Someone from the internets made criticised me, and you know how important it is to go after people who say things on the Interwebs. The answer: Very Important.
In his opening salvo, Mr Wojit has made some claims regarding the appropriateness of emotion in moral frameworks, namely utilitarianism. I'd like to respond to some of those claims, as well as defend myself against any crude caricatures made of me. I'll place all the substantative claims up the top of this and append any other nitpicks that I have at the bottom of this, if you so wish to peruse them.
The general argument that I'm running is this: Emotions qua emotions are not inherently damaging. I'll admit that emotions do play a fairly strong and probabilistic role in motivating action, but I think what this does is that it changes the question from a logical one to an empirical one, in ways that that'll be detailed below.
Imagine some person spends all day thinking of terrible horrifying fantasies of murder and pain and general gruesomeness. Said person derives a lot of pleasure from this activity, more so than any other activity available to her. If a utilitarian wants to maximise pleasure, than I can't see any reason why they would object to this persons' emotions/actions.
Another example: say I think, 'man, it'd be great if I went and firebombed an abortion clinic.' But I never go through with said action, because of material/time/knowledge constraints etc etc (building a firebomb is a PITA). But I have this thought nevertheless, and harbor positive emotions and feelings towards this thought. Now, let's assume I never express this thought in any public and keep it purely within myself. If it gives me pleasure, and doesn't hurt anyone else in any way, I don't see any reasons to evaluate it in any way.
The quasi-Humean motivational 'objection': So imagine the case whereby I harbor a great unjust antipathy to certain other people of the human race, namely distinguished by the colour of their skin i.e. white people. Now, I can imagine a case whereby I maintain these very antagonistic emotions towards them, without ever acting on those emotions; they may inspire detestment or hatred or some other negative emotion but I never act on them, due to various reasons, be it fear of consequences or a general understanding that emotions should not play a part in motivating my actions or some other reason all together. My actions look exactly the same as a non-racist person; I hold doors open for them, I tip my hat and say 'hullo' when I meet them, I don't discriminate against them socially or financially or otherwise. Furthermore, these emotions do make me happy in some way, in that they provide me with some comfort in the privacy of my mind. This is again a place where I don't utilitarians can relevantly object to me having these emotions, as repugnant as they may be.
Rules are too broad: with the case of the angry person throwing a punch, we can modify the rule. We can and should say, 'Don't throw punches at people without justification' or something along those lines, rather than 'throwing punches because you are angry is bad'. Hell, we could even be a more parsimonious and bracket out the anger bit, and say something like 'Throwing punches [because you are angry] is bad'. Again, this has to do with my general skepticism of judgment of motivation. As someone who leans consequentialist, I'd much rather have good things happen, than be overly concerned about how those good came about.
The problem of appropriate response: One of the severe problems that virtue ethics faces is what constitutes appropriate virtues, and I think that problem extends here. What can we consider appropriate emotional responses to an act or state of affairs? Turn the other cheek or eye for an eye? Even reasonable persons can have completely differing and polarised emotional responses to the same situation e.g. abortion. I certainly don't want to say that your emotional responses on those cases are wrong or inappropriate per se; if they proceed to act on those emotions i.e. either commit some kind of property or personable damages or base some kind of justificatory argument on those painful emotions, then I would claim those actions are misjudged in that they are based on bad premises. But those emotions qua emotions are not in themselves damaging.
Consider the example of videogames. They often inspire very strongly felt emotions in its subjects, very frequently emotions we would rightly condemn outside of those spheres. But this doesn't necessarily mean that gaming subject act on those emotions; we don't see people gunning down people and beating up hookers for money (well, we do, but we can be pretty sure that it's not the game that motivated them to behave in that manner). Again, emotions are not in and of themselves damaging, and as such shouldn't be subject to moral scrutiny or censure. NB: I'm not ruling out other types of scrutiny or censure.
