Problems with Shaftesbury’s analogies between the five senses and ‘moral sense’
Introduction
People don’t want to think that we are simply brutes, educated or trained only by treats and beatings. We like to think our minds have a lot to do with the process. Even during the original heyday of mechanistic philosophy, most 17th and 18th century thinkers argued that there was a real role, a fundamental role, for the soul and the mind to play in our daily lives, our education, and our choices in behavior.
Moral Sense Theory, often called Sentimentalism fit perfectly in that climate. It allows a person to check off both the ‘mechanistic’ box and the ‘soul serves a serious purpose’ box. Because its fundamental proposition is that the soul has a sense that is able to tell, immediately – without consciously analyzing or judging – right from wrong. Just like hearing allows us to process audible data immediately. And so this moral sense is effectively the motor of the body, the instigator of actions, because it is tied to pleasure and pain.
Cooper clarifies Cartesianism
Shaftesbury’s Moral Sense Theory does a huge service to Cartesian-inspired philosophy. It helps us see how a machine body coupled with a weakened ‘soul-mind’ could work together in practice. Though the soul is mostly unnecessary day-to-day because the body can handle itself very well, and though the emotions don’t “answer to” the soul, the soul does have sort of an ability, a sense, that works like the body’s senses: it is responsive to pleasurable and painful stimuli, and thus can effect physical responses and behavior much like the screech of a car wreck or a beautiful song can.
But it also clarifies something else about the Cartesian philosophy for us: Moral Sense Theory and Cartesianism share the same fundamental confusion as to whether emotions are judgments or not. Though it might seem clear that on Shaftesbury’s theory emotions are not judgments, he also makes a decent case for why they are. (This of course would undermine his moral sense theory.
Objects of emotion
Think about your favorite painting, or an Instagram picture you think is beautiful. When you look at something like that, you respond to a number of variables, such as color, proportion, and motion. You take all that in and it you are struck with the appreciation of beauty. Do you feel it is beautiful? Do you judge it beautiful? Whatever it is, it seems to happen immediately. Shaftesbury thinks these types of attributes don’t only immediately show the beauty (or ugliness) of objects to us – we are struck by it – but they do so necessarily. And he thinks there is a very close analog between seeing the beauty of that Instagram and capturing the motives, the nuances of another person’s behavior in a particular context. So we should and do see good and bad behavior necessarily and immediately.
That’s because the mind has its own sort of “eyes and ears” to perform the same sort of function, but relative to other minds. It watches and judges actions by seeing their proportion, by “scanning each sentiment or thought.”
So it is that if we a stranger helping a fragile old man to cross the street, we immediately appreciate that she did it out of benevolence and a good character. Though someone perhaps more cynical than Shaftesbury might advise you to turn your head before you see the young aide pick the old man’s pocket, Shaftesbury is convinced that the moral sense is excellent at feeling the “soft and harsh, the agreeable and disagreeable, in the affections” and perceives “foul and fair” harmony in actions just as it does in music.
The problem is that Shaftesbury finds it impossible to remain coherent and consistent in this view.
Understanding Shaftesbury’s problem
Just like Descartes, Shaftesbury thinks that the mind is under constant bombardment from “forms and images” notably for us, including the “moral and intellectual kind”. These forms or objects press on the mind the same way images of bodies, colors and sounds press on our senses. They press so hard that our sentiments, our heart, simply cannot remain neutral regarding these “pictures of manners” that the mind “imagines to itself.”
These moral forms, pictures of manners come not just from what our senses show us, but even the things that happen in our body when he have emotions and the emotions themselves. All these things, even our own being aware of ourselves having these thoughts, are objects that our mind and moral sense can ‘observe’ are objects of emotions.
All this passes the sniff test; I would agree that not only what I see with my eyes and hear with my ears lead me to have emotions and make judgments about good or bad behavior, but also my thinking about the things I see and how they make me feel cause me to have emotions and make judgments on behavior too. But it doesn’t really work the way Shaftesbury wants it to and Cartesian-type thinkers need it to.
The problems come out when we think about the analogy between you admiring your favorite painting or picture and you observing a person behaving in a moral situation. Think about; even when you are ‘observing’ the behavior of a mind you know well, a friend, a partner, do we really ‘immediately’ and ‘necessarily’ see the good or evil in what they do the way we see the beauty or ugliness in a picture or painting? What about when observing a stranger, an unknown person, acting in a context, in circumstances we don’t know or understand?
Any act can appear ‘proportionate’ or ‘morally beautiful’ when taken out of context, when motives are not transparent. But we don’t assign moral praise or blame in matters of right and wrong based on the outside appearance of things, without taking motives and contexts into consideration. In fact, even a person’s literal good looks can be magnified or diminished by a “better look” at the person overall.
Shaftesbury is convinced that the inclinations, passions and behavior of every person gets represented correctly, immediately in the mind of the observer, forcing the heart into a “trial or exercise” where it must choose between positive or negative emotional reactions, it must have a positive emotional reaction to what is right and just, and have a negative reaction to what is bad.
I think we’ve given a lot of reason to think something more than just ‘observation’ is going on in Shaftesbury’s moral sense. I think he’s allowing judgment in without crediting it. But let’s pick up next time with this ‘trial of the heart’ analogy and wrap up Shaftesbury.
Cumberland on the role of anatomy and physiology in emotion and thought
Cumberland examines the human body from three angles; that of the anatomist, the physician and the psychologist. The first focuses on the organized nature of the body, the second at its liability to preventable and curable “distempers”, and the third focuses on the relation of the mind to the body.
