Moral Behavior

David Brooks April 6, 2009 column reflects on the relationship between moral reasoning and moral decision-making. He quotes Michael Gazzaniga’s book Human. “It has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.” Contrary to making moral decisions based on moral reasoning Brooks writes, “Moral judgments . . . are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.” Consequently, he suggests, that moral reasoning is a subsequent process once decisions have been made and not the guiding discipline moral philosophers had hoped it would be.

He goes on to label this understanding of humanity morality as the “evolutionary approach to morality” and names three “nice things” about the approach. These nice things include emphasis on social construction of morality or cooperation, a humanizing of humanity, and a reasonable explanation for the irrational nature of human decision making that does not destroy individual responsibility. Brooks assesses this new approach to morality as “an epochal change” as it challenges among other things those of us who are invested in the “hyper-rational scrutiny of texts.” I have not invested time in studying the developments and reports which Brooks bases this development on so I can only respond to how he summarizes it. However, I am not convinced that this approach is either new nor particularly contrary to the way I understand a Christian view of morality.

First, I’m not sure the idea is all that new. Cicero wrote in De Oratore, “Men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, or authority, or any legal standard or judicial precedent, or statute” (2.41.178). So if I am correct in linking the view expressed in Cicero’s rhetorical dialogue with the evolutionary approach to morality, then it does not seem to be as revolutionary as it appears. The explanation of human behavior has been with us as least 2100 years. NOTE: It could be that what Brooks thinks is epochal is not the concept itself but its widespread acceptance.

Similarly, the Apostle Paul lamented, “The good that I would do, I do not. And that which I hate, I do” (Romans 7). Pauline anthropology resembles this view of the dominance of emotional reaction over moral philosophy in actual moral behavior. The modification brought by a New Testament understanding of humanity is simply that people can—through conversion and sanctification—cultivate new emotional reactions through processes of the spirit.

So, this may not be as challenging to existing models of moral reasoning as Brooks suggests. Among those challenged by this approach include new atheists who may naively assume the purity of their reasoning, the “Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts” and traditional moral philosophy. I’m not sure why Brooks chooses to name only the Talmudic tradition among those who approach moral reasoning via hermeneutics. Perhaps it’s so that when Christians like me object he can say, “Well, I wasn’t really talking about you; now was I?”

However, I would say that if I have understood what Brooks’s is labeling the evolutionary approach to morality correctly then it is not much different than the views of Howard Stone and Jim Duke in their basic text, How to Think Theologically. Stone, a pastoral care professor and Duke a Christian theological historian both a Brite Divinity School (my alma mater) provided this text as a basic introduction to applied theology (i.e., the kind of theology you practice in the church). They introduced the concept of embedded theology and critical theology. Embedded theology is the theology that governs our prayer life and those snap moral decisions. Our critical theology is an intentional identification, assessment, and critique of our embedded theology. However, they stress that the influence of critical theological work to our embedded theology is never direct. Critical theological work impacts embedded theologies slowly and over time.

I cannot name a serious Christian theological thinker and certainly no practicing minister who believes that moral behavior can be instantly changed through the cognitive processes of moral philosophy. It takes disciplined practice to reform embedded theological reactions and behaviors. Only behavior can reform behavior. Brooks seems to want to say that the evolutionary view of morality is not deterministic. People can make choices. I believe Christian spiritual formation view of people would argue that making new moral choices is about re-shaping the human emotional structures through specific practices not through complex moral philosophy.

I have no interest in defending the traditional practice of moral reasoning which Brooks thinks is jeopardized by these new developments. Ministry is not applied philosophy but applied theology and the two are not synonymous. But, I also don’t know that what he’s said challenges much in terms of the way practicing ministers approach the moral formation with people.