God vs. Science: Dan Cray/Los Angeles

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God vs.

Science
By Dan Cray/Los Angeles Sunday, Nov. 05, 2006

There are two great debates under the broad heading of Science vs. God. The more familiar over the past few
years is the narrower of the two: Can Darwinian evolution withstand the criticisms of Christians who believe
that it contradicts the creation account in the Book of Genesis? In recent years, creationism took on new
currency as the spiritual progenitor of "intelligent design" (I.D.), a scientifically worded attempt to show that
blanks in the evolutionary narrative are more meaningful than its very convincing totality. I.D. lost some of its
journalistic heat last December when a federal judge dismissed it as pseudoscience unsuitable for teaching in
Pennsylvania schools.

But in fact creationism and I.D. are intimately related to a larger unresolved question, in which the aggressor's
role is reversed: Can religion stand up to the progress of science? This debate long predates Darwin, but the
antireligion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design and
excited, perhaps intoxicated, by their disciplines' increasing ability to map, quantify and change the nature of
human experience. Brain imaging illustrates--in color!--the physical seat of the will and the passions,
challenging the religious concept of a soul independent of glands and gristle. Brain chemists track imbalances
that could account for the ecstatic states of visionary saints or, some suggest, of Jesus. Like Freudianism before
it, the field of evolutionary psychology generates theories of altruism and even of religion that do not include
God. Something called the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology speculates that ours may be but one in a cascade
of universes, suddenly bettering the odds that life could have cropped up here accidentally, without divine
intervention. (If the probabilities were 1 in a billion, and you've got 300 billion universes, why not?)

Roman Catholicism's Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has dubbed the most fervent of faith-challenging scientists
followers of "scientism" or "evolutionism," since they hope science, beyond being a measure, can replace
religion as a worldview and a touchstone. It is not an epithet that fits everyone wielding a test tube. But a
growing proportion of the profession is experiencing what one major researcher calls "unprecedented outrage"
at perceived insults to research and rationality, ranging from the alleged influence of the Christian right on Bush
Administration science policy to the fanatic faith of the 9/11 terrorists to intelligent design's ongoing claims.
Some are radicalized enough to publicly pick an ancient scab: the idea that science and religion, far from being
complementary responses to the unknown, are at utter odds--or, as Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has written
bluntly, "Religion and science will always clash." The market seems flooded with books by scientists describing
a caged death match between science and God--with science winning, or at least chipping away at faith's
underlying verities.

Finding a spokesman for this side of the question was not hard, since Richard Dawkins, perhaps its foremost
polemicist, has just come out with The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), the rare volume whose position is so
clear it forgoes a subtitle. The five-week New York Times best seller (now at No. 8) attacks faith
philosophically and historically as well as scientifically, but leans heavily on Darwinian theory, which was
Dawkins' expertise as a young scientist and more recently as an explicator of evolutionary psychology so lucid
that he occupies the Charles Simonyi professorship for the public understanding of science at Oxford
University.

Dawkins is riding the crest of an atheist literary wave. In 2004, The End of Faith, a multipronged indictment by
neuroscience grad student Sam Harris, was published (over 400,000 copies in print). Harris has written a 96-
page follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation, which is now No. 14 on the Times list. Last February, Tufts
University philosopher Daniel Dennett produced Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, which
has sold fewer copies but has helped usher the discussion into the public arena.

If Dennett and Harris are almost-scientists (Dennett runs a multidisciplinary scientific-philosophic program),
the authors of half a dozen aggressively secular volumes are card carriers: In Moral Minds, Harvard biologist
Marc Hauser explores the--nondivine--origins of our sense of right and wrong (September); in Six Impossible
Things Before Breakfast (due in January) by self-described "atheist-reductionist-materialist" biologist Lewis
Wolpert, religion is one of those impossible things; Victor Stenger, a physicist-astronomer, has a book coming
out titled God: The Failed Hypothesis. Meanwhile, Ann Druyan, widow of archskeptical astrophysicist Carl
Sagan, has edited Sagan's unpublished lectures on God and his absence into a book, The Varieties of Scientific
Experience, out this month.

Dawkins and his army have a swarm of articulate theological opponents, of course. But the most ardent of these
don't really care very much about science, and an argument in which one party stands immovable on Scripture
and the other immobile on the periodic table doesn't get anyone very far. Most Americans occupy the middle
ground: we want it all. We want to cheer on science's strides and still humble ourselves on the Sabbath. We
want access to both MRIs and miracles. We want debates about issues like stem cells without conceding that the
positions are so intrinsically inimical as to make discussion fruitless. And to balance formidable standard
bearers like Dawkins, we seek those who possess religious conviction but also scientific achievements to
credibly argue the widespread hope that science and God are in harmony--that, indeed, science is of God.

Informed conciliators have recently become more vocal. Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden has
just come out with Evolution and Christian Faith, which provides what she calls a "strong Christian defense" of
evolutionary biology, illustrating the discipline's major concepts with biblical passages. Entomologist Edward
O. Wilson, a famous skeptic of standard faith, has written The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,
urging believers and non-believers to unite over conservation. But foremost of those arguing for common
ground is Francis Collins.

(3 of 9)

Collins' devotion to genetics is, if possible, greater than Dawkins'. Director of the National Human Genome
Research Institute since 1993, he headed a multinational 2,400-scientist team that co-mapped the 3 billion
biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint, a milestone that then President Bill Clinton honored in a 2000
White House ceremony, comparing the genome chart to Meriwether Lewis' map of his fateful continental
exploration. Collins continues to lead his institute in studying the genome and mining it for medical
breakthroughs.

He is also a forthright Christian who converted from atheism at age 27 and now finds time to advise young
evangelical scientists on how to declare their faith in science's largely agnostic upper reaches. His summer best
seller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press), laid out some of the
arguments he brought to bear in the 90-minute debate TIME arranged between Dawkins and Collins in our
offices at the Time & Life Building in New York City on Sept. 30. Some excerpts from their spirited exchange:

TIME: Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?

DAWKINS: The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important
that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.

TIME: Dr. Collins, you believe that science is compatible with Christian faith.
COLLINS: Yes. God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of
science can provide the answer. From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and
therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.

TIME: Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist, famously argued that religion and science can coexist,
because they occupy separate, airtight boxes. You both seem to disagree.

COLLINS: Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I
do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the
natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation.

DAWKINS: I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road
religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does
not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to
the spirit of science.

TIME: Professor Dawkins, you think Darwin's theory of evolution does more than simply contradict the
Genesis story.

(4 of 9)

DAWKINS: Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was
the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful,
they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way
is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny
incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection. Each step is not too improbable
for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of
improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that
because something is complicated, God must have done it.

COLLINS: I don't see that Professor Dawkins' basic account of evolution is incompatible with God's having
designed it.

TIME: When would this have occurred?

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the
creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out,
perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also
give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

DAWKINS: I think that's a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be
slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life
got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and
sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.

COLLINS: Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don't think that it is God's purpose to make
his intention absolutely obvious to us. If it suits him to be a deity that we must seek without being forced to,
would it not have been sensible for him to use the mechanism of evolution without posting obvious road signs
to reveal his role in creation?

TIME: Both your books suggest that if the universal constants, the six or more characteristics of our universe,
had varied at all, it would have made life impossible. Dr. Collins, can you provide an example?
COLLINS: The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion
of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur.
When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance. But if you are
willing to consider the possibility of a designer, this becomes a rather plausible explanation for what is
otherwise an exceedingly improbable event--namely, our existence.

(5 of 9)

DAWKINS: People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled
the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because
something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more
improbable. Physicists have come up with other explanations. One is to say that these six constants are not free
to vary. Some unified theory will eventually show that they are as locked in as the circumference and the
diameter of a circle. That reduces the odds of them all independently just happening to fit the bill. The other
way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of
universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the
wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority
of universes will have the right fine-tuning.

COLLINS: This is an interesting choice. Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either
have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say
there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling
than the bubbling of all these multiverses. So Occam's razor--Occam says you should choose the explanation
that is most simple and straightforward--leads me more to believe in God than in the multiverse, which seems
quite a stretch of the imagination.

DAWKINS: I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly
imagine. What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're
shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word
God.

COLLINS: My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned
by something else. God is the answer to all of those "How must it have come to be" questions.

DAWKINS: I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where
this apparent improbability comes from. Now Dr. Collins says, "Well, God did it. And God needs no
explanation because God is outside all this." Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain.
Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, "We're working on it. We're struggling to understand."

COLLINS: Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might
explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned. But I do object to the assumption that anything that
might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of
questions we humans can ask, such as "Why am I here?", "What happens after we die?", "Is there a God?" If
you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the
natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God
might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion.

(6 of 9)
DAWKINS: To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work
on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God--it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

TIME: Could the answer be God?

DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present
understanding.

COLLINS: That's God.

DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of
Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at
the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case.

TIME: The Book of Genesis has led many conservative Protestants to oppose evolution and some to insist that
the earth is only 6,000 years old.

COLLINS: There are sincere believers who interpret Genesis 1 and 2 in a very literal way that is inconsistent,
frankly, with our knowledge of the universe's age or of how living organisms are related to each other. St.
Augustine wrote that basically it is not possible to understand what was being described in Genesis. It was not
intended as a science textbook. It was intended as a description of who God was, who we are and what our
relationship is supposed to be with God. Augustine explicitly warns against a very narrow perspective that will
put our faith at risk of looking ridiculous. If you step back from that one narrow interpretation, what the Bible
describes is very consistent with the Big Bang.

DAWKINS: Physicists are working on the Big Bang, and one day they may or may not solve it. However, what
Dr. Collins has just been--may I call you Francis?

COLLINS: Oh, please, Richard, do so.

DAWKINS: What Francis was just saying about Genesis was, of course, a little private quarrel between him
and his Fundamentalist colleagues ...

COLLINS: It's not so private. It's rather public. [Laughs.]

DAWKINS: ... It would be unseemly for me to enter in except to suggest that he'd save himself an awful lot of
trouble if he just simply ceased to give them the time of day. Why bother with these clowns?

COLLINS: Richard, I think we don't do a service to dialogue between science and faith to characterize sincere
people by calling them names. That inspires an even more dug-in position. Atheists sometimes come across as a
bit arrogant in this regard, and characterizing faith as something only an idiot would attach themselves to is not
likely to help your case.

TIME: Dr. Collins, the Resurrection is an essential argument of Christian faith, but doesn't it, along with the
virgin birth and lesser miracles, fatally undermine the scientific method, which depends on the constancy of
natural laws?

COLLINS: If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God
on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous. If God made the
natural laws, why could he not violate them when it was a particularly significant moment for him to do so?
And if you accept the idea that Christ was also divine, which I do, then his Resurrection is not in itself a great
logical leap.

TIME: Doesn't the very notion of miracles throw off science?

(7 of 9)

COLLINS: Not at all. If you are in the camp I am, one place where science and faith could touch each other is
in the investigation of supposedly miraculous events.

DAWKINS: If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word
miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. All kinds of things may happen
which we by the lights of today's science would classify as a miracle just as medieval science might a Boeing
747. Francis keeps saying things like "From the perspective of a believer." Once you buy into the position of
faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific--really scientific--
credibility. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

COLLINS: Richard, I actually agree with the first part of what you said. But I would challenge the statement
that my scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. The difference is that my presumption of the
possibility of God and therefore the supernatural is not zero, and yours is.

