective. If I do something which on later reflection I consider as wrong I can change my behaviour and apologise. It therefore makes sense to point out to someone that his action is wrong or misguided. If we shame someone in the second sense of shaming we are pointing out to someone that there is something wrong with their character. But people can’t just change their character at will, if they could they wouldn’t really have any character at all. Perhaps people can change their character over time but this is a slow process. It follows if we shame the obese using this second type of shame that they are more likely to withdraw from us rather than engage with us and lose weight. Shaming the obese is unlikely to help the obese in the short term.
Let us now consider my last concern. It might be argued that sometimes when we engage in shaming our motivation is not solely to change the behaviour of the shamed. It might be argued that sometimes when we shame others we do so in order to massage our own egos, even if we aren’t aware of our motivation. Perhaps when we shame the obese we are unconsciously massaging our egos. If our motivation in shaming the obese is at least partly to massage our egos then shaming is wrong because we are using the misfortune of others to serve our own ends.

I have argued that it would be wrong to employ shame in order to reduce obesity. However obesity is a major problem and we should address it through education. Might we also apply social pressure as suggested by Callahan by fostering guilt? I argued above that one reason why we should reject shaming the obese is that the shame is directed at their character rather than their behaviour. Trying to make someone feel guilty is directed at specific actions. Guilt might be defined as anxiety about social approbation concerning a specific action. Nussbaum suggests that if we disapprove of some action we should separate the doer from the deed. (5) Fostering a sense of guilt achieves this. For instance guilt might be directed at someone’s lie whilst shame would be directed at someone being a liar. Perhaps we should direct our disapproval at the amount of food someone eats or his lack of exercise rather than at his being obese. However in doing so we must be cautious for it isn’t always easy to separate the deed from the doer.

1. Callahan Daniel, 2013, Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic. Hastings Center Report, 43, pages 34–40.
2. David Velleman, 2009, How We Get Along, Cambridge University Press, page 95.
3. Velleman, page 99.
4. Velleman, page 101.
5. Martha Nussbaum, 2018. The Monarchy of Fear, Oxford University Press, page 217

Guilt, Shame and Society

According to Max Wind-Cowie shame should be liberated rather than legislated for. By this I take Wind-Cowie to mean that shame should play a greater part in regulating our society and this regulation should replace the need for some legislation. In my posting "me and my values"  I suggested the balance between pride and shame has shifted in most people’s psyche and that this shift damages them as persons. I believe shame is important to us as persons but I also believe shame is important to society. It follows that I broadly agree with Wind-Cowie’s aim. However in what follows I will argue that whilst this aim is desirable it is by no means easy to achieve.

Wind-Cowie suggests that for “a myriad of pressing, modern problems - from tax avoidance to obesity - society needs to judge more and legislate less”. Exactly how is a more judgemental attitude linked to shame? It seems Wind-Cowie’s argument runs roughly as follows. If society was more judgemental then more people would feel shame when contemplating actions society finds unacceptable. This shame would stop them from undertaking these actions. If the above argument is sound it follows in the context of a more judgemental society there would be less need for legislation. Wind-Cowie then uses, the example of Jimmy Carr’s use of an apparently legal tax avoidance scheme and his subsequent change of heart after others judged this scheme to be morally wrong, to support his argument, see the Guardian . I have two important reservations about society becoming more judgemental even though I accept that shame should be liberated.

My first reservation is that, even if it is accepted our society needs to be more judgemental, these judgements might be carried too far. For instance in my previous posting I suggested that in the past some gay people were ashamed of their homosexuality and this unjustified shame led them to lead inauthentic lives. They were ashamed because society judged their homosexuality to be wrong. My first worry is certainly not an insubstantial one because in the past some people such as Alan Turing may have committed suicide partly in response to such judgements. Perhaps society should only be judgemental about matters that harm society rather than harm individuals. I would suggest one of the things that harms society most is unfairness. Tax avoidance even if legal is unfair. Unfortunately judgements about what harms society and what harms individuals are not always as easy to make as in the case of tax avoidance. For instance obesity harms individuals. But it might be argued the obese place an unfair burden on the non-obese if the latter are required to support them through taxes. It follows obesity also harms society. Should then society become more judgemental about obesity?

