Intuition, Conscience and Catholic Ethics

[DL82]

I wonder if anyone here is familiar with intuitivism, the ‘affective turn’ in philosophical ethics, for example in the ideas of Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt or Jesse Prinz, or in earlier ethical work such as Philippa Foot or even David Hume, who argue that there is a gap between intellectual ethical understanding and intuition, or the gut motivation to act.

To (over)simplify, a rationalist approach to ethics says:

1. We see an ethical situation
2. We reason as to the right thing to do, using the intellect (we recall something from the Summa, perhaps, and consider the dilemma in the form of a deductive syllogism)
3. We make an act of will, based on our reason, and act on it.

An intuitivist approach says:

1. We see an ethical situation
2. We have an immediate intuitive/affective reaction (e.g. ‘eww, that’s bad’!)
3. We use our intellect to find a way of rationalizing our intuition (we ask our brain to find out why we just wen’t ‘eww’)
4. If we can find a reason for our intuition, then we act on it. (Maybe we even act on it if we can’t find a reason, or maybe we act first, and engage brain later).

I am glossing over some subtle differences here, but there is a lot of good evidence to suggest that this is how people actually make moral decisions. Antonio Damasio, for example, has done research on people with brain injuries which stop the intuitive part of their brains from working - they are perfectly able to weigh up the pros and cons of an action, but without the affective part (i.e. the bit that says ‘I want’) they find it really difficult to come to decisions even about basic problems like what to have for dinner. Jon Haidt did different kinds of work about situations where people have a gut feeling that they can’t back up with reasons, and it also seems to point to this kind of reasoning process.

What I am trying to work out is what is the relationship between this affective approach to practical ethics and Catholic teaching about the well informed conscience?

Firstly, it seems to have a bearing on what we think of as ‘full knowledge’ (i.e. one of the 3 criteria of mortal sin), because, while we can memorize the whole Catechism in our rational brain, or at least know where to look things up, if our moral decisions are part of the intuitive brain, then it may only be able to hold a very few core principles. The intuition of a holy person may instinctively do what the Catechism teaches, but it doesn’t do so just because that person knows their Catechism inside out. To ‘know’ with the affective, intuitive, fast-thinking part of the brain would mean something quite different from simply knowing which encyclical to look up to find the answer.

Consequently, this seems to lend itself toward something that looks more like classical Aristotelian virtue ethics, where what matters is, yes, that we fill our rational brains with Church teaching, but also that, through long training, recourse to the Sacraments, meditation on the Gospel stories or the mysteries of the Rosary, we train the intuition to have right desires. This is close to the Eastern fathers’ understanding of ‘mystagogy’, gradual learning from the mysteries, with the importance the East places on the ‘prayer of the heart’, learning in our affective part, instead/as well as the intellectual part.

I just wonder whether it is appropriate to draw a similarity between this idea of ‘intuition’ and the Catholic understanding of conscience. Like conscience, intuition, as it is used by Haidt, Kahneman, et al, seems to have a directive force which is not the same as either the reason or the will. On the other hand, many spiritual writers have stressed the importance of slowing down to listen to the ‘still small voice’ of conscience (such as in Ignatian spirituality), whereas Kahneman associates intuition with ‘fast thinking’, gut reactions and snap judgments. Speculatively, could it even be argued that we have two consciences, a fast one and a slow one?

 

[majorem]

Wow…where have you been.? I plan on doing some reading…some thoughts for you…I am a recovering alcoholic/addict…years in recovery…I am what you could consider a devout Catholic…I try…some of us in recovery…spend a great deal of time trying to gain some introspection into why we ‘pick up’ that first drink…Alcoholics in recovery, who are maybe have very little formal education…are taught to not over intellectualize,pause,play the tape back so to speak…what will happen if I ‘pick up’…lose job, family, home, love of family, and it goes on…why would an otherwise educated intellegent person put him/herself in a situation like this…impulse…there is evidence that neural pathways that (oversimplification) send signals to the cortex ‘saying’ don’t do this’ or somehow impaired in individuals like me…the same priniciple applies to individuals that suffer from endogenous depression…we can’t just tell these people to ‘snap out of it’…without turning this into a discussion on ‘recovery’ … I believe …the 12 step progam…which parallels St. Iganatius’ Spritual Excercises …is a very fundamental way of ‘setting’ healthy neural pathways by repeating certain phrases…there are those of us …I believe…who have very well formed consciences…that given the right circumstances would tend to act/affective…in ways that put our soul in jeopardy…react…I have heard…that ‘everyone’ has a conscience…I’m not sure that I believe this…It is also said that everyone inately knows right from wrong in certain instances…I’m certain I haven’t answered your question…but your thread was interesting…and I will do some reading…by the by…I have to be very conscience of my behavior most of the time…incidentally, I have been diagnosed with ADHD…and have finally agreed to take medication to help control impusivity…thank you for a fascinating read …although, my comments were somewhat anecdotal I hope they gave you something to think about…I have a great Marian devotion and the Holy Rosary prayed regularly is of great benefit to me…my soul… I believe we benefit where a great number of our Protestant Christian bretheren miss out on rote prayer…tks for listening…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

