Pursuing the Moral Mind
by Rev. Colin Bossen, May 17, 2009
Last December Sara and I had to take Asa, our toddler, to the hospital to have an abscess drained. While we were there the doctors ran a variety of tests on Asa's blood and took general stock of his well-being. One of the things that they discovered was that he suffered from an iron deficiency. In toddlers an iron deficiency can be a cause of alarm. It can lead to anemia and the development of lifelong learning disabilities. To improve Asa's iron levels he was proscribed an iron supplement. Additionally, we were advised to consider changing his diet. At the time Asa, like me, was a vegetarian. It was suggested to us that we could increase his iron levels by integrating some meat into his diet.
This presented us with a moral dilemma. A moral dilemma is an instance where an individual or community is presented with a problem that places two moral principles in conflict. The principles in conflict in this instance were my vegetarianism and my obligation to provide the best care I can for my child.
I have been a vegetarian of some form or another since I was fifteen years old. My initial decision to become a vegetarian stemmed from two factors. During my teenage years I became aware that the planet has limited resources. It takes far more land, water and fuel to provide an individual with a meat rich diet than it does to provide her with a vegetarian one. Additionally, the majority of the meat produced and consumed by people in this country is raised on factory farms. Factory farms are environmental disasters. They poison the land, water and air. The working conditions inside them are terrible. Perhaps most disconcertingly, the animals raised in factory farms live lives of suffering and torment. Chickens, for example, spend their lives crowded into small cages with each animal often having no more than half a square foot of space. Under such conditions the chickens often peck or beat each other to death. In order to prevent this their beaks can be removed and their wings clipped.
Over the years my vegetarianism has been an important part of my identity and value system. It had been my hope to raise Asa as a vegetarian. Emma was already a confirmed meat eater when Sara and I got married. I hoped that I would be able to have greater influence on our son's food choices. So once Asa began to eat solid food we started him on a vegetarian diet.
When we returned from the hospital Sara and I continued Asa on his vegetarian diet. We also started to give him his dietary supplement. It was a struggle. Sometimes we had to pry his mouth open to give him a dropper full of the liquid. Other times he would spit out the supplement as soon as we gave it to him. We tried to mix it with juice. And after weeks of this we noticed that Asa's teeth were turning grey. We spoke with one of our doctors about this and she said that it was a side effect of the supplement. We were also advised at that time that we'd probably have to continue with the iron supplement for at least another year, if not longer.
At that point Sara and I decided that we would integrate meat into Asa's diet. I was not happy about the decision but it seemed like it was probably the best long term choice for his health. Integrating meat, particularly red meat, into his diet meant that it would be easier for him to get iron and, hopefully, decrease the risk of future learning disabilities or cognitive impairment such as reduced short term memory.
I found our choice was gut wrenching. We made it only after several weeks of discussion. Between vegetarianism and what we believed was the best long term choice for the health of our child, the health of our child won out. We were presented with a moral dilemma and in the face of that dilemma we made a choice.
Over the last few years I have been studying how humans make moral decisions. I first began my investigation into moral decision making in seminary when I studied under the Unitarian Universalist theologian Thandeka. Thandeka advised her students that it is wise to draw upon the insights of contemporary science--particularly neuroscience and cognitive psychology--when seeking to understand moral decision-making. This is, she taught, simply good liberal theological methodology. As Paul Rasor, another Unitarian Universalist theologian, has noted, "liberal theology is characterized by the belief that human religiousness should be understood from the perspective of modern knowledge and experience." Using the findings of contemporary science to answer religious questions is not only permissible it is highly advisable. Indeed embracing, rather than running from, the findings of modern science has long been a liberal hallmark. It has often distinguished us Unitarian Universalists from our conservative and fundamentalist kin.
