Edward Song Responds to David Brooks, "The End of Philosophy"

Edward Song is a graduate of Yale and Oxford and earned the PhD in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He teaches philosophy at LSU.
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David Brooks has recently proclaimed the end of philosophy—moral philosophy, anyway (“The End of Philosophy, The New York Times, April 7, 2009).  Exploring some of the recent research in neuro- and cognitive science, Brooks argues that the best scientific understanding of moral decision-making and action increasingly suggest that the classic “philosophical” picture of moral thinking as simply a matter of reason and deliberation is a wild fantasy.   When we act, reason does not coolly deliberate the facts, and recommend the rational course of action.  Rather Brooks suggests that, quoting the University of Virginia psychologist, Jonathon 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.”  This line of thought is, of course, philosophical.  Haidt’s quote is a paraphrase of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume’s famous dictum, “Reason is and ought only to be the slave to the passions and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them.”   Brooks isn’t proclaiming the end of moral philosophy as such, but rather the end of one particular style of moral philosophy.  There are, however, three reasons to be skeptical about Brooks’s proclamation.

First, it is something of a straw man.  It is hard to think of any major philosopher in the western philosophical tradition who holds anything like the view that “moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation.”  There are many varieties of rationalistic ethics, but none of them would say that actual decision-making and action simply amount to coolly acting on the dictates of reason.  I suppose the obvious candidate would be Kant, for whom right action does in fact amount to a kind of rational consistency.  But the picture of Kant as worrying that a feeling of compassion might corrupt the purity of one’s rational motives is a pretty gross caricature, and some of the most interesting recent work in moral philosophy has offered  a much richer picture of the role of virtue and emotion within his overall account. 

It certainly is true that much contemporary philosophical work in ethics is highly abstract, technical, and unlikely to make a person any better for having read it.  (A running joke amongst philosophers is that there is some empirical research that suggests that moral philosophers are more likely to be less ethical than their colleagues working outside of ethics.  Try to remember this the next time a professional moral philosopher asks to borrow some money for coffee.)  It is hard, however, to see why this by itself is a reason to condemn the practice of philosophical reflection about morality.  Like all philosophical inquiry, it arises because one does not have to reflect very long on any subject matter to quickly start to see the complexities and paradoxes that arise.  For example, imagine that you are walking down the street and you see a group of teenagers taunting an elderly woman, stealing her walker and jeering at her.  You immediately are overwhelmed by righteous indignation, and form the thought that such action is wrong.  Now, the philosopher asks, where does the wrongness of the taunting reside?  Is it in the jeers? The taunting? The fear and humiliation the woman experiences?  What is wrongness in the first place?  How do we fit it in with a scientific view of the universe?  One doesn’t need to have a philosopher around to start to generate a pretty daunting list of questions.

This leads to a second more serious worry about the kind of neo-Humean account of morality that Haidt, Brooks and others attempt to advance.  Humean approaches to ethics usually lead to a thoroughgoing skepticism about morality.  For if moral judgments just amount to moral feelings or emotions that we happen to feel in particular situations, then it looks like they are analogous to our preferences and tastes for things, but no one thinks that strawberry ice cream is intrinsically better than chocolate.  We are undoubtedly hard-wired to feel particular kinds of moral emotions in particular kinds of situations, but none of this explains why I ought to act in some ways rather than others.  One can tell an evolutionary just-so story about why we feel compassion, jealousy, anger, pride, beneficence, etc, but none of this will provide any guidance to me when I am trying to decide how to act in the moment.  The new scientific insights into morality and human action are extraordinarily illuminating, but they provide explanations of what is going on, not justifications.  When we are deciding how to act, we are casting about for reasons why we should pursue some courses of actions rather than others.  Neuroscience provides an explanation of why I feel the way I feel, but it won’t give me a reason to help a person off of the ground, rather than bash his head in with a rock. 