TIME: Dr. Collins, you have described humanity's moral sense not only as a gift from God but as a signpost
that he exists.

COLLINS: There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years--some call it
sociobiology or evolutionary psychology--relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea
of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes. But if you
believe, and Richard has been articulate in this, that natural selection operates on the individual, not on a group,
then why would the individual risk his own DNA doing something selfless to help somebody in a way that
might diminish his chance of reproducing? Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they
share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we
admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An
extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas
chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes. We see less dramatic versions every day. Many of us think
these qualities may come from God--especially since justice and morality are two of the attributes we most
readily identify with God.

DAWKINS: Can I begin with an analogy? Most people understand that sexual lust has to do with propagating
genes. Copulation in nature tends to lead to reproduction and so to more genetic copies. But in modern society,
most copulations involve contraception, designed precisely to avoid reproduction. Altruism probably has origins
like those of lust. In our prehistoric past, we would have lived in extended families, surrounded by kin whose
interests we might have wanted to promote because they shared our genes. Now we live in big cities. We are not
among kin nor people who will ever reciprocate our good deeds. It doesn't matter. Just as people engaged in sex
with contraception are not aware of being motivated by a drive to have babies, it doesn't cross our mind that the
reason for do-gooding is based in the fact that our primitive ancestors lived in small groups. But that seems to
me to be a highly plausible account for where the desire for morality, the desire for goodness, comes from.

(8 of 9)
COLLINS: For you to argue that our noblest acts are a misfiring of Darwinian behavior does not do justice to
the sense we all have about the absolutes that are involved here of good and evil. Evolution may explain some
features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance. If it is solely an
evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil. But for me, it is much more than that.
The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible--not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a
God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-
developed sense of morality. What you've said implies that outside of the human mind, tuned by evolutionary
processes, good and evil have no meaning. Do you agree with that?

DAWKINS: Even the question you're asking has no meaning to me. Good and evil--I don't believe that there is
hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things
that happen and bad things that happen.

COLLINS: I think that is a fundamental difference between us. I'm glad we identified it.

TIME: Dr. Collins, I know you favor the opening of new stem-cell lines for experimentation. But doesn't the
fact that faith has caused some people to rule this out risk creating a perception that religion is preventing
science from saving lives?

COLLINS: Let me first say as a disclaimer that I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the
Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed
to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think
this can be a morally supportable approach.

TIME: But to the extent that a person argues on the basis of faith or Scripture rather than reason, how can
scientists respond?

COLLINS: Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component
of revelation. So such discussions between scientists and believers happen quite readily. But neither scientists
nor believers always embody the principles precisely. Scientists can have their judgment clouded by their
professional aspirations. And the pure truth of faith, which you can think of as this clear spiritual water, is
poured into rusty vessels called human beings, and so sometimes the benevolent principles of faith can get
distorted as positions are hardened.

DAWKINS: For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this
case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue
is, Are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they
deserve some kind of special moral treatment." Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but
usually does.

We slaughter nonhuman animals in factory farms, and they do have nervous systems and do suffer. People of
faith are not very interested in their suffering.

COLLINS: Do humans have a different moral significance than cows in general?

DAWKINS: Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

TIME: Do the two of you have any concluding thoughts?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-8,00.html#ixzz13NiMBDLP


(9 of 9)

COLLINS: I just would like to say that over more than a quarter-century as a scientist and a believer, I find
absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard in practically all of his conclusions about the
natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers
that science isn't able to provide about the natural world--the questions about why instead of the questions about
how. I'm interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way
compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.

DAWKINS: My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis. My mind is open to the most
wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else.
What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future,
it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we
started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I
thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a
worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian
gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If
there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any
theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

http://physics.about.com/b/2010/09/12/hawkinggod.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5367/1200

Science 22 May 1998:


Vol. 280. no. 5367, pp. 1200 - 1201 Prev | Table of Contents | Next
DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5367.1200

Association Affairs
Also see the archival list of the Essays on Science and Society.

ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY:


Science and Morality
Edward Teller

Edward Teller is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. A physicist born in Hungary, he is most
widely known for his contributions to the first demonstration of thermonuclear energy; in addition, he has
furthered our knowledge about quantum theory, molecular physics, and astrophysics.

What is true? What is right? What is beautiful? Science considers what is true, starting
out with almost unimaginable ideas (The earth is moving! The future is
unpredictable!). The job is to understand these ideas and fit them into a broad and
logical picture of the universe. Politics considers what is right. This requires broad
understanding and eventual consensus of points of view that often appear
incompatible. Art is the development of what is beautiful--whether through words, a
musical note, or architecture.

Truth, morality, beauty. It has been humanity's persistent hope that these three ideals
should be consistent with each other. Yet successful activities in science, politics, and
art diverge greatly, and I believe the three activities can be pursued initially without
regard to each other, or without reconciling the possible conflicts that may arise.
Today there is perceived to be a strong contradiction between the results of science and the requirements of
morality; for instance, the application of science has led to the development of nuclear weapons, while
international morality seems to demand that such results never be applied--and that research leading to them
should be stopped. I hold a position radically different from the general point of view, believing that
contradiction and uncertainty should be embraced.

Contradiction and uncertainty. Niels Bohr loved contradictions. He would not tolerate the idea that quantum
mechanics might some day supersede classical physics. For Bohr, classical physics had to remain in permanent
contradiction to quantum mechanics and the tensions between them retained as a part of science. In the same
way, the impacts of science, politics, and art must remain independent. We must learn to live with
contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding. The same applies to uncertainty.

According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, only probabilistic predictions can be made about the future.
Furthermore, small events can have important consequences. An everyday example is weather forecasting. It is
fairly successful for predictions up to 5 days ahead, but if you double that period the predictions are no longer
accurate. It is not clear whether long-range predictions are forever excluded, but the example does illustrate that
small causes can have significant effects.

This situation has an obvious analogy in free will. In a completely deterministic


world, what we know as free will in humans is reduced to a mere illusion. I may
not know that my actions are predetermined in some complicated configuration of my molecules, and that my
decisions are nothing more than the realization of what has been inherent in the configuration of electrons.
According to quantum mechanics, we cannot exclude the possibility that free will is a part of the process by
which the future is created. We can think about the creation of the world as incomplete and human beings,
indeed all living beings, as making choices left open to probability.

One may argue that this notion is fantastic. Indeed, Einstein firmly believed in causality, and rejected the
relevant part of quantum mechanics. (His famous statement is that, while God can rule the world by any set of
laws, "God does not play dice with the universe.") Attempts have been made to add laws to quantum mechanics
to eliminate uncertainty. Such attempts have not only been unsuccessful; they have not even appeared to lead to
any interesting results.

Personal history. Looking back at my own work, my major activities have been suspended between science and
politics. This was not premeditated--my actions and answers developed from the unavoidable situations in
which American science obtained an important influence on world politics. But, upon thinking back, I find that
I acted as though I had been convinced from the very beginning of the unavoidable separation of scientific and
political decisions.

There was one major decision in my life that seems to have made a difference on a large scale. That was the
advice I gave in 1949 about pursuing work on the hydrogen bomb. In August 1949 the Soviets tested their first
atomic bomb. Four years earlier, work in the United States on the hydrogen bomb had been discontinued. I had
been engaged in one aspect of that project--the problem of how the energy of an atomic bomb could be used to
produce nuclear reactions involving the simplest atoms, that is, hydrogen atoms, to release energy in a way
analogous to what happens in the sun and stars. What a person works on with some diligence he does not like to
discontinue, and I had two reasons to feel disappointment on leaving the work incomplete. One was my firm
belief that the pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of human capabilities are intrinsically worthwhile. I
could provide valid arguments to support this conviction, yet they would fail to explain the devotion I felt for
scientific and technical progress. The second reason was my worry of what might result if the Soviets got too
far ahead of us in military technology.

I have long been accused of criticizing communism. By age 11 I had had a none-too-sweet taste of communism
in Hungary. This left me with a dislike for it but with no firm conviction that communism was wrong--or that
the specific Russian brand had to be opposed. Indeed, Hungary's fascist government of the 1920s was much
more than disagreeable. I left Hungary to study in Germany, and around 1930 I had discussions with two close
friends. One was Carl Frederick von Weizsäcker, elder brother of a later president of West Germany and a most
determined opponent of communism. The other was an excellent Russian physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Lev
Landau. He could not imagine anything more ridiculous than a capitalist government. I listened to both, but my
final decision was influenced by something more important than words.

My second published paper in physics was a joint undertaking with my good Hungarian friend, L. Tisza.
Shortly after our collaboration in Leipzig he was arrested as a communist by the Hungarian fascist government.
He had lost his chance of obtaining an academic position and I referred him, with my strong recommendation,
to my friend Lev Landau in Kharkov, Ukraine. A few years later Tisza visited me in the United States. He no
longer had any sympathy with communism. Lev Landau had been arrested in the Soviet Union as a capitalist
spy! The implication of this event was for me even more defining than the Hitler-Stalin Pact. By 1940, I had
every reason to dislike and distrust the Soviets.

With the advent of the Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, it become clear that the communists were catching up in
nuclear technology. Would they develop the hydrogen bomb and become unbeatable in every military respect?
Ernest Lawrence, the pioneer in nuclear energy and its applications, visited me in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
He wanted to know about the hydrogen bomb and then invited me to accompany him to his plane that left the
next morning from Albuquerque. Preparing for bed that evening, he washed his shirt (the newly invented drip-
dry shirt) and told me, "In order to use your arguments, you will have to do a lot of traveling. This is now much
easier, because as you see, you don't have to take so many shirts along." This was, perhaps, not the most logical
argument he could have used to encourage my entrance into politics, but it was most effective in convincing me
that he meant what he said.

Even so, I did not proceed to argue for the hydrogen bomb in Washington. I was a physicist, not a politician. I
was not a member of the advisory body that had told the president not to proceed with the development of the
hydrogen weapons. That unanimous recommendation came from great scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer
and my very good friend Enrico Fermi. Not much later, in a private conversation, Enrico told me, "Go ahead
with the work on the hydrogen bomb, if you must. I hope you will not succeed."

In the end, I did give my advice to two important people. One was the Democratic senator Brian McMahon to
whom the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) reported. The other was Admiral Lewis Strauss who
subsequently became AEC chairman. When asked my opinion, I told them, "I believe that the hydrogen bomb is
feasible, may be effective, and the Soviets may soon develop it."

My advice reached President Truman, who decided to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. He
did so even though only one of those familiar with the hydrogen project made this recommendation. Whether he
would have come to the same conclusion in the face of unanimous opposition by the experts, I, of course, do not
know. What I do know is that I ended up with an obligation to work on the hydrogen bomb, which I did with
half my heart--the smaller half. I wanted to do it, but my heart's bigger half was with pure science, which I was
far too busy to pursue in what was then the prime of my life.

Several decades later the cold war ended with an American victory. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that
my advice to give a positive answer to the question of the hydrogen bomb played a significant role in
determining this outcome. Would I have behaved the same way if purely scientific interests had not led me to
make calculations about the energy production in the sun? Would I have given the same answer if my friend
Tisza had not told me about the persecution of Lev Landau in the Soviet Union? At any rate, my decision was
not a momentary exercise of free will, but a combination of many reasons and many choices, some of which
were an expression of my "free will."

