Emotivist Utilitarianism

Emotivism is a theory of ethics that says that moral judgements reflect positive or negative emotion. I argue that the process by which moral judgement is essentially emotivist, but that a truly functional ethical system requires the utilitarian principle of maximization of the good for the most members of the moral community. Recent neurological studies suggest that humans have what are called ‘mirror neurons” that simulate our being in the situations we see. When we see another person in a situation that has potential ethical implications, our brain feeds fake input into itself and mimics, as well as we can ascertain, the brainstate of the individual. The brain then gauges the emotional response we would get from being in that situation ourselves. From there we judge the situation to be good or bad and begin to analyze why that situation causes the feeling. Thus, we ‘sympathize’ with other people, or even animals or inanimate objects. The process of actually making a moral judgement is affected by one’s ability to grasp all the aspects of the situation and by ‘filters’ of preconceived notions, beliefs, and value systems that have previously been engrained in our mind. That is why people of certain prudish religious backgrounds will often judge behavior of others to be immoral despite its not having a negative emotional impact on any party involved. This does not lead to a relativist notion of ethics because whenever more than one person is involved, we must ‘sympathize’ with every person involved in the situation to make moral judgement of the whole. This may result in having a different emotional response from each person involved. Since this is ambiguous, or at least gives varying moral judgements as we move from person to person, we must then resort to adding together the varying levels of emotional response and the sum total, whether positive or negative, is the basis of giving a moral judgement. Thus the utilitarian principle applies. One must also keep in mind that we make moral judgements based on our ability to ‘sympathize’. ‘Sympathizing’ is trying our best to ascertain the true emotional state of others, something to which we have no real access. Therefore, to make accurate judgements, we must develop our ability to feel what others feel and not let our judgements be clouded by dogmatic value systems that are not based on how people are actually affected. From this we can conclude that the true ethical principle might be described as ‘what is moral is what maximizes the most positive emotional responses from the most members of the moral community’. In other words, it is at heart a utilitarian system.

In Ethical Terms

Ethic-a theory of the good; the most happiness for the most members of the moral community is the ultimate good

Morals-rules or guidelines that govern how one should act to achieve the ethic

Justice-the concept of equity or balance; one should be rewarded commensurate to his effort put in, all who have equal moral weight should be treated equally, good deeds should be rewarded and bad deeds should be punished or made up for

Rights-something to which one has a claim based on his ability (physical limitations should not be considered) to do anything; this ability is morally limited when it interferes with the abilities of another person; causing harm (physical or otherwise) to another person without good cause is not within a person’s rights

