Thought Experiment 80: Hearts and Heads

2/13/2017

Regular readers of this blog won't have much difficulty sorting out this week's thought experiment. Heck, if you value philosophy at all, you probably won't either. See what you think of this.

---------------------------------------------------
Schuyler and Tryne both sheltered Jews from the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands. They did so, however, for quite different reasons.
   Tryne was a woman whose acts of kindness were purely spontaneous. Suffering and need spoke to her heart and she responded without thinking. Friends admired her generosity of spirit, but sometimes reminded her that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. "You may feel moved to give money to a beggar," they would say, "but what if he then spends it all on drugs?" Tryne was unmoved by such worries. In the face of human need, all you can do is offer a hand, surely?
   Schuyler, in contrast, was known as a cold woman. The truth was that she didn't really like many people, even though she didn't hate them either. When she helped others, she did so because she had thought about their plight and her duties, and concluded that helping was the right thing to do. She felt no warm glow from her good deeds, only a sense that she had chosen correctly.
   Who of Schuyler and Tryne lived the more moral life?

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 238.
---------------------------------------------------

Pretty straightforward. As you can see, there's no other source material for this one, which would imply it's an invention of Baggini himself. So, let's hear how he ends the discussion of this one to see what exactly he would like us to consider:

The trite solution to the dilemma is simply to say that goodness requires a marriage of head and heart. ... This is almost certainly true, but it avoids the real dilemma: is it how we feel or how we think that is more important in determining whether we are morally good human beings?

So what's your non-trite solution to this dilemma? I'll be back on Friday with a heart-felt response of my own.

11 Comments

Chuck Schneider link

2/15/2017 06:16:09 am

Lyndon Johnson was quoted for saying ,
For men (people) of good will, it is easy to do the right thing, what's difficult is figuring our what is the right thing to do."

Yes, it is nice when doing the right thing blends easily with the feel good feelings we get from doing some compassionate project. But often when one helps someone who is really down and out, at a low point in their life, and those we help are just too down to really even say thanks.nThat's not fun, but it is right.
Pay your taxes, meet your responsibilities as a parent, neighbor, citizen, etc. are not very heartwarming tasks we do and feel warm hearted about.
So NO, doing good,because it makes you feel good,about what a good person you are is not a very good reason to be good. (Lots of good words there).
It is commonly said that without the emotions we cannot decide to do anything. So perhaps intellect itself does not make,us act, and we need our emotions to act. If I take drugs and share them with others and that makes both of us feel good, does that make it good? We might overdose the next time, get thrown in jail, etc. But it made us feel like we are doing good.
No, one needs reason and logic to make an action really moral. A moral person does what is right whether or not it makes herself feel good,,or whether it is the easy thing to do.

The question is quite appropriate today with all of the progressives protesting emotionally all,of,the " things that are wrong", without even thinking of the consequences of their actions, or their proposed solutions. (Dakota pipeline is good example.)

@EdGibney link

2/15/2017 04:06:11 pm

That's a very applicable quote from Lyndon Johnson. You are right on target with your comments and I agreed with them fully up until the Dakota pipeline project. I'm not quite sure what you meant there though. To me, putting the Dakota pipeline in would be a long-term risk to the people and environment there. I get that we aren't off fossil fuels yet and these may be better sources than others we are currently using, but I think we are long past the point where we need to "leave it in the ground" and come to terms with the rising costs of energy.

John A. Johnson link

2/15/2017 10:46:30 pm

Mark Twain once said, "I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."

His point was that telling the truth came naturally to George Washington. It was practically a reflex that took no thought or will-power. The implication is that we should not congratulate George Washington for his moral behavior because he could not help but tell the truth. Twain, on the other hand, was perfectly capable of lying, yet he used his intelligence and will to refrain from lying, and is therefore a better man than robotic George.

Kant and his followers such as Lawrence Kohlberg would fully agree with Mark Twain. For the deontologist, truly moral behavior is the result of deliberate reasoning. Any automatic, reflexive, or habitual act is simply amoral.

So, from that point of view, Tryne, a woman who feels compelled to help unfortunate people in a totally spontaneous, unreflective fashion, is not really behaving morally even though her behavior is kind and compassionate. Kant would claim that Schuyler is the more moral woman because she helps the unfortunate strictly out of a sense of duty to do what is right.

