Shame
A long time ago I suddenly realized that the country one belongs to is not, as the usual rhetoric goes, the one you love but the one you are ashamed of.
From Carlo Ginzburg. http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/year/2017/docId/44333
So here's a nice little piece, would you like to discuss? I always like to see Primo Levi brought in to a discussion, and some might see a connection with the recent thread on Anscombe's piece.
And there's lots of psychobabble on shame and guilt we might bring in too, to dilute the ancient philosophy and religious mythology a bit. Should this be here, or in politics? The categories are always permeable, but I'd rather focus on psychology and just use the politics as bait.
The victims and the liberators, Levi argued, were ashamed and felt guilty of having been unable to prevent injustice; the perpetrators and their accomplices were not ashamed.That's Ginzburg citing Primo Levi writing about being liberated from Auschwitz. Everyone should read Levi as a moral duty and penance.
Comments (132)
"Shame is definitely not a matter of choice: it falls upon us, invading us – our bodies,
our feelings, our thoughts – as a sudden illness. "
A weird coincidence (maybe?) I had a thought like this today, at work, feeling a little guarded and out of place, thinking : my shame feels a little like a flu right now, or a viral infection. It's not totally separate from me, but it still feels like something alien that I have to contend with. And I'd like not to pass it onto others.
But that's my shame, and that makes it different from the collective shame he's talking about. Maybe what I'm talking about is what he would describe as guilt? I'm not sure.
I've definitely read something, somewhere, about sacrifice functioning as a dark emotional glue bonding the sacrificers together - but that reading is horrible in this context. But, then, he's not really talking about the shame of the 'sacrificers' but the shame of those who couldn't prevent it.
Thinking about the Anscombe piece. I still have to finish reading it, I got up right to the end so far. Certainly, her characterization of fallen ethicists bracketing the immediate moral valence of any given act to focus on extrapolated consequences seems like one ingredient in the dehumanization and rationalization that leads to mass atrocity. I can't get all the ingredients here to coalesce into one idea though.
Going back to Ginzburg, he poses a problem with shame. Shame is usually considered to be raised by being seen by a member of my reference group (imaginary or real). Guilt is the voice of an internal judge. But if shame is a personal feeling, how is it possible to feel shame for others? To feel shame for something I have not done seems contradictory.
I think the answer is not in the structure of shame, but in empathy. I feel shame for the ridiculous friend because I am able to put myself in his place.
The problem of being ashamed of my own country is more complex.
I am actually ashamed of the ruling class or - more commonly - most of my fellow citizens. But it is not clear which reference group "sees" me. An abstract international community? How do I imagine this abstract community?
Actually, I think that "shame for my country" is a rather rhetorical expression, which responds to a moral rejection rather than to a feeling of shame itself.
I think it’s an awareness that my perspective is not identical with the group’s perspective - which in relation to ‘shame for my country’ is not so much of a paradigm shift these days as it might have been for Levi, perhaps. National identity is not so strong anymore (or is it just that I’m not American?). We seem more inclined to criticise our own country now (at least politically) than prior to WWII, I think.
I’m not sure that we ever recover from shame felt towards an extended identity, such as a country or religion, or even the company we work for. Once aware that our value systems don’t match, how likely is it that we’ll continue to submit? And if we do, how quickly would that shame turn to self-loathing, especially if “the perpetrators and their accomplices were not ashamed”?
Have you ever seen the Super Bowl? It’s the most widely watched television event in the US. Ever see the fighter jets fly over the stadium and hear the crowd roaring after the national anthem before the game starts?
Yes. It’s because you’re not American.
“Love it or leave it” is a ubiquitous refrain in America. I’ve also heard “It’s one nation under God or get the fuck out.”
Anyway, I found your analysis on shame to be spot on.
This is Cordelia's situation in King Lear. She rejects the dishonourable conduct of her brothers and the nobles towards her father. And she feels shame because they consider her one of them.
In this circumstance, the group of brothers and nobles is no longer her reference group.
In the same way, someone may feel shame because they are identified with the (dishonest) stereotype of their country. For example, an anti-bullfighting Spaniard. Or a German resistance fighter against the Nazis. But that shame disappears - or should disappear - when he makes clear his opposition to the stereotype with which he is associated. In the name of a new reference group (animalists or the resistance).