DL

**Speculatively, could it even be argued that we have two consciences, a fast one and a slow one? **

Yes.

A fast conscience works on simple questions of morality. A slow conscience works on more complex issues of morality.

We know instinctively (immediately) that murder is wrong. We do not know instinctively that killing in wartime is wrong. We have to reason slowly toward the conviction that it is or it isn’t, depending on the factors involved.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

DL82;10332384:

Speculatively, could it even be argued that we have two consciences, a fast one and a slow one?

Yes.

A fast conscience works on simple questions of morality. A slow conscience works on more complex issues of morality.

I’ve heard of this referred to under the terms “Primal Morality” and “Refined Morality” where “Primal” covers things that have some strong interaction with survival instincts. This dichotomy may also be known by other terms.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I wonder if anyone here is familiar with intuitivism, the ‘affective turn’ in philosophical ethics, for example in the ideas of Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt or Jesse Prinz, or in earlier ethical work such as Philippa Foot or even David Hume, who argue that there is a gap between intellectual ethical understanding and intuition, or the gut motivation to act.

To (over)simplify, a rationalist approach to ethics says:

1. We see an ethical situation
2. We reason as to the right thing to do, using the intellect (we recall something from the Summa, perhaps, and consider the dilemma in the form of a deductive syllogism)
3. We make an act of will, based on our reason, and act on it.

An intuitivist approach says:

1. We see an ethical situation
2. We have an immediate intuitive/affective reaction (e.g. ‘eww, that’s bad’!)
3. We use our intellect to find a way of rationalizing our intuition (we ask our brain to find out why we just wen’t ‘eww’)
4. If we can find a reason for our intuition, then we act on it. (Maybe we even act on it if we can’t find a reason, or maybe we act first, and engage brain later).

I am glossing over some subtle differences here, but there is a lot of good evidence to suggest that this is how people actually make moral decisions. Antonio Damasio, for example, has done research on people with brain injuries which stop the intuitive part of their brains from working - they are perfectly able to weigh up the pros and cons of an action, but without the affective part (i.e. the bit that says ‘I want’) they find it really difficult to come to decisions even about basic problems like what to have for dinner. Jon Haidt did different kinds of work about situations where people have a gut feeling that they can’t back up with reasons, and it also seems to point to this kind of reasoning process.

What I am trying to work out is what is the relationship between this affective approach to practical ethics and Catholic teaching about the well informed conscience?

Firstly, it seems to have a bearing on what we think of as ‘full knowledge’ (i.e. one of the 3 criteria of mortal sin), because, while we can memorize the whole Catechism in our rational brain, or at least know where to look things up, if our moral decisions are part of the intuitive brain, then it may only be able to hold a very few core principles. The intuition of a holy person may instinctively do what the Catechism teaches, but it doesn’t do so just because that person knows their Catechism inside out. To ‘know’ with the affective, intuitive, fast-thinking part of the brain would mean something quite different from simply knowing which encyclical to look up to find the answer.

Consequently, this seems to lend itself toward something that looks more like classical Aristotelian virtue ethics, where what matters is, yes, that we fill our rational brains with Church teaching, but also that, through long training, recourse to the Sacraments, meditation on the Gospel stories or the mysteries of the Rosary, we train the intuition to have right desires. This is close to the Eastern fathers’ understanding of ‘mystagogy’, gradual learning from the mysteries, with the importance the East places on the ‘prayer of the heart’, learning in our affective part, instead/as well as the intellectual part.

I just wonder whether it is appropriate to draw a similarity between this idea of ‘intuition’ and the Catholic understanding of conscience. Like conscience, intuition, as it is used by Haidt, Kahneman, et al, seems to have a directive force which is not the same as either the reason or the will. On the other hand, many spiritual writers have stressed the importance of slowing down to listen to the ‘still small voice’ of conscience (such as in Ignatian spirituality), whereas Kahneman associates intuition with ‘fast thinking’, gut reactions and snap judgments. Speculatively, could it even be argued that we have two consciences, a fast one and a slow one?