Kant is, however, in my own humble opinion, dead wrong about the way morality actually functions in human beings. Morality is not a set of abstract, timeless truths to be discovered by intelligence. There are no E=mc^2 or PV=nRT principles out there, waiting for us to figure out scientifically. Rather, morality is a part of evolved human nature. And morality develops in a predictable way across three phases of the lifespan. I wrote about this in my very first publication, A Socioanalytic Theory of Moral Development. The first phase is an absorption of adult rules by children, rules that help insure their survival. Piaget said that this stage of moral realism confuses human-made rules with natural laws and is therefore immature. I would counter by saying that uncritical absorption of rules that keeps a child safe is adaptive at that stage of life. The next phase of development concerns reciprocity, as children learn to get along with other children. Reciprocity involves empathy and other moral emotions that have always been there, but take the forefront as the peer group becomes increasingly more important than one's parents. Finally, we get to the phase of autonomous reasoning in adolescence (if we are lucky), where we get to think about moral issues like philosophers. We sift through what our parents and other authorities have told us are absolute truths about morality, we consider how our friends want us to interact with them, and then through reasoning decide what is the right thing to do, as far as we can tell.

In the foregoing view, we have three sources of morality, each serving as a backup system in case the others fail. Moral behavior has been absolutely essential to the flourishing of groups, and a flourishing group has been essential to the survival of each individual in the group. It may be sufficient to learn some adaptive rules from your parents and follow them reflexively, in case you lack empathy or awareness. Of course such a person will be a rigid adherent to the letter of the law and be insensitive to cases where following rules hurts people. Someone with all the right moral sentiments will probably behave very well toward others, although they can be indiscriminate (giving money to a beggar who spends it on drugs). Finally, a person might figure out that it is prudent to behave morally, even if they lack respect for absolute rules or feelings of empathy. Ideally, of course, it is best if individuals develop successfully through all three phases, getting a solid grounding in the rules of one's culture, having feelings that motivate moral behavior, and still having some detachment to mull issues over intellectually. How often does that happen, I wonder?

A question that has always fascinated me is whether people who think they have achieved success in the third phase of autonomous reasoning are ever as free as they think they are of the influence of their parents and their own moral sentiments. Did Kant ever come up with a duty that was not already being instilled in little German kids by their parents? And do Kantians who do their duty never feel a warm glow (such as pride) in the execution of their duties? I would hazard to say that someone who believes that his or her reasoning is completely autonomous, uninfluenced by their upbringing or own emotions, is lacking in self-insight.

@EdGibney link

2/16/2017 12:54:25 pm

Keep this up and I won't have to write my Friday posts pretty soon! : ) Thanks John. I'm racing to get some things done before a four-day weekend trip tomorrow, so I can't engage this as much as I'd like to, but a few thoughts spring up.

---> "Morality is not a set of abstract, timeless truths to be discovered by intelligence. There are no E=mc^2 or PV=nRT principles out there, waiting for us to figure out scientifically."

To this, I disagree. At least in part. Morals are rules on how to live, so their primary goal must be "to keep life alive." Otherwise, the morality is wrong. That doesn't mean the individual rules can be permanently written in stone though—the universe is changing so we must adapt to that—and I think that was your point. I wrote much about this in my academically published paper.

http://www.evphil.com/academic-paper.html

--> "Rather, morality is a part of evolved human nature. And morality develops in a predictable way across three phases of the lifespan. I wrote about this in my very first publication, A Socioanalytic Theory of Moral Development."

Ooh, I'll have to look at that more later. I mentioned Kohlberg's three levels of moral development too when I wrote about personality during my series of posts on how to "know thyself."

http://www.evphil.com/blog/the-2nd-level-of-personality-and-the-meaning-of-your-life

Those Kohlberg levels are the typical ways morality develops in *individuals*, but as one of the 10-15% of 30 year olds who has reached development level three (I don't have those numbers cited at the moment, but I'm sure we can agree not everyone reaches stage three), I'm more interested in looking at how and why the moral rules of *societies* evolve and change. Speaking of that...

--> "I would hazard to say that someone who believes that his or her reasoning is completely autonomous, uninfluenced by their upbringing or own emotions, is lacking in self-insight."

