The role of emotion in ethics and bioethics: dealing with repugnance and disgust.

Joshua May’s paper in this issue is an empirical study of the kinds of emotional responses that people have to human reproductive cloning (see page 26). This study gets its start from the strong claims made against reproductive cloning by Leon Kass and John Kekes. May’s paper is a good example of clearly targeted empirical research that clearly pinpoints empirical claims made in ethics or bioethics. Leon Kass claims that it is disgust or repugnance that most people feel—‘the widespread repugnances of humankind’—while John Kekes claims that these are behaviours that ‘just about everybody in contemporary Western societies would find disgusting’. So showing that this repugnance is not widespread or that just about everybody does not find reproductive cloning disgusting undermines these claims. May’s study gives us some decent and initial reason for thinking that these empirical claims are at best difficult to substantiate and at worst, false. But what generally are we to say about the role of emotions in ethics and in ethical judgement? We tend to sharply distinguish ‘mere’ emotions or emotional responses from reasoned or rational argument. Clearly, it would seem, if we are to make claims about rightness or wrongness they should be on the basis of reasons and rational argument. Emotions look to be outside of this paradigm concerned as they are with our responses to the world rather than the world itself and the clear articulation of inferential relationships within it. Most importantly emotions are felt subjectively and so cannot lay any generalised claim on others (particularly others who do not feel as the arguer does). The subjectivity of emotions means that they cannot function in arguments because, unless they are universal, they cannot form the basis of a claim on another person. The reason they cannot form this basis is because that other person may not have that emotion: relying on it means the argument can only apply to those who do. An argument that relies on feeling particular emotions, particularly emotions that we don’t all feel in the same way, is weak to that extent and certainly weaker than one that does not. In the case at hand, repugnance or disgust only have persuasive power to those who feel these emotions in response to human reproductive cloning. If all people felt one or the other, then claims based on an appeal to repugnance or disgust would have persuasive power over all of us. But even if these were generally or commonly felt emotions here, such persuasive power would be distinct from an argument’s having persuasive power over us because of the reasons it provides for us independently of contingently felt emotions. An argument then that is based on an appeal to emotion apparently as Kass’ and Kekes’ apparently are, can, at best, be only as strong as the generalisability of the empirical claim about the relevant emotion. But it is far from obvious that we should take this general attitude to emotional responses in ethics and to arguments in ethics. One kind of objection to this dichotomy between emotion and reason lays claims to the ethical importance of respect: we should respect people and their emotions. As such belittling and dismissing emotional responses is a political move involving misuse of power, perhaps the tyranny of reason, and correspondingly, disrespect for those who have those emotions. The background to this objection makes reference to, as it were, the politics of argument. Restricting or limiting the contribution that particular individuals can make to conversation, undermines and devalues their voice. What matters here is that everyone has the opportunity to have their voice heard. Excluding people them on the basis of the form of their contribution, excluding someone because their contribution is emotional rather than reasoned is to unfairly privilege one form contribution and marginalise others. Though common in various quarters, this is not the right move to make here. The distinction between reason and emotion described above relies on a view of argument that aims to extend beyond the messy, real world politics of the empirical world. One way of making progress on this view of argument is to abstract away from the real-world differences between individuals and to reflect on considerations that are either features of people independent of their context or are of a sort that people who are open to these claims might take as relevant, independent of their context. This abstraction helps in the move to considering reasons as relevant. On this view, arguments aspire to appeal to reasons that apply to all people independently of context and as possessors of the ability to reason. That is, arguments function by making an appeal to general features of people. “So the reasons anyone should accept that q follows from ‘If p then q’ and p are reasons that apply to him or her in virtue of his or her logical or reasoning capacities generally—those features that he or she holds in common with all beings capable of logic and reason”. (Dunn et al., 2012, Sheehan and Dunn, 2013) This is not say that arguments always or mostly succeed but the extent to which they do not is the extent to which they fail in this abstraction and in this appeal to reasons. As was suggested above, an appeal to contingently felt emotions like repugnance or disgust seems unlikely from the outset to come close to meeting this aspiration. Having said this, emotions are clearly the stuff of ethics in an important respect. Glossing over some important distinctions in moral philosophy, the ‘passions’ (our emotions, attitudes and desires) make ethical issues and choices things that we care about. When an ethical decision is at its most difficult, on the face of it this is because it really matters what we do and because we fell passionate about it. If cool rational deliberation was clearly always appropriate or we had internalised a straightforward algorithm of rational argument, it seems we would have lost a key feature of our ability to be ethical and to engage ethically with the world. None of this is to say that our passions are necessarily reliable or should be taken as guides to what is right or wrong. Nor does it mean that our emotions should be respected—even if those who have them should be. What it does mean is that we should pay careful attention to our