The Role of Emotion in Ethical Decisionmaking

The Role of Emotion in Ethical Decisionmaking What is the moral significance of may feelings when I hear that newly dead human bodies are used in car crashes for research on automobile safety? What should I make of the emotions aroused by the news that dying old persons will have their food and water withdrawn, or in other instances, be straitjacketed and forcibly fed? And does my emotional response to the dilemmas presented by AIDS or surrogate motherhood count? Everyone agrees that bioethical decisions, involving as they often do matters of life, death, sex reproduction, and familial and professional loyalties, can arouse emotional responses. What is not agreed upon is whether, or how, one should weigh emotions when trying to resolve an ethical dilemma. A completely rationalist view dismisses the role of emotions with the assertion that "arguments are one thing, sentiments another, and nothing fogs the mind so thoroughly as emotion." [1] Adherents of this negative estimate of emotion would advise a person confronting an ethical dilemma to arrive at a decision using rational considerations alone. As Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. says in his widely hailed book on bioethics, we should see the affirmations of one's feelings as "irrational, surd," and seek to become impartial reasoners "whose only interests are in the consistency and force of rational argument." [2] Other philosophers may begrudgingly admit the inevitability of emotive intuitions, to gut feelings in moral argumentation but vigorously resist employing them. As James Rachels puts it, "The idea cannot be to avoid reliance on unsupported 'sentiments' (to use Hume's word) altogether--that is impossible. The idea is always to be suspicious of them, and to rely on as few as possible, only after examining them critically, and only after pushing the arguments and explanations as far as they will go without them." [3] Joel Feinberg contends that emotions always should be subordinated to reason in the process of decisionmaking. Feinberg is not unappreciative of moral emotions, but they can never serve as an ethical criterion. A sentimental attachment to fetuses, corpses, or body parts should not be allowed to thwart the interests of actual living persons who need abortions, organ transplants, or automobile safety research. For emotions to count in any applied ethical decisions, they must be justified on independent grounds. [4] I propose a model for the mutual interaction of thinking and feeling in ethical decisionmaking. Certainly, reason should monitor reason as in traditional philosophical critiques, and reason should tutor the emotions as in Feinberg's model. But I would also claim that emotion should tutor reason and that emotion should monitor emotion. The ideal goal is to come to an ethical decision through a personal equilibrium in which emotion and reason are both activated and in accord. Human Emotions in Psychology What do we now think we know about the functioning of human beings that should make us take emotions more seriously in ethical enterprises? The human emotional system is a universal component of human functioning, the primary motivating system of all activity, including of course, thinking about ethical dilemmas. Following Darwin's lead, psychological theorists now see human emotions, like human cognitive capacities, to have been selected through evolution to ensure the survival of individuals and the group. [5] Emotions are energizing and adaptive, and serve communicating, bonding, and motivating functions. They seem to be distinct from either physiological drives or cognitive processes, although complex interactions and learned associations occur. Without emotions or affects to amplify physiological drives and infuse cognitive processing with subjective meaning, human beings would not care enough to stay alive, much less mate, nurture offspring, create kindship bonds, or pursue art, science, literature, or moral philosophy. …