The Role of Sentiment in Moral Judgment

The place of ethics in our lives remains an important question in philosophy. Dealing with what is right or wrong in our dealings with others, ethical judgments seem to hinge on whether or not this or that claim of what is right or wrong can be true or false. If our conclusion is that such valuational claims cannot be, then nothing can be definitively characterized as right or wrong and pretty much anything goes. Of course, this is the way some of us sometimes approach the world, especially when we lose faith in the moral claims we’ve been taught from youth onwards, deeming these no more compelling than anyone's particular preferences. If my preferences are just as good as yours, or yours no better than mine, then why should I be guided in the choices I make by any preferences but my own? Or others be guided by mine? Why should we care about the other at all? But if we choose not to care, then the idea of a moral dimension in our valuations, in the choices we make, flies out the window.

Of course we do care, in many cases, instinctively, without needing to be argued into it. We're born with inclinations developed in our species through evolution, inclinations to be social or to care about those immediately related to us, our children, our kin—and these inclinations carry with them certain demands, namely that we see those who fall into this group in terms of their needs and wants, too. And we expect that, looking at us, they do the same. We’re also inclined to extend this circle of others that matter to us beyond our immediate kinship circles. But doing so is not always the case with us.

Some of us lack a strong inclination in this direction from birth (even showing little regard for familial members) and so we may just not care or not care as much as others do, and all of us have our own needs and wants which drive our choices in life, often conflicting with others' drives and inclinations, even when we do feel some concern for them. The moral issue arises when we think we have reason to discern when, and if, it is better to set our particular interests aside for the good of others, whether for the group as a whole (hence patriotism, self-sacrifice, heroism) or individually (kinship, friendships, spousal bonds). When should such interests count more for us in our calculations than our own particular wants and needs should or do? And so, too, to determine how far the circle of concern extends, whether to those of the same household in which we find ourselves only, the same community, the same “blood,” the same country.

Moral concerns become a factor for creatures like us, creatures capable of seeing interests in ways that extend beyond our own. But such concerns have no traction with creatures who lack this capacity, who, looking at their world, do not see others as significant for themselves. Moral concern rests on certain instinctive feelings (which some of us have), that is, on our sentiments, and works by inserting this concern into the decision-making practices which rational creatures like us typically engage in. It puts us into a mindset in which interests stand out from the other phenomena of our world and become discernible to us as part of that world and so worth concerning ourselves with.

And interests, of course, imply beings that have them.

To recognize the interests of others, we must recognize that having interests is a characteristic of being an Other and that that recognition is a precondition of our human form of life, a life lived in a social context, a world in which others exist alongside and with us.

Our moral impetus arises from our natures as social beings but it does not take the form of moral concern as such, absent the capacity to reason, to look at our world and make choices based on anticipated outcomes. Our primate cousins have emotions, as we do, but lack the capacity to make rational choices that help them navigate the forest of needs and wants that define their lives. This capacity to reason is a function of a deeper capacity, the capacity for discourse, for language, which we have but which our primate cousins lack. The ability to sort and order the environment that is our world is a function of our linguistic orientation within the world, the ability language provides to distinguish and differentiate, and so create for ourselves, a world out of our immediate environment. To the animal in its natural habitat or a zoo, that environment is its world, because it is all it sees (or hears or smells, tastes or feels). But such creatures have no notion of what sort of environment they exist within. They cannot see their world beyond its immediate manifestation, the moment and location in which they stand, and they cannot include within that world recognition that it includes others, like themselves, within it, too.

And so they cannot attain the moral dimension in their thought, the recognition of the other as an Other. They can recognize others that are like them and so relate to them behaviorally but they cannot see those others in terms of self-awareness, that the others have an inner life characterized by feelings and wants and needs, as they do. They can and do have sentiment as we do, but they cannot see sentiment apart from the behaviors of others that trigger their own sympathetic responses.

Without sentiment, without feelings, there can be no moral dimension in a creature's life, but without reason it cannot transform from reaction to judgment which is what the moral involves. Moral judgement cannot be expression of sentiment alone. It must enter into and become a part of the creature’s world, of how the creature sees the world and itself as part of it. It rests on having the ability to look at other creatures and see their interiority as part of what they are.

