Do ethics come from the heart or the head?

Admit it:  we all know, at some level, that rational thought can be a smokescreen. 

You don’t like strawberries because there’s a rational argument for them … they just taste good.  And you don’t abhor murder because there’s a good argument against it, although there is:  that good argument is something you use to justify your inherent disgust at the practice.   

We know that.  From far back in human history people have known that we often use rational justifications as a cover for things we already believe.

But modern neuroscience has now “proven” it – showing that for many decisions the emotional parts of our brain kick in before the rational.  Some people are now saying that this changes everything we know about ethics – because ethical behavior is an emotional, rather than a rational, process.

Does that follow? 

In a recent New York Times column provocatively entitled “The End of Philosophy,” David Brooks suggests that new evidence that humans make value-laden, emotional decisions will lead to a new “evolutionary” perspective on ethics that doesn’t need all that difficult philosophizing.  He writes:

  

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Marvin Brown, however, doesn’t believe it. 

 

A noted expert on business ethics and an Organizational Systems faculty member at Saybrook, Brown says that the science is great.  The way people come to their initial beliefs about right and wrong may very well be an emotional process.  But even if all the science is completely right, it won’t actually change the philosophical nature of ethics:  we’ll still need to think ethics through.

Why?  Well because, Brown points out, people who make their emotionally based value judgments about what’s right and wrong are going to disagree with each other.

“People rarely do things that they think are wrong,” Brown says.  “Instead, people usually do what they think is right – taking into account the world that they think they live in.  So what happens when you have two people, both of whom think they know the right thing to do, who disagree?”

They try to figure it out. 

It’s possible that they could try to settle the issue with empathy alone, but even if that worked for two people, it wouldn’t work for three, or four, or a multi-national corporation.  At some point, people who disagree about right and wrong are going to have to sit down and try to think the issue through:  come up with intellectually sound principles for separating right actions from wrong.

“The ethical process, as opposed to first impressions, really begins when people who are doing what they think is right disagree,” Brown says.  “They can certainly come to their initial opinions through emotional means, but for collaboration, for society, for ethics in a meaningful way, we still have to do what Socrates did:  ask people why they think what they think, have them come up with meaningful answers and compare them.”

This is especially important now, Brown suggests, when so many of the ethical decisions that effect our daily lives are being made by corporations and government committees – which tend to have a pre-existing bias towards maximizing profit and enabling consumption … and very little empathy.

Their ability to think their decisions through … to challenge their own assumptions on the basis of evidence and make choices that are ethically responsible … has never been more crucial.

 “The process of being ethical really hasn’t changed, whatever people have found in the lab, and getting people to think about why they believe what they do is only getting more important, not less,” he says.

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Comments

[Paul Kimmel]

Depends upon what is meant by "think the issue through" and "intellectually sound principles."

Too often thinking and scientific information come from a Western model that goes back to Socrates (and others), but does not always work for non-Westerners. I am not advocating a more emotional approach to ethics (which also has many cultural biases), but a learning to learn approach where moderated discussions among those in conflict take place and training in intercultural exploration is provided.

Here is a relevant excerpt from some of my writings on intercultural communication:

Enlightened Ethnocentrism

The diplomatic perspective on international negotiation among theorists and practitioners in the Western world is supported by a Western folk psychology that posits an "enlightened ethnocentrism" about human behavior. The basic Western psychological assumption is that there are generic principles of human behavior (including behavior in complex situations such as international meetings). This assumption is comfortable for Westerners. To question the universality of one's own reality or to acknowledge that others' thought processes may fundamentally differ from one's own is disorienting. It is more reassuring to believe that all participants in an international negotiation not only can, but also prefer to use the established approaches. Contemplating the existence of a variety of approaches to and assumptions about negotiating is daunting and uncomfortable.

The "enlightened ethnocentrism" approach to human behavior found in Western folk psychology is clearly seen in Burton's work on deep-rooted conflicts. He attributes a basic ontological set of needs to all humans and assumes that deep-rooted conflicts among antagonists result from the denial or frustration of those needs (Burton, 1987). This human needs perspective is grounded in the needs hierarchy of Maslow. Maslow stressed that human needs for survival, security, identity, recognition, and control are innately given to an appreciable degree (Maslow, 1954). This biologically based perspective on human motivation is basic to contemporary American social science (Janowitz, 1954).

Such an ahistorical, biological perspective ignores the cultural development or meanings of peoples’ needs and how these meanings vary over time or from one group to another. It is also asocial, focusing on the individual as the unit of analysis. While Burton acknowledges that conflict may involve the "culturally determined ways in which needs are expressed" (Burton and Sandole, 1986, p. 343), he believes that the instrumental behaviors involved in their expression follows patterns orchestrated by the biology of the individual rather than the social context of the group. As he (1989) wrote me, "culture is a set of customs and beliefs followed by the members of a given society and accommodated to by members of other societies that are not as important as their more fundamental, ontological, universal, biologically-based needs." Thus, for Burton, as for many psychologists, culture is separated from the "human dimension," and becomes a matter of etiquette. Basic conflicts are about needs and interests, not about cultural meanings or basic assumptions.

A danger in being oblivious to one's own culture and in building universal schemes to explain human behavior (like the human needs of psychologists or the Track One negotiation processes of international relations theorists) "lies in the promotion of local common sense to formalized 'scientific knowledge'" (Black and Avruch, 1989, p.). The emphasis of Western social scientists on universal processes of human behavior in face-to-face conflict situations and of Western political analysts on universal processes of negotiation across cultures both suffer from this ethnocentrism. Their search for generalizations and their reliance on the cannons of positivistic Western science have blinded them to other perspectives that would increase their ability to understand and improve international negotiation practices (Kimmel, 1984).

Intercultural Communications and Subjective Cultures

Not surprisingly, the way that Western theorists and practitioners of negotiation conceive culture is like that of Western ethnographers. Ethnographically, culture exists in and through the artifacts, institutions, values, and norms of a society; it is an entity "out there" in the world. Ethnographic culture is defined in terms of concepts such as ethnicity, race, religion, language, and nationality. Avruch and Black call this a "thin" conception of culture (1991, p. 21).

Intercultural communication specialists conceptualize culture differently. For them, culture is "a growing, changing, dynamic thing consisting most significantly of shared perceptions in the minds of its members" (Fontaine, 1989, p. 22). It is to "a given people as personality is to a person" (Tyler, 1987, p.). Culture is a highly selective screen between the individual and the outside world that "directs the organization of the psyche, which in turn has a profound effect upon the ways people look at things, behave politically, make decisions, order priorities, organize their lives, and . . . how they think" (Hall, 1976, p. 212). An individual's acquired, shared perceptions, or subjective culture as Triandis (1972) has called it, contains the "categories, plans and rules people employ to interpret their world and act purposefully in it."

To understand how individuals think and feel in social situations requires an understanding of their subjective cultures, as well as the context in which they are behaving. As societies become more complex and fluid, the familiar ethnographic markers of skin color, religion, or ethnic background do not provide such understanding. Subjective cultures are more diversified and less visible, composed of individuals' cognitive, perceptual, and communication habits. These habits give meaning and intention to individuals' acts and their understanding of the acts of others. A person's subjective culture provides the underlying grammar for sending, receiving, and interpreting communications. Indeed, many of the perceptions we share with others in our culture have to do with how to communicate.

Paul Kimmel
Part Time Faculty