DOES REASONING HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ETHICS?
DOES REASONING HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ETHICS? David Brooks has an article entitled “The End of Philosophy” which describes current scholarship that argues that moral judgments are not made through a process of reason and deliberation. He quotes a scholar, Michael Gazzaniga as saying that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people.” (One could ask how Gazzaniga determines what constitutes “proactive moral behavior” without moral reasoning). Brooks compares moral decisions to what happens when you taste a new food. You don’t have to think about whether it is disgusting. “You just know.” He quotes Jonathan Haidt: “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.” Brooks makes several favorable comments about the new thinking. Mary Jane looked over my shoulder and asked me how I feel about this. I spent a lot of my life dealing with the moral reasoning which has been developed over centuries in the law. I think that moral reasoning has a lot to do with ethics.