I *completely* agree because of your qualification of autonomous using the world *completely*. : ) I can't think of a single moral system that doesn't overwhelmingly get the details correct about how to live. (Share, be nice, eat well, work lots, rest lots, play lots, etc.) The moral systems wouldn't survive if they didn't have this right. Therefore, one may move on from some of the details at the edges of the moral systems of their upbringing, but still they must live by most of the rules. I'd like to think I've shed all the godly reasons for morality I was given in my youth, and that has changed some of my moral proscriptions (especially around sex, love, abortion, and political economics), but I didn't have to throw most of what I learned away.

John A. Johnson

2/16/2017 02:21:47 pm

Ha-ha, I did feel like I was sort of taking over with my long post. Yet I knew that you would have your own unique things to say, which I look forward to reading on Friday. In the mean time I will enjoy the papers to which you refer.

As I was posting I correctly predicted which parts of what I said you would agree with and which you would have a different take on. I need to work on better explaining why I reject the existence of moral truths that are equivalent to scientific truths, other than saying, "Hey, I am an emotivist." So I will try again at some point,.

The socioanalytic theory of moral development is actually an alternative to Kohlberg's theory. My graduate school advisor engaged in a one-sided debate with Kohlberg (who never responded) about what was wrong with his model and what a better alternative is. The paper I mentioned can be accessed from my morality website at http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/virtues/.

John A. Johnson

2/16/2017 03:44:55 pm

I've now had a chance to read both papers. (Oh, the luxury of being retired.) The second level of personality and the meaning of life nicely integrates a number of my favorite topics--personality, Erikson's stages, morality, and Haidt's view of happiness--in a satisfying way. Better yet, though, is the academic paper. It is a real tour de force, and I have no problem at all with the argument that ought can be derived from is--as long as a "want premise" is included. In fact, this position seems nearly identical to my own, which I dubbed Real Utilitarianism, http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/virtues/morality.html . In that essay I argue that nothing is intrinsically good; rather, goodness can only be meaningfully judged in terms of being "good for" bringing about certain results. In "ought language" this means there is nothing we simply ought to do; rather, we ought to do certain things in order to bring about certain results. Obviously for living things the ultimate result that life wants is to perpetuate itself through survival and reproduction. But there are also hundreds of intermediate wants that can help achieve that goal, be neutral toward that ultimate goal, or actually interfere with the achievement of that goal. We can also look at what portions of the inanimate world are good for and what they "want" although the wants of chemical molecules are strictly metaphorical. So, yes, this is the kind of purely naturalistic morality that I can believe in.

There are of course many details that will require constant work, never being solved once and for all because the world is a dynamic place and because our knowledge of cause and effect is probabilistic. I think that one particularly contentious detail will be what it means to "cooperate" with other species. It seems to me that successful predator-prey species "cooperate" with each other in the sense that the predator does not eat the prey into extinction (as this is self-defeating). But it certainly allows killing, as both the predator and prey species remain in balance.

@EdGibney link

2/16/2017 08:15:00 pm

Thanks John! I'm packing up to head off in the early morning, but I appreciate the comments and will definitely scour through your personal psu webpage for some reading when I return. I may not be retired, but I am my own boss. : )

@EdGibney link

2/27/2017 02:49:40 pm

Okay, I've had a chance to carefully read through "Real Utilitarianism: Moral Goodness as Causal Efficacy" and then "A Socioanalytic Theory of Moral Development" (by Hogan, Johson, Emler). It's clear to me that you've already gone far down (and next to, and around, and beyond, etc.) the path I took to get to my bridge for the is-ought divide. It's therefore thrilling to hear someone who's considered all of this so thoroughly say they can agree with this. Thank you!

