Q&A: Regarding “Feeling” in Determining Morality
Regarding “Feeling” in Determining Morality
Question
Hello and blessings to the Rabbi. First, let me begin with proper respect for the host and say that I’m listening to the Rabbi’s Intro to Philosophy course with tremendous eagerness. Like a thirsty camel for water—pure pleasure.
And to the point: yesterday at the end, in the responsa section, I asked whether it is possible to say that feeling too can be attuned to morality (beyond being an indication that might happen “by mistake”), in addition to reason.
By this I mean perhaps trying to challenge the approach that claims there is the naturalistic fallacy in psychological matters (such as revulsion).
And that ‘the only justification for morality is reason’. (In Bergman’s book I saw that Kant defines only reason as the moral imperative, and everything else is called a “hypothetical imperative,” meaning something conditioned on something else, and therefore not moral.)
As I said yesterday, one can make a leap—just as we gave reason validity to determine what is moral and what is not.
So too with feeling. We can give feeling validity to show us what is moral and what is not (even if there is no rational justification for it. Suppose every reasonable person is disgusted by the blood of ritual slaughter [at least the first time]. Even if there were no rational justification for saying it is forbidden to let animals bleed, we would still claim that making them bleed is immoral, *and the proof* is that it disgusts me).
And just as with the categorical imperative I do not take feeling into account, here too I would not take reason into account.
To tell the truth, this is just a thought I’m raising, under the influence of the Rabbi’s great method of explaining Kant’s synthetic a priori. Just as there are “the eyes of reason,”
so one could say there are “the eyes of the heart.”
And just as consciousness sees with its intellect (seemingly) the principle of causality, that same consciousness sees in its heart (feels) what is moral and what is not.
Therefore feeling too, in the psychological sense, is indeed “theory-laden” and not empty.
(There is much more that could be said here. I of course reject blind evolution and claim that it was completely guided. Therefore human psychology does have validity.
I intuitively feel that there is a position here that needs to be properly defined, but I hope I managed to convey the general idea.)
This is admittedly an argument that claims to be “revealing” rather than “inferring.” But it doesn’t feel to me that the role of justification would be any weaker for feeling than for reason. (They seem equivalent to me, both logically and intuitively.)
Happy holiday to the Rabbi
Answer
These are word games. If you understand feeling as something that apprehends a reality outside itself (moral reality), then that itself is what I call reason and not feeling. So this is only a semantic difference. I define feeling as something that exists only inside me, and therefore it has no objectively binding status.
Discussion on Answer
Obviously that is a feeling, but at times it expresses a value judgment made by reason.
So it’s not word games, Rabbi—that is exactly the claim I was trying to suggest: that psychological revulsion (that is, feeling) stems from a moral source.
“The eyes of the heart.”
So you’re repeating what I wrote and presenting it as a different position. What’s the question?
The Rabbi claims that “revulsion” belongs to feeling, and nothing can be learned from feeling.
I said the opposite: that revulsion belongs to feeling, and something can indeed be learned from feeling. I’m repeating the Rabbi’s idea in solving the synthetic a priori, but extending it to feeling as well (that too is intuition).
In principle there’s no question—I just wanted to see whether the Rabbi accepts this position. I understand that he doesn’t.
Reason-based moral theories were made for emotionless psychopaths so they can disguise themselves as good people.
I explained that if feeling is an expression of an intellectual or volitional judgment, then one can learn from it—but only as an indication. Feeling in itself is meaningless.
A clarifying question: into which category would the Rabbi classify “revulsion (psychological)” in the parable/application—feeling or reason?