I am still asked on occasion whether I am not sorry for having invented such a terrible thing as the hydrogen
bomb. The answer is, I am not. On the occasion of my 90th birthday, I received a letter signed by four Russian
colleagues whom I had visited in their weapons laboratory Chelyabinsk.* The letter contains a paragraph
obviously referring to the hydrogen bomb. Their remarks make me very happy.

The developed nations have paid a great price in terms of their national resources in their strenuous effort to
protect life, to safeguard peace. They displayed sufficient wisdom to overcome the traditional inclinations
toward military solutions of world problems. This has happened for the first time. And it has provided an
abiding pattern to apply new, peaceful and joint approaches to solving the most acute world problems. For the
first time in world history, the most powerful weapons ever created were not used. Instead, they became an
instrument of human experience, the means of great discoveries, the tool of deep penetration into the secrets of
Nature. We trust, it will henceforth and forever take its deserved place among the sophisticated tools of
enlightened generations.

The author is at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94306, USA.

*Authors of the letter are: academician Evgeny J. Avrorin, director; academician Boris V. Litvinov, chief
designer; Professor Vadim A. Simonenko, deputy scientific director; Professor Georgly N. Rykovanov, physics
department head.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html

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Toward a Science of Morality


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Over the past couple of months, I seem to have conducted a public experiment in the manufacture of
philosophical and scientific ideas. In February, I spoke at the 2010 TED conference, where I briefly argued that
morality should be considered an undeveloped branch of science. Normally, when one speaks at a conference
the resulting feedback amounts to a few conversations in the lobby during a coffee break. I had these
conversations at TED, of course, and they were useful. As luck would have it, however, my talk was broadcast
on the internet just as I was finishing a book on the relationship between science and human values, and this
produced a blizzard of criticism at a moment when criticism could actually do me some good. I made a few
efforts to direct and focus this feedback, and the result has been that for the last few weeks I have had literally
thousands of people commenting upon my work, more or less in real time. I can't say that the experience has
been entirely pleasant, but there is no question that it has been useful.

If nothing else, the response to my TED talk proves that many smart people believe that something in the last
few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from making cross-cultural moral judgments -- or moral
judgments at all. Thousands of highly educated men and women have now written to inform me that morality is
a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions and, therefore, nonsensical, and that
concepts like "well-being" and "misery" are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural
influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them. Many people also claim that a scientific
foundation for morality would serve no purpose, because we can combat human evil while knowing that our
notions of "good" and "evil" are unwarranted. It is always amusing when these same people then hesitate to
condemn specific instances of patently abominable behavior. I don't think one has fully enjoyed the life of the
mind until one has seen a celebrated scholar defend the "contextual" legitimacy of the burqa, or a practice like
female genital excision, a mere thirty seconds after announcing that his moral relativism does nothing to
diminish his commitment to making the world a better place. Given my experience as a critic of religion, I must
say that it has been disconcerting to see the caricature of the over-educated, atheistic moral nihilist regularly
appearing in my inbox and on the blogs. I sincerely hope that people like Rick Warren have not been paying
attention.

First, a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the
academic literature on moral philosophy. There are two reasons why I haven't done this: First, while I have read
a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the
rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical
implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind. Second, I am convinced that every
appearance of terms like "metaethics," "deontology," "noncognitivism," "anti-realism," "emotivism," and the
like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like
TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful.
Few things would make this goal harder to achieve than for me to speak and write like an academic philosopher.
Of course, some discussion of philosophy is unavoidable, but my approach is to generally make an end run
around many of the views and conceptual distinctions that make academic discussions of human values so
inaccessible. While this is guaranteed to annoy a few people, the prominent philosophers I've consulted seem to
understand and support what I am doing.

Many people believe that the problem with talking about moral truth, or with asserting that there is a necessary
connection between morality and well-being, is that concepts like "morality" and "well-being" must be defined
with reference to specific goals and other criteria -- and nothing prevents people from disagreeing about these
definitions. I might claim that morality is really about maximizing well-being and that well-being entails a wide
range of cognitive/emotional virtues and wholesome pleasures, but someone else will be free to say that
morality depends upon worshipping the gods of the Aztecs and that well-being entails always having a terrified
person locked in one's basement, waiting to be sacrificed.

Of course, goals and conceptual definitions matter. But this holds for all phenomena and for every method we
use to study them. My father, for instance, has been dead for 25 years. What do I mean by "dead"? Do I mean
"dead" with reference to specific goals? Well, if you must, yes -- goals like respiration, energy metabolism,
responsiveness to stimuli, etc. The definition of "life" remains, to this day, difficult to pin down. Does this mean
we can't study life scientifically? No. The science of biology thrives despite such ambiguities. The concept of
"health" is looser still: it, too, must be defined with reference to specific goals -- not suffering chronic pain, not
always vomiting, etc. -- and these goals are continually changing. Our notion of "health" may one day be
defined by goals that we cannot currently entertain with a straight face (like the goal of spontaneously
regenerating a lost limb). Does this mean we can't study health scientifically?

I wonder if there is anyone on earth who would be tempted to attack the philosophical underpinnings of
medicine with questions like: "What about all the people who don't share your goal of avoiding disease and
early death? Who is to say that living a long life free of pain and debilitating illness is 'healthy'? What makes
you think that you could convince a person suffering from fatal gangrene that he is not as healthy you are?" And
yet, these are precisely the kinds of objections I face when I speak about morality in terms of human and animal
well-being. Is it possible to voice such doubts in human speech? Yes. But that doesn't mean we should take
them seriously.

The physicist Sean Carroll has written another essay in response to my TED talk, further arguing that one
cannot derive "ought" from "is" and that a science of morality is impossible. Carroll's essay is worth reading on
its own, but in the hopes of making the difference between our views as clear as possible, I have I excerpted his
main points in their entirety, and followed them with my comments.

Carroll begins:

I want to start with a hopefully non-controversial statement about what science is. Namely: science deals with
empirical reality -- with what happens in the world. (I.e. what "is.") Two scientific theories may disagree in
some way -- "the observable universe began in a hot, dense state about 14 billion years ago" vs. "the universe
has always existed at more or less the present temperature and density." Whenever that happens, we can always
imagine some sort of experiment or observation that would let us decide which one is right. The observation
might be difficult or even impossible to carry out, but we can always imagine what it would entail. (Statements
about the contents of the Great Library of Alexandria are perfectly empirical, even if we can't actually go back
in time to look at them.) If you have a dispute that cannot in principle be decided by recourse to observable
facts about the world, your dispute is not one of science.

I agree with Carroll's definition of "science" here -- though some of his subsequent thinking seems to depend on
a more restrictive definition. I especially like his point about the Library of Alexandria. Clearly, any claims we
make about the contents of this library will be right or wrong, and the truth does not depend on our being able to
verify such claims. We can also dismiss an infinite number of claims as obviously wrong without getting access
to the relevant data. We know, for instance, that this library did not contain a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
When I speak about there being facts about human and animal well-being, this includes facts that are
quantifiable and conventionally "scientific" (e.g., facts about human neurophysiology) as well as facts that we
will never have access to (e.g., how happy would I have been if I had decided not to spend the evening
responding to Carroll's essay?).

With that in mind, let's think about morality. What would it mean to have a science of morality? I think it would
look have to look something like this:

Human beings seek to maximize something we choose to call "well-being" (although it might be called "utility"
or "happiness" or "flourishing" or something else). The amount of well-being in a single person is a function of
what is happening in that person's brain, or at least in their body as a whole. That function can in principle be
empirically measured. The total amount of well-being is a function of what happens in all of the human brains
in the world, which again can in principle be measured. The job of morality is to specify what that function is,
measure it, and derive conditions in the world under which it is maximized.

Good enough. I would simply broaden picture to include animals and any other conscious systems that can
experience gradations of happiness and suffering -- and weight them to the degree that they can experience such
states. Do monkeys suffer more than mice from medical experiments? (The answer is almost surely "yes.") If
so, all other things being equal, it is worse to run experiments on monkeys than on mice.

Skipping ahead a little, Carroll makes the following claims:

I want to argue that this program is simply not possible. I'm not saying it would be difficult -- I'm saying it's
impossible in principle. Morality is not part of science, however much we would like it to be. There are a large
number of arguments one could advance for in support of this claim, but I'll stick to three.

1. There's no single definition of well-being.

People disagree about what really constitutes "well-being" (or whatever it is you think they should be
maximizing). This is so perfectly obvious, it's hard to know what to defend. Anyone who wants to argue that we
can ground morality on a scientific basis has to jump through some hoops.

First, there are people who aren't that interested in universal well-being at all. There are serial killers, and
sociopaths, and racial supremacists. We don't need to go to extremes, but the extremes certainly exist. The
natural response is to simply separate out such people; "we need not worry about them," in Harris's formulation.
Surely all right-thinking people agree on the primacy of well-being. But how do we draw the line between right-
thinkers and the rest? Where precisely do we draw the line, in terms of measurable quantities? And why there?
On which side of the line do we place people who believe that it's right to torture prisoners for the greater good,
or who cherish the rituals of fraternity hazing? Most particularly, what experiment can we imagine doing that
tells us where to draw the line?

This is where Carroll and I begin to diverge. He also seems to be conflating two separate issues: (1) He is
asking how we can determine who is worth listening to. This is a reasonable question, but there is no way
Carroll could answer it "precisely" and "in terms of measurable quantities" for his own field, much less for a
nascent science of morality. How flakey can a Nobel laureate in physics become before he is no longer worth
listening to -- indeed, how many crazy things could he say about matter and space-time before he would no
longer even count as a "physicist"? Hard question. But I doubt Carroll means to suggest that we must answer
such questions experimentally. I assume that he can make a reasonably principled decision about whom to put
on a panel at the next conference on Dark Matter without finding a neuroscientist from the year 2075 to scan
every candidate's brain and assess it for neurophysiological competence in the relevant physics. (2) Carroll also
seems worried about how we can assess people's claims regarding their inner lives, given that questions about
morality and well-being necessarily refer to the character subjective experience. He even asserts that there is no
possible experiment that could allow us to define well-being or to resolve differences of opinion about it. Would
he say this for other mental phenomena as well? What about depression? Is it impossible to define or study this
state of mind empirically? I'm not sure how deep Carroll's skepticism runs, but much of psychology now
appears to hang in the balance. Of course, Carroll might want to say that the problem of access to the data of
first-person experience is what makes psychology often seem to teeter at the margin of science. He might have a
point -- but, if so, it would be a methodological point, not a point about the limits of scientific truth. Remember,
the science of determining exactly which books were in the Library of Alexandria is stillborn and going
absolutely nowhere, methodologically speaking. But this doesn't mean we can't be absolutely right or absolutely
wrong about the relevant facts.

As for there being many people who "aren't interested in universal well-being," I would say that more or less
everyone, myself included, is insufficiently interested in it. But we are seeking well-being in some form
nonetheless, whatever we choose to call it and however narrowly we draw the circle of our moral concern.
Clearly many of us (most? all?) are not doing as good a job of this as we might. In fact, if science did nothing
more than help people align their own selfish priorities -- so that those who really wanted to lose weight, or
spend more time with their kids, or learn another language, etc., could get what they most desired -- it would
surely increase the well-being of humanity. And this is to say nothing of what would happen if science could
reveal depths of well-being that most of us are unaware of, thereby changing our priorities.