The topic of moral decision making has been of concern to religious communities for thousands of years. Ancient texts and classical theologians offer a variety of opinions on how humans make moral decisions and what it means to be a moral being. James Luther Adams, perhaps the most important Unitarian Universalist theologian of the twentieth century, explored human decision making in his essay "The Changing Reputation of Human Nature." Adams identified three major ways of thinking about moral decision making--the Apollonian, the Dionysian and the Judeo-Christian.
The first two views of moral decision making, and more broadly human nature, appeared in Ancient Greece. Adherents to the Apollonian school held that when confronted with moral choices human beings responded primarily rationally. They believed, as Adams writes, "man's primary distinguishing faculty is...reason, and through it he can release a vitality that will enable him to achieve control of himself and of the human situation."
The Dionysians took a different view. They believed that while humans are imbued with reason we are governed by our emotions, our will. This will, to quote Adams, "cannot be brought under control by any human technique." History, and moral decision making, contains, therefore, a tragic element. Much of it lies beyond our control.
The third view, which Adams calls the Judeo-Christian view, shares similarities with the Dionysian perspective. Humans are governed by our wills. However, there is also a divine will, God's will, which is inherently good. Humanity's fallen nature often puts it at odds with the divine will. It is possible, through religious practice and God's grace, to seek alignment with God's will. This enables one to make moral decisions.
Moral decision making for Apollonians is purely a rational affair. When confronted with a moral dilemma a person uses a set of rational principles, discovered through the application of the human faculty of reason, to resolve it.
For the Dionysians moral decision making is more difficult. There might be some set of moral principles that one should use to make decisions. However, when confronted with a moral decision people generally do not use those principles. Instead they respond instinctually. You might think of our former President George W. Bush as an archetypal Dionysian. He famously claimed that he governed from the gut. When required to make a decision he responded instinctively and emotionally rather than rationally.
For the third group, the Judeo-Christians, moral decision-making is a hybrid affair. They believe that left to our own devices humans will act like Dionysians. Fortunately, the grace of God allows humans to overcome our Dionysian impulses and use a God given moral code. Often people follow this code because they are fearful of what will happen if they do not. It is the Ten Commandments or eternal hellfire and damnation. In this system one emotion, fear, allows people to regulate their other emotions and live by God's moral code.
The Bible is replete with examples of what happens to those who fail to live by God's code. Take, for instance, Moses descending from the mountain to discover many members of his community worshipping Baal, the Golden Calf. The Baal worshippers are in clear violation of the first commandment--"You shall have no other gods besides Me"--so Moses, with his followers, slaughters them.
I suspect that most of us are familiar with contemporary versions of this worldview. They usually run as follows: people can obey laws--moral codes--and live together in harmony. In order for this harmony to be achieved a strong police force and the threat of punishment are required. Otherwise people will fall victim to their passions and violence and disorder will run rampant. The moral code needs enforcement.
My examination of contemporary science and the teachings of some Enlightenment philosophers and liberal theologians leads me to believe that each of these schools of thought is only partially right. We use our reason and emotions in moral decision-making. We also, sometimes, make moral choices out of fear. Additionally there maybe some sort of universal moral code hardwired, on some level, into our brains.
Let me sketch out how I think the moral decision making process works. The process is proceeded by an axiom: we have innate mental systems that allow us to make moral decisions. With this in mind, I propose that, when confronted with a moral dilemma two things happen. The first is that we have an emotional response to the situation. Second, if we have a strong enough emotional response we engage our reason. We then use our reason to try to solve the dilemma.
Most of the processes involved in moral decision making lie below our consciousness. For the Apollonians it is possible to believe that reason takes precedence because that is only faculty they are aware of using in their decision making. Likewise, the Dionysians can claim that emotions play the crucial role in determining our responses to moral dilemmas because the emotions are required to trigger the possibility of a moral decision. Neither group is aware of the processes in play outside the awareness of the conscious mind.