Well this is my suggested starting point, aligned with the story of the fall and thus the divine law source,
for an investigation of the philosophy of psychology, as prescribed by Anscombe.
Quoting Possibility
I don't want to get too rigid too early, and I don't much like the language you use here because it is confusing more than illuminating. "We" identifies 'a group with which one identifies' and substituting one gets a mess... Perhaps it is pedantic but I think "One feels shame ..." is much preferable.
I'd rather start with Adam and Eve and the shame of nakedness and sexuality. Nothing to do with acting in one way or another, but a state of being other. It is surely in the first place a condition of self-consciousness. Adam is suddenly conscious of his difference from Eve (and vice versa). Thus the swimming pool changing rooms allow for shameless nakedness amongst those of the same sex.
Quoting csalisbury
So you have not said (perhaps you are too ashamed) what you were ashamed of, what puts you out of place. Perhaps it was of being a philosopher amongst plebeians - then here is the place to strip off - but you express rather well the personal yet impersonal, social yet antisocial nature of the beast.
I feel shame when I pass by a homeless person. I am ashamed of being a member of a society so rich and so uncaring that it can let people sit in the snow outside an empty building and die of cold. Now I think this is almost universal, and in particular, I want to draw attention to those who actively persecute and further humiliate the homeless - you will have seen the stories. Why do they care so much as to set people on fire in their sleeping bags or urinate on them or whatever? It is surely their own shame that they cannot bear, and project as hatred onto the immediate cause. And thus perhaps Primo Levi was wrong about the perpetrators - they felt the shame but projected it back as hatred and anger, shaming the cause of their shame.
I tend to use ‘we’ because I find ‘one’ to be impersonal, and I acknowledge my inclusion in the description. But you have a point, and I agree that it can be confusing here.
Quoting unenlightened
I’m always intrigued by interpretations of Adam and Eve in relation to shame, because I tend to disagree with the common assumption that their shame has anything to do with sexuality. I agree that it is a condition of self-consciousness, but in my view, it’s more to do with an awareness of their fragility than a state of being other. Adam and Eve’s nakedness displays their vulnerability and openness to the world - which contradicts the assumption that they are whole, complete or impenetrable. It is this contradiction or prediction error between what they think or expect of humanity and what they experience in reality that results in shame.
I agree with this, too. I think people often hate or attack what draws attention to their shame, in the same way as they hate or attack what draws attention to their humility, or their pain or lack or loss.
I think it something else altogether. It seems to me that it has to do with social hierarchies, and the idea that it is ok to vent frustrations (also born out of the same sort of abuse) onto those that are lower in the hierarchy, with the homeless being deemed the lowest.
[quote= King James version]And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. [/quote]
Well they didn't make shoes or headscarves. I think it's pretty clear what they were covering if not why. But it's not my main point at the moment. Rather it is to note the tradition that shame is the primary mark of humanity, and that it results in the urge to hide, to self efface.
So this is the beginning of psychological conflict, that what I am ought not to be.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
You may be right, it is a common explanation -- 'the pecking order'. But the need to assert one's superiority over a homeless beggar in such graphic ways seems disproportionate. A Nelson-like "haha!" would be sufficient. It is a very fragile superiority that has to literally piss on its inferiors.
And it is just that psychological fragility that needs to be examined and accounted for.
Well once upon a time it was shame at being unpresentable or unincludable, and that took any number of guises (poor, ugly, awkward etc depending on my age). Now, it feels like the habits of interacting with others I developed in my childhood-to my 20s are 'locked in'. It feels like I never learned the nuances of social interaction through the long delicate process of trial and error that most do & that I instinctively, in a hard to override way, tend toward a certain kind of self-concealment. So I am ashamed at being ashamed But I also learned that you can't literally hide when, as an adult without a specific skillset, you have to work with others or die. So, overtime, I learned that an effective way to hide in the open is to just let people talk to you about what they want to while you smile and nod and ask occasional clarifying questions- people don't see you when they're talking about themselves, or if they do, its a weird transferential way where they see the you they need you to be to hear what they're saying. This brings its own level of shame, because I'm selfishly allowing an asymmetric bond to develop in order to hide. (It's probably also why I talk so much about myself on here, or about other things bombastically - I spend most of my irl time either listening to others, or speaking with quiet self-effacement)
(I'm not ashamed about 'being a philosopher among plebians', but my social difficulties do tend to draw into stark relief the fact that at least half of my interest in philosophy is compensatory, and then I feel dumb about feeling smart.)
