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.