What do people think and feel when they make important moral decisions? How do the mind and the brain draw moral judgments? Moral psychology and moral neuroscience study ethics and morality from the viewpoint of the mind (thoughts, feelings, emotions, intentions, and motivations) and the brain (patterns of neural activation in the different regions of the brain). The general assumption here is that when people make decisions or judgments about moral goodness, rightness, and social justice, there are peculiar psychological and neural patterns that we can observe and identify as “moral.” However, philosophers have been discussing the intriguing relation between feelings (psychological states) and duties (moral sense of what one should do) for many centuries.
Since the full understanding of ethical norms (the ideal standards of what one should do and live) requires philosophical reflection of moral values—not just psychological observation—careful consideration of how the mind represents and reflects moral obligations and duties should be included in the study of moral psychology. Additionally, theories of moral psychology and neuroscience should consider culturally diverse forms of moral cognition (the cognitive processes of moral categorization, moral reasoning, and moral judgment). Although many theories of moral psychology are proposed as universal (i.e., cross-cultural) theories of moral cognition and judgment, there are culturally embedded and enriched forms of moral mind and moral agency (Seok), and emotions such as anger and shame have culturally specific forms (Flanagan, Seok). It is important, therefore, to explore and explicate different models and theoretical frameworks of moral psychology from interdisciplinary and intercultural viewpoints. It is always exciting to see, for example, the inspiring ideas and implications of ancient Chinese and modern Korean philosophy on the nature of the moral mind and emotions in contemporary moral psychology and moral neuroscience. In this post, I introduce one model of moral psychology inspired by Confucian schools of thought.
Currently, there are three popular models of moral psychology inspired by three renowned philosophical schools of thought. They are called the Kantian, Humean, and Rawlsian creatures, i.e., three theoretical frameworks that explain and delineate how the mind/brain processes moral information and activates moral judgments (Hauser).
- Kantian Creature (named after Immanuel Kant and his philosophy of duty ethics or deontology): A moral agent who draws moral judgments and actions from conscious and deliberate reasoning about universal moral rules and principles, for example, against intentional harm, killing, and cheating.
- Humean Creature (named after David Hume and his philosophy of moral sentimentalism): A moral agent who draws moral judgments and actions from affective moral sense and other-concerning emotions such as empathy, compassion, and care.
- Rawlsian Creature (named after John Rawls and his philosophy of rational moral intuition): A moral agent who draws moral judgments and actions from consciously inaccessible formal principles (principles such as the principle of double effect that consists of four major conditions [action, intention, means/end, and positive/negative consequences] of evaluating moral decisions available in moral faculty [a specialized and independently functioning unit of the mind]).
The three creatures are the philosophically inspired and empirically developed models of moral agency that explains how one thinks and feels for certain moral values and how one acts morally. Suppose one thinks that killing an innocent person is wrong. According to the Kantian model (the Kantian creature), one takes it one’s duty (command of one’s reflective moral reason) not to kill anyone because killing cannot be a universally justified rule that all people should follow. According to the Humean model (the Humean creature), however, one feels that killing is not acceptable because one’s feeling for the victim does not allow this type of aggressive behavior. One simply cannot bear to see the pain and suffering of the victim. According to the Rawlsian model (the Rawlsian creature), killing an innocent person is wrong because our rational intuition (a quick, unconscious, rational decision) does not allow unjustified harm. These theoretical frameworks are used in psychological and philosophical theories of moral cognition, moral motivation, and moral justification from the perspectives of reflective reasoning (Kohlberg), affective reaction (Haidt, Nichols, Prinz), and innate moral intuition (Hauser, Mikhail), respectively. It may seem that the three models cover the whole field of moral psychology where moral actions and decisions are understood through the rational, emotional, deliberate, spontaneous, constructive, and/or innate processes of the mind, but is the conceptual or methodological terrain of moral psychology actually fully surveyed and identified with these models?
In addition to the tripartite divisions, several hybrid models (a hybrid of the Kantian and the Humean models and a hybrid of the Rawlsian model) are proposed, but they are simply different variations or combinations of the three original models (the Kantian, Humean, and Rawlsian creatures) of moral psychology (Huebner, Dwyer, and Hauser). However, some attempts are made to develop different models of moral psychology. Morrow proposes the Mencian creature named after an ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (372—289 BCE). He characterizes the Mencian creature as a moral psychological model of constructive and developmental sentimentalism. According to this unique form of sentimentalism, unconscious and affective mental processes mediate moral judgments and actions. Additionally, these affective states can be enriched, refined, and balanced by constructive developmental processes, often characterized as Confucian self-cultivation (the process of cultivating virtuous dispositions by self-reflection and regulative self-understanding following the tradition of Confucianism). The moral psychological essence of the Mencian creature, therefore, lies in the development of refined, well-balanced, consistent, and affective moral sense. Emotions can be impulsive, unregulated, uneven, narrowly focused, and self-serving, but Mencius’s version of moral sentimentalism focuses on carefully balanced and cultivated other-concerning emotions that come out of our natural inclination for others’ wellbeing. The Confucian virtue of ren (love, compassion) is such a fully cultivated emotional disposition that helps us to feel for others and draws appropriate moral judgments.
