Casey, thankyou for your well-written and well-thought-out post.

Although I admit, I am plodding through 'Fast and Slow', really finding it a plod. I do think it helps to know the reasons why we think and feel the way we do. If we can understand a mental reaction, we can stop being quite so afraid of it, if it is a bad one.

I haven't ever had a panic attack, but I do know a those who have. In my case, both were 17 year old boys.

I have, however, for a brief period, suffered from acute clinical depression. Now, that was scarey because it was inexplicable. The doctor explained that anyone could suffer from this illness, it wasn't caused by outward circumstances (although they could trigger it) but the major cause was 'chemicals' in the brain. The brain not producing enough serotonin. I took some pills for six months, stopped gradually, didn't feel right, so then took pills for another month or two, then came off them gradually and I have been OK since then. I was very grateful indeed, to know what was causing the problem.

I was very grateful for the research carried out. Because I knew there was something I could do to help myself, I didn't feel quite so much like a headless chick (as our Antipodean friends say).

I am trying to make up my mind, whilst reading this book, whether fast thinking is inferior to slow, rational thinking. Or whether we need to feel encouraged to use both types. Do we really have a primeval, intuitive mechanism, which is addled from lack of use?

Well, I think we do. Life is much faster paced in these times. We don't always have the time for deliberation. I think we need to develop our fast-thinking facility and that we shouldn't undermine it. It is vital.

denisecummins wrote:Although some interpretations of dual process theories of morality is that rationality is needed to override emotion-based moral judgments, not everyone subscribes to that. Detaching moral judgment from compassion typically has disastrous consequences, such as witch burning.

Denise, responding to your comment from last week, and to your detailed comments on Hume and Kant, I disagree with your argument here about the role of compassion and reason in morality. Compassion often produces flawed decisions, for example when charity destroys capacity and incentive for self-improvement and creates dependence on the giver. Emotive feelings need to be grounded in a rational understanding of consequences in order to achieve the best results. I don't think your example of witch burning makes sense here, since you link it to "rationality overriding emotion-based moral judgments" although it is primarily emotional rather than rational. Morality should be about how passions are controlled by rational principle.

Questioning the status of compassion in morality also links to a critique of the popular moral claims of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. One of Hume's most famous statements was "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." This is a flatly ridiculous claim, not just because it contradicts his dictum that you can never derive an ought from an is. If, for a British Enlightenment example, someone is a passionate supporter of British Imperialism, then, like JS Mill's support for the opium trade, he or she will subordinate their rational faculties regarding moral rights to their economic interests, making reason slave to passion. That is the underlying heuristic for Hume's argument, and it is evil.

Kahneman's brilliant analysis of how we substitute easy questions for hard ones helps to disentangle what these philosophers were really conveying. Their agenda was to construct a mythic narrative for modern capitalist individualism, quite a hard question. But Hume and Mill and Locke had to conceal this heuristic(using Kahneman's term), which they saw as an intuitive judgment of common sense, beneath a more plausible argument. So Hume derided the role of abstract principle in guiding our moral sentiments.

Hume's 'slave of the passions' line bears comparison with "Honi soit qui mal y pense" a French phrase meaning: "Shamed be he who thinks evil of it", and the motto of the English chivalric Order of the Garter, appearing on the national coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland known as the Arms of Dominion. Like Hume's argument, which on face value suggests that he can rationalise any desire, the Empire power slogan justified brazen domination by an arrogant disdain for what anyone else thought. It is a philosophy of might makes right, and is contrary to basic moral principles.

'Reason as slave of passion' also implies that if I am passionate about compassion, as a primary emotive view, then I will enslave reason to justify my feelings, and ignore rational argument and evidence that contradicts my emotion. But that is rationalisation, not logic.

Yes, we do disagree. And that is because people disagree about what the "greater good" is. The holocaust happened in large part because the Nazi's believed sacrificing entire populations of people was necessary in order to achieve "a greater good", namely a pure Aryan race. Suicide bombers believe that (e.g.,) killing 3,000 innocent people is justified for "the greater good" of destroying the alleged foes of Islam. The entire Spanish Inquisition was based on a principle of "greater good".

What stops people from engaging in these atrocities even when authorities are telling them it is for "the greater good"? Compassion for the victims.

I'm plodding too. Can't really win can we? If we smile to lift our mood then we are more likely to make rash decisions, and if we frown and try and use system 2 we are miserable. I tried the pencil trick to make me smile and therefore in a happier mood but I just gagged on it

denisecummins wrote:What stops people from engaging in these atrocities even when authorities are telling them it is for "the greater good"? Compassion for the victims.

But you are just using compassion here in its legitimate role as an evidentiary factor in critiquing dogmatic ideologies. That is quite different from your original claim that compassion could be placed above reason as an organising principle for morality. Yes, compassion is central to morality. But compassion applied in isolation can be just as irrational as any dogma. Compassion should be placed within a systematic logical understanding in order to contribute to a good morality. Reason is a more powerful critique of fanaticism than compassion alone is. Extreme fanatical examples only show that people can be deluded about the content of the greater good, not that we are incapable of forming some rational consensus about what the greater good actually is.

Robert wrote:

Compassion should be placed within a systematic logical understanding in order to contribute to a good morality.

We cannot 'place' our compassion where we want it to be. Compassion is an emotion, it is not logical!!!!


Hatred combined with logic and understanding can create great evil.

Compassion (Love?) can't ever do that.

I remember the admirable Professor Ira Berlin, on 'Desert Island Discs' on the radio, announcing, 'Evil can always grow from hatred, but never, ever from love and compassion'.

It brightened an otherwise dull Sunday morning for me!!!

Robert, where did get the impression that I was arguing compassion should be placed "above reason"? I don't believe that, so your post surprised me. I re-read my earlier posts, and I don't see anything that could be construed that way. I hope you didn't conclude that because I am female, and women are "emotion driven"??

I agree that morality is or should be the outcome of a process that combines reason, emotion, and intuition. That, incidentally, is what the System 1/System 2 division is all about. System 1 comprises a rapid affective, heuristic, and intuitive processes. System 2 comprises slower deliberative processes, such as probability estimation and consideration of aggregate cost-benefit analyses.

Like Hume, though, I also believe benevolence (or compassion) should be a crucial component of our moral judgments. Other emotions, such as anger, disgust, or outrage, can often lead us to be vindictive. Compassion tempered with rational considerations is an excellent method of moral judgment.

denisecummins wrote:Robert, where did get the impression that I was arguing compassion should be placed "above reason"?

Hi Denise, I'm just teasing out an apparent non-sequitur I may have misconstrued from your statements that I quoted above: "Although some interpretations of dual process theories of morality is that rationality is needed to override emotion-based moral judgments, not everyone subscribes to that. Detaching moral judgment from compassion typically has disastrous consequences, such as witch burning."

How I read this comment, which you have now clarified, was that firstly, you think it is wrong to use reason to override emotion. "Not everyone" reads as "I don't" in this context because you go on to illustrate why reason should not override emotion. Your second sentence reads as an example to illustrate how reason overriding compassion is bad, as a particular illustration of a general argument. These two sentences considered in isolation seem to equate "rationality overriding emotion" with "detaching judgment from compassion." But "override" and "detach" have extremely different meanings which your argument appears to elide. So we have these rational witch burners (Calvin comes to mind) who have a cold logical system in which compassion does not figure. In Kahneman's sense, you have "primed" the reader to equate the primacy of reason with the burning of witches, a very dubious proposition, especially with the emphasis you provide through the words "typically disastrous".

If rationality is not "needed to override emotion" and compassion is the primary example of emotion, then compassion is indeed placed above reason. Linking that back to Hume's theory of reason as slave of passion suggests a view that morality should be primarily driven by sentiment rather than logic. That argument, in my view, jars against rule of law, in which reason is tempered by compassion but where the rationality of state power routinely overrides compassion towards criminals.

I'm sorry if I have built a straw man, but my purpose was to clarify this complex issue. Compassion is primarily a "System One" intuitive form of thought, while logic is "System Two". I am interested in the problem of moral coherence, and how intuition bleeds into and infects reason. You are emphasising how reason alone is insufficient for morality, as in Kant's willingness to betray a victim because he places truth above practicality in his system of moral principle.

Hume's valid point is that moral sentiments are expressions of value preference rather than observations of fact. Yet there is this big problem of the interplay between intuition and reason in morality. So I disagree with Penelope's comment that "We cannot 'place' our compassion where we want it to be." Of course we can and we do it all the time. We support rule of law. We are compassionate to our friends and indifferent to those we don't know. That is why the injunction from Christ to love your enemies is so baffling and confronting.

We are compassionate to people we believe are deserving and harsh to people we see as undeserving. This assessment of 'moral desert' is based on a complex combination of evidence and prejudice. I would like to see an increase in the use of evidence in the formation of moral values. That means placing compassion within a rational framework.

Robert, just to clarify further: In Joshua Greene's dual process of model of morality, two systems process the situation in parallel. System 1 is a rapid system that outputs judgments quickly based on emotion, heuristics, or intuition. System 2 is a slower system that outputs judgments more slowly based on deliberation.

If both systems output the same judgment, a decision has been made.

If the systems output different judgments, then further deliberation is made to resolve the conflict. The conflict can be resolved in favor of either output. System 2 can override System 1 outputs or vice versa.

The question is which one is the "right" answer. Moral judgments are not like math decisions; there aren't clear right or wrong answers. Even moral philosophers disagree, so normative moral theories are frequently based on consensus.

To use again the "murderer at the door" example, Kant believed it was always wrong to lie, even if lying would save an innocent life. Utilitarians like Bentham and Mill believed saving a life outweighed the minor wrong of lying. Kant was concerned with deriving universal categorical imperatives that applied to everyone everywhere and every time. Obviously, not everyone agrees with that.

So what is "rational/relevant" and what is "irrational/irrelevant" is not clear cut. Psychopaths and people with damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex act like strict utilitarians. Psychopaths also show virtually no compassion or empathy for others, and are capable of great harm to others as a result.

Bottom line: I think we agree that cost-benefit analyses and compassionate/empathetic concerns are integral parts of the moral judgment process. When we exclude either, we make bad judgments that too often have led to atrocities.

So what is "rational/relevant" and what is "irrational/irrelevant" is not clear cut.

There's a Rationally Speaking blog about the distinction between rational and irrational posted just this morning. Helpful disambiguation for myself.

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/