I'll also make an argument from parsimony, based of a metaethical tripartite division of intentions, acts and effects/outcomes (Told you there was going to be metaphysical baggage). Moral frameworks should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Utilitarianism, especially, should focus more effects/outcomes, and to a lesser extent, acts. Intentions should be given minimal, if not negligible, concern. The example I am primarily thinking of is the ill-gotten charity example: imagine a person giving to charity not because of charitable intentions but rather of trying to cultivate good will and personal reputation. Utilitarians shouldn't care about the intentions (which are 'bad') and care more about the act (good, in this case, though it is obviously possible to have bad acts that produce good outcomes) and care most about the outcomes (good, in this case as it alleviates suffering/produces more pleasure). To critique emotions/intentions/thoughts in this case would be detrimental to the utilitarians' case of increasing the amount of pleasure in the world.
What the argument from parsimony and the videogame example should point out is that we are much better at acting on with outcomes and acts, then we are at dealing with intentions and emotions (In fact a point that you make later in the post).
A consequentialist would care more about the outcome than how the outcome was caused (but that doesn't mean she doesn't care at all about the causes, it just means she cares less). In this case, the case over appropriate emotions becomes an empirical one: how much did the emotion matter in contributing to the outcome? Answering this question would have to be done on a case-by-case basis, as the examples above clearly show cases of emotions that have no net negative effects. In some cases, sure the emotion played a major contributive/motivating factor. But in many other cases, it has no effects on the outcomes of that case.
What a lot of this boils down is my general anti-paternalist tendencies: I value autonomy, especially autonomy over your mind and thoughts as being especially paramount. I don't mind being told what to do, especially if you can convince me in a rational manner. But being told what to feel is another matter altogether; not only is it often a unbidden, non-rational response, it's a deeply primal and often integral part of human imagination and experience. In other words, you can lead a horse to water and even convince him to drink it; but that doesn't mean he's obligated to feel nice towards you.
OPTIONAL NITPICKS
Nitpick the first: I'd add to the whole, "loving the murderer who killed your loved one means that the victim wasn't really a loved one", to me it doesn't strike me that you could in honesty and in good faith love someone who just killed your loved one. Love, by definition, to me precludes this, but i'm more than willing to say that is possible that there is someone out there who is capable of such psychological gymnastics.
Semantic/Linguistic Nitpick:
You say:
In his opening salvo, Mr Wojit has made some claims regarding the appropriateness of emotion in moral frameworks, namely utilitarianism. I'd like to respond to some of those claims, as well as defend myself against any crude caricatures made of me. I'll place all the substantative claims up the top of this and append any other nitpicks that I have at the bottom of this, if you so wish to peruse them.
The general argument that I'm running is this: Emotions qua emotions are not inherently damaging. I'll admit that emotions do play a fairly strong and probabilistic role in motivating action, but I think what this does is that it changes the question from a logical one to an empirical one, in ways that that'll be detailed below.
Imagine some person spends all day thinking of terrible horrifying fantasies of murder and pain and general gruesomeness. Said person derives a lot of pleasure from this activity, more so than any other activity available to her. If a utilitarian wants to maximise pleasure, than I can't see any reason why they would object to this persons' emotions/actions.
Another example: say I think, 'man, it'd be great if I went and firebombed an abortion clinic.' But I never go through with said action, because of material/time/knowledge constraints etc etc (building a firebomb is a PITA). But I have this thought nevertheless, and harbor positive emotions and feelings towards this thought. Now, let's assume I never express this thought in any public and keep it purely within myself. If it gives me pleasure, and doesn't hurt anyone else in any way, I don't see any reasons to evaluate it in any way.
The quasi-Humean motivational 'objection': So imagine the case whereby I harbor a great unjust antipathy to certain other people of the human race, namely distinguished by the colour of their skin i.e. white people. Now, I can imagine a case whereby I maintain these very antagonistic emotions towards them, without ever acting on those emotions; they may inspire detestment or hatred or some other negative emotion but I never act on them, due to various reasons, be it fear of consequences or a general understanding that emotions should not play a part in motivating my actions or some other reason all together. My actions look exactly the same as a non-racist person; I hold doors open for them, I tip my hat and say 'hullo' when I meet them, I don't discriminate against them socially or financially or otherwise. Furthermore, these emotions do make me happy in some way, in that they provide me with some comfort in the privacy of my mind. This is again a place where I don't utilitarians can relevantly object to me having these emotions, as repugnant as they may be.