In any case, all of the above is a certain kind of shame that is solitary and narcissistic (or at least self-centered.) On the other hand :
Quoting unenlightened
I'm trying as accurately as I can to think about my reaction to passing by homeless people. There's definitely shame, but I don't know for sure if, for me, its about being a member of a society so rich and uncaring etc. I rarely give money, but about half of the time I give cigarettes. One weird day, I split a sixpack of heinekens with a guy, sitting on a stoop outside a bar, and we talked about whatever he wanted to. I felt good about myself for doing that, but I was also quick to message a couple of friends about this experience afterward, so what's that about. I think the closest thing I can come to is I don't feel enough distance between myself and the homeless to feel guilt on behalf of society for leaving them out(was homeless briefly, in NYC -a few weeks, sleeping on benches, parks etc. But was I really homeless? Not really. I could have gone home. It feels to me like I still learned some very very small inkling of what it's like, but I'm sure someone in severe straits would laugh me out of the room. That said, I've spent a lot of time around the very desperate, as one of the desperate, and my social safety net has dwindled. Whether I'm deluding myself or not, I do feel like I 'get' in some way that experience of helplessness)
I think for me the passing-by-homeless shame is as simple and stupid as not wanting them not to like me, which is shallow, but that's what it is.
Now active persecution. I think I agree with you that it's rage-reaction to their own shame and impotence, because fucking with someone helpless makes you feel powerful. I think there's a strong case to be made that a huge aspect of the appeal of fascism for Germans was the military and economic humiliations of WW1 and its aftermath, and I think you're right that it seems off to say the nazis couldn't feel shame. But maybe it is correct to say that they failed to feel shame about what they most should have felt shame about?
Anger - vis-a-vis the homeless - may well be, for some substantial proportion of folks, the primary reactive emotion, unmediated by shame.
It's a bit over-charitable to suggest that anger in every case plays second fiddle to shame. It's a token of a good, and of a naive, heart.
Plenty of folks have been taught that the homeless are scammers, moochers and parasites. Anger is a natural response.
These Randian notions are extremely widespread in the United States.
I agree that shame as a consequence of self-awareness is the primary mark of humanity - but the urge to hide relates specifically to the difference between a relation to others that we expect and the relation to others we experience in reality. There’s no urge to hide when we feel shame with regard to a homeless person, but I think there is an urge to determine or initiate action that manifests either an awareness/connection/collaboration or ignorance/isolation/exclusion of this difference. In the same way, Adam and Eve hiding is also an urge to manifest ignorance/isolation/exclusion of the difference between expectation and reality.
But the perspectives are different. Anscombe is searching for a theological justification of morality and Ginzburg is making an anthropological analysis of shame.
How can you relate these different points of view?:
I don't think that is shame. It is guilt. It basically depends on whether you feel shame when someone sees you or whether you feel guilt inside yourself. If you're ashamed, you can identify the group that defines what should be done. If you feel guilty, you can identify the rule you have broken. If you feel ashamed, you think you are not comme il faut. If you feel guilty, you think you have done something wrong.
These are the main differences. They are often confused.
Quoting David Mo
The perspectives are indeed different, but Anscombe is not looking for a theological justification, but a psychological one. So the connection is in the philosophy of psychology according to her specification. Fools rush in, and I am proposing to start doing the work she says is required before we can sensibly discuss morality.
So the Genesis origin myth is one of many but uniquely infects Western thought, and it seems to identify shame as central to the uniquely human psyche. Shame is presented as the psychological marker of the fall from Nature. Not anger, or fear, or joy, or ecstasy, not even pride, - shame. Why? Why is shame the fruit of the tree of knowledge?
We are not bible literalists, so Adam and Eve are stand-ins for our prehuman ancestry, and there is a fairly uncontroversial notion that a highly social species in a complex and perhaps unstable environment needs a big brain to become adaptable over short timescales, and to succeed in a social group. And on the social side, an acute sensitivity to other individuals' emotional state, together with the ability to control one's own emotional expression is important. So a large part of this big brain is concerned with social matters of hierarchy, sexuality, emotion, status, and so on. And out of these concerns develops the skill, or habit, or disease, of identification.
