What Is The Foundation of Morality?: Passions, Emotions & Sentiment or Reason
What Is The Foundation of Morality?: Passions, Emotions & Sentiment or Reason
What Is The Foundation of Morality?: Passions, Emotions & Sentiment or Reason
“The hypothesis…maintains
that morality is determined
by sentiment. It defines
virtue to be whatever mental
action or quality gives to a
spectator the pleasing
sentiment of approbation;
and vice the contrary.”
Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals.
DAVID HUME:
“Reason is and
ought to be the
slave of the
passions”
HUME’S ARGUMENT:
P1) Reason cannot tell us what we value
P2) Reason can help us pursue what we value
P3) What we value is based on our sentiments & passions
SP1) We are naturally endowed with empathy – “fellow
human feelings”
Sp2) We find virtue beautiful and vice odious
P4) Morality is based on what we value
_________________________________________________
C) Morality must be based on our sentiments & passions
HUME’S ARGUMENT:
Three Players:
Moral agent: the person who performs an action
Quote from the Atlantic magazine. Original Research Publication: Science. 2001 Sep
14;293(5537):2105-8. “An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral
judgment.” Greene JD1, Sommerville RB, Nystrom LE, Darley JM, Cohen JD.
Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, Department of Philosophy, 1879 Hall,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. jdgreene@princeton.edu
HUME AND 21ST CENTURY NEUROBIOLOGY:
The Neurobiology of “Morality may be innate to the human
Moral Behavior: Review brain. This review examines the
and Neuropsychiatric neurobiological evidence from research
Implications involving functional magnetic resonance
Dr. Mario F. Mendez, MD, imaging of normal subjects,
PhD, Professor developmental sociopathy, acquired
CNS spectrums 14.11 sociopathy from brain lesions, and
(2009): 608–620. Print. frontotemporal dementia. These studies
indicate a “neuromoral” network for
responding to moral dilemmas centered in
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and its
connections, particularly on the right. The
neurobiological evidence indicates the
existence of automatic “prosocial”
mechanisms for identification with others
that are part of the moral brain. Patients
with disorders involving this moral network
have attenuated emotional reactions to
the possibility of harming others and may
perform sociopathic acts.”
SOME PROBLEMS:
Inequality of Sympathy
Our capacity to associate with the suffering of others is
governed and perhaps limited at least in part by our
own experiences
Just as different people feel different levels of suffering
so too would different people feel different levels of
sympathy
Some people seem to be easier to sympathize with
than others – this is driven by how well we can
associate ourselves with them
If the circumstances are too alien or the people too
different, we could be ignorant of their suffering entirely
MORE PROBLEMS:
Failure to account for unsympathetic
behaviour:
What of people whose sentiments are not
stirred by the suffering or joy of others?
What of those people whose feelings of
pleasure are given rise by another’s
suffering?