There’s a philosophy called “emotivism” that seems to be along these lines. “Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes.”
I can see a couple of ways to read it (not having looked too closely). The first is “Everyone’s ethical statements are actually just expressions of emotion. And, as we all know, emotions are frequently illogical and inappropriate to the situation. Therefore, everything anyone has ever said or will say about ethics is untrustworthy, and can reasonably be dismissed.” This strikes me as alarming, and dangerous if any adherents were in charge of anything important.
The second reading is something like, “When humans implement ethical judgments—e.g. deciding that the thief deserves punishment—we make our emotions into whatever is appropriate to carry out the actions we’ve decided upon (e.g. anger towards the thief). Emotions are an output of the final judgment, and are always a necessary component of applying the judgment. However, the entire process leading up to the final judgment isn’t necessarily emotional; we can try, and expect the best of us to usually succeed, at making that process conform to principles like logical consistency.” That I would be on board with. But… that seems like a “well, duh” which I expect most people would agree with, and if that was what the emotivists meant, I don’t see why they would express themselves the way they seem to.
I think a proper human morality somehow accounts for disgust having actually been an important part of how it was birthed.
I’m not sure if people maintain consistent distinctions between legal philosophy, ethics, and morality. But for whatever it is that governs our response to crimes, I think anger / desire-for-revenge is a more important part of it. Also the impulse to respond to threats (“Criminal on the streets! Who’s he coming for next?”), which I guess is fear and/or anger.
Come to think of it, if I try to think of things that people declare “immoral” that seem to come from disgust rather than fear or anger, I think of restrictions on sexual behavior (e.g. homosexuality, promiscuity) and drugs, which I think the law shouldn’t touch (except in forms where someone was injured nonconsensually, in which case revenge-anger comes into play). As emotions go, I think I’d distrust disgust more than the others.
I know some people with disgust reactions to bad epistemics (that are at least morally tinged, if not explicitly part of the person’s morality).
I think “disgust for in-elegance” is actually an important component on how “desire for consistency / reflectively fair rules” gets implemented in humans (at least. for the philosophers and lawmakers who set in motion the rules/culture that other people absorb via a less-opinionated “monkey see monkey do”)
I recall some discussion of one paper claiming conservatives had higher disgust response, but this was in part becaused they asked questions about “what do you think about homosexuality” and not “what do you think about cutting up books” or “not recycling”, etc (I think the book-cutting up purity response isn’t quite disgust-mediated, at least for me, but it’s at least adjacent).
None of that is a strong claim about exactly how important disgust is to morality, either now or historically, but, I think there’s at least more to it than you’re alluding to.
The idea that ethical statements are anything more than “just expressions of emotion” is, to paraphrase Lucretius (EDIT: misattributed; it’s from Gibbon), “regarded by the common people as true, by the wise[1] as false, and by rulers as useful.”
Alarming and dangerous as this view may be, I’d be really surprised if literally everyone who had power (“in charge of anything important”) also lacked the self-awareness to see it.
The idea that ethical statements are anything more than “just expressions of emotion” is, to paraphrase Lucretius, “regarded by the common people as true, by the wise[1] as false, and by rulers as useful.”
I figure you think the wise are correct. Well, then. Consider randomly selected paragraphs from Supreme Court justices’ opinions. Or consider someone saying “I’d like to throw this guy in jail, but unfortunately, the evidence we have is not admissible in court, and the judicial precedent on rules of evidence is there for a reason—it limits the potential abusiveness of the police, and that’s more important than occasionally letting a criminal off—so we have to let him go.” Is that an ethical statement? And is it “just an expression of emotion”?
For the record, in an ethical context, when I say a behavior is bad, I mean that (a) an ethical person shouldn’t do it (or at least should have an aversion to doing it—extreme circumstances might make it the best option) and (b) ethical people have license to punish it in some way, which, depending on the specifics, might range from “social disapproval” to “the force of the law”.
Alarming and dangerous as this view may be, I’d be really surprised if literally everyone who had power (“in charge of anything important”) also lacked the self-awareness to see it.
I think there are lots of people in power who are amoral, and this is indeed dangerous, and does indeed frequently lead to them harming people they rule over.
However, I don’t think most of them become amoral by reading emotivist philosophy or by independently coming to the conclusion that ethical statements are “just expressions of emotion”. What makes rulers frequently immoral? Some have hypothesized that there’s an evolved response to higher social status, to become more psychopathic. Some have said that being psychopathic makes people more likely to succeed at the fight to become a ruler. It’s also possible that they notice that, in their powerful position, they’re unlikely to face consequences for bad things they do, and… they either motivatedly find reasons to drop their ethical principles, or never held them in the first place.
I was being glib because you made some favorable (iyo) remark about the views of the people “in charge”.
I don’t actually think the “wise” I made up are entirely correct; that was just to make my paraphrase hew to the original quote about religion. Ethical statements are also tools for social signaling and status-seeking, which the “rulers” understand implicitly, among whom it is their primary purpose.
