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| "Feelings" (2004) by Martin Creed |
When the lawyer, Burnett, gave Bingle instructions for dealing with the consulate in India, Bingle said "it didn't feel right" (76). When Sachin told Sanders that the workers were lying about how much money the workers were asked to pay, Sanders said he "felt . . . in his gut" that Sachin was the one who was lying (73). When Sanders first interacted with Pol, he said Pol "rubbed him the wrong way" (73).
These are examples of using emotional instinct as a moral compass.
Do you think emotional responses are reliable when it comes to moral judgement?
Consider the "disgust" Sanders detected in Signal employees who had gone over to India to test candidates and characterized the nation as "being like another planet" (65) or Schnoor's feeling about what life was like in India (which he had never visited) (85). Are these cases in which emotional responses are more likely to be influenced by cultural background and bias than judgements that are based on fact-based evidence, argument, and logic?
Generally speaking, would people be better off trusting their gut instincts more than they do now? Or are gut instincts more likely to be biased and prejudicial?
Answer only after you've read part two, chapter five and all the preceding chapters.
What Sanders felt in response to those three scenarios with Burnett, Sachin, and Pol is a common phenomenon that many people may experience but may not fully understand. "Emotional instinct", "intuition", or "your gut-feeling", are all ways to describe this scenario. Many can attest to being in a situation where, on the surface, nothing seems alarming or concerning, but a gut-feeling, almost like a voice deep in your primitive subconscious, tells you that the situation is not in fact as it seems. It is my belief that humans evolved this subconscious emotional instinct through many years of evolution. It was advantageous for our early ancestors to recognize patterns in people's physical and non-physical body language, and through recognizing these patterns we might be able to see when a situation or person poses a threat to us or our survival. Of course, Sanders was not in any physical danger, but the subconscious mental alarm that protected our ancestors from the deceptiveness and danger of others was still active in his mind, except in a modern-day scenario. Knowing this, it can be argued that this emotional instinct is very useful for navigating one's moral compass, especially in complex scenarios.
ReplyDeleteThere is a major flaw to our emotional instinct, however, in that it can be influenced by illogical and harmful beliefs we learn throughout childhood and as adults. Examples of these beliefs include prejudice and racism. Once someone learns these negative beliefs about others, certain feelings like uncomfortability or distrust may arise in certain situations, like with Sanders' disgust with India or Schnoor’s racist stereotypes. Thus, in order for someone to use their emotional instinct most effectively, they must realize when these feelings arise from actual deceptive and unusual behaviors from others (like in the case with Sander’s feelings regarding Burnett, Sachin, and Pol), or from simply illogical beliefs and unfair judgements they learned from others.
It is difficult to answer whether people should “generally speaking” trust their gut instincts more, because like in the aforementioned examples, it can depend on the person and what kind of beliefs they may hold. Additionally, it depends on how well they are at noticing when they might hold certain beliefs that are illogical and how easy they can replace those beliefs with more useful ones.
**(This is the same response but I edited the formatting so it didn't get rid of my paragraph spacing and put my name)**
DeleteWhat Sanders felt in response to those three scenarios with Burnett, Sachin, and Pol is a common phenomenon that many people may experience but may not fully understand. "Emotional instinct", "intuition", or "your gut-feeling", are all ways to describe this scenario. Many can attest to being in a situation where, on the surface, nothing seems alarming or concerning, but a gut-feeling, almost like a voice deep in your primitive subconscious, tells you that the situation is not in fact as it seems. It is my belief that humans evolved this subconscious emotional instinct through many years of evolution. It was advantageous for our early ancestors to recognize patterns in people's physical and non-physical body language, and through recognizing these patterns we might be able to see when a situation or person poses a threat to our survival. Of course, Sanders was not in any physical danger, but the subconscious mental alarm that protected our ancestors from the deceptiveness and danger of others was still active in his mind, except in a modern-day scenario. Knowing this, it can be argued that this emotional instinct is very useful for navigating one's moral compass, especially in complex scenarios.
There is a major flaw to our emotional instinct, however, in that it can be influenced by illogical and harmful beliefs we learn throughout childhood and as adults. Examples of these beliefs include prejudice and racism. Once someone learns these negative beliefs about others, certain feelings like uncomfortability or distrust may arise in certain situations like with Sanders' disgust with India or Schnoor’s racist stereotypes. Thus, in order for someone to use their emotional instinct most effectively, they must realize when these feelings arise from actual deceptive and unusual behaviors from others (like in the case with Sander’s feelings regarding Burnett, Sachin, and Pol), or from simply illogical beliefs and unfair judgements they learned from others.
It is difficult to answer whether people should “generally speaking” trust their gut instincts more, because like in the aforementioned examples, it can depend on the person and what kind of beliefs they may hold. Additionally, it depends on how well they are at noticing when they might hold certain beliefs that are illogical and how easy they can replace those beliefs with more useful ones.
Morality is decided by how a person would feel in the same situation. At the same time empathy can only go so far and is easily side tracked. Nobody knows the future and it's easy to be conceited. Bingle wouldn't want others to lie or take advantage of him. He knows it could backfire on him. Sanders could have picked up more genuine expression from the workers and was convinced by the majority. I would be rubbed the wrong way too, if a man I was supposed to discuss business with started yelling. I think in these cases it was very accurate. The inaccurate case is with the staff and Schnoor. They were in fact negatively influenced by culture. Many US citizens are told that India is a poor, dirty, unsafe country. Schnoor and the others ingrained racial sayings into them and probably don't see a problem or want to change. They see the workers being in the US as a privilege. They couldn't picture what it would be like to grow up there or eat the food because they are who they are and that is the limit. To me it's best to trust in oneself, but also question if there is prejudice.
ReplyDeleteI think that sometimes emotional responses can be “correct” moral judgment, for instance seeing a child unattended in a store, it makes you feel pity for the child and to think “where is the child’s parents”, and morally it is correct, as a child should not be left unattended. However, conversely emotional responses can be wrong, such as when you do not know the whole story, like seeing someone get struck by someone else, the first instinct is hurting people is bad(unless you like seeing that), however you may not know that person is a robber, or if that person is someone who has held a knife to someone, many things you cannot know.
ReplyDeleteThese two examples, I believe, are cases of emotional judgment clouding rational thinking. Many don’t consider thoughts of maybe someone grew up here, or maybe this is normal for others. Culturally America and India are in fact worlds apart, however, we are still on the same planet, some do not consider their privileged position. This is why I believe them to be emotional responses.
I believe if many people started to think more rationally then the grand majority would benefit. I believe emotional responses are grown into, they are environmental, which means I believe that they are more likely to be biased and prejudicial.