Virtue-a quality that tends to achieve the ethic

Honor-respect or acknowledgement earned for doing good

Nightwatch

London, Wounded City

Walking through London in late June, I got the sense of a city at profound peace with itself, its past, and the world. I climbed up the monument at Trafalgar square, breathing in quite roar of the city air. I followed the moon down a curving street, a crevasse between two cliffs of Victorian edifices, to Westminster. It was quiet, and the full moon silently shone in the clear sky, a benevolent friend. On the south bank I strolled through the collection of theatres and art museums. Centuries ago, Shakespeare would have walked these streets. In this ancient city, gothic churches and modern glass innovations shared one skyline, one neighborhood, one fate. “Back the Bid,” advocated billboards. London was soon to find out that it will host the Olympic Games in seven years.
Near city hall, an outdoor exhibition featured aerial photographs of our home earth. Unreal colors and landscapes featured geological abstract expressionism coexisting with man’s efforts at eking out his livelihood. Boats and villages, caravans, and homes clung like barnacles to the rugged lands and fertile waterways of the planet. It is the stuff of life, natural and human. A giant map on the ground revealed the locations of all the images. I walked barefoot across it, across wonders and peoples in corners of the planet continents away. They were neighbors I’ve met for the first time. It was late, so I made my way back across the river along Tower Bridge, near the prison, palace, and armory so much a part of the history of this place. A little further down the Thames must have been the spot where Conrad’s Marlowe pondered with his sailing companions the first Roman legionnaires to set foot in this once savage land.
In this city I saw a culture trying to atone for its sins, an open, progressive society that accepted strangers as kinsmen, as brothers. Perhaps it was lingering guilt from the past. Over 300 languages are spoken in London. Paddington station, the terminus of my transatlantic journey and the place where I first set foot in this world, was a short walk from the Middle Eastern district. Its streets were lined with Arabic writing and halal meat markets. In Hyde Park, I saw a French-speaking West African father playing soccer with his son, a boy of only three. At Westminster protest signs lined the fences. Silent but loud, these hand-made posterboard protests evidenced a people that had once conquered the world, but had then grown weary of the burdens of conquest, for both sides of the equation. How was I to know that somewhere among these streets a new Gunpowder plot was in the works? At least to me, this nation, if not its government, was trying to define its role in the world as a tolerant peacemaker. While I sleep, chthonic plans are finalized. I leave for my studies in Oxford and wish the city farewell.
It was a severe shock to me when, two weeks later, explosions wrecked the veins that carried the lifeblood of the city. This same network of trains and buses I had traveled such a short time ago. How misguided, how uncharacteristic of an occurrence this was. Had those deadly undercurrents flowing from my country to the cradle of civilization and back again followed me here? Would this event incite the crusading hatred that it had back home? I feared that the evil, long dead and buried here, would reawaken from beneath the monuments of conquests past and topple the new, living city of peace. I saw visions of the British Museum, a moment ago hosting a celebration of Africa and its people, change into a voracious neoclassical monster. Hate emanated from its doors like hot electric fire—it was beast seeking to devour again the treasures of the world, that in its belly it might house more of the world’s booty, plundered from the cultures that met their end under the Union Jack. Before America started fucking up the world, Britain had done it first. Now with the shoe on the other foot and the rebellious colony, hot with hate and giddy with power, calling the shots, would rage again spill forth in the streets of London. A second round of bombings and the death of an innocent man in a trigger-happy police firestorm seemed to confirm my fears. The bleeding city was calling down Death on its enemies. From Oxford, an hour and a half away, we pondered these worries as we tried to go about the day to day business of study.

Memory: September 12, 2001
I’m in the car with my father; we are driving to a store to purchase my first real camera, an expense that I as a high school kid could not myself afford. I was in a photography class for the first time and needed it. We are silent in the car. Music no longer plays on the radio—that’s a diversion that now seems wholly inappropriate. The newscasters are ruminating on the previous day’s events, still trying to put it together. It is just before dusk, the sky is cool blue turning into fiery orange at the horizon. There are no more planes in the sky. It is a different world now, one where the colors don’t seem quite right. I get the camera and head back home as the sun sets. I will learn to see the world now through this lens. The radio plays on.

At Oxford, I write essays each week about history or literature. My English tutor asks me to skip lines on the loose leaf so that she can write comments. Looking at one of them I notice the difference in my writing between two lines. Must’ve taken a break there. A lot can happen between the lines. Between those lines of furious writing, I made new friends, broke with old friends, traveled around, and even fell in love. Once, several of us went with a tutor for a walk in the countryside. From the town we made our way through the park-like pastures of sheep and fields of grain. Great expanses of yellow-tinged green rippled in the wind, a nourishing, living being domesticated within its hedgerow enclosures. Along the way, a Roman villa had wedged itself into the land, finally finding a comfortable spot, becoming a part of the land, even as its walls crumbled. I did not bring my camera. These sights I would keep as my own, free from the photographic dissection of spaces and moments. Looking back at my snapshots of London monuments, I now see only stilted still-frames of frozen marble masonry, as if the buildings saw me photographing them and paused a moment from their candid conversations to offer a clichéd pose of my camera. None of the vibrant, bubbling life beneath is there, only dry stone caricatures. My memories are what contain the true life of the place, and the only interesting photos are of the friends I met there. Perhaps I should adjust my lens.
In my history studies at Oxford, my tutor always made me look at the past from the ground up. It is in this bubbling stew of peoples and ideas and life that history is made. The kings, battles and monuments only come later, a consequence, an artifact. It wasn’t the city that was wounded, but the individual people living there, trying to make a home for themselves in the midst of this earth. It is these people whose wounds would either heal or continue to fester. Hatred and war are poisons that disrupt their existence, physically and spiritually. The physical damage scars the bodies and buildings, but the worst damage is done to hearts and psyches, of both the victims and the perpetrators. We are fragile creatures; when we lash out, seeking to break others, we irrevocably break ourselves. The poisons must be contained before the frothing sea of humanity produces monstrosities out of its choler and bitterness. London, I believe in you still. Your citizens do not approve of the bombings, the police shootings, or the trouble behind it all. You just want to live.

