Good and Evil

[Hatshepsut]

But that was my fault for doing what I usually do on this forum, and which never goes down well, which is to a) talk about brain processes and expect people to understand or even care what I'm talking about, neutrally, in those terms...I was explaining an emotional brain process...

Or care about it neurally, perhaps?  

I think the brain process angle is fascinating because it shows the gulf we insert between emotion and reason is artificial. Formal reasoning does have mechanistic rules allowing arguments to be structured on paper, while the rules underlying the computation and generation of emotional states by the brain are poorly understood. Yet it's almost certain they are there; the brain, including its emotion computers, can be unreliable but it doesn't operate in a willy-nilly or stochastic manner-even if individual neurons do to some extent.

I've held on this thread that emotions are a form of intelligence.

The main problem under discussion, of whether "the good" also follows necessarily from deterministic laws, seems unresolved to me. As if ethics can be neither subjective nor objective, having features of both. If no subjective self existed, we wouldn't even need to discuss a notion of "the good." Yet principles for ethics don't arise in a willy-nilly way either; reasoning must be used to make ethical arguments.

[emjay]

But that was my fault for doing what I usually do on this forum, and which never goes down well, which is to a) talk about brain processes and expect people to understand or even care what I'm talking about, neutrally, in those terms...I was explaining an emotional brain process...

Or care about it neurally, perhaps?  

I think the brain process angle is fascinating because it shows the gulf we insert between emotion and reason is artificial. Formal reasoning does have mechanistic rules allowing arguments to be structured on paper, while the rules underlying the computation and generation of emotional states by the brain are poorly understood. Yet it's almost certain they are there; the brain, including its emotion computers, can be unreliable but it doesn't operate in a willy-nilly or stochastic manner-even if individual neurons do to some extent.

I've held on this thread that emotions are a form of intelligence.

The main problem under discussion, of whether "the good" also follows necessarily from deterministic laws, seems unresolved to me. As if ethics can be neither subjective nor objective, having features of both. If no subjective self existed, we wouldn't even need to discuss a notion of "the good." Yet principles for ethics don't arise in a willy-nilly way either; reasoning must be used to make ethical arguments.

Actually this was the one in a million time when I did mean neutrally rather than neurally   As in 'objectively' or 'matter-of-factly'. 

I've got to go to work now. I'll reply properly later.

Editing from work:
I don't know much about the neural basis of reason but I do know a fair amount about emotion and have quite a lot of theories of my own. Emotion is an incredible form of intelligence but it only summarises information and allows for intuition. The same goes for the processes of stereotyping and bias (ie prejudice) - they are both the most natural things in the world to a neural network and serve as a means of making quick judgements based on very little information... judgements that err on the side of caution and could have saved lives in ancestral times. But in these modern days those features of the brain, impressive though they are from an neural network perspective, are not too helpful and need to be overcome with reason if we want to be fair to all. That was the essence of my post.

Another part of my post dealt with what I believe to be an innate aversion to causing senseless harm, whether mental or physical, to other sentient beings, human or animal. By senseless I mean that which has no self-justification or excuse. For instance if you physically or emotionally 'kick someone when they're down', it feels awful and leaves you with a very strong feeling of guilt/shame that is qualitatively different from other forms of guilt and shame, and which stays with you forever. I think that feeling is innate and since it applies to all kinds of hurt, even just an unkind word, I see no reason why that shouldn't be a good basis for your morals - one that comes from within rather than without. I don't mean to say that you can't learn more or benefit from outside sources, such as law and ethics, but just that this is IMO what comes built in, as it were, by nature and which has, also IMO, the strongest emotional appeal precisely because it is innate.

As for your second question I'm afraid the heavy duty logic and formal ethics under discussion is way above my level of understanding. So rather than pick a side in ignorance of the arguments I'll just leave you guys to hammer it out. As I said my post was more about psychology than ethics so I shouldn't really have posted it here in the first place. My apologies.

[Neo-Scholastic]

No, emjay. I was responding to bennyboy and, benny, I really do admire your general rigor even though I disagree with your Idealist stance. At the same time, I do believe your statements about emotion are not reflective of your usual open-minded approach. I hope you can forgive my curt response. - Chad

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I think the brain process angle is fascinating because it shows the gulf we insert between emotion and reason is artificial....I've held on this thread that emotions are a form of intelligence.