Rules are too broad: with the case of the angry person throwing a punch, we can modify the rule. We can and should say, 'Don't throw punches at people without justification' or something along those lines, rather than 'throwing punches because you are angry is bad'. Hell, we could even be a more parsimonious and bracket out the anger bit, and say something like 'Throwing punches [because you are angry] is bad'. Again, this has to do with my general skepticism of judgment of motivation. As someone who leans consequentialist, I'd much rather have good things happen, than be overly concerned about how those good came about.
The problem of appropriate response: One of the severe problems that virtue ethics faces is what constitutes appropriate virtues, and I think that problem extends here. What can we consider appropriate emotional responses to an act or state of affairs? Turn the other cheek or eye for an eye? Even reasonable persons can have completely differing and polarised emotional responses to the same situation e.g. abortion. I certainly don't want to say that your emotional responses on those cases are wrong or inappropriate per se; if they proceed to act on those emotions i.e. either commit some kind of property or personable damages or base some kind of justificatory argument on those painful emotions, then I would claim those actions are misjudged in that they are based on bad premises. But those emotions qua emotions are not in themselves damaging.
Consider the example of videogames. They often inspire very strongly felt emotions in its subjects, very frequently emotions we would rightly condemn outside of those spheres. But this doesn't necessarily mean that gaming subject act on those emotions; we don't see people gunning down people and beating up hookers for money (well, we do, but we can be pretty sure that it's not the game that motivated them to behave in that manner). Again, emotions are not in and of themselves damaging, and as such shouldn't be subject to moral scrutiny or censure. NB: I'm not ruling out other types of scrutiny or censure.
I'll also make an argument from parsimony, based of a metaethical tripartite division of intentions, acts and effects/outcomes (Told you there was going to be metaphysical baggage). Moral frameworks should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Utilitarianism, especially, should focus more effects/outcomes, and to a lesser extent, acts. Intentions should be given minimal, if not negligible, concern. The example I am primarily thinking of is the ill-gotten charity example: imagine a person giving to charity not because of charitable intentions but rather of trying to cultivate good will and personal reputation. Utilitarians shouldn't care about the intentions (which are 'bad') and care more about the act (good, in this case, though it is obviously possible to have bad acts that produce good outcomes) and care most about the outcomes (good, in this case as it alleviates suffering/produces more pleasure). To critique emotions/intentions/thoughts in this case would be detrimental to the utilitarians' case of increasing the amount of pleasure in the world.
What the argument from parsimony and the videogame example should point out is that we are much better at acting on with outcomes and acts, then we are at dealing with intentions and emotions (In fact a point that you make later in the post).
A consequentialist would care more about the outcome than how the outcome was caused (but that doesn't mean she doesn't care at all about the causes, it just means she cares less). In this case, the case over appropriate emotions becomes an empirical one: how much did the emotion matter in contributing to the outcome? Answering this question would have to be done on a case-by-case basis, as the examples above clearly show cases of emotions that have no net negative effects. In some cases, sure the emotion played a major contributive/motivating factor. But in many other cases, it has no effects on the outcomes of that case.
What a lot of this boils down is my general anti-paternalist tendencies: I value autonomy, especially autonomy over your mind and thoughts as being especially paramount. I don't mind being told what to do, especially if you can convince me in a rational manner. But being told what to feel is another matter altogether; not only is it often a unbidden, non-rational response, it's a deeply primal and often integral part of human imagination and experience. In other words, you can lead a horse to water and even convince him to drink it; but that doesn't mean he's obligated to feel nice towards you.
OPTIONAL NITPICKS
Nitpick the first: I'd add to the whole, "loving the murderer who killed your loved one means that the victim wasn't really a loved one", to me it doesn't strike me that you could in honesty and in good faith love someone who just killed your loved one. Love, by definition, to me precludes this, but i'm more than willing to say that is possible that there is someone out there who is capable of such psychological gymnastics.
Semantic/Linguistic Nitpick:
You say:
That is to say something like: there is a strong probabilistic link between the emotion, anger, and the action, violence. [emphasis added]But then next sentence:
So unless there is some other, more direct & effective way to reduce instances of punch-throwing without having to go through emotional proscription, then it seems we have perfectly good reasons to morally worry about, judge, and critique emotions. [emphasis added]I'm not quite sure whether I want to equate perfectly and probabilistic. I'd rather change the second sentence to probabilisitic good reasons to etc etc, but this is some pretty minor hairsplitting/handwaving.
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