Does reason and emotion play an equal role in justifying moral decisions?

Does reason and emotion play an equal role in justifying moral decisions? First of all, let’s define what is right and what it is wrong. Something might be valued as right or wrong according to individual preferences rather than a universal “law” of morality. A particular issue might seem moral to some people but to a different group it might seem immoral. When defining what is ‘good’, one cannot show or touch what is good; it can only be obtained by one’s right decisions and right actions that might lead to ‘good’ results. Likewise, doing what one thinks is right or wrong might lead one to define it as being moral or immoral. But, these moral (or immoral) statements might have been made by one’s predisposed assumptions. If these assumptions are once not there, then the expression of the person might be just the person’s feelings; it might be just expressions of what one wants to achieve or gain; emotion. Behind the scenes of emotion, there is a big question – Why? – Why do people do things that we think is immoral? Why are some of our actions not “right” to others? If a person does an action or make a decision, he/she should know the reason behind what he/she is doing. He/She should be able to justify his/her actions. In today’s society, a social group might have a mutual understanding of why something is right or appropriate. But considering the fact that people think differently, this understanding might differ; then and there the crisis of moral issues arise.

To define if something is moral (or immoral), not just the person’s expressions, but also the person’s valid reasons should also be taken into consideration. The person should be held responsible of why his/her actions or expressions are moral (or immoral). Reasons might vary in value. All the issues are weighed as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ based on the validity of the arguments behind it. Also, these moral judgments made by a person should not just be applied to a specific individual rather it should apply to everyone. If these judgments are not applicable to everyone, the validity of the argument being moral (or immoral) is gone. Thus, because the emotions of different people vary, the supporting or opposing argument and the justifications given by the individual should connect with all the justifications made by everyone. When analyzing the reasons behind individual preferences, Lawrence Kohlberg claims that one of the reasons why people chose to do the right thing is to avoid punishment or any sort of external pain. The second claim is that people do an action to serve their own self-interests. These claims (and more claims) along with the individual’s feelings towards a situation aid an action to be justified as moral or immoral.

Emotions are just feelings or expressions of people, while reason is a stronger component that justifies the situation. These roles of emotions and reason can be illustrated through todays on going issues such as assisted suicide, animal rights, cloning, abortion, and feminist issues. These ethical issues are debated all around the world today. Most of the issues are pushed from both sides of whether the issues should be legal or not. As described before, the reason for why these debates still continue is that a social group cannot agree on a same opinion, instead people just take their own stand on a particular issue by only looking through their own perspective (that might be right or wrong), ignoring the opinions of their peers. Moral issues can only be concluded into a compromised agreement if the ‘supporting and opposing’ party step into each other’s shoes and spectate the issue from each other’s point of view.

Now lets look at one of the popular issues going on in today’s world, abortion. This issue has caught in the United States like wild fire because of the contrasting arguments made by the each group. Abortion can be seen as a right of the women’s personal choice or can be seen as denying the right of a human individual. The group supporting abortion argues that it is the right of the pregnant to abort the child or continue carrying the child since the child is part of her body. A controversial argument is that it is the right of every human individual to be born, live and to contribute to this world. Who knows whether the child will be the next ‘Albert Einstein’ or not? In certain countries abortion is permitted if only the two or more doctors approve it and in some other parts of the world aborting is only permitted if the child is defective. Certain religions such as Christianity, opposes abortion by arguing that god has formed the image of the fetus and that abortion is destroying the god given gift or demolishing the god given image of a human being.