The only thing for a Catholic to do is to form their conscience according to the teachings of the Church on faith and morals. This is pretty clear in the majority of situations. I’m talking here about much more than just the bold print in the Ten Commandments. I’m talking about every thing in the Catechism, the Scriptures, and the official documents of the Church, including the teachings of our local Bishops. Beyond that one is to be guided by a realist ethical philosophy such as that by Thomas Aquinas. The latter in a modern synthesis, can be found in a book called " Right and Reason " by Austin Fagothey. Or one can go directly to St. Thomas. Finally, there is much available in other Catholic sources to help us learn how to think along with the Church.

Our object in life is to save our souls. That is the reason for following the Church’s teaching in all matters of faith and morals. If we allow ourselves to be guided by secular philosophies of ethics we will soon be lost, entirely lost - spiritually.

I really question using any of the ethical systems you mentioned.

 

[I_buljan]

For one, Would you say that God is a substance? Does not the Catholic Church hold that God created the universe ex nihilo? Do you hold that matter is a different substance? Does that not very clearly imply that God is a free agent who transcends the material substance? If that is not dualism (metaphysical at least) I do not know what is! Are we not created in the image of God? You can not be serious that this implies in a physical sense, since God’s image is not defined by that which arises from the physical which arises from “nothing”! So we too are somehow created as free agents that transcend the physical substance. There is some support for this in the Gospel of John, the ninth chapter where they encounter the blind man. The apostles ask Jesus if it is the sin of this man or the sin of his parents that caused him to be born blind. Jesus answered that it was neither his sin or that of his parents which caused the man to be born blind. Now how could someone not yet born sin? One would have to argue that either the man sinned in his Mother’s womb, or that he sinned before he was even conceived. I hold the position that if he sinned in his Mother’s womb, than he could just as well have sinned before conception. Further evidence can be found from the statement Jesus made: “Every sin will be forgiven man except the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit; it will not be forgiven in this life nor in the life to come.” The Church holds that this is speaking of purgatory. Well, the body is certainly not in purgatory, the soul is. Where is the body? In the ground waiting to be resurrected. In Macabees we also read that they made prayers for the dead. Where were their bodies? Does not the Church also use that to support Purgatory? Taking this into account, I do not see how any Catholic can be anything else except a dualist. I think that it very closely resembles property dualism more than anything else. The real problem that I see between the Catholic Church and Descartes is not Cartesian dualism, but in that Descartes took epistemology to a whole different level. He flipped the question “What is the truth?” on its head by posing a question: “Of what can I be sure, and how can I be sure of it?” Had the Catholic Church done the same thing, they would never had burned so many at the stake! They would not have to apologize to Galileo and others concerning the Heliocentric theory etc. Is it not ironic that the institution that claimed to have infallibility as to TRUTH (faith and morals), actually called the TRUTH a lie, and the LIE the truth! Ought anyone be afraid of its anathema statements? Are such statements an example they picked up from our Lord? I think not (Did He not say something like “Bless and do not curse, pray for those who persecute you…”). It really does comes down to the Truth. Man is the one who thinks he is right about certain things and either comes to this conclusion through appeal to authority or through reflection, experimentation, questioning and reasoning. God’s truth is always vindicated by the latter as is in the case of the great thinkers–irrespective of what the Catholic Church says-- of our age. We are composed of two different substances: One substance is created in the image of God, i.e. the soul, the rational, the mind or whatever you want to call it, and this substance indwells the material body, a different substance, which is the mechanism through which the works of the mind are manifest in the physical universe. You can use the molecule as an analogy. Two different substances composing one molecule. You would not call the molecule a substance even though it has properties of unity etc. Likewise, there is the spiritual substance, and the material substance comprising what it means to be human. Many in the Church are on the Aristotle bandwagon concerning the properties of matter. However, If Descartes, Kant, Leibniz and others had not challenged the Aristotle’s understanding of matter, and in turn the Church’s understanding, today’s Atomic and molecular theories would not be anywhere near what they!

 

[Linusthe2nd]

… We are composed of two different substances: One substance is created in the image of God, i.e. the soul, the rational, the mind or whatever you want to call it, and this substance indwells the material body, a different substance, which is the mechanism through which the works of the mind are manifest in the physical universe.