Let us accept making society more judgemental carries dangers as well as benefits. My second reservation is whether Wind-Cowie’s argument outlined above is a sound one. For surely it would be wrong to encourage a more judgemental society, if its judgements were not effective in solving society’s problems, due to the problems outlined above. Clearly society’s judgement was effective in the case of Jimmy Carr. But is society’s judgement always just as effective? For instance, if the judgement of the majority of society condemns some action but a sizeable subsection of that society condones the same action then the majority’s condemnation seems likely to be ineffective. Consider the traders working for Barclays Bank who tried to manipulate the Libor rate in order to benefit the bank. The majority of people would have condemned such an action. However these traders were not rogue traders and it seems possible that their colleagues and traders in other banks might well have condoned their actions. It further seems possible that despite society’s condemnation these traders might have felt no shame. They might have felt no shame because their actions were just the actions of any average bank trader.

Nevertheless even if these traders did not feel ashamed of their actions it seems probable that they did feel some negative emotions with regard to these actions for after all they kept them secret. In everyday usage the terms guilt and shame are often treated as interchangeable. At this point I want to try and differentiate between these terms. I must make it clear I am only interested in guilt as an emotion. David Velleman defines guilt as anxiety about being in an indefensible position that might warrant one’s being cut off from social interaction (1). Let us accept this definition. The traders who attempted to manipulate the Libor rate may well have felt no shame but I would suggest that they might well have worried about damaging their social interactions. Of course they would not have worried about damaging their social interactions with fellow traders nor would they have worried about being cut off totally from social interaction. Nevertheless they might have worried that their actions, if fully public, would have damaged their social interactions with the majority of the population. I would suggest such a worry is a form of guilt. Velleman also suggests guilt might be connected to the loss of love of one’s conscience (2). Guilt may well be tied to one’s conscience but I don’t believe it is tied to loss of love of one’s conscience. Shame however may be tied to loss of love of one’s conscience. Bennett Helm links pride and shame to our identity as a person (3). Let us accept that someone must love himself at least to some degree to be considered a person at all. Someone who feels absolutely no love for himself has no reason to act and so becomes a wanton. It might then be argued that for someone, who feels shame and as a result comes to love himself less, his shame acts a guardian of his identity. I would suggest shame can be partly defined as someone’s worry about the loss, at least in part, of his identity. I would further suggest the traders who attempted to manipulate the Libor were not worried about their identity and that any negative emotions they felt as a result should be characterised as guilt rather than shame.

I have attempted to differentiate between guilt and shame by claiming that guilt is a worry about social exclusion whilst shame is a worry about someone’s identity. If my claim is accepted then the following would seem to hold; because guilt is a worry about social exclusion whether we feel guilt depends on society’s judgements whilst because shame is worry about our identity shame is not. It follows if society becomes more judgemental it will liberate guilt rather then shame. Personally I see no reason why guilt should not be liberated in some contexts. For instance liberating guilt about tax avoidance would be acceptable whilst fostering guilt about someone’s homosexuality or obesity would be wrong. How then are we to differentiate between contexts in which liberating guilt is desirable and those in which it is not? It might be suggested that our politically correct society places restraints on our natural inclination to criticise and all that is needed is to remove these restraints. Unfortunately our natural inclination to criticise in a social setting usually applies to all those who don’t observe society’s norms. These norms may well include sexual orientation.  Nonetheless I still believe it would benefit society to remove some of the restraints society places on people in order to make society more judgemental and by so doing liberate guilt. An unfair society is an unjust society. It should always be perfectly acceptable in society to criticise unfairness.

My argument suggests that a more judgemental society would rely on guilt rather than shame. Nonetheless I still believe shame is important to society and that society should foster shame. What basis do I have for believing society should foster shame? I would argue the quality of any society depends in part on the qualities of the individuals who make up that society. A society composed mostly of rogues is likely to be a very limited poor quality society. I have previously argued shame makes people better people it follows fostering shame makes for better society. I would further suggest a society that is regulated for the most part by individual morality is a better one than one mostly governed by legislation. How then may society foster shame if society becoming more judgemental cannot be do this? To answer this question we must first ask why people feel shame. Let it be accepted the ability to feel shame makes someone a better person. Why is this so? I would suggest that shame like pride is essential in helping someone maintain his identity. I have frequently argued in this blog that someone’s identity is linked to Frankfurt’s ideas on loving or ‘caring about’. Frankfurt believes when someone cares about something he,

“identifies himself with what he cares about in the sense that he makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced.” (4)

In what follows I will follow Frankfurt is assuming that ‘caring about’ as defined above is equivalent to loving. Loving so defined differs from erotic love and the beloved may be for instance a person, a place or even an ideal. I would suggest that one of the ways someone who causes losses or damages to what he loves, becomes vulnerable, is because he feels shame. I would further suggest anyone who doesn’t love anything cannot feel shame. It follows if we want to foster shame we must foster a society in which people come to love things.