Moral judgment rests on feeling but requires reasoning if it is to become part of our decision-making behaviors. It can only arise when we are able to look at another and relate to that creature as a subjective being, like ourselves, to see its discomfort, anguish, loneliness, pain or joy and delight when these are there – and so to decide that their distress or happiness are like ours and so warrant our concern, too. Moral valuation rests on adding sentiment, as a component of one’s world, into the rest of what constitutes that world.

The development of highly sophisticated and powerful artificial intelligence platforms, big news in today's world, will never achieve a moral dimension absent our providing it with the capacity for sentiment akin to what we have achieved through the evolutionary process that has shaped us as a species and individually. The article below, from the Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, May 9, 2023), about a failed zoo and the animals suffering because of it, enduring isolation and poor living conditions, reminds us that caring is at the heart of moral thought. We see the face of the chimpanzee, an animal not so far removed from ourselves, and recognize through it the animal’s distress which the article describes. Recognition of that distress triggers our concern and such concern, because of our discursive capacities, enters into our deliberative processes informing what we are moved to do because it becomes a part of the world we see. Recognition like this is not exclusively reserved in us for our own kin or species. It runs deep and is made manifest through our capacity to turn what we respond to through our observational encounters into referents, into things that have a place in our world.

If caring matters, and it does for the moral dimension to manifest, then it must extend beyond particular individuals and species. It must also reach those who are not the same as we are but who are enough like us to be able to possess the sensibilities we have, the sort that makes us more than indifferent biological automatons. When it does, because we see it, it also prompts us to extend our caring beyond the range that is limited to our own. At the same time, it reminds us of where our own capacity to care comes from. We're no different than others who suffer after all, wherever and whatever they are. Caring is a glue that holds sentient life forms together but it only becomes a part of our lives when we can see it as an object of knowledge, too, as a referent in our world. Otherwise, if we can’t, we're just self-interested biological machines out for nothing more than our own survival at the expense of all other life forms.

It's important to ask where the moral dimension we find in ourselves comes from if we’re to understand its role and power in our lives, and trust in the judgments it inspires in us. To do that we must realize that feeling is part of our world, too and that being aware of what affects us as organisms is to be in the world in a way that counts as more than merely being present in it. Having feeling lies deep in our natures, courtesy of evolution and, as such, is a characteristic of our species. It enables us to respond to it when seen in others, too. But for moral judgment to happen, we must also realize that the capacity for feeling isn't limited to ourselves.

It is this realization that turns feeling into choices and choices to action:

A Zoo Fit for Mara the Chimp

By Robert Shumaker May 8, 2023 6:24 pm ET

. . . Before the Puerto Rican zoo was closed, the situation for its animals was dire. They were struggling to survive in a woefully underfunded facility that had been battered by hurricanes. The zoo had been without electricity since 2017, and many animals were dying.

The condition of a 31-year-old female chimpanzee named Mara was especially troubling. On top of poor conditions in the zoo, she was left alone as the only chimpanzee in Puerto Rico’s lone zoo after the death of Magnum, her longtime companion.

Prolonged isolation is bad for chimpanzees, who are highly social. Mara was lonely and depressed, and caretakers reported that she spent her time in a small, dank cell. A heart-rending video circulated online showing Mara extending her fingers through the bars of her cell, attempting and failing to grasp a small leaf. A “Free Mara” campaign was launched online.

When the Justice Department asked if the Indianapolis Zoological Society could provide Mara a loving home, we immediately agreed and rescued her. Today, Mara is receiving expert care from our devoted staff in Indianapolis.

As a primatologist, I’m confident Mara’s future is bright. But that’s largely because the Justice Department had an accredited, qualified zoo it could turn to—one experienced in rehabilitating and socializing chimpanzees and other great apes.

. . . more must be done to address substandard facilities that call themselves “zoos” or “sanctuaries.” Out of about 2,800 animal exhibitors with licenses from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, less than 10% are AZA accredited.

Mara now has a wonderful home in Indianapolis. She’s making new friends and will integrate into a community of nearly 30 chimpanzees when she moves into our new International Chimpanzee Complex later this year.

I hope for the day that such rescues from substandard facilities are no longer necessary. Mara’s move to Indianapolis is a sure sign of progress.

_________________________________________________ Mr. Shumaker is an evolutionary biologist and expert on primate behavior. He is president and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoological Society and the Indianapolis Prize, an award for animal conservation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-zoo-fit-for-mara-the-chimpanzee-accreditation-justice-department-puerto-rico-1b3bcd66?st=9rl6ktep4qn9z51&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink