Emotions and Reason
There are two main forms of moral rationalism, associated with two major forms of reasoning. If moral reasoning is based on theoretical reason, and is hence analogous to discovering empirical or scientific truths about the world, a purely emotionless being could arrive at the truths of reason. Such a being wouldn't necessarily be motivated to act morally. Beings who are motivated to act morally can also arrive at moral truths, but needn't rely upon their emotions to do so.
Many moral rationalists believe that moral reasoning is based on practical reason, which involves choices about what to do or intend to do, including how to achieve one's goals and what goals one should have in the first place. In this view, moral reasoning always involves emotional states and hence be intrinsically motivating. Immanuel Kant expressed this view when he said that immoral actions do not involve a contradiction in belief, but a contradiction in the will, that is, in one's commitment to a principle which one intends to motivate actions. Christine Korsgaard's elaboration of Kantian reasoning tries to show that if ethics is actually based on practical reasoning, this shows that it can be objective and universal, without having to appeal to questionable metaphysical assumptions.
Read more about this topic: Moral Rationalism
Famous quotes containing the words emotions and, emotions and/or reason:
“Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Virtues are not emotions. Emotions are movements of appetite, virtues dispositions of appetite towards movement. Moreover emotions can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable; whereas virtues dispose us only to good. Emotions arise in the appetite and are brought into conformity with reason; virtues are effects of reason achieving themselves in reasonable movements of the appetites. Balanced emotions are virtue’s effect, not its substance.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
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