Memory: August 10, 2005
It’s almost dusk; I’m in the air, my farewell flight from England. The sky is a cool blue turning to fiery orange at the horizon. Below, I see the lights and roadways of the towns and villages, colonies of life nestled on the ground like lichens growing on a tree. In photographing my time here I’ve taken ten rolls of film of the places, and sights and people and friends. I wonder to myself how they will turn out. How will it all turn out?

Against Faith

Faith means trust. One can have faith (or confidence) in a number of things, such as faith in the economy, faith in another person, etc. It is simply the belief that a claim is true or will that someone will act as they have promised. Faith in the religious sense means belief in a doctrine without necessarily having enough proof of its truthfulness to be reasonably certain. To believe something without adequate proof or evidence is a mistake. At best, it is the equivalent of guessing, at worst it is to go against reason itself. Unless some conclusive evidence can be found for the existence or nonexistence of a divine being, then the agnostic position is the only logical choice. Faith without reason is a grave mistake.

Semblence

Value

Beyond inborn talents, beyond the accidental virtues of good looks wealthy families, or the like, beyond intelligence or any other achievement, the only just way of judging a man's worth is to what length he does what’s right with what he has. It matters not if ethics are a part of the laws of the universe laid down by God, or a complete aesthetic fabrication of man, or even if free will itself is a fallacy, Ethics are the one measure to which all actions may be held.

On Civic Virtue (Fall 2004)

All men do things to achieve an end. They work to gain money; but they want money on the theory that it will allow them to achieve other ends, which in turn will lead to happiness. Thus all acts strive for happiness. Man is by nature a social animal, since he has the power of speech and language and by necessity must interact with others if for nothing else to successfully reproduce. By commerce, men obtain things they would not otherwise be able to produce. Thus interaction also serves as a means of attaining happiness (to fulfill biological needs and to obtain goods). Man is neither swift of foot nor mighty in strength compared to other creatures, but by banding together, men can better protect themselves. Protection is also a means of achieving a greater level of happiness. Public works improve the lives of all. The state is a structure created to regulate interaction between people, and to assure mutual protection of its members, and by these and other means strive for happiness of all those who are a part of the state. Civic virtue therefore means doing one’s utmost to make the state more effective in achieving happiness for the most people in the state as possible. This is done by creating laws that facilitate achievement of happiness for the most people, removing or altering laws that hinder this process in such a way as to not make happiness more difficult to achieve, and otherwise living in a way that improves the community.
One might argue that civic virtue just means following the laws or acting justly, however, this is not always the case. The chief good is happiness for the most people possible. Morals are rules that help achieve this end. Justice is a method of distributing goods (such as food, money, honor) based on deservedness. Justice is not in of itself a direct method of achieving happiness (that would be morality), but rather a practice that indirectly aids in the process. For example, forgiveness is a quality of morality, but it is unjust. Suppose another has injured you and therefore deserves punishment, and yet you forgive them. You are not carrying out justice (in fact you would be unjust), however, you would be considered to have done a morally upright deed. In most cases, people are upset and therefore less able to achieve happiness when they are the victims of injurious injustice, so justice should be thought of as a precondition that aids in the process of achieving happiness, but not necessarily as a direct means of doing so. The state does not create morals, but instead creates laws. Laws are written approximations of morals or, more commonly, justice. A law that requires taxes be levied in order to help the poor would be a moral law. A law allowing property to be seized if debts are not paid is more concerned with justice. It is not always easy to create laws that perfectly match justice and morality, and in fact in some cases it is not possible to do so. As long as these laws remain close approximations of morals and justice, one should follow and enforce them, however, there may be cases that fall between the law and justice and morality. Or perhaps a bad law might have been created that is completely opposed to morality and justice. In such cases is part of civic virtue to break these laws and do one’s utmost to have them changed, as long as this disobedience or changing of law code does not itself cause more trouble for members of the state than the bad law itself.
Besides the law, members of the state perform civic virtue by improving the level of happiness of others through individual acts. Cleaning up trash in public areas, volunteering time, effort, or money to helping the less fortunate, participating in government (by voting, speaking out, or carrying out the functions of an office) if one has the knowledge and abilities that could improve the state, and defending the state from attack are all other means by which one shows civic virtue.
While we are on the topic of defense of the state, engaging in warfare for defense against an aggressor is both a civic virtue and a just/moral thing to do. Engaging in aggressive war against other states might be considered a civic virtue internally (as it may improve the financial situation within the state and therefore the happiness of those within), but at the same time morally wrong in the greater context of all human activity beyond simply individual states. This is because we are dealing with two core ethics around which morals are determined. There is the intrastate ethic of “happiness for all within the state” and the interstate (and in fact beyond all states) ethic of “happiness for all, regardless of state affiliation”. Since the superstate or stateless ethic is more all-encompassing, I posit that it supercedes the intrastate ethic of any one nation or group of people.