Finally, all of this ignores the important practical role that philosophical reflection can play within ethical life.  Brooks has spent time crafting an argument about how we ought to think about moral life.  The article arises out of a conference that Brooks himself moderated—a conference presumably put on because the Templeton foundation thought that the material and argument presented would actually make a difference to how people thought and acted.  On any plausible account of morality, part of what distinguishes the ethical person is skill in reasoning about what to do in particular kinds of situations.  In this way the business of philosophy isn’t merely to reflect about the fundamental nature of ethical norms, but it is also to help to inculcate a skill and a wisdom in how to act.  It is true that for the better part of the last century, philosophers have been less interested in practical ethics in this way, but this isn’t true anymore.  Theoretical ethics is increasingly continuous with practical ethics.  Life these days presents us with more ethical dilemmas, not fewer, and they will not simply be resolved by appealing to our emotions.  Our emotions themselves are not static.  Which emotions do we choose to inculcate? Which to suppress? 

To engage in the debate that Brooks has started is to do philosophy, even in a relatively rationalistic way.  It is as possible to end such a practice, as it is to end our practice of conversing.  And if we are going to do it, it needs to be done well—seriously, rigorously, maybe even sometimes by professionals.  What we need is not less philosophy, but more of it.

Comments

[Barrett Turner]

Thanks, Dr. Song. Your response reminded me of Robert George's response to Jeffrey Goldsworthy, "A Defense of the New Natural Law Theory." Goldsworthy, according to George, critiqued the new natural law on the basis that feelings and desires motivate people to the exclusion of rationally comprehended ends. "Reason's role is limited to identifying efficient means to those ends" supplied by the passions. George goes on to argue for the existence of at least some "non-instrumental reasons for action" in keeping with the new natural law theory. Pretty neat.

You mentioned how not even serious cognitivists or rationalists totally exclude emotions or passions (as George notes, as well). My question is how you, as a Christian philosopher, understand the role of the feelings and desires we have as human beings when we're deciding to act. How do we know when our feelings are getting in the way and how do we know when they're helping us on to the right choice? Perhaps this is too complex a question.

Thanks!
Barrett

[Lois Westerlund]

And yet, isn't it true, that although right reason supplies the justification, passion supplies the motivation? Does not the Spirit's conforming us to Christ consist not only in illumining our minds, but in inflaming our passions, so that our heart's truest instinct is ready obedience? Without that, I have only a head full of knowledge; a lifetime of experience has shown me how powerless that is when it comes to acting on what I know is right! I once asked Professor Haidt if he had read any C. S. Lewis. He hadn't. I gave him a copy of "The Abolition of Man" suggesting he read the chapter, "Men Without Chests." He said that was the book others had recommended! Lewis writes, "Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe 'a gentleman does not cheat.' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers." Thanks for your thoughtful post.
Lois

[Edward Song]

Thank you both for the thoughtful responses. Barrett, I know much of George's work, (coincidentally, he was at LSU just last week and I had dinner with him) but not that particular essay. There is a lot of really interesting work being done on this point, especially by TM Scanlon. He argues that desire-based/instrumental accounts of reason for action get things backwards. Desires aren't reasons for actions because they are desires; rather, desires are reasons for action because they are reasons or proto-reasons. He tries to argue that desires are actually complex psychological phenomenon that are proto-evaluative. To desire something is to see oneself, at least prima facie as having a reason to do it. THis is different from having an urge or compulsion which lacks this evaluative component. Interesting stuff.

But this doesn't answer either question. I don't know if I believe, Lois, Lewis's pithy maxim. I wouldn't trust a moral philosopher brought up among sharpers much, but I don't think I would trust him or her less than I trust a moral skeptic. It is hard to believe that the skeptic's beliefs wouldn't at some point erode the reliability of his training. Again, I don't doubt at all the importance of the emotions and the importance of trying to inculcate moral dispositions and virtues (In fact, I think such inculcation is necessary to "see" the point of certain kinds of moral demands--I am a virtue theorist through and through when it comes to thinking about moral education). But neither do I think that reason is wholly impotent to motivate us to action. It's the 'powerless' bit that seems a bit much to me. And maybe more important, I think all of this talk obscures certain important connections between reason and the emotions. This is related to the point above, many emotions at least, seem to have a proto-evaluative component.

Ed