Quote of the Day: Ian McGilchrist

Moral values are not somethig that we work out rationally on the principle of utility, or any other principle, for that matter, but are irreducible aspects fo the phenomenal world, like colour. I agree with Max Scheler, and for that matter with Wittgenstein, that moral value is a form of experience irreducible to any other kind, or accountable for on any other terms; and I believe this perception underlies Kant's derivation of God from the existence of moral values rather than moral values from the existence of a God. Such values are linked to the capacity for empathy, nor reasoning; and moral judgments are not deliberative but unconscious and intuitive, deeply bound up with our emotional sensitivity to others. Empathy is intrinsic to morality. The Master and the Emissary, p. 86

If you are unaware of this book, it's definitely a must read. Now I have some extra time during the holidays I'm just working my way through it. I'm taking a lot of extra time with chapter two because I have to educate myself on brain physiology and function. 

I was wondering if there was any interest out there to do a book club on it. I'm open to it if there are three or four others who might want to join me as I dig through it.  I think it's a very, very important book.

The passage quoted, I think, stands on its own, but it is supported by the larger argument that he is making in his book. Rather than go into it here again, I point you to earlier post on the book. 

 

Comments

[mondo dentro]

I'm no philosopher, just a thinker, and I get the gist of what McGilchrist is saying. I even embrace it at an "irreducible" emotional/spiritual level (!!) BUT... one cannot separate reason from empathy. Quite the contrary. Reason is a centrally important component of empathetic feeling and action. It is my reason that tells me that screaming guy over there with the teabag hanging off of his hat and the "Obama is a commie-nazi-muslim sodomy loving baby killer" poster is, like me and mine, a human worthy of respect. Not my feelings. Indeed, as I survey our world, the correlation in humans between unreason and lack of empathy seems pretty close to 1.

I'm aware that this is likely semantic nit-picking and that an entire book's worth of exposition is probably much more coherent than that. But one thing that contemporary neuroscience is showing pretty clearly is that "feelings" and "reason" are inextricably linked. I'm curious how that affects this sort of discussion.

[Jack Whelan]

Mondo--It's not a question of either or, it's a question of how the two work together. McGilchrist would say, referring to the title of his book, Empathy is the Master and Reason the Emissary. The problem arises when the latter thinks he's in charge.

[Jack Whelan]

I also think that McGilchrist points to something important about the situational particularity and immediacy of moral judgments. They are not or should not be abstract judgments that we make about ourselves or others. When we make negative moral judgments about others, we typically use an abstract template, which is the opposite of empathic understanding. The gospels admonish us against morally judging others and instead to empathically identify with them.

This is too easily dismissed as relativism. I think there is always in every moment the absolute right thing to do, but what is right in one moment may be wrong in another. The idea that there is some certain or some easy formulation that determines what is right or wrong in a given situation is a form or moral alienation. We can never be certain. We make the best judgment we can.

The no judgment of others admonition also does not prevent us from making judgments about particular behaviors that have a destructive effect on others or on the community at large. I have no idea to what degree Adam Lanza or his mother were morally culpable for what happened in Newtown, but that does not prevent you from seeing what happened as profoundly evil.

When making judgments in one's own experience about the right thing to do in a given moment, the essential element is not the imposition of an abstract moral template. It's rather using more of an 'irrational' intuitive capability. It's a matter of discernment, not of rational calculation.

That being said, I think it's also important for us to develop habits in ourselves (and in our children) that incline us to be sensitive enough to discern what the moment demands. That means eschewing those activities that de-sensitize us. So I would say that we must undertake a kind of moral training in the same way that a musician trains. The goal is not to be technically perfect in some mechanistic way. We want to have developed sharpened physical reflexes and a good ear, but more importantly to cultivate a capacity to surrender to the music. In this way the technical skill or proficiency that comes from training works in the service of the grace of the moment.

The training, insofar as it is motivated by a will to develop control and proficiency, is a function of the left side; the attunement to the mystery in the music comes from the right. The problem lies in becoming so obsessed with the technical proficiency that we forget what it serves. In the moral realm this forgetting and the quest for technical perfection as an end in itself is Phariseeism.

So regarding moral judments, the most important question to ask about our rational faculties is "What do they serve?" Too often they work in the lawyerly service of justifying our wrongdoing by giving us all manner of good reasons for doing the wrong thing.

[Jonathan]

Jack, you say " I think there is always in every moment the absolute right thing to do" -- is that McGilchrist's position as well? A lot of what I read, whether it's a theologian like Berdyaev or a physicist like Brian Greene, tells me the universe (as we can experience it anyhow) is not absolute like this, your temporal qualification notwithstanding. The tragedy and complexity of life doesn't come from choosing right over wrong, but in choosing between two or more options that are equally right. The uncertainty you bring up potentially permeates every moment, it does not have to only exist in the movement from one context to the next. I'll have to read McGilchrist on this finer point. I do know that a lot of people who talk about morality as if it were an annoying, slightly embarrassing thing we have to struggle to understand so as to transcend, tend to think of it as purely right v. wrong, but morality has always been -- or so I find -- about going 'beyond good and evil.'

One more thought: All this talk of empathy is fine, but what about fear? I guess I'm a Kierkegaardian on this point. Fear of wrongdoing is not the same as desire to do right. It's also not necessarily the same thing, despite what many people now believe, as allowing one's mind to be controlled by an oppressive moralism. Does McGilchrist have anything to say about fear and trembling? And finally, I would add that there is a third impetus to moral life, neither fear nor empathy, but awe, which is a mixture of both but also transcends both. Those who feel a need to worship are not responding to fear or empathy, i think, at least not exclusively. But then, the religious impulse is not reducible to or coextensive with moral life -- though again, that is how a lot of people who are embarrassed by one or the other or both tend to imagine religion and morality.

[Jack Whelan]

Jonathan--

What I'm writing here is not McGilchrist, but my own thinking, which I think is consistent within the McGilchrist frame. I don't know that he would agree with my statements.

I"m not sure about 'fear'. I think we'd have to define the experience of fear a little more clearly. I think there is a fear that can have a paralyzing effect on action, a fear of making a mistake that is so dependent on our being certainty that we are doing the right thing that is not at all morally healthy.

But this quote from McGilchrist, while not addressing fear, here sounds rather Kierkegaardian:

""Denial is a left-hemisphere speciality: in states of relative right-hemisphere inactivation, in which there is therefore a bias toward the left hemisphere, subjects tend to evaluate themselves optimistically, view pictures more positively, and are more apt to stick to their existing point of view. In the presence of a right-hemisphere stroke, the left hemisphere is 'crippled by naively optimistic forecasting of outcomes'. It is always a winner: winning is associated with activation of the left amygdala, losing with right amygdala activation.

"There are links here wight the right hemisphere's tendency to melancholy. If there is a tendency for the right hemisphere to be more sorrowful and prone to depression, this can, in my view, be seen as related not only to being more in touch with what's going on, but more in touch with and concerned for, others. "no man is an island": it is the right hemisphere of the human brain that ensures that we feel part of the main. The more we are aware of and empathically connected to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, the more we are likely to suffer. Sadness and empathy are highly correlated: this can be seen in studies of children and adolescents. There is also a direct correlation between sadness and empathy, on the one hand, and feelings of guilt, shame and responsibility, on the other. Psychopaths, who have no sense o guilt, shame or responsibility, have deficits in the right frontal lobe particularly the right ventromedial and orbitofrontal cortex." p.85

McGilchrist's way of describing how unbalanced left-side thinking creates a state in which one is a prisoner in a closed mirror-world system is exactly my understanding of what Kierkegaard describes as despair.