Someone might object it can’t be that simple and fostering a society in which people come to love things need not be any better than a society in which people don’t. She might suggest someone could come to love, identify himself with, getting rich and feel shame if he failed to do so. I have two responses to this objection. Firstly I doubt if someone can actually feel shame at his failure to become rich. I don’t deny someone may feel shame at his failure to support his family but this is different from becoming rich. It is easy to see how someone might identify himself with supporting his family but I would question whether someone can identify himself with becoming rich. This is an empirical question and it seems to me an experimental philosopher could do some useful work on shame. My second response is that if we foster a society in which people love things that help them to flourish. Becoming rich is not one of these things.

How do we foster people coming to love certain things that help them flourish? The certain things in this context being ideals or virtues. We teach them. My objector might respond you can’t teach people to love something. She might point out that love has an affective element and cannot be taught like arithmetic or even philosophy. In reply I would argue even if we can’t teach someone in a conventional sense to come to love something we can nevertheless help or foster him to learn to love something. For instance we may point out the things we love. We may encourage someone to persist in some activity in the hope he later learns to love it. We must make it clear what we love in the hope someone may emulate us. By so doing we are not becoming judgemental about someone else’s actions as Wind-Cowie would have us do but we are being judgemental about what we love and demonstrating this judgement. Lastly we may simply introduce someone to what we love in the hope he will come to love much the same sort of thing.

I believe fostering shame would benefit society as Wind-Cowie hopes. Unfortunately as I have argued fostering shame cannot be achieved by society becoming more judgemental even if by so doing we liberate guilt. Fostering shame is difficult. Indeed fostering a genuine sense of shame is best achieved in children by helping them become virtuous. It follows fostering a sense of shame is a long term process. Shame is related to our identities and should be fostered by fostering our identities by fostering our loving in ways I have suggested above. Because fostering shame is a long term process and society’s problems are pressing it might be argued that these problems are better addressed by liberating guilt or government legislation. In reply I would suggest many of society’s problems are related to personal problems and as such are best solved by helping people come to love or value certain things. For instance it seems to me that the problem of obesity is mostly a personal problem better dealt with by shame about what people ‘care about’ rather than making fat people feel guilty or forcing legislation onto reluctant food manufacturers as some sort of bandage. I would further suggest many of the problems facing society are not the kind that are amenable to quick fixes and can only be dealt with in the long term.

1. David Velleman 2009, How We Get Along, Cambridge University Press, page 99.
2. Velleman, page 101
3.  Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford, page 109
4. Frankfurt, H. (1988) The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press page 83.

Damaging Self-Love, Pride and Shame

In the New Scientist of 28/04/12 Laura Spinney examines whether too high self esteem damages us. Self-love is related to though not identical to self esteem. In this posting I will argue some forms of self-love are damaging but not by being excessive like too much self esteem. Rather I will argue that damaging forms are in some ways incomplete forms of self-love. Before setting out I must make it clear I believe we must of necessity love ourselves to some degree. For instance Frankfurt believes caring about and loving are equivalent. (1) He suggests caring about oneself is necessary to be a person,

“perhaps caring about oneself is essential to being a person. Can something to whom its own condition and activities do not matter in the slightest properly be regarded as a person at all. Perhaps nothing that is entirely indifferent to itself is really a person, regardless of how intelligent or emotional or in other respects similar to persons it may be. There could not be a person of no importance to himself.” (2)

If we accept Frankfurt’s position, which I do, it follows a person must of necessity love himself. However if a person loves himself so much that he ignores or even harms those close to him his self-love is damaging.

Unfortunately the idea of love as based simply on ‘caring about’ isn’t a very useful concept in examining damaging forms of self-love. If we accept Frankfurt’s account of love then a damaging form of self-love is perhaps one in which someone simply ‘cares about’ himself too much. But Frankfurt’s account offers us no idea of how much self-love is too much. In order to overcome this problem I will turn to Bennett Helm’s account of love (3). I will argue that damaging forms of self-love are not defined by the degree of love but rather by a lack of something. I will argue that damaging self-love is deficient.

