Are reason and emotion equally necessary in justifying moral decisions?

Every week I find my self witnessing this savage battle between my emotions and logical reasoning. Amongst my most recent exploits was selecting the cricket team for our upcoming match and as captain it is my responsibility to see to it that everyone gets a chance in the squad. I eventually found my self torn between having to choose my friends (most of whom weren’t particularly impressive players) or choosing a strong team optimizing our chances of victory. I thought it through, and my emotional need to win clouded my vision, then I went through a rational process and therefore went with choosing a strong team. The result of the choice derived through reason was a well deserved victory, which we would have most likely not seen if I had chosen to let my emotions get the better of me and pick my friends for the team. The choice had slight emotional consequences as my friends who really needed the game for their practice, into the bigger leagues weren’t selected, and as a result I experienced great amounts of anger and hostility in the weeks that followed. In response to this, for our next match, I selected a team not based on rational thinking, but from an emotional angle and picked all my friends. This team was very weak, we looked like the losing team from the beginning and even though I played the captain’s innings, it wasn’t enough to secure the win, and we ended up losing humiliatingly. When I gave the match report to the athletics coordinator he was infuriated. I found it almost impossible justify our loss, telling him that I had picked my friends instead of a decent team. It would have been difficult telling him that I had let my emotions get the better of me and that I picked my friends for the squad instead of using logical reasoning to pick a squad with which I would have optimized chances of victory. This example clearly shows that there are situations when putting weight on one factor undoubtedly provides the more desired outcome.

        A great example where you can’t justify a moral decision one way or the other is when there are two people drowning but you can only save one. Of the two people one of them is your friend and the other person a great guy who continually does service to man. You might be compelled to save your friend because you’re letting emotions get to the better of you, and with some deeper thought you might decide to save the other guy. But whomever you save, this is one case where no matter how you try you cannot justify this moral decision, with emotion or reason. Hence supporting my thesis that emotion and reason are don’t play equal roles in justifying moral decisions.

Perhaps the best example of when it is difficult to justify a decision could be during a test when you're sitting next to someone, who wants your help. This is probably the most important test of the term, and the person sitting next to you, your best friend, doesn’t understand the material, while you seem to be breezing through the test. Therefore you might be compelled to help him out, and propelled by your emotions, you try and get caught and into trouble. You can try justifying it from the emotional angle and maybe hope for some sympathy, or you could try reasoning it out and hoping things fall into your favor. It would be virtually implausible for someone to justify their position in this situation. Really you can’t justify this one way or the other as it would be difficult to find an argument in your favor. But if you perhaps explain that logically that you were approached for help and you gave it, might not fall in your favor, and in this case there is evidently no real way to justify your actions. This is one case where you can’t justify it with reason or emotion.

As highlighted from the previous examples it is clear that moral decisions can’t be justified one way or the other and it is also clear that reason and emotion don’t necessarily play equal roles in justifying them. In our every day decision making process, we usually tend to think it through from both sides but naturally one side tends to fall in favor and we go with it, showing human bias and limitations. Reasoning usually tends to fall in favor, as emotions do tend to change while your reasoning behind something tends to stay firm. Even in our everyday decision making process, we tend to look at both sides and from both angles, and case dependent one clearly outweighs the other, and it seems that in most cases it happens to be reason, which has time and again shown to be the better way of knowing.