The fMRI Studies:The Ethical Decision Process: Reasoning vs Emotions

I presented to ethicists on a bioethics listserv my last posting about the fMRI study results documenting in neurophysiological terms that ethical decision-making involves emotions to varying degrees in addition to reasoning. I thought my visitors might be interested in reading their responses which follow:

I don't think that these studies present a problem for moral philosophy
or even the rationalist tradition in moral philosophy. Rather, they
demonstrate a misunderstanding of basic moral philosophy on the part of
the researcher. There are two related fundamental flaws, as I see it,
with this study and studies like it, and that is that 1) they are merely
descriptive in nature, whereas most moral philosophy is normative and
2), they misunderstand the basic nature of most moral philosophy they
aim to criticize. This study describes how average people DO evaluate
moral problems...the study says nothing about how moral problems OUGHT
to be evaluated. If we want to focus on the rationalist tradition, Kant
would be the standard bearer, and he readily admits that most do not
make their moral evaluations based upon reason, but rather inclination,
emotion, etc. Thus, if anything, this study would support Kant's
conjectures about how most people evaluate moral dilemmas, but say
nothing about whether Kant is right regarding how moral dilemmas should
be evaluated. Put another way, if a similar study were done using fMRIs
of those same study subjects regarding the evaluation of the results of
fMRIs, I suspect we would see an entirely different result than if we
performed the same tests on the researchers. In my own case, I imagine
you would get the fMRI equivalent of crickets chirping...very little
activity at all. Does that mean that the evaluation of fMRIs is done in
the areas of the brain associated with blank stares, crickets chirping,
and the evaluation of Jackson Pollock paintings (in my case, sorry, I
just don't get them!)? Of course not. These studies make a gigantic
leap from is to ought, without even attempting to provide us an account
for why that leap is justified...at least Hume offered an account.

Many people explain that they make moral decisions based on a "gut feeling"
or
instinct. In Aristotelian terms, we would say that the individual, at some
point, used reason to determine the proper action in a particular situation.
Over time, the same choice was made and eventually it became a habit, what
the
person terms a gut feeling. Biologically, the first few times one encounters
a
dilemma, that choice would take place in the reasoning part of the brain,
but
after a while, once it becomes habit and gut feeling, then its processing
would take place in the more emotion-centered parts of the brain.

For a good account of decision making based on reasoning vs "gut feeling",
an excellent read is the best-seller "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. He outlines
how many judgments are made quickly, using "thin-slices" of experience, in
which the reasoning process occurs, but does so out of the awareness of the
judgment-maker.

Very few ethicists have thought that ethics is wholly contained in the
activity of "pure reason." I think, rather, that there is a widespread
idea that, first, only creatures capable of reason can be moral agents,
and second, that the practice of ethics is a quintessentially rational
activity, characterized by the production and criticism of reasons
either for or against various courses of action. Ethics seems to involve
a sort of judgment which answers to reason. Nobody should be surprised
if strong emotions accompany or are associated with ethical convictions.
What would be surprising is to find that such convictions are impervious
to reasons.

As you can see by the comments above, the role of emotions in moral judgment is not unexpected by these professionals. Though confirming the role of emotions in judgment, I am not sure what these fMRI studies do to advance the understanding of the judgment process. Are there any congnitive neurophysiologists out there to respond? ..Maurice.