Helm holds like Frankfurt that if someone is to be considered of as a person at all he must of necessity love himself. However unlike Frankfurt he does not believe that everything someone cares about is a form of love and defines him as a person. Helm links our identity to the things we value, our values. It is important to note what we value need not be identical with the values we explicitly identify with. Cocaine may be of value to me but when I reflect I might wish it wasn’t. Helm believes valuing is not just caring about something a lot, it is caring about something which is connected to your identity. According to Helm,

“for something to have value for one is for it to be the focus of a projectible pattern of felt evaluations. Because what is at stake in one’s values are oneself and one’s own wellbeing as this person, and because values involve an implicit understanding of the kind of life it is worth one’s living, the felt evaluations constitutive of this pattern …. are emotions like pride and shame.” (4).

A felt evaluation is an emotion which is focussed on something linked in some rational way to other emotions with the same focus. For instance, if I feel anxiety focussed on driving in dense traffic then it is rational that I should feel relief when driving in traffic if the traffic is less dense than I had anticipated. Helm argues when my focus is on me, on my values, the felt evaluations are pride and shame together with some second degree emotions, emotions about emotions. Helm holds someone’s pride and shame are a kind of attention, a kind of vigilance, about himself and his identity and that this attention or vigilance is a form of self-love. I don’t want to go into Helm’s position in greater detail but I do want to accept that someone who cannot feel pride and shame cannot truly love himself.

Accepting Helm’s ideas about the importance of pride and shame means we are now in a position to be able to see why some forms self-love might be damaging. It might be suggested that if someone has too much self-love he has excessive pride. However if someone must of necessity love himself then from the above he must at least have some pride. Nonetheless it is clear pride can damage us. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is a deficient character who is damaged by what most people describe as his excessive pride. I will now argue what is usually described as excessive pride might be better described as either empty or exclusive pride. I will start my argument with empty pride. If someone is proud about something then intuitively it should be something which he believes to be good, which he desires and something or some quality he believes he possesses. If his pride is simply focussed on himself, rather than some of the attributes he possesses or values he holds, then it seems to me his pride is of a deficient form. Helm argues someone’s pride in his values helps to form his identity; it follows that if someone’s pride bypasses his values and simply focuses on himself it doesn’t really focus on anything at all and as a result is an empty and hence deficient form of pride.

I now want to turn to what I mean by exclusive pride. Coriolanus had real achievements to be proud of and so his pride was not simply empty pride. Nonetheless Coriolanus was damaged by his pride. An excellent discussion of Coriolanus and his pride is given by Gabriele Taylor (4). Taylor argues Coriolanus’ pride was an arrogant pride and that it was this arrogance that damaged him. I do not disagree with Taylor that Coriolanus’ arrogance damaged him but would suggest that his arrogance was due to the exclusivity of his pride. Helm argues if someone genuinely loves himself that he must feel both pride and shame. I would define exclusive pride as the pride someone feels who doesn’t or is incapable of feeling any shame. If we accept that someone must of necessity love himself and that Helm is correct, when he argues that to truly love oneself someone must be capable of feeling both pride and shame, then someone who feels exclusive pride is damaged as a person. Taylor suggests Coriolanus is damaged as a person because he lives in a world apart seeing himself as sole arbitrator of right and wrong. Coriolanus has limited perspective meaning he does not have the ability to change his focus. This inability to broaden his perspective is caused by his exclusive pride which excludes shame. I would suggest that the same argument can be applied to exclusive shame but I will not repeat the argument here.

Let us accept that the ability to feel both pride and shame is necessary for us if we are to love ourselves in a way that doesn’t damage us as individuals. In practice of course most people do feel both pride and shame. Nonetheless it appears to me that the balance between them has shifted and shame plays a less important part in most people’s psyche. Perhaps this shift was needed in the past. For instance in the past some Gay people were ashamed of their homosexuality and this unjustified shame led them to lead inauthentic lives. However it also seems to me this shift has gone too far so that it damages both individuals and society. For instance the fact that this shift has occurred at the same time as drunken behaviour in major UK cities has increased might well be significant.

1.      Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love, Cambridge University Press. Page 129.

2.       Necessity, Volition, and Love, page 90

3.      Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford.

4.      Helm, page 109.

5.      Gabriele Taylor, 2006, Deadly Vices, Oxford, chapter 5.

6.      Taylor, page 79.