What I'm reading on 9/13/05

Moral Sources by Taylor (1989)

Rather than summarize Taylor’s chapter, as I did with Russell’s, I will keep it short and add comments at the end so as to do some serious thinking toward the discussion of all of these papers and how they relate to abstract concepts.  The problem as Taylor points out, was that some philosophers and also normal people have taken the position of silence when it comes to articulating what GOOD is. Taylor wrote that that is not an optimal existence, because as he pointed out language about the good empowers, inspires, and/or moves people.  Taking that effect as evidence of some sort of moral reasoning, or as moral sources, he believed that the position of silence was a “stifling of the spirit and to the atrophy of so many of our spiritual sources, which is the bane of our modern naturalist culture.” (p107).  Thus, he argued as an alternative that people should work to understand the interdependence of ourselves, the history of morality and the notions of the good in our culture, and the kinds of narratives that people use to make sense of our lives (e.g., the rags-to-riches story).  He believed that the fruit of this labor will probably end people up on both sides of the fences, but it would also lead to “unprecedented understandings of agency and selfhood” (p105).

Comments:  I agree that silence is not a very good stance on defining abstract concepts like GOOD, TRUTH, or FREEDOM.  At maybe a few frustrating points in my short career, I may have thrown up my hands and said that they are ineffable.  And I loved that quality about them in the same way that Taylor talks about how using them is moving and sort of gut-wrenching in a good way.  So that is kind of interesting in that he seemed to make the argument that if people do not work to articulate the good, then they are depriving themselves.  But what if they have an appreciation and are inspired by the ineffable?

Secondly, there has been a lot of interesting work by Simone Schnall, Schubert, Robinson on directionality effects for emotional and moral stimuli (see also Prinz).  These effects supports the notion that there are implicit processes at work when people process and tap into moral sources.  Not only spatial effects, but also force dynamics effects have also been found as well (Need to find the reference, sorry).  It is not the case that metaphor is the reason behind this phenomenon, because there must be some direct experience that the metaphors we use map onto.  In any case, Taylor’s argument that these processes are implicit seems likely.

The automatic evaluation literature also speaks to this issue, and offers a interesting caveat.  The findings in this area by Bargh and others, as well as Strack, seem to demonstrate that there are implicit processes that differentially affect positively- vs. negatively-valences stimuli.  As I have observed first hand, and others have pointed out in these kinds of experiments the robust effect is found with the positive stimuli, and the negative side is a little less reliable.  Rather than elongate an already distended comments section, I will be leave the reader to ponder this caveat, and speculate more later.

In closing, I think that the role of the bodily state on moral reasoning, and processing of moral kinds of linguistic stimuli may be a fruitful experiment to try.  By that I mean using meditation to interfere, or facilitate with these implicit processes.  If anyone has references to work done on any of these areas, I would appreciate hearing more about it.