The axiom that such processes exist was proposed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Contemplating how the human mind works Kant had the insight that human knowledge can be divided into two categories, the a priori and the a posteriori. A priori knowledge is knowledge that all developmentally normal humans have regardless of their experience. In fact, it proceeds experience. An example might be the ability to visually distinguish between two different colors--say blue and red. A posteriori knowledge is knowledge only gained through experience. For example, the names of the colors I can visually discern. Having lived in Mexico I know, for instance, that the Spanish words for blue and red are, respectively, azul and rojo.
Kant thought that all people had a wide range of a priori knowledge. Examples he used included our abilities to note the passage of time, to discern cause and effect and discover mathematical principles. Kant also believed that all people had some form of a priori moral knowledge. He wrote, "Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
For Kant, an archetypal Apollonian, the moral law could be distilled into rules for action. He was convinced that such rules were available to all thinking human beings. He asserted that if someone reasoned hard enough they should, independent of any experience, be able to discover what he called the categorical imperative. This is the idea that, in his words, you should "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." In other words, your moral choices should be governed by a set of absolute principles—do not lie, do not steal, and so forth.
Much of cognitive science has been built upon Kant's insight that we have a priori knowledge. Most, if not all, contemporary philosophers and scientists would not dispute the idea. Some have expanded it to areas of knowledge beyond those explored by Kant. The linguist Noam Chomsky, for instance, has proposed that we are born with something he calls the universal grammar--a set of rules for making language.
Over the years some have disputed Kant's idea of the categorical imperative. They have argued that it is not a priori knowledge. And that absolutes offer insufficient guidance for moral action. Recently some thinkers, such as Marc Hauser, have proposed that while we may not have a priori knowledge of the categorical imperative we do have a priori knowledge of some moral principles. Just as we have a universal grammar for language Hauser believes that we have a universal grammar for morality.
A universal grammar provides us with a set of rules for building a system of knowledge. Using the example of language it has been proposed that one rule of the universal grammar is that all languages must have nouns. It is not possible to construct a meaningful language without them. Likewise a rule from a universal moral grammar might run all moral codes must have elements within them that are permissible (right) and impermissible (wrong).
We are each born with the ability to learn language and morality. The particular language we speak and moral code we follow are products of culture and, to a lesser extent, experience. Whether we are conscious of them or not our innate moral faculties cause us to develop moral codes, lists of permissible and impermissible actions. My culture's moral code has taught that honor killing, the practice of murdering someone to erase a perceived social wrong, is immoral. This is not true of some other cultures where honor killing is permissible and used to enforce the society's social norms. Additionally, I have further refined the moral code by which I operate based upon my life experience and knowledge (which is really just a form of experience). My moral principles relating to vegetarianism are not societal. They are personal.
The code we develop, conscious in some instances and unconscious in others, is built from our universal moral grammar, our cultural norms and our past experiences. Unless I am presented with a moral dilemma my moral code operates essentially in the background, helping to guide my day-to-day actions without my conscious awareness.
We only engage with a moral dilemma when it elicits an emotional response from us. Without an emotional response we lack the necessary impetus to examine our moral codes and possibly alter our patterns of behavior. This was an insight from the great liberal theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher was a Kantian but he felt that something was missing from Kant's system. If everyone had access to the moral law within them why was it, he wanted to know, that some people acted morally and others acted immorally. Where did this freedom to choose come between immoral and moral action come from?
He suggested that it was a result of our emotions. In a given situation we respond emotionally first and rationally second. Sometimes our emotions overrule our reason and cause us to act contrary to our moral codes. However, he believed that, when confronted with a moral decision, we could train ourselves to pause between the initial impulse to act and actually acting. This could give us time to reflect and make certain our action was in alignment with our moral code. This ability of impulse control was the sign of a mature human being. Schleiermacher thought it could be taught. He believed that with guidance members of society with ill formed or insufficient moral codes could learn to pause between the initial incident and their response to it and develop more appropriate moral principles.