Carroll continues:

More importantly, it's equally obvious that even right-thinking people don't really agree about well-being, or
how to maximize it. Here, the response is apparently that most people are simply confused (which is on the face
of it perfectly plausible). Deep down they all want the same thing, but they misunderstand how to get there;
hippies who believe in giving peace a chance and stern parents who believe in corporal punishment for their
kids all want to maximize human flourishing, they simply haven't been given the proper scientific resources for
attaining that goal.

While I'm happy to admit that people are morally confused, I see no evidence whatsoever that they all
ultimately want the same thing. The position doesn't even seem coherent. Is it a priori necessary that people
ultimately have the same idea about human well-being, or is it a contingent truth about actual human beings?
Can we not even imagine people with fundamentally incompatible views of the good? (I think I can.) And if we
can, what is the reason for the cosmic accident that we all happen to agree? And if that happy cosmic accident
exists, it's still merely an empirical fact; by itself, the existence of universal agreement on what is good doesn't
necessarily imply that it is good. We could all be mistaken, after all.

In the real world, right-thinking people have a lot of overlap in how they think of well-being. But the overlap
isn't exact, nor is the lack of agreement wholly a matter of misunderstanding. When two people have different
views about what constitutes real well-being, there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove one
of them to be wrong. It doesn't mean that moral conversation is impossible, just that it's not science.

Imagine that we had a machine that could produce any possible brain state (this would be the ultimate virtual
reality device, more or less like the Matrix). This machine would allow every human being to sample all
available mental states (some would not be available without changing a person's brain, however). I think we
can ignore most of the philosophical and scientific wrinkles here and simply stipulate that it is possible, or even
likely, that given an infinite amount of time and perfect recall, we would agree about a range of brain states that
qualify as good (as in, "Wow, that was so great, I can't imagine anything better") and bad (as in, "I'd rather die
than experience that again.") There might be controversy over specific states -- after all, some people do like
Marmite -- but being members of the same species with very similar brains, we are likely to converge to
remarkable degree. I might find that brain state X242358B is my absolute favorite, and Carroll might prefer
X979793L, but the fear that we will radically diverge in our judgments about what constitutes well-being seems
pretty far-fetched. The possibility that my hell will be someone else's heaven, and vice versa, seems hardly
worth considering. And yet, whatever divergence did occur must also depend on facts about the brains in
question.

Even if there were ten thousand different ways for groups of human beings to maximally thrive (all trade-offs
and personal idiosyncrasies considered), there will be many ways for them not to thrive -- and the difference
between luxuriating on a peak of the moral landscape and languishing in a valley of internecine horror will
translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.

2. It's not self-evident that maximizing well-being, however defined, is the proper goal of morality.

Maximizing a hypothetical well-being function is an effective way of thinking about many possible approaches
to morality. But not every possible approach. In particular, it's a manifestly consequentialist idea -- what matters
is the outcome, in terms of particular mental states of conscious beings. There are certainly non-consequentialist
ways of approaching morality; in deontological theories, the moral good inheres in actions themselves, not in
their ultimate consequences. Now, you may think that you have good arguments in favor of consequentialism.
But are those truly empirical arguments? You're going to get bored of me asking this, but: what is the
experiment I could do that would distinguish which was true, consequentialism or deontological ethics?

It is true that many people believe that "there are non-consequentialist ways of approaching morality," but I
think that they are wrong. In my experience, when you scratch the surface on any deontologist, you find a
consequentialist just waiting to get out. For instance, I think that Kant's Categorical Imperative only qualifies as
a rational standard of morality given the assumption that it will be generally beneficial (as J.S. Mill pointed out
at the beginning of Utilitarianism). Ditto for religious morality. This is a logical point before it is an empirical
one, but yes, I do think we might be able to design experiments to show that people are concerned about
consequences, even when they say they aren't. While my view of the moral landscape can be classed as
"consequentialist," this term comes with fair amount of philosophical baggage, and there are many traditional
quibbles with consequentialism that do not apply to my account of morality.

The emphasis on the mental states of conscious beings, while seemingly natural, opens up many cans of worms
that moral philosophers have tussled with for centuries. Imagine that we are able to quantify precisely some
particular mental state that corresponds to a high level of well-being; the exact configuration of neuronal
activity in which someone is healthy, in love, and enjoying a hot-fudge sundae. Clearly achieving such a state is
a moral good. Now imagine that we achieve it by drugging a person so that they are unconscious, and then
manipulating their central nervous system at a neuron-by-neuron level, until they share exactly the mental state
of the conscious person in those conditions. Is that an equal moral good to the conditions in which they actually
are healthy and in love etc.? If we make everyone happy by means of drugs or hypnosis or direct electronic
stimulation of their pleasure centers, have we achieved moral perfection? If not, then clearly our definition of
"well-being" is not simply a function of conscious mental states. And if not, what is it?

Clearly, we want our conscious states to track the reality of our lives. We want to be happy, but we want to be
happy for the right reasons. And if we occasionally want to uncouple our mental state from our actual situation
in the world (e.g. by taking powerful drugs, drinking great quantities of alcohol, etc.) we don't want this to
render us permanently delusional, however pleasant such delusion might be. There are some obvious reasons
for this: We need our conscious states to be well synched to their material context, otherwise we forget to eat,
ramble incoherently, and step in front of speeding cars. And most of what we value in our lives, like our
connection to other people, is predicated on our being in touch with external reality and with the probable
consequences of our behavior. Yes, I might be able to take a drug that would make me feel good while watching
my young daughter drown in the bathtub -- but I am perfectly capable of judging that I do not want to take such
a drug out of concern for my (and her) well-being. Such a judgment still takes place in my conscious mind, with
reference to other conscious mental states (both real and imagined). For instance, my judgment that it would be
wrong to take such a drug has a lot to do with the horror I would expect to feel upon discovering that I had
happily let my daughter drown. Of course, I am also thinking about the potential happiness that my daughter's
death would diminish -- her own, obviously, but also that of everyone who is now, and would have been, close
to her. There is nothing mysterious about this: Morality still relates to consciousness and to its changes, both
actual and potential. What else could it relate to?

3. There's no simple way to aggregate well-being over different individuals.

The big problems of morality, to state the obvious, come about because the interests of different individuals
come into conflict. Even if we somehow agreed perfectly on what constituted the well-being of a single
individual -- or, more properly, even if we somehow "objectively measured" well-being, whatever that is
supposed to mean -- it would generically be the case that no achievable configuration of the world provided
perfect happiness for everyone. People will typically have to sacrifice for the good of others; by paying taxes, if
nothing else.

So how are we to decide how to balance one person's well-being against another's? To do this scientifically, we
need to be able to make sense of statements like "this person's well-being is precisely 0.762 times the well-being
of that person." What is that supposed to mean? Do we measure well-being on a linear scale, or is it
logarithmic? Do we simply add up the well-beings of every individual person, or do we take the average? And
would that be the arithmetic mean, or the geometric mean? Do more individuals with equal well-being each
mean greater well-being overall? Who counts as an individual? Do embryos? What about dolphins? Artificially
intelligent robots?

These are all good questions: Some admit of straightforward answers; others plunge us into moral paradox;
none, however, proves that there are no right or wrong answers to questions of human and animal wellbeing. I
discuss these issues at some length in my forthcoming book. For those who want to confront how difficult it can
be to think about aggregating human well-being, I recommend Derek Parfit's masterpiece, Reasons and
Persons. I do not claim to have solved all the puzzles raised by Parfit -- but I don't think we have to.

Practically speaking, I think we have some very useful intuitions on this front. We care more about creatures
that can experience a greater range of suffering and happiness -- and we are right to, because suffering and
happiness (defined in the widest possible sense) are all that can be cared about. Are all animal lives equivalent?
No. Are all human lives equivalent? No. I have no problem admitting that certain people's lives are more
valuable than mine -- I need only imagine a person whose death would create much greater suffering and
foreclose much greater happiness. However, it also seems quite rational for us to collectively act as though all
human lives were equally valuable. Hence, most of our laws and social institutions generally ignore differences
between people. I suspect that this is a very good thing. Of course, I could be wrong about this -- and that is
precisely the point. If we didn't behave this way, our world would be different, and these differences would
either affect the totality of human well-being, or they wouldn't. Once again, there are answers to such questions,
whether we can ever answer them in practice.

I believe that covers the heart of Carroll's argument. Skipping ahead to final point:

And finally: pointing out that people disagree about morality is not analogous to the fact that some people are
radical epistemic skeptics who don't agree with ordinary science. That's mixing levels of description. It is true
that the tools of science cannot be used to change the mind of a committed solipsist who believes they are a
brain in a vat, manipulated by an evil demon; yet, those of us who accept the presuppositions of empirical
science are able to make progress. But here we are concerned only with people who have agreed to buy into all
the epistemic assumptions of reality-based science -- they still disagree about morality. That's the problem. If
the project of deriving ought from is were realistic, disagreements about morality would be precisely analogous
to disagreements about the state of the universe fourteen billion years ago. There would be things we could
imagine observing about the universe that would enable us to decide which position was right. But as far as
morality is concerned, there aren't.
The biologist P.Z. Myers has thrown his lot in with Carroll on a similar point:
I don't think Harris's criterion -- that we can use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals -- is
valid. We can't... Harris is smuggling in an unscientific prior in his category of well-being.

It seems to me that these two quotations converge on the core issue. Of course, it is easy enough for Carroll to
assert that moral skepticism isn't analogous to scientific skepticism, but I think he is simply wrong about this.
To use Myer's formulation, we must smuggle in an "unscientific prior" to justify any branch of science. If this
isn't a problem for physics, why should it be a problem of a science of morality? Can we prove, without
recourse to any prior assumptions, that our definition of "physics" is the right one? No, because our standards of
proof will be built into any definition we provide. We might observe that standard physics is better at predicting
the behavior of matter than Voodoo "physics" is, but what could we say to a "physicist" whose only goal is to
appease the spiritual hunger of his dead ancestors? Here, we seem to reach an impasse. And yet, no one thinks
that the failure of standard physics to silence all possible dissent has any significance whatsoever; why should
we demand more of a science of morality?

So, while it is possible to say that one can't move from "is" to "ought," we should be honest about how we get to
"is" in the first place. Scientific "is" statements rest on implicit "oughts" all the way down. When I say, "Water
is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen," I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what
if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple
experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor
doesn't share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence?
What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right
question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place?

So it is with the linkage between morality and well-being: To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally
constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is
good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we
must first assume that a rational understanding of the universe is good. We need not enter either of these
philosophical cul-de-sacs.

Carroll and Myers both believe nothing much turns on whether we find a universal foundation for morality. I
disagree. Granted, the practical effects cannot be our reason for linking morality and science -- we have to form
our beliefs about reality based on what we think is actually true. But the consequences of moral relativism have
been disastrous. And science's failure to address the most important questions in human life has made it seem
like little more than an incubator for technology. It has also given faith-based religion -- that great engine of
ignorance and bigotry -- a nearly uncontested claim to being the only source of moral wisdom. This has been
bad for everyone. What is more, it has been unnecessary -- because we can speak about the well-being of
conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science. I think it is time we tried.
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/09/12/is-morality-natural.html

Is Morality Natural?
Science is tracing the biological roots of our intuitive sense of what is
right and what is wrong.
On Jan. 2, 2007, a large woman entered the Cango caves of South Africa and wedged herself into the only exit,
trapping 22 tourists behind her. Digging her out appeared not to be an option, which left a terrible moral
dilemma: take the woman's life to free the 22, or leave her to die along with her fellow tourists? It is a dilemma
because it pushes us to decide between saving many and using someone else's life as a means to this end.