By which I do not mean plant identification or any other externality, but self-identification. In order to feel ashamed, one must identify some aspect of oneself and take a negative attitude to it. One is ashamed of some aspect of one's being. I think, purely for the purposes of this thread, I will stipulate at this point that the shame under discussion is some kind of unhappiness with the image one has of oneself, and that guilt is a possibly and possibly not associated kind of unhappiness with (the image one has of) what one has done or not done. Obviously that is not a universal definition and distinction, and potentially still a bit blurred at the margin.
And this allows to a complex brain, that one can be ashamed of one's privates (for example) in one context and proud of them in another. {An aside for linguists, chauvinists and sex addicts: to stand proud is to stick up above the surface, to be erect, and to think well of the image one has of oneself. Women have to make do with breast implants.}
Anyway, Adam has fallen into his own head. He has become his image of himself, and to that extent lost contact with reality. As far as any individual is concerned 'I am what I think I am'. And I must think that (and so must you) because I didn't think I was what I thought i was then I would think otherwise. But at the same time, and from the same source, my understanding of other individuals in society, I can see that everyone is much more than, and often quite different to what they think they are.
If you are following, you should now be feeling 'cognitive dissonance'. I'll pause while you smooth over the cracks.
Now pride is personally unproblematic, but socially conflicting. I am a jolly fine fellow smart, handsome articulate, and an asset to the forum and society in general. In myself I am unconflicted, undivided, at least between my self-image and the self image I would be happy with. The only potential source of conflict is reality. In my own mind I am the greatest, and there is no need or desire for me to question that until reality bites.
Shame, by contrast, is personally conflicted, but socially conducive.
Quoting csalisbury
Shame is social glue, that makes me care what others think of me.
And so from the social view, we arrive at the vice of pride and the virtue of humility. From this, as the Ginzburg piece suggests, one can arrive at other virtues and vices quite easily. The social image of virtue is conveyed by social myths and parental approval, so one learns for instance to be ashamed of one's fear, and hides it with a performance of bravery. And so on.
Sartre sets shame as the way the in-itself becomes the for-others. One sees oneself as being objectified by the other when one feels shame.
Presumably if one learns to live authentically one no longer feels shame.
I suppose the christian myths give another way to say something similar. The trouble is that they are open to so many other interpretations.
Nussbaum sees this vulnerability not as a threat but as an admission of fragility, and hence of worth.
Perhaps that's a take-away from feminism: the capacity to see our objectification as valuable.
I think that an important aspect of shame is the attention which others give to the shamed person. This is why shame and embarrassment come together in the same package. Shame is what is given to you by the others, and embarrassment is how you feel shame.
It is also how we can understand the difference between shame and guilt. We can feel guilt without embarrassment, without showing it, and some guilty people become very good at hiding their guilt. They have no shame. So shame is not a self-recognition of guilt. Shame only comes when the guilt is recognized by others, the nakedness is a revealing of guilt, and this necessitates embarrassment.
I do not know if you can take "shame" to the extent implied above. Simply being another, not the same as someone else, is insignificant to produce shame. We are all different in our own ways. However, if the others are all the same in some way (clothed), and you are different from them (naked), this may be sufficient to produce shame, as you are recognized as outside the norm.
Everyone is an image of themselves. First of all, your consciousness is a project that it is not in reality because it is in a future that is uncertain. Secondly - but simultaneously - one is what is seen by the Other. Every time I feel seen (in a real or imaginary way) I have to accept the reification that the look of the Other put on me. This is shame: I am what I am not because shame and the project are entangled in what I am by filling me with a void of being consistent.
Pure individuality is a false image = bad faith. A phenomenon more universal than one would like to admit.
Yes, Sartre.
No. Authenticity is about recognizing yourself in the other's eyes. The woman who abandons her hand in the hand of a seductive jerk because she doesn't want to give it any importance/significance lives in the bad faith of the one who denies her exteriority. All of us who take refuge in an inner world are denying our condition of being thrown into the world.
Yes, that might be a better way to put things, but it is almost too precise for me here. It smacks of abstract theory rather than the way we actually live and talk.
I wonder if there is more to say about the conflict. I feel this is important but no one is mentioning it.
If I was an existentialist, I would bring in Laing as the avowedly existential psychologist.