When I say a behavior is bad, it’s almost always merely an expression of my preferences. (I say almost to leave open the possibility that I might need to engage in social signaling sometimes.) But yes, I agree that all good people ought to share them and punish those who don’t.
There’s a philosophy called “emotivism” that seems to be along these lines. “Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes.”
I can see a couple of ways to read it (not having looked too closely). The first is “Everyone’s ethical statements are actually just expressions of emotion. And, as we all know, emotions are frequently illogical and inappropriate to the situation. Therefore, everything anyone has ever said or will say about ethics is untrustworthy, and can reasonably be dismissed.” This strikes me as alarming, and dangerous if any adherents were in charge of anything important.
The second reading is something like, “When humans implement ethical judgments—e.g. deciding that the thief deserves punishment—we make our emotions into whatever is appropriate to carry out the actions we’ve decided upon (e.g. anger towards the thief). Emotions are an output of the final judgment, and are always a necessary component of applying the judgment. However, the entire process leading up to the final judgment isn’t necessarily emotional; we can try, and expect the best of us to usually succeed, at making that process conform to principles like logical consistency.” That I would be on board with. But… that seems like a “well, duh” which I expect most people would agree with, and if that was what the emotivists meant, I don’t see why they would express themselves the way they seem to.
I’m not sure if people maintain consistent distinctions between legal philosophy, ethics, and morality. But for whatever it is that governs our response to crimes, I think anger / desire-for-revenge is a more important part of it. Also the impulse to respond to threats (“Criminal on the streets! Who’s he coming for next?”), which I guess is fear and/or anger.
Come to think of it, if I try to think of things that people declare “immoral” that seem to come from disgust rather than fear or anger, I think of restrictions on sexual behavior (e.g. homosexuality, promiscuity) and drugs, which I think the law shouldn’t touch (except in forms where someone was injured nonconsensually, in which case revenge-anger comes into play). As emotions go, I think I’d distrust disgust more than the others.
I know some people with disgust reactions to bad epistemics (that are at least morally tinged, if not explicitly part of the person’s morality).
I think “disgust for in-elegance” is actually an important component on how “desire for consistency / reflectively fair rules” gets implemented in humans (at least. for the philosophers and lawmakers who set in motion the rules/culture that other people absorb via a less-opinionated “monkey see monkey do”)
I feel at least a little disgusted by people who are motivated by disgust, which I have discussed the paradoxicality of.
I recall some discussion of one paper claiming conservatives had higher disgust response, but this was in part becaused they asked questions about “what do you think about homosexuality” and not “what do you think about cutting up books” or “not recycling”, etc (I think the book-cutting up purity response isn’t quite disgust-mediated, at least for me, but it’s at least adjacent).
None of that is a strong claim about exactly how important disgust is to morality, either now or historically, but, I think there’s at least more to it than you’re alluding to.
The idea that ethical statements are anything more than “just expressions of emotion” is, to paraphrase Lucretius (EDIT: misattributed; it’s from Gibbon), “regarded by the common people as true, by the wise[1] as false, and by rulers as useful.”
Alarming and dangerous as this view may be, I’d be really surprised if literally everyone who had power (“in charge of anything important”) also lacked the self-awareness to see it.
See also: “I have drawn myself as the Chad.”
I figure you think the wise are correct. Well, then. Consider randomly selected paragraphs from Supreme Court justices’ opinions. Or consider someone saying “I’d like to throw this guy in jail, but unfortunately, the evidence we have is not admissible in court, and the judicial precedent on rules of evidence is there for a reason—it limits the potential abusiveness of the police, and that’s more important than occasionally letting a criminal off—so we have to let him go.” Is that an ethical statement? And is it “just an expression of emotion”?
For the record, in an ethical context, when I say a behavior is bad, I mean that (a) an ethical person shouldn’t do it (or at least should have an aversion to doing it—extreme circumstances might make it the best option) and (b) ethical people have license to punish it in some way, which, depending on the specifics, might range from “social disapproval” to “the force of the law”.
I think there are lots of people in power who are amoral, and this is indeed dangerous, and does indeed frequently lead to them harming people they rule over.
However, I don’t think most of them become amoral by reading emotivist philosophy or by independently coming to the conclusion that ethical statements are “just expressions of emotion”. What makes rulers frequently immoral? Some have hypothesized that there’s an evolved response to higher social status, to become more psychopathic. Some have said that being psychopathic makes people more likely to succeed at the fight to become a ruler. It’s also possible that they notice that, in their powerful position, they’re unlikely to face consequences for bad things they do, and… they either motivatedly find reasons to drop their ethical principles, or never held them in the first place.
I was being glib because you made some favorable (iyo) remark about the views of the people “in charge”.
I don’t actually think the “wise” I made up are entirely correct; that was just to make my paraphrase hew to the original quote about religion. Ethical statements are also tools for social signaling and status-seeking, which the “rulers” understand implicitly, among whom it is their primary purpose.
When I say a behavior is bad, it’s almost always merely an expression of my preferences. (I say almost to leave open the possibility that I might need to engage in social signaling sometimes.) But yes, I agree that all good people ought to share them and punish those who don’t.