Max Kaplan

Illustrated by Daniel Nyari

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eople are not passive vessels; they are actors. We feel moved by an oration and run to the voting booth. We feel stung by the sincerity of a movie and call our mothers in tears. The value of emotions, then, is not chiefly the part they play in subjective experience. It is their ability to induce activity. States of affection can change our behavior, our priorities, and our evaluations. And they do not require our allowing them to do so. The reason we look for great emotion in great works of art, for example, is not the pleasure we derive from them, but the impact they have on our lives.

This is not a triviality. Emotions are crucial to the way in which we make decisions, both in the everyday and when we must weigh the morality of an action. I do not believe that moral facts are best found in our emotional judgment and that to act properly one ought follow one’s sentiments. Rather, I endorse a non-cognitivist approach, primarily through Charles Stevenson’s theory of Emotivism, wherein decisions are not grounded upon a computation of beliefs but upon a non-reason-based influence. What is at stake is not how one acts or how one ought to act but what it means to make a moral decision.

But before we get to the decision itself, it is important to understand what is entailed by a moral argument, or even an argument in general. Let us say that Alex and Ben are trying to choose a restaurant for dinner. They both want Chinese food, but Alex believes the restaurant is on Amsterdam while Ben holds that it is on Broadway. This, clearly, is a disagreement of fact or belief; the restaurant cannot be on both avenues, and therefore only one of them can be correct in his belief. This is the primary form of argument people consider. However, there is a second form that may prove to be of higher importance.

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uppose the dispute is not concerning the location of the restaurant but rather preference. Alex prefers Columbia Cottage whereas Ben prefers Ollie’s. Here the facts are clear, but rather the dispute presents a divergence in attitudes. ‘Attitude’ implies evaluation. What makes this type of disagreement so interesting, this discord between positive and negative attitudinal feelings, is that even after the two break down all the facts of the situation, from cost to location to free boxed wine (thank you Columbia Cottage), they can still disagree upon the comparable taste of the General Tso’s Chicken. Better yet, they may even agree as to the nature of the subjective experience of eating the chicken—say both agree that Ollie’s is greasy—while Ben can still prefer the taste. The point being, the decision will eventually terminate upon a concurrence or discord of attitude.

But who cares about Chinese food? More likely than not the argument will end with hunger rather than an accord of attitude. Yet this is precisely what is at stake. The disagreement does not end with the conceding of fact but with an agreement of attitude. At some point the primacy of negatively evaluated hunger will overwhelm one of the participants’ more neutral restaurant evaluations. Every moral argument reaches such a point. A moral argument, by definition, concerns the evaluation of an action as good or bad, right or wrong. Therefore the disagreeing parties hold either positive or negative attitudes towards the action. The decision is ultimately non-cognitive. For any argument involving attitudes the terminating factor, that upon which the decision turns, is how one feels. Attitude becomes primary.

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his move should not be taken lightly. It may seem innocuous to say that opinions are relevant in decisions, but the above discussion is more than a subjective refocusing. Prioritizing attitude demotes belief, as well as truth. If agreement in our beliefs is no longer stipulated for the conclusion of moral disagreements, then there is cause to describe beliefs as instruments of the moralist as opposed to ends in themselves. This is not a mere reorientation of usage, but a complete questioning of the utility of beliefs.

In the case of the restaurants the same beliefs yielded two distinct attitudes. The implication is a collapse in the standard ‘if-then’ logic, asserting (B^A) (B^¬A), or (i) if B, then A and (ii) if B, then not-A. A logical contradiction appears to be true, but this obviously cannot be the case. Therefore the implicational relation between belief and attitude, namely, that attitudes follow from beliefs, must in this case be denied. It may be asserted that what is actually being considered is two people with similar, but not identical belief-states—(B^A) (B`^¬A), or (i) if B then A and (ii) if B`, then not-A. This implies that there may be deeper personal beliefs that color these differences, but this is not useful. Two people always hold some differing underlying belief, so to posit this explanation denies any instant of agreement and makes any dispute of fact innocuous. If this difference cannot be articulated then its use in disputes qua belief collapses. I would argue that the ‘belief ’ is an attitude masked as something more grounded.

This is the power of attitudes. At the end of a moral disagreement, in the process of making a decision to act in a particular way, one eventually relies upon how one feels about the action as opposed to what one believes to be true. The statement ‘X is good’ has less to do with X and more to do with how one feels towards X. This is not to say that what X is does not matter or that a change in belief does not necessitate a change in attitude. What X is does matter; a change in belief does necessitate a change in attitude. The point is that these are secondary to the attitudinal reaction one has towards X. A new belief that Ollie’s chicken is actually bad for your health may indeed change Ben’s preference, but then that alteration is determined by his attitude towards unhealthiness. This must eventually bottom out to some initial attitudinal attribution rather than a statement of fact.

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t is here that we find the value of emotions. One may object that the discussion of attitudes has no relation to the earlier topic of emotion, or that I have been presupposing one will act from an emotion in the same way one will act from an attitude. Nor would such an objection In the process of making a decision to act in a particular way, one eventually relies upon how one feels about the action as opposed to what one believes to be true. features 19 be wrong. Envy will not necessarily lead to some retaliatory action. However, it will make one feel negatively with regard to some object or occurrence. Emotion implies an attitude. To feel happy about something is to hold a positive attitude towards it. To feel depressed is to hold a negative attitude towards life. Emotion is the major informer of attitudinal states.

This, I posit, is the value of emotion, the reason we cherish the elicitation of sentiments. Emotions affect our attitudes and our attitudes affect our actions. This is not to fetishize sensations, though this may be a resulting secondary component. Emotions are not toys we play with, but the tools of the moral systems that shape us.