I think it is fair to say that you would not privilege one way of thinking over the other and at the same time accept that they serve in different capacities.

If no subjective self existed, we wouldn't even need to discuss a notion of "the good." Yet principles for ethics don't arise in a willy-nilly way either; reasoning must be used to make ethical arguments.

I think the atheists argue that no reasoning suffices to provide that guidance. They would say that ethical reasoning flows out of evolutionary programmed emotional motivations. I don't agree, but I see that as the claim being made.

[emjay]

No, emjay. I was responding to bennyboy and, benny, I really do admire your general rigor even though I disagree with your Idealist stance. At the same time, I do believe your statements about emotion are not reflective of your usual open-minded approach. I hope you can forgive my curt response. - Chad

Hi Chad. Thanks. I admire your philosophical rigor as well. But can you elaborate on what you find closed minded about my statements on emotion?

Anyway I'm down to 18% battery on my phone so can't use the forum any more till I get home from work in a few hours.

[Whateverist]

I don't know much about the neural basis of reason but I do know a fair amount about emotion and have quite a lot of theories of my own. Emotion is an incredible form of intelligence but it only summarises information and allows for intuition. The same goes for the processes of stereotyping and bias (ie prejudice) - they are both the most natural things in the world to a neural network and serve as a means of making quick judgements based on very little information... judgements that err on the side of caution and could have saved lives in ancestral times. But in these modern days those features of the brain, impressive though they are from an neural network perspective, are not too helpful and need to be overcome with reason if we want to be fair to all. That was the essence of my post.

Another part of my post dealt with what I believe to be an innate aversion to causing senseless harm, whether mental or physical, to other sentient beings, human or animal. By senseless I mean that which has no self-justification or excuse. For instance if you physically or emotionally 'kick someone when they're down', it feels awful and leaves you with a very strong feeling of guilt/shame that is qualitatively different from other forms of guilt and shame, and which stays with you forever. I think that feeling is innate and since it applies to all kinds of hurt, even just an unkind word, I see no reason why that shouldn't be a good basis for your morals - one that comes from within rather than without. I don't mean to say that you can't learn more or benefit from outside sources, such as law and ethics, but just that this is IMO what comes built in, as it were, by nature and which has,  also IMO,  the strongest emotional appeal precisely because it is innate.

As for your second question I'm afraid the heavy duty logic and formal ethics under discussion is way above my level of understanding. So rather than pick a side in ignorance of the arguments I'll just leave you guys to hammer it out. As I said my post was more about psychology than ethics so I shouldn't really have posted it here in the first place. My apologies.

I wonder if you would say more about how you're defining emotion. I'm used to "feeling" being regarded as distinct from emotion. Has that changed? I would have always said that feeling informs and directs thinking, but I suspect you're saying that emotions are what give rise to feeling.


There is definitely interest in philosophy to account for neurology. It is very relevant. Morality and ethics can't function as an inquiry completely separate from our lived experience. The more neurology can reveal, the more philosophy has to account for. I wonder if you think there is an essential barrier between 3rd person investigation and 1st person phenomenology, or is any barrier merely a function of limiting technology?

[Angrboda]

I think the brain process angle is fascinating because it shows the gulf we insert between emotion and reason is artificial. Formal reasoning does have mechanistic rules allowing arguments to be structured on paper, while the rules underlying the computation and generation of emotional states by the brain are poorly understood. Yet it's almost certain they are there; the brain, including its emotion computers, can be unreliable but it doesn't operate in a willy-nilly or stochastic manner-even if individual neurons do to some extent.

But the reliability of emotional judgements is a key difference between them and reasoned judgements. If emotional judgements aren't as reliable in their conclusions than reason, it makes sense to prefer one over the other. That both follow rules doesn't imply that the robustness of each's rules are equivalent.

[Whateverist]

The function of science seems to be to screen any emotional residue from the results.  It is fine for emotion to serve as a catalyst along the way but then it has to get out of the way and allow the product to stand or fall on its merits.