Cory

Notes on Ethics

Ethics are theories of the good. The principle good is happiness. Happiness means physical pleasure as well as higher pleasures of the mind, such as satisfaction, wisdom, peace, and a sense of well-being. All things that can have some conscious sensation of physical pain and/or mental anguish are subject to the ethic of happiness and thus deserve moral consideration. Justice is a sense of equality, balance, and fairness. It means each gets exactly what he deserves, no more and no less. When one does work he undergoes some pain in that he expends some of his energy and time. He expends this energy now in the expectation that he will receive some commensurate or even superior good later. When he expends energy doing good toward another, there is a sense of deservedness of an equal good in return. When one does evil toward another, he has decreased the level of happiness for that person and there is a sense of deservedness of an equal evil I return. Out of this sense of equivalent exchange comes a sense of justice. There is no justice for groups, but only for individuals. If we speak of justice for a group, we actually mean justice for a group of individuals. Complete justice would mean that everyone is the same. Because injustice is conceptually displeasing, it causes a measure of unhappiness. Thus while morality supercedes justice, justice does play a factor in morality and often the one contributes to the other. Out of justice emerges a sense of individual rights, which are simply all powers that individuals have that do not infringe on the powers of others unjustly or cause undeserved suffering.
If one individual were made happy while another was left unhappy, the situation would be unjust, yet still more moral than before, since the general level of happiness has increased. If both were made happy to an amount equivalent to the increase in happiness of the previous case (factoring in added unhappiness of the latter individual) with the happiness divided equally among them, then the situation would be equally moral as the previous case and also just.
When we discuss hypothetical ethical dilemmas, we imagine ourselves in the situation of the person in the dilemma. If we judge that it would cause unhappiness or pain to us, we view it as immoral. Instances of morality are the conceptual counterpart to aesthetic beauty, as both cause pleasure on one level or another.
Pride is a positive assessment of oneself (or sometimes of another). The word pride is used in both a negative and positive sense. There are actually three varieties. Just pride is a positive assessment based on earned merit (or desert) and is morally acceptable unless it is taken to the point where others are meant to feel inferior. Justified pride is a positive assessment based on what might be called accidental virtues, that is, positive qualities about a person that he happened to have due to pure good fortune, such as good looks or talents. This sort of pride is morally neutral because it simply describes reality. Of course it becomes immoral when it is used improperly to make others feel inferior. Finally, there is unjust pride, which is positive assessment that is undeserved, is based on false virtues, or has no real merit. This is almost always immoral, as it is a judgment that is not based on true desert, and is thus unjust and leads to unhappiness in others. The concept of such an incorrect judgment is abhorrent.