Quoting David Mo
You have leaped over what I want to look at. Sartre is moralising here for reasons of his own. There is a sense in which every image is false, and there is a sense in which every self-image must be distorted. But why is that such a problem? I have an image of myself as a smart cookie, and then David comes along and shows that I am an idiot. "Ok, I'm not as smart as I thought." *shrugs*.
But it's not like that - it hurts! Why does it hurt, when all that has been damaged is an idea?
It is the way we use "shame". "Shame on you!" Shame is what is cast on to others, not what one feels. We feel embarrassment upon being shamed. We also call this feeling ashamed. Shame is meant to be the objective description of the situation rather than the subjective feeling. That's why we've developed statements like "It's a shame". Shame as part of the shaming, is disassociated from the feeling one gets from the shaming, which is embarrassment.
You might call this abstract theory, but it is important as you say, because the abstract theory helps us to understand the mechanisms of guilt, and how one can successfully conceal guilt. There are two distinct aspects of guilt, the judgement of "guilty" passed by others, and the guilt one holds within when knowingly acting wrongly, with or without judgement from others. If the guilt within can be successfully concealed, there may be no shame whatsoever associated with that guilt. That's the important point. When the shame is successfully prevented, in this way, there is no embarrassment and no bad feelings involved with that guilt within. Then the person can knowingly proceed in doing what is wrong without any "guilty feelings".
On the other hand, one might try to hide one's own guilt, but self-reflection, introspection, could reveal the guilt to oneself, causing embarrassment from within (we ought not confuse this with "shame" which comes from others). The blush of embarrassment, or other consequent changes in the person's actions, could reveal the guilt to others, and shame would follow, increasing the embarrassment.
It may be the way most people use the word, and it may be the conventional meaning of the word, and you may have a superior understanding of the relation of that usage to guilt or any other term; but there is also a usage that treats it as a feeling, and that is how I have stipulated it to be used in this thread. So in this thread you are wrong. Shame is a feeling and I cast shame on you for attempting to prevent the discussion from taking place in the terms I have already set out. It's equivocation. You don't have to like it, but then you don't have to participate. If you do participate, then you need to use the word the way I am using it, or you will confuse an already difficult topic.
Ah. Ok, I'll take your word for that.
-Anscombe
SO is Satre's existentialism to be counted here along side Sedgwick? One is free to choose authenticity at the expense of justice, after all.
Is shame to be counted amongst the virtues?
What I've demonstrated is that it is impossible that there is such a feeling as "shame". This is why we can have shameless guilty people, guilt without shame, because shame, as it is commonly described, as being self-conscious of guilt, is actually not something we feel at all. Being conscious of one's guilt does not cause a feeling of "shame", so defining the term in this way is not a true definition. It just makes some people feel better, more secure, thinking that guilty people will naturally feel shame. So people like you, who think they are referring to a feeling called "shame", really do not know what they are talking about, because they've never felt shame, nor has anyone else. Notice your quote in the op refers to being "ashamed". That a person might feel shame itself, rather than "ashamed" is an illusion. And limiting your thread to such a definition of "shame" will produce a dead end because you prevent us from addressing the real nature of shame.
Yes, I think that's the positive face of shame. I think the problem comes, like with most of our vices, when a source of virtue malfunctions (which it sounds like you also agree with). Vanity, for instance, seems like a secondary reaction to too-strong shame. If the shame of disapproval, meted out moderately, leads to corrections of behavior, then an overwhelming, shaking level of shame can produce, as a defense, an overly perfect fake self. It's like a statue you hide inside of that deflects any scary disapproval rays. Your shame hides inside it with you, but now everything is frozen. Your shame has hit a critical limit, and overflowed, so it remains with you, but it no longer truly interfaces with external feedback, which is what it does when its working well. To get into psychological jargon, what you have, vis-a-vis the real world, is dissociation.
There's something of the protective statue to fascism, and something of the too-much-shame origin story to the economic and military humiliations of 1910s-1920s Germany.
(The other thing is shame which doesn't lead to a change of behaviors, but to identification with the shamers. That's when you develop a self-deprecating identity which makes you part of the in-group by laughing at the outsider, even though that outsider is you. Once that locks into place, the brain/mind/soul links it to survival (since the individual needs to be part of the group), and thinking well of yourself, or doing things that people who think well of themselves do, can begin to feel as dangerous as much more serious offenses.)