Thus Lateran in 649 (against the Monothelites), canon ii, “the Word of God with the flesh assumed by Him and animated with an intellectual principle shall come . . .”; Vienne, 1311-12, “whoever shall hereafter dare to assert, maintain, or pertinaciously hold that the rational or intellectual soul is not per se and essentially the form of the human body, is to be regarded as a heretic”; Decree of Leo X, in V Lateran, Bull “Apostolici Regiminis”, 1513, “. . . with the approval of this sacred council we condemn all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal or is the same in all men . . . for the soul is not only really and essentially the form of the human body, but is also immortal; and the number of souls has been and is to be multiplied according as the number of bodies is multiplied”; Brief “Eximiam tuam” of Pius IX to Cardinal de Geissel, 15 June, 1857, condemning the error of Günther, says: “the rational soul is per se the true and immediate form of the body”.

From the above found in the Catholic Encyclopedia, it is difficult to see how anything like the " Dualism " of Descartes could be held by Catholics.

And from the Catechism:

II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

So while " Dualism " may not be condemned, it is difficult to see how a Catholic can regard it a valid/licit view and still hold to what is taught by the Catholic Church. I would say that those who hold to some form of " Dualism " must be able to justify it by some positive teaching by the Church. And I don’t see how that is possible.

Addition:
God is a Being by " attribution of proper proportionality. " His Being is Pure Being, Ipsum Esse Subsistens. Angels are beings by " proper proportionality, " which HAVE EXTENCE. Man is a being composed of the principles of body and soul which has being. A man is one being, not two.

The body cannot survive after death. It immediately begins to decompose into ultimate elements - the essential " dust " of prime matter. Since it cannot survive at death in its original state, it is not a substance. And contrary to what you say, the soul, separated from the body, exists as an incomplete substance. Eventhough it then exists in Heaven or Hell or possible " Purgatory, " it nevertheless exists as an incomplete substance, as St Thomas teaches ( the Church does not teach anything on this point as far as I know). In this state, according to Thomas, it knows only " universals, " it does not know particular beings unless God provides such knowledge.

So I continue to be convinced that it is better not to use the term " Substance Dualism, " or any other kind of " dualism, "because of the unfortunate history of the word " dualism. "

I deny that the Church says anywhere that it describes God’s creation as " Subsistance Dualism." If the Church can be said to hold any philosophical view on the exact nature of this creation, one could make a very strong argument that it favors the explanation of St. Thomas that created reality is composed generally of contingent, caused beings. Beings who HAVE EXISTENCE from God Who Is Existence.

Many in the Church are on the Aristotle bandwagon concerning the properties of matter. However, If Descartes, Kant, Leibniz and others had not challenged the Aristotle’s understanding of matter, and in turn the Church’s understanding, today’s Atomic and molecular theories would not be anywhere near what they!

Unfounded, unsupported.

Please keep in mind that this is a Catholic site and one of the rules is to be respectful of that faith. This does not mean you cannot disagree with it but I think it does mean that you refrain from expressing disparaging remarks about that faith.

 

[DL82]

The only thing for a Catholic to do is to form their conscience according to the teachings of the Church on faith and morals. This is pretty clear in the majority of situations. I’m talking here about much more than just the bold print in the Ten Commandments. I’m talking about every thing in the Catechism, the Scriptures, and the official documents of the Church, including the teachings of our local Bishops. Beyond that one is to be guided by a realist ethical philosophy such as that by Thomas Aquinas. The latter in a modern synthesis, can be found in a book called " Right and Reason " by Austin Fagothey. Or one can go directly to St. Thomas. Finally, there is much available in other Catholic sources to help us learn how to think along with the Church.

Our object in life is to save our souls. That is the reason for following the Church’s teaching in all matters of faith and morals. If we allow ourselves to be guided by secular philosophies of ethics we will soon be lost, entirely lost - spiritually.

I really question using any of the ethical systems you mentioned.

I think you misunderstand what these systems are about. What I have described in the original post are what may be termed descriptive ethics, as opposed to normative ethics. That is to say, theorists like Prinz and Haidt are interested in describing how our brains actually process moral decisions, not how we ought to behave morally. It is more a matter of moral psychology rather than moral philosophy, and this a person doesn’t so much ‘use’ these moral systems as acknowledge that they have some descriptive truth to them.

Of course, for a Catholic, the sources you describe are authoritative, but the process by which human brains process and use those sources when reasoning about moral problems remains an empirical question, not solely a matter of faith.