A new science of morality is beginning to uncover how people in different cultures judge such dilemmas,
identifying the factors that influence judgment and the actions that follow. These studies suggest that nature
provides a universal moral grammar, designed to generate fast, intuitive and universally held judgments of right
and wrong.

Consider yourself a subject in an experiment on the Moral Sense Test (moral .wjh.harvard.edu), a site
presenting dilemmas such as these: Would you drive your boat faster to save the lives of five drowning people
knowing that a person in your boat will fall off and drown? Would you fail to give a drug to a terminally ill
patient knowing that he will die without it but his organs could be used to save three other patients? Would you
suffocate your screaming baby if it would prevent enemy soldiers from finding and killing you both, along with
the eight others hiding out with you?

These are moral dilemmas because there are no clear-cut answers that obligate duty to one party over the other.
What is remarkable is that people with different backgrounds, including atheists and those of faith, respond in
the same way. Moreover, when asked why they make their decisions, most people are clueless, but confident in
their choices. In these cases, most people say that it is acceptable to speed up the boat, but iffy to omit care to
the patient. Although many people initially respond that it is unthinkable to suffocate the baby, they later often
say that it is permissible in that situation.

Why these patterns? Cases 1 and 3 require actions, case 2 the omission of an action. All three cases result in a
clear win in terms of lives saved: five, three and nine over one death. In cases 1 and 2, one person is made
worse off, whereas in case 3, the baby dies no matter what choice is made. In case 1, the harm to the one arises
as a side effect. The goal is to save five, not drop off and drown the one. In case 2, the goal is to end the life of
the patient, as he is the means to saving three others.

(Page 2 of 2)
Surprisingly, our emotions do not appear to have much effect on our judgments about right and wrong in these
moral dilemmas. A study of individuals with damage to an area of the brain that links decision-making and
emotion found that when faced with a series of moral dilemmas, these patients generally made the same moral
judgments as most people. This suggests that emotions are not necessary for such judgments.

Our emotions do, however, have a great impact on our actions. How we judge what is right or wrong may well
be different from what we chose to do in a situation. For example, we may all agree that it is morally
permissible to kill one person in order to save the lives of many. When it comes to actually taking someone's
life, however, most of us would turn limp.

Another example of the role that emotions have on our actions comes from recent studies of psychopaths. Take
the villains portrayed by Heath Ledger and Javier Bardem, respectively, in "The Dark Knight" and "No Country
for Old Men." Do such psychopathic killers know right from wrong? New, preliminary studies suggest that
clinically diagnosed psychopaths do recognize right from wrong, as evidenced by their responses to moral
dilemmas. What is different is their behavior. While all of us can become angry and have violent thoughts, our
emotions typically restrain our violent tendencies. In contrast, psychopaths are free of such emotional restraints.
They act violently even though they know it is wrong because they are without remorse, guilt or shame.

These studies suggest that nature handed us a moral grammar that fuels our intuitive judgments of right and
wrong. Emotions play their strongest role in influencing our actions—reinforcing acts of virtue and punishing
acts of vice. We generally do not commit wrong acts because we recognize that they are wrong and because we
do not want to pay the emotional price of doing something we perceive as wrong.

So, would you have killed the large woman stuck in the cave or allowed her to die with the others? If you are
like other subjects taking the moral sense test, you would say that it is permissible to take her life because you
don't make her worse off. But could you really do it? Fortunately, there was a simpler solution: she was popped
out with paraffin after 10 hours.
http://www.dare-to-dream.us/archives/2008/01/emotion_defines_morality_culture_sets_priorities.php

Emotion Defines Morality; Culture Sets Priorities


By
DaveMSW
on January 21, 2008 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Man will become better when you show him what he is like." - Anton Chekhov

Our modern culture highly values our rationality. Genius, seemingly defined as those with great
accomplishment, is highly celebrated by our culture, if not by income, at least by notoriety. Our emotionality,
on the other hand, seems to get attributed with causing many of the problems our culture finds criminal. Rage is
said to have led to many murders, domestic abuse, child abuse and greed to theft and fraud for a couple of
examples. Combining genius and emotional disturbance however seems to characterize those that gain infamy
in the history books. Hitler and Stalin come to mind.

We are part rational, part emotional. From my clinical experience, we are unable to separate the two effectively.
In other words, it is impossible for humans to be objective. Our emotionality is an intrinsic part of our existence.
Last Sunday, there was a facinating article in the New York Times Magazine title "The Moral Instinct". It turns
out that even our morality has an emotional basis.

New York Times


"When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find
that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances
and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of
fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a
group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to
defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and
sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five -- harm,
fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity -- and suggests that they are the primary colors of
our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral
intuitions of people in our own culture.

[..]The five spheres are good candidates for a periodic table of the moral sense not only because they are
ubiquitous but also because they appear to have deep evolutionary roots. The impulse to avoid harm, which
gives trolley ponderers the willies when they consider throwing a man off a bridge, can also be found in rhesus
monkeys, who go hungry rather than pull a chain that delivers food to them and a shock to another monkey.
Respect for authority is clearly related to the pecking orders of dominance and appeasement that are widespread
in the animal kingdom. The purity-defilement contrast taps the emotion of disgust that is triggered by potential
disease vectors like bodily effluvia, decaying flesh and unconventional forms of meat, and by risky sexual
practices like incest.

The other two moralized spheres match up with the classic examples of how altruism can evolve that were
worked out by sociobiologists in the 1960s and 1970s and made famous by Richard Dawkins in his book "The
Selfish Gene." Fairness is very close to what scientists call reciprocal altruism, where a willingness to be nice to
others can evolve as long as the favor helps the recipient more than it costs the giver and the recipient returns
the favor when fortunes reverse. The analysis makes it sound as if reciprocal altruism comes out of a robotlike
calculation, but in fact Robert Trivers, the biologist who devised the theory, argued that it is implemented in the
brain as a suite of moral emotions. Sympathy prompts a person to offer the first favor, particularly to someone
in need for whom it would go the furthest. Anger protects a person against cheaters who accept a favor without
reciprocating, by impelling him to punish the ingrate or sever the relationship. Gratitude impels a beneficiary to
reward those who helped him in the past. Guilt prompts a cheater in danger of being found out to repair the
relationship by redressing the misdeed and advertising that he will behave better in the future (consistent with
Mencken's definition of conscience as "the inner voice which warns us that someone might be looking"). Many
experiments on who helps whom, who likes whom, who punishes whom and who feels guilty about what have
confirmed these predictions.

Community, the very different emotion that prompts people to share and sacrifice without an expectation of
payback, may be rooted in nepotistic altruism, the empathy and solidarity we feel toward our relatives (and
which evolved because any gene that pushed an organism to aid a relative would have helped copies of itself
sitting inside that relative). In humans, of course, communal feelings can be lavished on nonrelatives as well.
Sometimes it pays people (in an evolutionary sense) to love their companions because their interests are yoked,
like spouses with common children, in-laws with common relatives, friends with common tastes or allies with
common enemies. And sometimes it doesn't pay them at all, but their kinship-detectors have been tricked into
treating their groupmates as if they were relatives by tactics like kinship metaphors (blood brothers, fraternities,
the fatherland), origin myths, communal meals and other bonding rituals.

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five
moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought
in to moralize which area of social life -- sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on -- depends on the
culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize
that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral
obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of
nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity),
the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and
government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the
world this is incomprehensible -- what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?"

"The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the
United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or
racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a
large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing
down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It's
not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and
unprincipled.

[..]One is the prevalence of nonzero-sum games. In many arenas of life, two parties are objectively better off if
they both act in a nonselfish way than if each of them acts selfishly. You and I are both better off if we share
our surpluses, rescue each other's children in danger and refrain from shooting at each other, compared with
hoarding our surpluses while they rot, letting the other's child drown while we file our nails or feuding like the
Hatfields and McCoys. Granted, I might be a bit better off if I acted selfishly at your expense and you played
the sucker, but the same is true for you with me, so if each of us tried for these advantages, we'd both end up
worse off. Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that
the state we should aim for is the one in which we both are unselfish. These spreadsheet projections are not
quirks of brain wiring, nor are they dictated by a supernatural power; they are in the nature of things.

The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric
vantage point of the reasoner. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me -- to get off my foot, or tell me
the time or not run me over with your car -- then I can't do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours
(say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously. Unless I am Galactic
Overlord, I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can't act as if my interests
are special just because I'm me and you're not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on
is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.

Not coincidentally, the core of this idea -- the interchangeability of perspectives -- keeps reappearing in history's
best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the Golden Rule (itself discovered many times); Spinoza's
Viewpoint of Eternity; the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant's Categorical Imperative; and
Rawls's Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer's theory of the Expanding Circle -- the optimistic
proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a
path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.

[..]But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other
guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can
acknowledge the other's concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some
other value should trump it in that instance.

[..]The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way
of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to
illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to
reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes
taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of
the angels.
Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public
discourse still fails to discount it appropriately. In the worst cases, the thoughtlessness of our brute intuitions
can be celebrated as a virtue.

[..]The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way
of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to
illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to
reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes
taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of
the angels.

Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public
discourse still fails to discount it appropriately. In the worst cases, the thoughtlessness of our brute intuitions
can be celebrated as a virtue. In his influential essay "The Wisdom of Repugnance," Leon Kass, former chair of
the President's Council on Bioethics, argued that we should disregard reason when it comes to cloning and other
biomedical technologies and go with our gut: "We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings . . .
because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold
dear. . . . In this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done . . . repugnance
may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that
have forgotten how to shudder."

There are, of course, good reasons to regulate human cloning, but the shudder test is not one of them. People
have shuddered at all kinds of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture: touching an untouchable,
drinking from the same water fountain as a Negro, allowing Jewish blood to mix with Aryan blood, tolerating
sodomy between consenting men. And if our ancestors' repugnance had carried the day, we never would have
had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants and in vitro
fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new.

[..]And nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-
induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the
cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.'s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and
the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree
that these numbers don't add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon
emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians
and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one
wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax
and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and
atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and
resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.

Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through
the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As
Anton Chekhov wrote, "Man will become better when you show him what he is like." "
http://research.haifa.ac.il/~benzeev/emotionsmorality.htm

On Emotions
Emotions and morality

Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa

The Journal of Value Inquiry 0: 1-l8 1997. (g) 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Emotions and morality

 
The role of emotions in the moral domain is controversial Two central features of emotions are particularly
problematic for the integration of emotions into the moral domain: (1) the nondeliberate nature of emotions, and
(2) the partial nature of emotions. The nondeliberate nature has been claimed to contradict the possibility of
moral responsibility, and the partial nature of emotions has been perceived to be incompatible with.the impartial
nature of morality Although admitting the presence of these features, I claim that emotions are very important in
morality. I argue that we have some responsibility over our emotions and that emotions have both instrumental
and intrinsic moral value.