You once said to me something like you weren't sure if psychology or philosophy could be considered the primary field of study, and I'm beginning to see how important it is to know *both* to really have a chance to "know thyself." Often, when I'm faced with a person I cannot convince of an argument, I wonder what experiences it would take to get one of us to the other's point of view. How few steps could it take? We can't all experience everything that everyone else has experienced, but there do seem to be a few essays, relationships, or travels that seem especially transformative. When I was at the FBI, I worked on a Leadership Development Program that measured top executive's abilities (through self-report) over a broad range of leadership abilities (communication, strategic thinking, liaison, etc.). We also asked those leaders to rate how those abilities grew through time over their careers at the end of each position they had held. Finally, I then interviewed the leaders about their most transformative times in an attempt to find which experiences might be most important for the FBI to put future leaders through as well. This has all got me thinking about what kind of personal experiences could be recommended for humans to achieve maximum potential to flourish. (I like your socialanalytical steps towards autonomy, for example.) This might sound like an impossible list to finish, but these are things I wonder about and wish had been available for me by now...

John A. Johnson

2/27/2017 10:25:23 pm

"What kind of personal experiences could be recommended for humans to achieve maximum potential to flourish?" I am hard-pressed to think of a more important question. Maslow and the humanistic psychologists addressed the question. Positive psychology has done an even better job in empirically testing possible responses to the question. But I think there is still so much more work that could be done.

There are probably so many experiences that can increase autonomy and flourishing that you could fill a book with them. And some experiences might work better for some people than others and some might work better for a person at some points in his/her life than others or in some circumstances better than others. So I don't know if we'll ever be able to reduce the key to autonomy to one principle.

Yet I do have a favorite principle that I think encourages autonomy, and that is anything that deals a blow to egocentrism (the sense that the self is the center of the universe). I've read that, historically, there have been three major de-centering events for human beings: (1) the realization that nothing in the heavens save the moon revolves around the earth; (2) the realization that humans evolved from other life and were therefore not specially created; and (3) the realization that we have vastly overestimated the amount of conscious control we have over our lives. Grasping these points is a genuinely humbling experience. It puts things in perspective and reduces the feeling of self-importance.

But how do we get people to grasp these points? Educational classes in astronomy, evolutionary biology, and neuropsychology might provide a gateway, but only if there is a significant hands-on component to make it a real alternative to superstitions that compete with science. If we could only send everyone into space! If we could only send everyone a paleontological dig! We can get some psychology students to participate in activities that demonstrate to them how their brains work, but what percentage of the world's population takes such a psychology course?

I really think that getting people to try new things, to travel to foreign lands, is key. Without that, provincialism seems almost inevitable. I suppose it is possible for a person to be transformed simply by reading a book or hearing a lecture or engaging in Socratic dialog, but I think the chances of transformation are greater if the book or lecture or dialog motivates the person to do something outside of his or her conventional world view.

@EdGibney link

3/1/2017 10:11:28 am

I shifted the conversation to this on purpose because I knew you would have good ideas on flourishing. Thanks for sharing! I like the idea of focusing on your favourite principle - knocking down egocentrism. In addition to your ideas on how to do this, I note that religions have done so throughout history by promising rewards from gods and their communities of worshipers. These visions of heaven on earth and after death draw people to them by creating desire, emotion, *wants*, which then guide their moral oughts. Now that you've read my paper on the is-want-ought connection, you can see why I also focusing on writing fiction that inflames the wants.

Saying this now, however, makes me realise that having been personally inspired by positive psychology I am focusing exclusively on the heavenly stories of utopia. Plenty of others have written or are writing hellish stories of dystopias, and I recently wrote a short story along those lines for a philosophical fiction contest, but that's important too. Although the modern world makes me question sometimes whether writing is too weak an art form. To be considered...

John A. Johnson

3/1/2017 07:57:56 pm

A look at my vita will show that I have been collaborating with some English professors since about 2005 to better understand the evolutionary psychology of literature (or narrative, more broadly). I think one should not underestimate the power of narrative, whether it is the stories we tell ourselves or the stories we tell each other. I think that stories possess the potential for incredible power.

The power of narrative is revealed particularly well in the writings of don Miguel Ruiz (e.g., The Four Agreements). Although these books are not written from a strictly scientific viewpoint, I find them to be compatible with good science and full of psychological truth. In the following interview with Ruiz, he clearly expresses his ideas about stories: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Ellen-Degeneress-O-Magazine-Interview-with-Author-don-Miguel-Ruiz/2 . (Don't be put off by the fact that this is on Oprah's website!)

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

Thought Experiment 80: Hearts and Heads

Leave a Reply.

Subscribe to Help Shape This Evolution

Blog Philosophy

Archives