David Brooks had a really interesting op-ed in the New York Times on Monday entitled The End of Philosophy. In it, he basically describes how the current view of psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and philosophers is that our moral judgments are a snap evaluation occurring in the brain; our explanation of them come later and are not the true underpinnings of them. He then goes on to look at the evolutionary process that leads to this emotional morality: namely the need for humans to learn to cooperate in families and groups to survive.

I found the following particularly interesting:

Moral judgments are like that. They 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.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and … moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

From everything I’ve read and studied on consciousness, this is largely the way it works as well. Our brain makes some decision, our consciousness is informed after the fact, and a story is constructed so we can believe that we “made” the decision, that we consciously thought it out and reasoned about it.

Some of these “rapid intuitive decisions” that “involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain” really confuse me. Whenever I have some strong emotions, I often struggle to find any reason to them. It’s so difficult to reconcile rational thought with emotional intuitive decisions. But perhaps that makes the emotional intuitive decisions more exciting.