1. The nondeliberate and partial nature of emotions

Deliberate evaluations involve conscious rational processes, whereas nondeliberate evaluations are more
elementary spontaneous responses. The two types of evaluations may clash. Thus, we sometimes persist in
being afraid when our conscious and deliberate judgment reveals that we are in no peril. We may explain such
cases by assuming that certain nondeliberate evaluations become habitual to a degree where no deliberation can
change them. This corresponds to situations in which deliberate thinking, or knowledge acquired by such
thinking, fails to influence illusory perceptual contents. Spontaneous evaluations are similar to perceptual
discriminations in being immediate, meaningful responses. They entail no deliberate mediating processes,
merely appearing as if they were products of such processes. Spontaneous evaluations are either the result of
evolution or of personal development. In both cases they reflect certain structures of our personality. They are
ready-made mechanisms of appraisal. Since the evaluative patterns are part of our psychological constitution,
we do not need time to create them; we just need the right circumstances to activate them.

Complex deliberate evaluations are more recent on the evolutionary tree: they entail conscious deliberation,
characteristic mostly of human beings. The presence of emotions in some higher animals and the existence of
conflicts between emotional evaluations and deliberate thinking indicate that at least some emotions involve
spontaneous rather than deliberate evaluations The question is whether typical emotions are not deliberate. A
key consideration in this respect is that emotions are usually generated when the agent confronts a sudden and
significantchange.2 in lightofthe sudden generation of emotions, it is reasonable to suppose that they involve
spontaneous evaluations which do not require much time. If emotions are typically immediate responses to
changing situations, they probably result from the activation of evaluative patterns or schemes which do not
require a lengthy process of deliberation. This, however, does not imply that deliberate thinking has no role in
the generation of emotions. We may think about death and become frightened, or think about our mates and
become jealous. Similarly, we may decide not to curb our anger but rather to intensify it. In such cases,
deliberate thinking brings us closer to the conditions under which evaluative patterns are spontaneously
activated. Deliberate thinking may be the immediate Cause for the activation of an evaluative pattern, hut the
emotional evaluation itself is typically nondeliberate.

I turn now to discuss the second basic feature of emotions which poses problems for the integration of emotions
in the moral domain, namely, their partial nature.

Emotions are partial in two basic senses: they are focused on a narrow area, as on one or very few objects, they,
as well, express personal and interested perspectives. Emotions involve evaluations made by an interested agent
from a specific and partial perspective. Emotions direct and color our attention: they limit what can attract and
hold our attention; they make us preoccupied with some things and oblivious to others. Emotions draw on a
personal and interested perspective. They are not detached theoretical states; they address a practical concem,
often personal, associated with readiness to act. Not everyone and not everything is of emotional significance to
us. We usually cannot assume an emotional state toward someone utterly unrelated to us. Emotions require
resources of time and attention. Since these resources are finite, emotions must bc partial and discnminative.

The partiality of emotions is clearly demonstrated by their intentional com-ponents, namely, cognition,
evaluation, and motivation. The cognitive field of emotions does not engage vaned and broad perspectives of
our surroundings but a narrow and fragmentary perspective focused upon an emotional object and a subject-
object relation. Thus, love limits a subject's range of interest, focusing almost exclusively on a beloved and his
or her relationship with the subject. As the popular song has it, "Millions of people go by, but they all dis-
appear from view 'cause I only have eyes for you." Similarly, the cognitive field of an envious person is limited
to some, often petty aspects of an envied person and to the subject's own inferionty. Because of the partiality of
the cognitive field in emotions, it is often distorted. Aristotle compares emotions such as anger to hasty servants
"who run out before they have heard the whole of what one says, and then muddle the order" and to dogs who
"bark if there is but a knock at the door, before looking to see if it is a friend."3 The evaluative field of emotions
is narrow owing to its highly polarized nature. In comparlson with other people, an emotional object is often
characterized as either highly positive or highly negative. The motivational field is narrow in the sense that the
desired activity is often clearly preferred to any altemative. In intense emotional states we are somewhat similar
to children. Like children, our perspectives are highly partial and involved. Our immediate situations are all that
interest us; no rational explanations concerning broader perspectives are relevant. Partiality is an important, not
an incidental feature of emotions.

The spontaneous nature of emotions has been perceived to contradict the very nature of moral responsibility.
And the discriminative, partial nature of emotions has been perceivedto be incompatible with the more
egalitanan and impartial nature of moral principles.

2. Emotions and moral responsibilitv

The major problem concerning the relationship between emotions and moral responsibility concerns the
allegedly necessary presence of a broad perspective involving intellectual deliberations in moral behavior for
which we are responsible, The problem may be formulated as follows.

1 . Responsibility entails free choice; if we are forced to behave in a certain manner, we are not responsible for
this behavior.

2. Free choice entails an intellectual deliberation in which alternatives are considered and the best one is chosen.
Without such consideration we cannot clearly understand the possible altennatives and are not responsible for
preferTing one of them.

3. Since intellectual deliberations are absent fiTom emotions, we cannot be responsible for our emotions.

Before facing this difficulty, it should be clear that we do impute responsibility to persons for their emotions.
We praise and criticize people for their emotions . We speak of appropriate reasons for being afraid, or
inappropnate grounds for hating someone. We often advise others to desist from some emotions as when wc
say: "You have no reason to be angry." We may also urge them to adopt emotions with the injunction: "Love
your neighbor - but not your neighbor's wife." The problem we face then is not whether wc impute
responsibility to persons for their emotions, but how such imputation is possible and what kind of responsibility
is imputed. Remarks such as "I couldn't help it, I was madly in love with hint." or "Ignore his action, he was
overcome with anger," indicate that we often do not attribute full responsibility to agents having certain
emotions or acting out of emotions. The major flaw of the argument denying our responsibility over our
emotions is that it presupposes a too simplistic picture of responsibility and emotions.

Responsibility may be described as having two major aspects: causality and blameworthiness. In light of
causality, P is causally responsible for X if P is the cause for X. Thus, if P hands over a glass containing poison
to X and consequently X dies, then although P is causally responsible for X's death, P is not to be blamed for
this death if he did not know that the glass contained poison. The central sense of moral responsibility is that of
blameworthiness. It can be divided into direct and indirect responsibility.

Paradigmatic cases of direct responsibility encompass doing or having at will X; the ability to avoid X; and thc
ability to foresee the consequences of X. Thcse factors are important in describing the ideal situation for
complete and direct personal responsibility. It is hard to sce how we can be directly responsible for som eth i ng
that we were forced to do, we were not able to avoid, and whose consequences we could not predict. However,
the idcal situation in which the three factors are fully present is rare. There are different degrees of these factors
and it is probably impossible to have the highest degree. Nevertheless, we often assign direct personal
responsibility even if the ideal situation is not fully present.4

Personal responsibility is also assigned when these three factors are clearly absent at the time we pertbmm the
particular deed, but were present at some time in the past. Ilere we assign indirect responsibility. A drunken
driver who causes a fatal accident and a drug-addicted person who steals in order to have money for drugs are
examples of such cases. Indirect responsibility is assigned when we are responsible for cultivating the
circumstances which give nse to the blameworthy deed or attitude.

In addition to indirect responsibility, legal and moral systems recognize partial responsibility. For example,
provocation is understood as a partial defense of murder, since it reduces the agent's responsibility: a successful
provocation plea involves a concession of partial responsibility but a denial of full responsibility S The personal
responsibility we bear for our emotions is mainly indirect and partial.

The view denying our responsibility for emotions often encompasses not just a narrow notion of responsibility,
but also a narrow picture of emotions. Emotions are reduced to fleeting, unreliable feelings over which we have
little control and no responsibility. In the same way that we do not choose to have a toothache, and accordingly
are not responsible for having it, it is assumed that we do not choose our emotions and are not responsible for
them.

However, emotions are obviously more complex than fleeting feelings. The presence of intentional components
such as cognition, evaluation, and moti vation enable us to impute responsibility for emotions and consequently
to criticize or praise them. Indeed. emotions may be criticized or praised with regard to their three intentional
components: the cognition ofthe situation may be flawed, false, or partial; the evaluation of the situation may be
flawed or inappropnate, as when based on unfounded, vague, or immoral grounds; and the motivational
components of desires and conduct may be self-defeating, socially destructive, only of short-temm value, or
excessive. The whole emo tional attitude may also be regarded as appropriate or inappropriate in the given
circumstances. Thus, we may cnticize ourselves for grieving too much or too little. Emotions may also be
experienced as unsuitable with regard to their timing. It is disputable whether all emotions. in particular love
and grief, can be criticized in light ofthe above considerations, but it is clear that we do War criticize or applaud
people for having certain emotions.

Typically, we cannot immediately induce ourselves or others to assume a certain emotion. We do not invoke
emotions by a deliberate, purposive decision. We cannot expenence, or stop exTtenencing, an emotion by
simply deciding to do so. This, however, does not imply that there are no voluntary elements in experiencing
emotions, or that we are incapable of regulating our emotions. Any regulation is, however, indirect. It can be
done by changing ourselves or our environment. We can cultivate or habituate emotions by attaching more or
less value to certain things. For example, attaching much importance to the boss's opinion may bring with it
vulnerability to fear and disappointment. Since emotions express our profound values, cultivating values may
also be the cultivation of emotions. We can also create or avoid the circumstances generating emotions. We
may indirectly, but intentionally, make ourselves angry, sad, or envious by imagining that the circumstances
typical of such emotions are indeed present. How we feel is less a matter of choice at the moment than a product
of choice over time in which we habituate certain dispositions.

The view of emotional responsibility suggested here is basically Aristotelian. For Aristotle, virtuous people
have the kind of character that leads them to experience emotion in a proper way, as well as leading them to act
in a proper way. Similarly, to display vice is to depart from the proper response; it is to show either excess or
deficiency in our emotional and behavioral responses. To shape our character properly is partially our
responsibility, but is neither entirely nor directly under our control. As we are responsible for our character
traits, so we are responsible for our emotions; the responsibility for our emotions may even be greater, since it is
easier to manage them. Emotions and character traits are not raw impulses but socialized modes of response.

Like other types of habituation, emotional habituation can be more successful if started at an early age.
Accordingly, we have responsibility in educating our offspring to generate the proper emotions in the proper
circumstances. We teach our children "not just to avoid fire but to fear it, not just to consort with others but love
them, not just to repair wrongdoing but to suffer remorse and shame for its execution.” Habituating emotional
dispositions is also possible with adults, but it is more difficult and limited.

Our responsibility for our emotions is different from our responsibility for our rational, calculated actions.
Whereas a fully explicit reason for a rational action entails a positive evaluation of the action itself, a reason for
an emotion does not entail a positive evaluation of the emotion itself By virtue of its causal structure alone, we
can expect rational actions to be judged as good or bad. This does not hold for emotions, insofar as they are not
generated by rational processes. Accordingly, whereas we are answerable for nomms concerning our rational
actions, we are not answerable in a similar manner for norms constituting our emotions.

