[lit-ideas] Re: On being called a Lyre
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:23:25 +0900
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> As an independent topic, I am intrigued by the notion of an "emotional
> moral
> approach." "Morality," I would have thought, concerns the obligations we
> have
> to others and ourselves in virtue of being rationally autonomous agents.
I am glad that Walter introduces the qualification "I would have thought"
into his assumption.
The attempt to separate "rationally autonomous agents" from the emotions
has, I trust we all know, a long and honorable history in Western thought.
But the last couple of centuries have produced a lot of evidence that
separating reason and emotion is not only a difficult task but, at the end
of the day, an impossible one.
This is not, by the way, an attack on reason and logic. Both clearly have
great utility, and there is every reason to believe that considering the
question: "If rationality is possible, what are the conditions that make it
so?" is a valuable thing to do.
One can always proceed like the fabled economist who trapped on a desert
island with nothing to eat but a can of beans begins to consider his problem
with "Assume a can opener." It may be more valuable, however, to proceed
from the observation, being reinforced almost daily by all sorts of
research, that pattern-matching and emotional response precede reason, which
enters into decision-making as part of a feedback loop, a control mechanism
that serves, when operating properly, to check the errors to which
pattern-matching and emotional response are prone.
John (in a mellow and philosophical mood)
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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