Although Morrow’s view identifies the sentimentalist elements in Mencius’s moral psychology and many comparative philosophers take the similar route to moral sentimentalism in their interpretations of Mencius’s moral philosophy, they do not fully explain the unique characteristics of the Mencian creature or Confucian moral psychology in general. In addition to or independently of the sentimentalist elements, there are two peculiar characteristics of the Mencian creature to which one needs to give special attention.
First, the Mencian creature is essentially embodied. In Mencius’s moral psychology, moral actions and judgments are intrinsically related to bodily reactions (affective and physiological changes in the body vividly felt and publicly observable). In many schools of Western philosophy, specifically in Descartes’ philosophy of mind body dualism, the body is regarded as a physical exterior or vehicle of the mind that has little to do with moral cognition or judgments. This is not the case in the Mencian creature. There is a famous passage in the book of Mencius clearly indicating this embodied approach to moral psychology.
In great antiquity there were some who did not bury their parents. When their parents died, they took them up and threw them into a ditch. Later when they passed by them and saw foxes and wild cats eating them, and flies and gnats feeding on them, their perspiration started out upon their foreheads, they looked askance and could not bear to look straight at them. Now the perspiration was not for the sake of other people. It was something at the bottom of their hearts that showed in their expressions. They immediately went home and returned with baskets and spades and covered the bodies. If it was indeed right to cover them, then there must be certain moral principles which made filial sons and men of humanity inter their parents. (Mencius, 3A5; translated by Chan, emphasis added)
In this passage, the moral mind is expressed in the forms of perspiration, particular body posture, facial direction, and spontaneous behavior. Simply, the ancient people not only felt badly about not properly covering and burying their parents’ bodies, but also reacted physiologically or behaviorally to the scene where their parents’ bodies were devoured by insects and animals. Mencius clearly states that perspiration is not for display to show off one’s character traits but for one’s genuine love and respect for one’s parents. According to him, physiological or behavioral expressions are not simply external displays but essential part of one’s other-concerning mind. In other passages of the Mencius, he discusses how the body, via its moral energy or force (qi), supports and responds to moral values and norms. Therefore, the moral mind of the Mencian creature is intrinsically and importantly embodied. That is, the body (i.e., physical interactivity and responsiveness to moral values and norms) is an essential part of the moral mind (Seok).
Second, the Mencian creature is not simply a model of moral interior but also a model of moral psychological ecology. Confucian philosophy is a great tradition not only of virtuous moral interior (such as other-concerning feelings, dispositions, and motivations), but also of moral exterior or moral ecology (such as the environment of tangible, pleasant, memorable, and nicely organized forms of moral behaviors). In this context, one can understand Confucian ritual (li) as a uniquely Confucian way of integrating the moral interior and the exterior together in an interactive and synergistic form that can stimulate feelings of people who share, recognize, and participate in the field of moral emotions.
Typically, ritual refers to ceremonial formality, etiquette, or polite manners. However, in Confucian philosophy, it plays a critical role in the cultivation of ideal moral virtue. In this context, ritual means a fully enriched, tangible form of ethical norms that one should follow with one’s dedicated heart-mind. For this reason, Mencius criticizes the mechanical and inflexible rituals because he believes that ethics is not a matter of following rules blindly without genuine feelings for others with appropriate forms. Confucian ritual, therefore, is founded upon a nicely ordered and well-organized affective moral disposition that is expressed in a tangible, pleasant, and memorable form (one that can be found in formal ceremonies and other public performances). Most important, ritual serves as an affect-scape or moral-scape (an environment that stimulates and cultivates affective moral sense). In Confucian ritual, feelings for others are expressed in refined forms (for example, nicely orchestrated, polite behaviors in ceremonies and commemorative events such as weddings and funerals) and these refined forms stimulate new feelings and start a self-generative process of affective moral sense. In other words, moral emotions tangibly and generatively build their own affective moral niche to further their visibility and influence. I think Confucian ritual provides a unique and constructive field of moral ecology for sustained moral emotions via the constructive process of affective expression, refinement, resonance, immersion, and communal sharing. Like a land-scape, an affect-scape of moral emotions unfolds and spreads out to the whole space of affective moral sense.
It seems that the Mencian creature, although sharing many characteristics of the Humean creature, provides a unique moral psychological framework of the embodied and ecological moral emotions. I define “Mencian creature,” or more broadly “Confucian creature” with its distinct moral psychological properties rarely discussed in Western moral psychology and moral philosophy.
- Mencian Creature or Confucian Creature (named after ancient Chinese philosophers, Confucius and Mencius, who discussed the affective and embodied nature of the moral mind in moral ecology of ritual): An agent who draws moral judgments and actions from other-concerning, developmentally formative, embodied emotions that build the sustained moral ecology of an affective moral sense (i.e., ritual) recognized, shared, and exchanged by a group of individuals.
Defined in this way, the Mencian/Confucian creature provides a new way of understanding the mind and morality with its culturally enriched notion of the embodied and ecological moral mind.
Bongrae Seok
Bongrae Seok is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. His primary research interests lie in cognitive and comparative philosophy of mind and moral psychology, moral neuroscience, neuroethics and neuroasesthetics. In his recent books, Naturalization, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy: Owen Flanagan and Beyond (Routledge 2020), Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame: Shame of Shamelessness (Rowman and Littlefield 2016), and Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy (Lexington 2013), he develops an interdisciplinary approach to moral psychology from the viewpoint of embodied moral emotions and Asian philosophy.