Excuse me, it's not my style to call anyone an idiot.
Anyway, suppose I ridicule your French Omelette three stars. You'll be embarrassed if this is "seen" by members of your reference group - gourmet friends, for example - or you consider me an authority on this field. We're not talking about a simple idea. We're talking about the image of yourself that links you to a reference group - family, friends, or big chefs. It is your life project that is being questioned and your own identity. Remember Huis clos. Garcin is in hell and is watching his former colleagues blame him for being a coward. And he can't do anything about it. This is hell. This is shame. You can't say "But I'm not a coward!", because to the other you are a coward and this is what you really are. (NOTE: You are not ashamed of having done something wrong. You are ashamed because others have seen what you are).
Am I lost in translation?
Quoting Banno
Yes, in a strong communitarian society - Homeric, for example. No, in a strong individualistic society - like the neo-capitalist. In the first one it's a question of survival. In the second, it's a path to neurosis.
I think shame is an inescapable fact and you have to learn to deal with it. It's the human condition.
That's because you give a special meaning to the word "shame." How do you call the feeling of embarrassment of a young woman who is ashamed of her first period or the young man who is ridiculed in public by his girlfriend for not being very good in bed? I see a difference with the girl who betrays her best friend with her boyfriend or the young man who feels bad because he has hit his girl. Is it not?
I was distinguishing between "shame", as that which is cast upon a person by others, and the feeling of being "ashamed", "embarrassed". The latter is the consequence of the former. The feeling of being ashamed, requires the act of shaming, and this is why a person who knows oneself to be guilty can be in that state of knowing oneself to be guilty, without being ashamed or embarrassed, shameless. That is when the person has not been shamed
So if there is a feeling which one gets, when one knows oneself to be guilty, but the person has not been shamed and therefore cannot be ashamed or embarrassed, the feeling which causes the blush we associate with embarrassment, this feeling is something other than shame. The feeling is related to the keeping of a secret. Since the keeping of a secret might be either for good or bad purposes, we cannot call this feeling, which pushes the person toward exposure of the secret, "shame", because that implies that keeping the secret is wrong, guilt. But the feeling, which leads to the exposure of the secret is the same whether the secret is held for good purposes or for bad purposes.
Quoting David Mo
What I said above ought to partially answer this question. And this example with different degrees of wrongness, or degrees of guilt, will help demonstrate what I said, that the feeling which one has when hiding a secret from others ought not be called "shame". This is because it is the same feeling, or more properly the same type of feeling, regardless of the degree of guilt involved with the secret being kept. Furthermore, there may be no guilt at all involved with keeping the secret, if the secret is kept for good reasons. The name "shame" implies guilt, but the same type of feeling occurs when one is keeping a secret for good reasons, and there is no guilt.
I am sorry Unenlightened, I am willing to follow your instruction, for participation in your thread, and I apologise for any unnecessary persistence. However, we must maintain the following important point which I regret that I missed earlier:
Quoting unenlightened
We must maintain that separation between this feeling you have named "shame", and any necessary association with guilt. Any person who uses "shame" in this thread as if it implies guilt, I will charge with equivocation, and justification for that charge is found here.
Accordingly, I will revoke the following, and other related statements in my last post:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You have clearly removed the association between the feeling you describe as "shame", and what we call "guilt", so there is no reason not to call this feeling which I described as the feeling one gets from keeping a secret, as "shame". So long as "shame" does not necessarily imply guilt, I have no problem with calling this feeling "shame".
Now I will question the relationship you describe here:
Quoting unenlightened
As I understand this feeling of shame, it results from hiding something, keeping a secret, thereby producing the urge to reveal as the unhappiness referred to earlier. What you do, is describe a relationship between pride and shame, almost to the point of a dichotomous opposition. To put this into my perspective, pride is the feeling of having nothing to hide, laying it all out there. Shame is the feeling of having something to hide, and this only occurs if there is a reason for hiding that thing. The reason for hiding something, is what produces the unhappiness you refer to.