The Functions of Film

All art is communication and it requires an audience. Communication is the sharing or provoking of ideas from one individual to another (or even the same individual). Communication is an experience, and therefore all forms of art are experiences. Some experiences of art carry more ‘experiential’ weight than others. For example, hearing music being performed live is typically a more powerful experience than listening to recorded music. Actual proximity to a work of art is more powerful than seeing a photographic reproduction of it. Live actors have more ‘stage presence’ than filmed drama. Therefore cinema, when it is acting as dramatic narrative, typically has less ‘presence’ than theatre. It is the job of the filmmakers to overcome this initial shortcoming and engross the audience. Even so, theatrical works, when presented on stage in the normal fashion (as opposed to some of the possibilities of street theatre, unscripted drama, or breaking of the proscenium barrier), still presence the audience with an experience somewhat removed from that of a ‘true’ experience occurring in real life, as the audience is aware that this is a fictional play. It is however, also the mark of good theatre that the audience forgets this separation from reality and is completely engrossed in the story.
Despite cinema’s not-insurmountable shortcomings in comparison with theatre, film can be used in more ways than simply dramatic narrative. It can also function as a sort of art installation piece wherein the film “crosses the proscenium” by involving the audience in some manner. In Sharon Lockhart’s Teatro Amazonas the audience watches an extended shot of another audience (sitting in an opera house in Brazil) while vocal music plays. The film is as much or more about the live audience’s reaction when confronted with a filmed audience as it is a film of an audience in Brazil. Film need not be restricted to a theatre. Projectors showing films can be part of an art installation (such as some of the work of Andy Warhol) and work in conjunction with the viewing space or other pieces of art to form an entire environment in which the viewer can experience everything around him.
Film can also function as a visual/aural art piece “framed” by the screen. This is in essence like viewing a painting, but with moving and changing images with sound. It may consist of pure colors and shapes and/or coherent pieces of narrative. In the latter case, the screen gives the viewer the implied notion that he is looking through a window and that beyond its edges the there is a greater expanse of space just out of view. It also differs from a static painting or other framed image in that there is no object to look at, only ephemeral projections of flat images on a screen. Therefore the viewer is another level removed from the pure experience of the images he sees. Also unlike a painting the viewer cannot look closer or linger on part of the image as the succession of images is not within his control.
Film can act as a record of actual events. This does not necessarily mean that a documentary film as a whole will function in this manner. Most documentary films have voice-over narration, utilize editing, include animation or diagrams and are structured to explain or argue a point. In this case, its function is more like the sort of narrative that will be discussed later. Raw footage captured at the time of an event is a historical record in a more pure form. Within the ‘frame’ of the screen (with its implied environment just out of the camera’s view) the view sees a moving visual (and sometimes also aural) approximation of the actual event taking place. It is an approximation as it is in reality a series of still images shown in quick succession so that it appears to the human eye as a moving image.
Finally, film can act as a narrative in other ways besides merely dramatic. A narrative can be told through a progression of still or moving images, sounds, words, movements, colors, and scenes. It need not always require actual actors. One image followed by another will be connected by the viewer’s mind to form an idea greater than simply a single image. This narrative may be a complex “storyline” or simply a series of ideas. Such a narrative is more literary than dramatic in that it functions through description, dialogue, metaphor, imagery, as well as action, as in a fictional story, or even a poem. Many an art film is in many respects a visual poem. Written or spoken poems rely on imagery, sounds, rhythm, and even visual shapes (such as with many e.e. cummings works), as do many films. A documentary film also functions as a narrative. This kind of documentary can be likened to reading a newspaper article or editorial (as opposed to a novel), which is based on actual events, but presented in a certain manner by its author.
So far film in particular has been discussed, but of course these ideas can also apply to other analog or digital video as well. In addition, it must be said that the experiences of theatre, film, visual arts, and music carry with them carry with them distracting elements inherent in the medium and in the world around us—other people talking in the theatre, other viewers obstructing our view of a painting. In addition they often require the viewer (or listener) to become adjusted to the medium before they can experience the work at its full potential. In much the same manner as putting glasses on for the first time, the viewer must mentally adjust his perception. With cinema, he soon learns to ignore the blackness around the screen as one learns to ignore the frames of one’s glasses. A theatergoer soon does not even notice the fact that the sets are laid before him in an unrealistic manner (the forth wall is missing). As we are now in the age of internet, digital video, and virtual reality, this discussion of the functions of film may not even be exhaustive, as filmmakers are still exploring the limitations and possibilities of this medium. Many a film theorist have speculated at length about ‘total cinema’, in which we will perceive not just visual images on a screen with accompanying sound, but in which all of our senses are involved and the screen covers our entire field of vision. We may not just be a spectator, but also a participant, altering the storyline with our own decisions. Such technology is largely a reality today, but has not become as widely utilized as traditional cinema. I will concur with those other theorists and critics in that this will be the most complete ‘experience’ possible shy of the real thing. I will add however, that artistic expression can be powerful and effective in any medium, only limited by the effort, skill, and imagination of the artist.

The Activity of Man

Art is man’s alteration of nature; it is creative, inventive and novel. Only by creating literature, art, music, by making new history, new ideas, by doing things never done before, does he change the very universe—he adds something to it that was not there before.