We are not punished for our emotions as we are punished for our rational actions. There are hardly any legal
sanctions against having certain emotions. Nonlegal punishment for having emotions are more common. Thus,
we may not want to live with someone who is jealous or angers easily. This sort of punishment is indirect in the
sense that it is not a localized response to a particular emotion, but one factor in the negative assessment of a
whole person. It is then often the case that although people are perceived to be somehow responsible for their
emotions, they are hardly punished for having them. A major reason for this is the mere indirect and partial
control over emotions. Our responsibility for our emotions is not expressed in the particular activation of our
emotional response, but in the creation of the mechanism underlying the response, and in not preventing the
circumstances responsible for the generation of the emotional response. The view defended here, which imputes
a certain type and degree of responsibility for our emotions, avoids two extreme positions held by several
philosophers: emotions are always manifestations of freedom, and people can never be responsible for their
emotions.

After indicating the possibility of moral responsibility in the emotional domain, we are in a position to examine
the second problem concerning the relevancy of emotions to the moral domain: the apparent incompatibility of
the partial nature of emotions with the impartial nature of moral principles.

3. The role of emotions in the moral domain

In order to show that emotions are morally valuable we must first indicate how the discriminatory, partial nature
of emotions can be compatible with the more egalitarian and impartial nature of moral principles. Those who
consider this difficulty to be unresolvable believe that emotions impede moral behavior. The functional value of
emotions does not necessarily imply moral value as well. it can be argued that although emotions have practical
value in terms of leading a more comfortable life, they have nothing to do with leading a more moral life. The
difference between practical and moral values is clearly expressed in uses of the phrase "the prosperity of the
wicked and the suffering of the righteous."

The moral value of emotions may be established by showing that partial emotional Concern is not so egoistic,
as it often addresses the well-being of others too, and that it is extremely valuable in some moral circumstances.

The inadequacy of identifying emotional, personal Concern with immoral, egoistic concern is evident from the
fact that helping other people may be as emotionally exciting as if we were gaining something for ourselves;
similarly, hurting others may be as emotionally distressing as if we were being hurt ourselves. Positive
emotional states usually increase inclinations toward helping. The reverse direction is also common: helping
other people may increase our happiness, and perceiving injustice can provoke negative emotions which may
lead to the elimination of the injustice. We may enjoy greater happiness from the good fbrtune we have
procured for others than from our own. If benevolence is as essential to our constitution as personal
gratification, then helping others may be an important constituent of our happiness.

Even if we grant that emotional, personal concenn should not be identified with immoral, egoistic concern, it
can be still argued that benevolent emotional concern, whenever it appears, is quite limited in nature and mainly
refers to those who are close to us. indicating the importance of emotions in morality should show that the
partial, discriminative perspective so typical of emotions is valuable in many moral circumstances. These
circumstances can be divided into those in which the partial perspective has instrumental moral value as a
means for achieving positive moral consequences, and those in which the partial perspective has Intrinsic value
as something valuable in itself.

Emotions which in themselves can be regarded as morally negative, may have instrumental moral value in the
sense that they may lead to positive moral consequences. Jealousy is morally valuable in protecting unique
relationships; envy may encourage improvement of our situation and that of other people; and anger may be
useful in maintaining our values and self-respect. it is often the case that pursuing our own egoistic happiness
may increase the happiness of other people as well. Adam Smith's view of economic benefits is similar: by
pursuing our own private economic benefits, we contribute to the well-being of other people. Only excessive
intensity of negative emotions is morally harmful; moderate fbnms of negative emotions are typically morally
beneficial since they prevent indifferent attitudes toward others. Society v. u id be less humane if we were not
immediately irritated by the presence of evil, or ashamed of our misdeeds.

Another instrumental advantage of negative moral emotions is their necessary coupling with positive moral
emotions. Emotions express our sensitivity to what is going on around us. Elimination of negative moral
emotions would require eliminating our sensitivity, and hence, also eliminating positive moral emotions.
Elimination of the capacity of jealousy and pleasure-in-the-misfortune-of others would require elimination of
love and happiness-for-the-fortune- of-others. The elimination of the capacity of anger and shame would require
the elimination of gratitude and pride.

The coupling of negative and positive emotions in the moral domain or elsewhere is compatible with the view
which assumes that an emotional state tends to generate another emotional state with the opposite sign. Thus,
interruption of a pleasurable sexual expenence tends to create acute disappointment and irritation before a return
to a neutral state. This coupling is also compatible with the common sense idea that we cannot have emotional
highs without exposing ourselves to emotional lows. It also fits in with the Buddhist notion that the proper
object of character planning is to get rid of all emotions, not just the unpleasant ones, since that is not feasible.

Generally, when we describe someone as emotional we refer, among other things, to the great sensitivity of the
person: emotional reactions are easily invoked in the person. Indeed, for many emotions too great sensitivity
leads to more extreme stands in multiple directions.

The great personal involvement of an emotional relationship has not merely advantages, but nsks as well. Those
who are close to us can easily hurt us, as the popular song puts it: "You always hurt the one you love." Telling
our secrets to someone may establish a friendship relationship, but it also exposes our vulnerability.l5 Some
people actually avoid having fnellships for this reason. I once lived in an apartment building of low-income
families. Being acquainted with my new neighbors was mostly a sad experience, as most of them had very
difficult economic and social situations. I noticed that members of one family on my floor avoided making
social contacts; later on l realized that they did that in order to avoid being exposed to the sad emotional
experiences associated with these families.

The choice we face is not that of having positive emotions or a mix of positive and negative emotions, but
rather that of having close emotional tics, or living in an isolated environment. Whereas having close emotional
ties includes many emotional benefits and risks, living in isolation has few. Nancy Sherman rightly argues that
by letting emotions play an important role in our lives, we assent to being passive in a certain sense; we give up
control in order to be able to live emotionally. Yet, this is precisely what our friends may value in our
relationships with them that we show willingness to be emotionally drawn, to be vulnerable to emotional losses
and gains resulting from our close relationships with them.

So far I have indicated the instrumental moral value of emotions: they are a valuable means for leading a
sensitive and moral life. I turn now to the more crucial moral value of emotions: their intrinsic value.

The intrinsic value of emotions is expressed in the fact that from a moral viewpoint, we care not only about how
people act, but also about how they feel. This is so since emotions are genuine expressions of our basic attitudes
and enduring values. When we really value something, our evaluation is often accompanied by a certain
emotion. Holding a certain value emotionally is necessary for adopting that value as central to us. 17
Accordingly, an important advantage of incorporating emotions into the moral domain is the greater role of
sincerity in our behavior. A system based on intellectual calculations can more successfully hide our real
attitudes. Children, whose behavior is based more on spontaneous emotional evaluations, are more sincere than
adults. Knowing how to hide our emotions is a personal discovery. Teaching children good manners is teaching
them, among other things, to hide their real emotions. At least in this sense politicians are well educated.

Although emotions express our most profound values, it is easy to evoke them. We do not need a profound
argument to generate emotions; on the contrary, very superfficial matters easily induce emotional reactions.
Because of their depth, emotional values are comprehensive and relate to many events in our life.

Due to the profound and sincere nature of emotional behavior, its value is particularly important in our
relationships with those who are close to us. our behavior toward our friends and family is less restrained and
more sincere; for instance, we can fall asleep while watching TV together, expressing more freely our opinion,
and be less careful in our effort not to insult other people. Unlike emotions, good manners often express
superficial attitudes which are more typical of our behavior toward strangers. Take, for example, the following
response of Miss Manners to a question by a professional woman in business who is wondering about the
proper way for a man to shake a woman's hand: "Gentlemen were taught to shake ladies' hands lightly because
ladies, but not gentlemen, often wear diamond rings on their right hands.... Other reasons for light shaking
include arthritis, sweaty palms, and a hand frozen onto a cocktail glass." In light of their superficial nature, good
manners can be deceptive in so far as they do not necessarily express our genuine profound attitude .

The profound nature of emotions and their natural emergence toward those who are close to us is related to their
central moral characterization With regard to our intimates, partial emotional treatment is morally required and
justified. We ought to treat our intimates with special emotional preference. Stephen Toulmin argues that in
dealing with our families, intimates, and immediate neighbors or associates. "we both expect to - and are
expected to —make allowances for their individual personalities and tastes, and we do our best to time our
actions according to our perception of their current moods and plans.''

General moral rules cannot colt or the whole range of activities and attitudes required for the close and special
relationships. As Anatole France remarks, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under
bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread the rich as well as the poor General moral rules are especially
valuable in our behavior toward strangers.

Along similar lines, Henry Sidgwick justifies special care toward friends insofar as we are psychologically so
constituted that we are capable of affection for only a few other persons; furthermore, most of us are not in a
position to do much good to more than a very small number of persons. Calculated, impartial behavior is often
taken to indicate the lack of an intimate, close relationship. As Grunebaum suggests, "once friends begin to
keep a credit-debit accounting of their relationship (making sure that they are not giving more than they receive
or that they have not incurred too great a debt of gratitude), the beginning of the end of the fnendship is close at
hand."20 Being moral is not necessarily being alienated; abiding by morality need not alienate us from the
particular commitments that make life worthwhile. The personal emotional perspective addresses, among other
things, the concern for the well-being of others. The personal element should not be excluded from morality; it
should, however, be molded in such a way that considerations about the well-being of others are not excluded
either 21 Similarly, happiness cannot be achieved by merely comparing ourselves to others. Our personal
constitution should be taken into account. However, happiness cannot be achieved by ignoring others. Morality
and happiness combines personal and social concems.

The morality of canng suggested by some feminists attempts to incorporate personal concerns typical of the
emotional domain into the general moral domain. In this approach, the particularized self is of no lesser moral
significance than the abstract general self assumed by some impartialist approaches to morality; sensitivity to
particular differences, care and concern for individual persons are as central to morality as general principles.
The feminist struggle carries some of its supporters to the extreme position denying any real gender differences.
Such a denial undermines the very foundations upon which a morality of canug is based: the emotional and
moral significance of individual differences. Radical egalitarianism cannot be integrated into the emotional
domain, as it neglects individual differences which are so essential in emotions. Such differences should not
harm certain individuals. but they will give nse to different emotions toward different individuals. Legislation
and contracts may reduce the nsk of harmful discrimination in our behavior toward various individuals. but they
cannot replace care and individualistic emotional attitudes. Whereas in personal relationships care is the
essential feature, more distant relationships are based on contract. We should avoid the tendency, prevailing in
mode m society. to base all relationships on formal contracts.

The distinction between intimates and strangers is obviously not clear-cut. In addition to personal relationships
toward our intimates, and nonpersonal relationships toward strangers, there are other types of relationships in
between. Thus, although my relationship with my personal physician for the last ten years is not as personal as
my relationship with my children, it is not as remote as a relationship to a complete stranger. Such a relationship
may be temmed quasi-personal relationship. Moreover, there are circumstances in which partial emotional
attitudes should be applied to strangers, and impartial attitudes to our intimates. Some situations, such as those
in which a stranger suffers a great mistbrtune, call for our compassion. Because of the huge resources demanded
by compassion, such an attitude cannot be applied to more than a few strangers. In the same way that a partial
emotional attitude is sometimes required in our attitude toward strangers, the attitude toward our intimates
should sometimes be impartial and non-emotional. The circumstances are present when partial behavior toward
our intimates may hurt bas ic rights of strangers. Thus, when serving as judges, referees, or teachers, we should
not favor our children over strangers. Since doing that is hard, it is preferable to try to avoid such circumstances
in the first place.

