Good and Evil

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think we’re all being a little simplistic by contrasting emotion with reason. Reason includes more than logical analysis. Both perceptual interpretation and language use involve deeper unconscious processes necessary for gaining knowledge. Likewise some emotions are instinctual responses, like fight or flight, while others are habitual ones, like pride. Still other emotions are either innate motivations, like thirst or curiosity. And then there are cultivated desires, like art and musical taste.

[emjay]

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?

I suppose technically you could define emotion as any feeling the leads to action, such as fear and desire, but here I was just meaning all feelings. I should clarify that I'm no expert; just someone with a long-standing layman's interest in neuroscience and anything related to it, so feel free to take anything I say with a pinch of salt 

I should also clarify that I am much less certain of the neural mechanisms of emotion than stereotyping or bias... I really should have separated them a bit more in my earlier post. I think I'm on the right track with my thinking but it is, in the end, an open question, whereas stereotyping and bias are facts as far as I'm concerned, because they are how neural networks observably work. But I'm still sure that the purpose of emotion is to summarise global neural activity because feelings and moods can exist without a specific object in mind.

As for how it can be applied to philosophy, ethics, and morality, I'm sorry but I really don't know, and I perhaps should not have even ventured a guess in this thread. The fact that I don't even understand your question speaks volumes  1st person vs 3rd person... I may be completely wrong in what you mean by that but for what it's worth all of my 'knowledge' and theories about neuroscience and how it relates to psychology comes from introspection, let's say mindfulness, and studying the subjects.

[Whateverist]

I may be completely wrong in what you mean by that but for what it's worth all of my 'knowledge' and theories about neuroscience and how it relates to psychology comes from introspection, let's say mindfulness, and studying the subjects.

You have no idea how much your stock just went up in my esteem, a phenomenon of significance mostly just inside my cranium.

[Hatshepsut]

1st person vs 3rd person... [and] mindfulness, and studying the subjects.

3rd person just means if Sarah stubs her toe, you don't feel it. You may have empathy and sympathy, but you don't feel the stubbed toe. Only Sarah does, since it's her toe. She's in the 1st person, everyone else is 3rd person as far as what she experiences "inside her head where the lights are on." I noticed you used that word, "mindfulness." Did you ever go into social work?  

I don't understand that much of what Pyrrho & Nestor were doing with David Hume on morality and so on. But goodness gracious! One of the first things Hume said is that we trash talk all the older systems of thought:

"Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them." -On Human Nature, 1738

[emjay]

1st person vs 3rd person... [and] mindfulness, and studying the subjects.

3rd person just means if Sarah stubs her toe, you don't feel it. You may have empathy and sympathy, but you don't feel the stubbed toe. Only Sarah does, since it's her toe. She's in the 1st person, everyone else is 3rd person as far as what she experiences "inside her head where the lights are on." I noticed you used that word, "mindfulness." Did you ever go into social work?  

I don't understand that much of what Pyrrho & Nestor were doing with David Hume on morality and so on. But goodness gracious! One of the first things Hume said is that we trash talk all the older systems of thought:

"Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them." -On Human Nature, 1738

Okay thanks, I think I understand now what you mean by 1st person and 3rd person in this context. And I also think I understand where whateverist's question might have been coming from; the view that Neuroscience as a discipline doesn't pay enough attention to subjective qualia etc?

No, I didn't go into social work but my sister is a psychologist and she's always talking about mindfulness. For myself I didn't really mean it in that sense, hence the 'let's say'; I used to do something kind of like a diary but much less strict (i.e. not one entry per day); any time I had a theory, an idea, an insight, an observation, or just something to get off my chest, I would write it down and date it, filling up notepad after notepad of the stuff. Collectively I called it "Know Thyself" or KT for short. Anyway it was such a big part of my life doing this that everywhere I went and everything I did seemed like an opportunity for insight. For instance I went to Alton Towers and thought 'this would be a good opportunity to study fear' so I forced myself to go on about six different roller coasters and then wrote an essay about it when I got home. So that's kind of what I mean by mindfulness; my writing encouraged me do little experiments and otherwise look for insight in the real world which in turn I would write about, so it was a circular process that generated an awful lot of insight. Then on top of that going back through KT there was insight to be gained from seeing the patterns in my thinking and how my theories evolved prompting even more writing so it was also an iterative process. 

Basically KT was the best thing I ever did and in it I developed some rock solid theories, in my own mind at least, of psychology and neuroscience, ones that stick with me to this day, several years later. I still write occasionally but not in that same obsessive way as I did before and to be honest I miss it; I miss all that excitement and curiosity. I don't really know why I stopped, but I think in part it had served its purpose and I felt I did know myself pretty well   Thankfully though joining this site has rekindled my interest and maybe I can get back into it, either on paper as before or using the forum in place of it    

As for the philosophy debate, I think the most prudent response from me would be 'no comment' 

[Whateverist]

You may be conceding too much. To the degree the subject is "what did so-and-so think about a subject most of us will feel unqualified. But reflection and a little reading will serve you well deciding what you think is true and important. We're all masters of the nature of our first-person experience. Though how careful an observer or articulate a recorder you turn out to be may vary quite a bit. Advanced degrees aren't a big help.