The Brain
His work in all these facets tells him that there are aspects of human bodies that allow it to strengthen the imagination and memory far beyond animal imagination and memory.
The first thing is how large the human brain is relative to the body when compared with other animals. Because of this and because all the nerves come from either the brain or the spinal marrow, he thinks the brain can exert a tremendous amount of control on action, and he thinks “all voluntary motion is directed and governed by the brain”.
He also thinks that our first apprehension of things is passive and therefore necessary. So, for example, what we see when we open our eyes can’t be anything but what it is. And he thinks the same goes for our desire for good and aversion from evil: the mind is innately, constantly working – understanding, choosing, refusing, deciding – moving the body to get what it wants. The brain lets us observe sensible objects and better understand which ones are good or evil, and, through a process then not yet understood by science, the nervous system relays messages to the brain, assisting the imagination and memory and to the body, aiding muscles and nerves to allow motion.
Now, what would seem to follow from this is that the soul does not “direct and govern” voluntary motions of the body unless it governs the brain directly. And as we saw with Descartes, trying to explain that is a very tall order, but he tries.
He expects that science will one day explain the workings of the nervous system but he cautions that it can’t explain everything; specifically he thinks it is impossible that we could ever reduce the workings of the mind to the “mechanical powers of matter and motion”. In fact, he thinks the more we learn about the nature of the brain, “the more we shall despair of the possibility of explaining the operations of the mind by its motions”. In other words, our mental lives are not reducible to mechanical talk.
At the basis of this belief is his commitment to dualism. He as sure as Descartes was that the mind, not the brain, can in the end control its reactions to sensations. But he doesn’t give any reasons that should convince us that this is true. Instead, his deep study qua anatomist and physician recommend us that the mind may just be unnecessary and irrelevant in understanding thought and emotions. For all his advances, our hero is just as guilty of the First Cartesian Error as Descartes.
Beyond the Brain
The internal organs in our chest cavity, the viscera, also have tremendous influence in “governing” and “determining” of emotion to seek the good of others rather than hurting them. Basically, he thinks the structure of our bodies serves as a continual reminder to very strictly govern our emotions. He goes so far as to say that the only reason we obey laws of nature and the source of every virtue is that we can govern the emotions that we use in “settling or securing every man’s property”.
Due to the amazing connectivity and back-and-forth communication between the viscera and the brain, the heart, diaphragm, etc, via the nervous system, they affected in various ways by violent emotions about good or evil. (And believe me, he gets into some detail about how this might actually work!). Its similar in all the other kinds of emotion; the heart and other viscera are more moved by the influence of a more powerful brain than animals are. Animals have emotions, but ours are much stronger.
Furthermore, the heart is the fountain of all the pleasures we enjoy, so any passions that help or hinder it “more powerfully” in us than in animals “necessarily affects” us more than them. Specifically, two properties peculiar to human bodies (I’ll spare the details) that allow for communication between the viscera give us the ability to better effect diligent government of the passions, along with the motivation to do so.
All this might remind you of the Homeric theory, and I agree they’re quite similar, but lets not jump to the conclusion that Cumberland is really a confused visceral theorist. Instead, he thinks that the peculiarities of human anatomy and physiology actually suggest that the mind’s province is to “diligently attend the helm committed to its care, and to steer it skillfully”. (This is reminiscent of Descartes sailor/ship metaphor in Meditation VI).
An even stronger point against viewing Cumberland as a visceral theorist is the previously stated claim that “the strongest passions are employed regarding the selling of private property…because nothing moves men more strongly”, meaning that concepts, beliefs and expectations play a huge role in the passions, or at least in a certain type. The “conceptions of the brain affect the heart”.
What these passages also show is a deep understanding of the importance of duplex communication between the brain and the rest of the body, which I’ve said numerous times is critically important.
Conclusion
So in the end, Cumberland more or less escapes the Second and Third Cartesian Errors and its mostly his falling to the First Cartesian Error that keeps me from listing him as part of the P-A-L progression. And like Descartes, Cumberland finds himself confused in the end as to whether and how the emotions are physiological phenomena or phenomena of an impalpable mind. This confusion makes fuzzy the role of the soul in our mental lives and emotions much in the same way it was by Descartes, though in a more ‘agreeable’, scientifically more rigorous way.
I’d also point out that his methodology as a philosopher is a little troubling, as in many places he’s utterly confident that scientific advancement simply will fill in gaps in his theory while at the same time he insists that such advancement will not undermine his other fervently held belief, that the mind is not physical and really can control our emotional responses to sensory phenomena. I might even argue that this is a weak version of the Second Cartesian error.
But for our purposes, the most important takeaways are:
1) Cumberland should be credited for further solidifying the methodological point that the physiology of the body is absolutely fundamental to the nature of the emotions, even to the exclusion of the metaphysically distinct ‘soul’.
2) Cumberland keeps at the core of his theory the idea that the mind’s role is important and only partially independent of the body.
3) He is seriously confused about just what role the metaphysically separate soul he so strongly insists on has in mentality to the point that he is guilty of the same incoherence as Descartes.
4) His confusions make it unclear whether he is a cognitivist or a sentimentalist about morality, a general issue we’re about to spend a lot of time on.
Its fair to say Cumberland has a stronger feel for these confusions, but he still has them. At the least we can say that though he is a partisan of Cartesian philosophy of emotions, he seriously advances that project.
Anger, Et Cetera Online 