Reason and emotions in justifying moral decision

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

Reason and emotion are both assumed to be the ways of knowledge required in justifying moral decisions. This essay will explore the knowledge issue of reason and emotion being equally necessary and important in justifying moral decisions.

Reason is a way of knowing that involves different elements. It is also embracing the rationalist approach, where we can ascertain truth by thinking and the process of reflection alone. The use of reason is a way of extending our knowledge from known facts. One of the roles traditionally attributed to reason is to find balance or equilibrium between two extremes. In a very general sense, reasoning is a collective endeavour by which people construct meaning together by exchanging, modifying and improving their ideas and opinions.

The use of formal logic, the study of form in argument irrespective of the subject matter, is required in reasoning. There are two types of logic being used here: deductive logic and inductive logic.

Deductive logic involves giving the truth of some information, where the conclusion must also be true. One example is the following statements, A: all humans are mortal. B: I am human. C: I am mortal. Since A and B are true, I would be compelled to accept that C is also true. It is ludicrous for me to assert A and B, yet deny C. This seems to show that logic play a very prominent role in the search for a reliable knowledge. Deduction also allows us to deduce a conclusion with absolute certainty. In deductive logic, the premise of the argument is also very important as it can provide a dubious conclusion, despite a valid logic statement.

On the other hand, inductive logic does not involve certainty in the same way. An inductive logic is a system of reasoning that extends deductive logic to less-than-certain inferences1. Induction is a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances. It is used to ascribe properties or relations to types based on an observation instance; or to formulate laws based on limited observations of recurring phenomenal patterns. One example is such that a man goes to a lake and saw only white swans there. Thus he came up with a conclusion that all swans are white. This is an inductive logic, which the conclusion was wrong as there are black swans as well. This problem surfaces in most inductive statements and this problem of generalization is known as the ’problem of induction’. This problem arises due to the drawing of conclusion from limited evidence. However, the conclusion drawn from inductive logic may not be unreasonable though it is wrong.

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An emotion is a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. It is a prime determinant of the sense of subjective well-being and appears to play a central role in many human activities2. Emotions play very powerful role in shaping thoughts, influencing behaviour and steering the pursuit of knowledge. Emotions can be caused through both physically and mentally. Almost everything we do in our lives is due to our emotions. We eat because we are hungry, sleep because we are tired. These emotions are the ones that drive us in our work every day. We have no control over our emotions, just like tides pushing boats around. We, the boats cannot retaliate much to our emotion, which are the tides. Moreover, they are not dependent on cognition, reason or perception. To have an engagement with the people and the world around us requires emotions. We must be able to understand and be able to sympathise with others as being emotionless would lead to having no goals and no being-in-the-world.

The act of making moral decisions involves the area of knowledge, ethics. Ethics refers to standards of behaviour that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find themselves-as friends, parents, children, citizens, businesspeople, teachers, professionals, and so on.3 It involves a discussion of the way we ought to live our lives, the distinction between right and wrong, the justification of moral judgement, and the implications of moral actions for the individual and for the group. The major emphasis here is how we know or justify what you ought to do. To do so, we can use reason or emotion as a way of knowledge to justify our actions.

When using reason to justify a moral judgement, there may be separate reasons for people to have an argument. If it is based in fact, the argument is open to settlement by evidence, though the evidence may be very difficult to obtain and interpret. However, if it is based in principle, it is very hard to use evidence to solve the dispute as everyone’s principle differs from each other. Making such a distinction is important as arguments of principle and arguments of evidence are solved differently. Thus, morality may come down to just a personal opinion. In this case, the prospects of finding the’ correct’ form of morality are and trying to persuade someone that one course of action is ‘morally better’ than the other, is like trying to convince them that apple taste better than oranges.

After making a vital distinction between principle and evidence, the choice of premises when justifying a moral judgement is also equally important. In most situations involving ethics, we would usually choose to act in self-interest but there are situations [ethical egoism], there are times when we sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others. This notion is known as altruism, which is opposed to that of ethical egoism. There are many people who do sacrifice their own interest to help others. However, the root of the problem is that if we see altruism as being an excellent thing then we can be egoistic by being altruistic. It provides no guide to action and seems little use as a moral theory. Although we would certainly want to take others’ welfare into account, it does not seem reasonable to live totally for others. So we need to find a way of balancing our needs with those of other. Utilitarianism allows both altruists and egoists to attempt to maximise someone’s utility. Utilitarianism states that we are all equally valuable- that all utility are equal and it takes sheer prejudice to take one’s own point of view as the standard judgement. The idea of moral duty is a choice of premises as well, which needs to be scrutinised carefully as it is dangerous to answer questions with reference to other schools of ethical thoughts. We may end up following these schools of thought rather than trying to develop fully the duty theory. Thus we must acknowledge that reason alone can never motivate actions. People who can agree how to act in specific cases, yet have no agreement on principles, prove that we have far missed something in our search for ethical ‘truth’.

Emotions is necessary in justifying a moral decision as good utilitarians have to weigh the pros and cons and decide if there is a net gain of happiness and if they feel that it is right to do so. The notion that character(rather than the outcome or duty) can matter seems to be reflected in the idea of intention as an important factor in moral decisions. This approach is known as virtue ethics, which is a set of philosophies that hold moral life should be concerned with cultivating a virtuous character, as opposed to following the rules of action. This means that a decision can be moral even if the outcome is a ‘bad’ one and irrespective of ideas such as ‘duty’.

One situation where the use of reason and emotion may come in is when a teacher miscalculated a student’s test marks, giving her more than what she was supposed to get. The student realises this and the extra marks had allowed her to pass her test. However, she also knows that she should be honest and inform her teacher about the error. This is a moral decision which the student has to make. She reasons that if she tells the teacher, she will be living up to her morals, but her if she does, she will fail the test and she will be upset. In this case, reason and emotions are both factors that will contribute to her moral judgement. In the end, the student decides to tell the teacher of her error as she felt that it was logical and ‘morally right’ to do so. Although she failed the test, she had a net gain of happiness as the teacher had praised her for being an honest student.

Reason and emotion are both equally necessary in justifying a moral decision. Utilitarian, duty-based and virtue-based theories of ethics all rely on both reasons and emotions to differing degrees. Each system has its own flaws and despite the reams of profound books we can turn to, we will still be doubtful if any of these systems will pose severe difficulties and if a compelling theory would arise. However, theories are only ‘guidebooks’ and do not make a moral decision as this is what humans do. As it is hard for a human not to have any emotions, justifying a moral decision would require both the use of reasoning and our emotions play a role in decided what we ‘feel’ like doing.

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