The personal, special care typical of emotional attitudes is by nature limited; it cannot be directed toward
everyone. The moral ideal may be that of enlarging the circle of people enjoying our personal emotional care.
Martha Nussbaum describes the following Stoic metaphor of moral development. Imagine that each of us lives
in a set of concentric circles, the nearest being our own body, the furthest being the entire universe of human
beings. The task of moral development is to move the circles progressively closer to the center, so that our
parents become like ourselves, our other relatives like our parents, and strangers like relatives. This metaphor is
apt for describing our ideal moral development, as long as it is remembered that the process of drawing the
circles closer to the center can never be completed and should not result in their elimination Theyexpressthevery
foundations of ouremotional structure Our emotions will always be more intense toward people included in the
closest circle. Another task for moral development is realizing the inevitable presence of such circles and,
accordingly, our partial emotional perspectives. One way to deal with the shortcomings of this partiality is to be
acquainted with many such perspectives. Leaming to appreciate the diversity of partial human perspectives is
crucial for giving our own perspective its proportionate weight.

Another reason for the intrinsic moral value of emotions is that they serve as a kind of moral compass. In Death
In the Afternoon, Emest Hcmingway argues: "What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is
what you feel bad after." Emotions are often moral barriers for many types of immoral behavior. Some of the
most horrible cnmes have been committed on the basis of cool intellectual calculation. What sometimes
prevents a person from committing a cnme is emotional resistance. In one trial of white-collar workers in the
United States, forty-five individuals were convicted of secretly fixing consumer prices for electricity. One
senior executive conceded in the trial that in retrospect, he seemed to "intellectually believe" that what he was
doing was wrong, but he avoided emotional recognition and heartfelt conviction about his wrongdoing.

Sometimes we must violate one moral duty in order to fulfill another, as in cases of dirty hands, in which an
agent must ham in order to help in these situations, our moral character is expressed in the negative emotional
experiences, like sadness and regret, that are associated with them. Our moral strength is often measured by the
types of emotional resistance we have against wrongdoing. A person who exclusively behaves in accordance
with the intellectual system may easily become indifferent to other people, since emotions express sensitivity
toward other people. Moral behavior comes harder for people who lack feelings and emotions. Such people
cannot have any feeling toward their children or others; they have to convince themselves or remind themselves
to behave morally as they cannot do so out of compassion or friendship.

I believe that emotions have three basic evolutionary functions: an initial indication of the proper direction in
which to respond; a quick mobilization of resources, and a means of social communication. Emotions function
within individuals to indicate and regulate prionties, and between individuals to communicate intentions Since
emotions are generated when we perceive a significant change in our situation, their purposes must be related to
our ability to function in the circumstances. This is clearly expressed in the first two functions. The indicative
function is required for giving us an initial direction in the uncertain novel circumstances we are facing. The
mobilizing

function of emotions is to regulate the locus of investment in the sense of allocating resources away from
situations where they would be wasted, and toward those urgent circumstances where investment will yield a
significant payoff. The communicative function is that of revealing our evaluative stand and accordingly
eliciting aid from others while insisting upon social positions. All functions are particularly important when
urgency is in evidence.

In light of these general functions, we may describe three moral functions of emotions:

1. Emotions have an epistemic role of initially indicating moral salience and hence the general moral response.
Emotional sensitivity helps us to distinguish the moral features of a given situation, and as such serves as an
initial moral guide.

2 Emotions have a motivating role of supporting moral behavior and opposing immoral behavior. In accordance
with their general mobilizing role, emotions help us to mobilize the resources needed for moral behavior, which
is often not the most convenient course of action.

3. Emotions have a communicative role of revealing our moral values to others and to ourselves. Since
emotions express our profound values, emotional experiences can reveal these values. Taking care of another
person with sympathy and compassion can reveal our evaluation of the person to ourselves and to the person
himself Sometimes we do not know how much we care for someone until emotions such as jealousy, fear, or
compassion are generated.

4. Combining the emotional and intellectual perspectives

Emotional and moral attitudes are not contradictory. We can have close emotional ties with our intimates and
still exhibit moral behave ior toward strangers. There may be cases in which the two attitudes clash, but the
conflict is not inherently unresolvable. Take, for example, loyalty whose diverse types to our family, friends,
community, and nation, usually involve some conflict between a partial emotional state and a more general and
impartial moral attitude. Thus, patriotism involves a partial preference for the well-being of our country, which
may be in conflict with a more universal concern for the well-being of all humanity. A morally acceptable form
of patriotism, similar to the morally acceptable form of love or family loyalty, is feasibic. We really should care
more about those near and dear to us than we care about strangers, but this should not be an exclusive concern
that violates the rights of strangers. Our love should not be a submersion in someone else to the exclusion of
worldly responsibilities. Likewise, our partial attitude toward our nation is morally recommended, so long as it
is curbed by other moral principles.

Since particularistic emotional commitments readily lend themselves to excesses, they should be combined with
a more general and impartial perspective for strengthening their moral value. Partial emotional attitudes and
impartial moral attitudes represent complementary perspectives for the evaluation of human beings and their
activities. A healthy human society needs all these perspectives. Utilizing such different perspectives is not only
natural but morally recommendable.

A spontaneous emotional system and a deliberate intellectual system are both important for conducting moral
life. The presence of several systems in the moral domain is as valuable as the presence of several powers in the
political domain. For example, it is important to have legislative, executive, and judicial systems, as well as
national and local powers, to balance each other in a modern democracy. The different systems oRen express
opposing tendencies and competing interests. Yet, each system retains a somewhat independent voice and
influence. It is as important for an individual as it is for a state to have potential sources of dissent from within.
The possibility of internal conflict is sometimes a wellspring of vitality and sensitivity, and a check against one-
sidedness and fanaticism. if our moral decisions were reached only through intellectual deliberations, then our
decisions would be morally distorted insofar as they would be one-sided, neglecting important aspects of our
lives . The presence of conflict between the intellectual and emotional systems is frequently useful from a moral
viewpoint, since it indicates a moral predicament to which we should pay attention.

Neglecting the role of intellectual deliberations in morality is as dangerous as neglecting the role of emotions.
Although emotions serve as our moral compass, the compass may in some cases provide inadequate directions.
In oppressive societies, such as Nazi Germany, or many male-chauvinist societies, inappropriate emotions have
been cultivated. There, the emotional compass becomes largely immoral, generating inappropriate emotions and
requiring intellectual deliberations to reveal its deficiencies. An important task of intellectual deliberations in
such societies is that of correcting the emotional compass. Otherwise, the intellectual objections will hardly be
expressed in actual behavior, as they will not be absorbed into the basic evaluative system.

In addition to the emotional capacity shared by both animals and people, people also possess an intellectual
capacity. It is implausible to suppose that it is not involved in determining our moral behavior If it were not, we
would be like non-human animals. But, it would be morally dangerous to determine our moral behavior by
refemng to the intellectual capacity alone. Some scholars argue that God acts in this way: in a cold and
calculated manner, unfeelingly,

and only as reason directs. Contrary to animals and God, the moral behavior of people is detemmined by
emotions and reason. Vir uous people should not attempt to imitate the behavior of animals or God by basing
their actions on mere emotions or reason. They should behave in a way typical of human circumstances which
combines emotions and reason. Combining emotions and reason is complex and difficult, and only virtuous
people can accomplish it smoothly. Virtuous people are not angels; their advantage over most of us is that in
their case, the combination of emotions and reason is not a source of conflict, but instead a valuable means to a
moral and happy end.

While emotions should not be overlooked, their v eight should often bc limited. Virtuous people are not calm
and unfeeling, but they are also not people led by passion. Their behavior is in accordance with the dictates of
reason, but it is not generated by intellectual deliberations; it is nule-described behavior rather than nule-
following behavior. The role of emotions in such behavior is crucial. As Plato suggests, a sound education
consists of training people to find pleasure and pain in the nght objects. Similarly, for Aristotle the virtuous
person is not only the one who acts virtuously, but the person who has the appropriate emotional dispositions
and character traits while doing so. Not having the proper emotion is as significant as not acting in accord with
it. The virtuous, good-tempered person is not only someone who acts angrily against the right person, to the
nght degree, at the right time, for the nght purpose, and in the right way, but someone who also feels anger in
these circumstances.32 in this sense, the actor Dustin Hoffman may be considered to be a virtuous person, since
he claimed that after meeting his wife he felt no passion toward other women. There is no infidelity in the
behavior and heart of such a true lover, since the emotions and values are not in conflict. Most other people are
less fortunate, and overcoming such a conflict is a major step toward achieving happiness. This is obviously the
case of Amencan presidents, such as John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and even Jimmy Carter, who once admitted
that although he was very religious, he had lusted in his heart.

An essential moral difference between virtuous people and ordinary people is in their sensitivity. Virtuous
people are less sensitive to hnmoral temptations and are more sensitive to moral wrongdoing. They cannot be
characterized merely by their insensitivity to sinful temptations; they should also be charactenzed by their
sensitivity to the suffering of other people. In order to be a really virtuous person, it is not enough that Dustin
Hoffman desires no woman other than his wife; he should also care for other women and men. On the opposite
side, we may describe Bill Clinton as a kind person, since he has a very positive attitude toward every woman.
Even if some womanizers are indeed kind in nature, I would not describe them as vir uous people, since they are
not insensitive to certain temptations Dustin and Bill may be taken to represent partial and general sensitivity.
Dustin is closer to the ideal of a virtuous person than Bill, since in close relationships, the partial perspective
should be more dominant. Finding the right proportion between the partial and general types of sensitivity is not
easy, as greater emotional sensitivity to one person may naturally lead to insensitivity toward other people. No
wonder there are so few virtuous people these days.

The emotional sensitivity of virtuous people is accompanied by a more acute moral perception. Virtuous people
can better perceive the moral features of vanous situations that they encounter in the same vein, people who are
sensitive to tea can better perceive vanous features of tea. Similarly, it was found that anti-Semitic people can
identify Jews better than other people. Moral perception in itself does not necessarily lead to moral behavior
NVe can imagine a person who clearly perceives other people's suffering but is totally unmoved by it—the
person simply does not care. Virtuous people do not only possess better moral perception, but also have the
appropriate emotional sensitivity.

To sum up, I have discussed two major difficulties in assigning emotions a major role in morality: their
nondeliberate nature seems to contradict moral responsibility and their partial nature seems to contradict the
more general and egalitarian nature of morality. Conceming the first difficulty, I have argued that we do have
some kind of responsibility over our emotions. Our responsibility stems from our indirect control over the
circumstances generating emotions. The partial nature of emotions has been described as giving us a moral
perspective in addition to an intellectualist perspective. In this sense, emotions enlarge our global perspective,
thereby enabling us to conduct a more meaningful and moral life. Emotions are especially important in our
relationships with those near and dear to us. In such circumstances, which constitute the bulk of our everyday
behavior, partial emotional attitudes are not only possible but morally commendable. Sincerity and particular
attention to specific needs, both typical of emotional behavior, are of cnucial importance Emotional attitudes are
also a moral barrier against many comes. Emotional evaluations have emerged from a long process of
evolutionary and personal moral development. Accordingly, they are morally significant in expressing some of
our deepest value commitments and in providing basic guidelines for moral behavior. However, the crucial role
of emotions in moral life does not imply their exclusivity; the intellectual capacity is important as well.

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