Ok, I gotta go off-topic for a few moments to point out some silliness in David Brooks’ New York Times column on ethical reasoning. I mean, this part is perfectly fine:
Moral judgments are…rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.
In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it.
I don’t think many people dispute this, really. We all make snap judgments about what’s fair and what’s moral; and philosophers have been aware of this for centuries. But weirdly, Brooks seems to think that it’s a genuinely new insight—and, weirder still, that it’s rendered moral reasoning basically moot.
The assumption behind [Socrates’s] approach to philosophy…is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it…
The rise and now dominance of [the] emotional approach to morality is an epochal change… It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people.
But isn’t the whole point of moral reasoning to challenge our gut intuitions about what’s fair and moral? Isn’t there a very real need to reflect, and use reason, when our moral intuitions conflict? In some ways, the whole point of “reason” in ethics is to have a guide when our intuitions come into conflict with one another.
So to me, the “gut reactions” that Brooks hails are merely the starting point for any ethical deliberation, not the conclusion. And while Brooks tends to espouse tradition as a guide to moral action, there are plenty of areas where tradition fails miserably. Would the civil rights movement have been possible if there were no challenge to the dominant culture’s intuitions about justice and fairness? Will we be able to respond to the threat of climate change, if we simply rely on moral intuitions that were formed when CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere posed no long-term threat?
I don’t mean to come down too hard on Brooks; he makes some interesting points. Yet I’m still uncomfortable with the idea that we should defer to our gut intincts when making choices about fairness. Given how often our gut reactions have failed us in the past—and the fairly novel moral challenges that face us in the coming century or two—I think we can find some better guides than raw nerves.
[Photo courtesy of flickr user marttj.]
Kevin Bayhouse
Clark, you are absolutely correct in your comment re Brooks’ perspective in these matters. The fact is, elites constantly are trying to manufacture our consent with their so-called “informed” opinions. It’s classic propaganda of elites. The problem is, they actually might believe their own BS (some actually do). They drink their own Koolaid on a daily basis. Perhaps they try so hard because one’s down in the gut ethical compass is always beeping red or green, depending on what decisions we make in life. Most of these Brooks types become so jaded in their beliefs, that they just color the red warning light green by reflex, and then we get more invasions of other countries and deplorable economic actors like AIG. Noam Chomsky would pin Brooks down in five minutes on this issue. Chomksy has been studying human instincts, ethics, responsibility and language forever and understands this stuff cold. Brooks may deep down know too, but his personal station in our society (which colors his thinking), makes him keep defending deplorable acts. What they (elites) are defending is the basic tenets of George Kennan’s aside comment in his PPS 23 document. Here is the notable quote- “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…. We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”When elites finally reconcile with this guiding principle in our way of conducting foreign policy and our lifestyles, then maybe we can have some honesty from people like Brooks.