Source+of+Morality+-+Group+4

Emotional Empathy

 LIM KITAMURA TAKAGI

The basic beliefs of the theory are:
 * 1) All individuals are interdependent for achieving their interests
 * 2) Those particularly vulnerable to our choices and their outcomes deserve extra consideration to be measured according to
 * 3) the level of their vulnerability to one's choices
 * 4) the level of their affectedness by one's choices and no one else's

 The Golden Rule states
 * 1) One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself
 * 2) One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated

 This classic rule is quasi-universal as this sort of rule is present throughout the globe since history. It is the reverse of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" strategy, seeking individuals to treat others with respect. Apparently, most people want to be treated with respect, so this often works out fine. Buddha said "Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill." YWHW also said "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."  Nonetheless, critics of this rule exists, for instance, George Bernard Shaw said, "the golden rule is that there are no golden rules". He meant that because we are only assuming that every individuals wants respect, we can not be sure until we ask the person directly. Such really fails to account various conditions of life. Imagine a man walking into a bar. He may be looking for some alcoholic drinks, but others may be looking for an one-night romance, drugs, or fight. These people definitely do not possess the same value, thus it is difficult to expect them to treat the man the way he wants. Immanuel Kant, another critic, gave an example of a prisoner appealing to the golden rule so that the judge would release him. The judge would not want to be sent to prison so he should not send the offender to the prison, according to the Golden Rule.

One of the moral views from the ancient Greeks, Stoicism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy in the early 3rd century. They believed that destructive emotions (i.e. fear, fury, etc.) are resulted from the errors in judgment, and the sage or the person with the moral and intellectual perfection would not suffer from these emotions. The existence of the errors or the immoral actions always appears as personal emotions; therefore, they believe that people with no destructive emotions are the justice.

With the influences by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, A. J. Ayer stated the theory of Emotivism in 1936 in his book of //Language, Truth and Logic.// Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Emotivism is a form of non-cognitivism or expressivism. It is opposite to the other forms of non-cognitivism, such as quasi-realism, which states that ethical sentences do not express propositions and ethical sentences project emotional attitudes as though they were real properties, and universal prescriptivism, which states that ethical sentences do not express propositions and instead, ethical sentences function similarly to imperatives which are universalizable.

 Gilligan proposes a stage theory of moral development for women. Her complaint is not that it is unjust to leave women out of psychology. Her complaint is that it is not good psychology if it leaves out half of the human race. "What are the rules of the game?" seems to be the issue at hand. From her careful interviews with women making momentous decisions in their lives, Gilligan concluded that these women were thinking more about the caring thing to do rather than the thing the rules allowed. Gilligan's reply was to assert that women were not inferior in their personal or moral development, but that they were different. They developed in a way that focused on connections among people (rather than separation) and with an ethic of care for those people (rather than an ethic of justice). Gilligan lays out in this groundbreaking book this alternative theory.

 Gilligan's Stages of the Ethics of Care **Stage: Goal**  Preconventional: Goal is individual survival **Transition** is from selfishness to responsibility to others <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Conventional: Self Sacrifice is goodness <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Transition** is from goodness to truth that she is a person too <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Postconventional: Principle of nonviolence: do not hurt others or self

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: normal;">Gilligan has shown that Kohlberg's systems are based on a male-centered view. Kohlberg built his theory based on interviews with males only. She has certainly shown us the inadequacy of that. In addition, she has broken the idea that there is only one dimension of moral reasoning. If there can be two, why not three? Why not several? Considering that the experiment was conducted under a predominantly paternal society where masculinity was preferred, it is evident that women were viewed rather inferiorly. Finally, she has connected moral decision making back into concerns about both the self and the social environment in which the self lives. She regarded environment as a pivotal factor that affects our formation of ethical values, and many human conflicts are case by case, requiring people to see from a variety of perspective, instead of just one absolute standard.

Ethic of care has a very different point of view from the ethical views, such as consequentialist theories and deontological theories. Consequentialist theories states that consequences of one's action are the true basis of any judgment about the morality. Deontological theories, similar to Immanuel Kant's ethics, states that one's actions will be judged by the adherence to the rules. However, in the other hand, ethics of care emphasize the importance of relationships.