[bennyboy]

No, emjay. I was responding to bennyboy and, benny, I really do admire your general rigor even though I disagree with your Idealist stance. At the same time, I do believe your statements about emotion are not reflective of your usual open-minded approach. I hope you can forgive my curt response. - Chad

In that case, you have misunderstood me. I'm not saying that feelings make everything moral. I'm saying that moral ideas are rooted in feelings, and that since we are born with feelings, morality is rooted outside the conscious self-- in a physicalist/determinist view it's rooted in the successive interactions between DNA of ancestral organisms and environment over a very long time. In other words, human morality may in a physicalist/determinist perspective be seen as objective.

This does not mean, however, that there is a "right" floating in space somewhere which is right in an absolute sense. In fact,it means like so many other things in our understanding of the universe, morality would be a statistical model: "x% of people consider baby-eating wrong, and y% consider it a fun weekend hobby." You could then view behaviors through deviations from the norm, correlate them with phenotypes (race, gender, etc.), and so on. But you could no more say "Good an Evil are X" than you could "The electron must be in position Y."

In the end, I'd say that no matter where our moral sense comes from, that we experience moral ideas is not enough to say that we own them, and in that sense morality may always be seen as objective-- even though it varies greatly among individuals.

[Whateverist]

I get the feeling that Chad and others consider the ability to feel justified (smug, pompous, etc) as a necessary component of any adequate account of morality.  That any account should fail in this much sought after duty renders it completely useless.  Their ilk will always look down their noses at we who are less wed to a life of nothing but the mind as being less than serious.  The fact that I view them as hobbled by their incompleteness probably makes us even.  

Anyway, you gotta love a guy who puts "pompous ass" beside his avatar.

[Hatshepsut]

Another part of my post dealt with what I believe to be an innate aversion to causing senseless harm...to other sentient beings, human or animal.

An aversion that is definitely real. Only psychopaths kill without strong negative emotional reactions attending the event. Soldiers do so only after military training limits one's moral universe to one's combat buddies and thus blunts the normal aversion. Politicians order killings but distance themselves from the dirty deed by means of euphemism and the fact that they're not on scene.

I wonder if you would say more about how you're defining emotion.  I'm used to "feeling" being regarded as distinct from emotion...I wonder if you think there is an essential barrier between 3rd person investigation and 1st person phenomenology, or is any barrier merely a function of limiting technology?

I didn't think about it much but yes, 1st person (feeling) and 3rd person (emotion). These perspectives should be distinguished in some contexts though I'm not sure if ability to make moral calculations is one of them. Thomas Nagel, in his 1974 paper "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" thought that there was an essential barrier between 1st and 3rd person; that it's not just a matter of lacking the technology. He would say that no matter how advanced your brain-reading machine was, you'd still be an outsider with respect to the personal experience of a bat. Perhaps you put a "bat mind" into the Matrix and plug yourself in like in that movie, but it would still be you experiencing a simulacrum of bathood. You'd never be the bat, or truly penetrate its private preserve of experience.

I tend to agree with Nagel's philosophical view on this question, though I doubt anyone can prove scientifically either that such a private consciousness exists or that it doesn't exist.

If emotional judgements aren't as reliable in their conclusions than reason, it makes sense to prefer one over the other.

It makes sense to prefer each one in its own domain of applicability. Stanley Pons & Martin Fleischmann, chemists and investors in a company that made platinum & palladium catalysts, let their emotions have a run as they "discovered" cold fusion in 1989, incidentally in a jar using a platinum-group catalyst. But when I lived in Miami, Florida, a town where being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be dangerous, I trusted my gut.

Mathematicians and physicists themselves develop "gut" responses that tell them whether a particular assertion upon first encounter is baloney or should be investigated. When they see "obvious" baloney, they don't have to do the calculations or state exactly what's wrong with the new idea; they just "know" it won't fly. This saves them a lot of time. Usually their first reaction is correct, though ideally any conclusion reached by intuition should be checked carefully.

The power of reason comes from its approach of first assigning a small number of categories to the phenomenon under question and making simplifying assumptions about the dynamics. That allows progress step by step, with each step justifying the next according to an explicit rule. This process doesn't guarantee that the initial category assignments chosen for solving a problem were the best or most relevant ones. There was nothing wrong with the reasoning in the "vital force" and phlogiston theories: We simply discovered later that the categories and initial assumptions these theories use aren't as productive in the laboratory as ATP in cells, or vibrational energy of molecules as heat.