Much of contemporary neuroscience suggests that Schleiermacher was largely right. Our physiology causes us to mirror the emotions of other human beings we are engaged with. This is origin of empathy. It means that when we confronted with someone suffering our emotions engage even before we become conscious of the issues at stake. Then only if the situation is sufficiently emotionally jarring—and there’s a conflict between moral principles—do we engage our reason. Otherwise we continue to act according to current moral code.
Many politicians have, consciously or not, mastered this insight. During the election season I am sure you all were aware of the various political attack ads on television and the radio. Such ads are designed to try to change your mind by inducing fear. If they are successful in inducing fear then you might re-examine your political allegiance and vote against the politician being attacked in the ad. These ads are effective because they manipulate human nature on a basic level.
After responding emotionally to a moral dilemma we can reason through the situation to determine what course of action to take. Sometimes we do not change our action in the moment but decide upon a rule to govern future actions. For instance, I know several war veterans who are now pacifists. Other times we are able to pause enough between the incident and our action to make adjustment, if necessary, to our moral code.
When two principles are in conflict we can weigh them and decide which is more important. Most likely this process also involves our universal moral grammar. How exactly it work has yet to be discerned.
Using these principles let me briefly re-examine my moral dilemma. It began when a situation where two of my moral principles were in conflict elicited an emotional response in me. Sara and I determined that the health of our child was more important to us than my vegetarianism. So we decided to introduce meat into Asa’s diet. Since then we have tried to figure out how to best make this decision coincide with other principles operative in our lives. As a result, we have decided only to feed him free range locally raised meat. The animals that this meat comes from do not live in factory farms. Eating their meat has less of an impact on the environment. Additionally, the animals have relatively decent lives up until shortly before their slaughter.
So what, if any, application does knowledge of how we make moral decisions have upon our lives? For one it suggests to me that people are only truly accountable for their actions if their moral capabilities, their universal moral grammar, is intact. Like language, morality is largely a product of the mind. Those who have suffered brain damage or developmental delays to the parts of the brain involved in moral decision making cannot be expected to be able to make moral decisions in the same ways that fully developed healthy adults do. Let me further suggest that the insight that emotional engagement is required to initiate moral decision making and the re-examination of moral codes is of great utilitarian value. It is an insight that allows us to understand how other people can affect our moral codes and how we, in turn, might affect theirs.
I was reminded of this recently when I was talking with a colleague of mine who is a conservative Methodist minister. She does not support gay marriage. In fact, she thinks that homosexuality is morally wrong. I suggested to her that many people are opposed to gay marriage simply because, for one reason or another, they are afraid of homosexuals. She countered that the issue is not about fear, it is about morality. I know, however, that much of her moral system is based in fear--fear of hellfire and damnation and fear of those not like her. I suspect that if she is ever to come to a different conclusion about the morality of gay marriage something must be done to assuage her underlying feelings of fear. Some incident must take place to cause to re-examine her beliefs.
I am, unfortunately, uncertain what that incident might be or how to engineer it.
The 19th century Universalist minister Hosea Ballou might have had an idea. Ballou was a master of rhetoric and he loved to argue with fundamentalist clergy of varying stripes. One day he was out riding with a Baptist minister when the Baptist turned to him and said, "Brother Ballou, the problem with you Universalists is that you don't believe in Hell. If I didn't have the fear of eternal damnation and hellfire there would be nothing to stop me from hitting you over the head and stealing your horse, money, saddle and clothes." Ballou replied, "Sir, if you were a Universalist the idea would never occur to you."
Our ever increasing human knowledge is allowing us to better understand how we, as a species, make moral decisions. We might become aware when fear is negatively impacting our decision-making. With this knowledge perhaps we will one day be able to answer the question and fulfill the visions of our poets. We might understand, in the words of Tu Fu, "why...men cross each other." We might realize, with Rexroth, a "World where man… [is] no longer / Wolf to man, but men and women / ...[are] all brothers and lovers / Together." May it be so.
Amen.