It is a confliction, because there appears to be a natural tendency towards being proud, laying it all out there for the world to see, as this makes one feel good. This "pride" is closely related to confidence, so the reason for hiding something, which manifests as the actual secret and the feeling of shame, can be understood in terms of a lack of confidence. The lack of confidence is what you describe as "the urge to hide". Notice the distinction, yet the relationship between, the act of hiding something, keeping a secret, and the urge to hide oneself. This I propose as the characteristics of the feeling "shame". The difficulty of keeping the secret, when pride is what brings enjoyment, is the root of the unhappiness.This difficulty appears to be lessened by hiding oneself, and so the urge to hide.
Once again, I'm sorry for my earlier obtuseness, but I think it is very important for any clear understanding of the subject, that we do not conflate two very distinct senses of "shame". They are very distinct, because one is the feeling when the person is hiding something, keeping a secret, and the other is the consequences when the secret is exposed, revelation. Therefore if you refer to the biblical story of Genesis, or any other stories to elucidate the nature of "shame", we need to respect this difference. We cannot relate "shame" to the fruit of tree of knowledge, because this is the "shame" of exposure, revelation, and that would not be the "shame" you are talking about, but equivocation by the rules of your thread.
Therefore we must relate "shame" to the feelings which are involved with keeping the secret, the secret existing prior to that incident. These feelings of "shame", the unhappiness and uncomfortableness of keeping a secret, the need to tell someone, are the feelings which inspire the creation of language. Notice that in this case the reason for keeping the secret, the lack of confidence, and therefore the root of that shame, is the inability to communicate. That is why this shame, this unhappiness which led to that first exposure of knowledge is associated with innocence.
I have to disagree with this exclusion of the Genesis story as an incidence of ‘shame’. It is an exposure or revelation of fragility or susceptibility to harm that is made only to Adam and Eve themselves - not to anyone else. Their unhappiness at this knowledge and their lack of confidence as a reason to keep the secret results in them attempting to cover up or hide what is not even apparent to anyone else.
You distinguish between the norm that has been broken and the feeling. That's not what I meant. I was distinguishing between two different feelings. Guilt involves an external victim: you feel guilty because you have hurt a person, an animal, etc. In shame the damaged one is the self (your self-esteem). Other important differences can also be established: shame implies your inner self (you are cowardly, shy, etc.). In guilt something you have done: a crime, a fault.
These differences are not trivial. They have important different implications. For example, guilt can be redeemed by the victim or by society. Shame is an indelible stigma.
In my examples: the girl's feeling due to her first menstrual flow is shame: she has not hurt anyone and her feeling is caused by something internal (not only in a physical sense). The feeling of the boy who has hit his girl is guilty: there is a victim and he can ask her to forgive him because it is out of his character and it will not happen again.
In general shame is involved with honor, and guilt with evil.
Pride is rather the feeling of possessing something that the society praises. In its borders it becomes vanity. I hide my shame (cowardice). I exhibit my pride (triumph).
Shame and guilt are mixed up in Genesis. This is very common in human justice as well. Adam and Eve were ashamed of what they had become. They feel guilty of having violated the divine standard. If they had become like Yahweh (this is what frightened him) they would not be ashamed: they would be powerful (pride). Nor would they feel guilty because they should be able to dictate their own rules. What a pity!
Quoting Banno
I don't think so. One can use virtue as almost synonymous with 'property' - one might talk of the different virtues of kinds of wood or medicines, and I think one talks of animals as symbolising human virtues in this way, such that one does not need to ask if this lion is brave any more than whether this leopard has spots.
But in this context, it is not a human virtue to have an opposable thumb, and I think the capacity for shame is about as prevalent. I'm not ready to characterise virtues yet, but I'd suggest that as others have indicated here there is probably something cultivated, and in this sense unnatural about them, the way a desert apple is an unnatural variety of crab-apple.
Thus shame is the human virtue that distinguishes us form other animals the way bravery distinguishes the lion and not therefore not a human virtue in the sense that one would admire anyone for their readiness with the red face.
I'm not a biblical scholar, but this appears as a misinterpretation to me. There are no people other than Adam and Eve. Eve has come into possession of "the secret", and reveals the secret to Adam. So the supposed "shameful" act here is the revealing of the secret. Once the secret is out, there is no attempt to hide it from future generations. The problem is that they are supposedly "shamed" for revealing the secret, but what are the feelings which led Eve to reveal?
Quoting David Mo
I find it very difficult to understand things by these terms, the way that you separate guilt from shame. The problem is that there are cases when a person knowingly hurts another, and therefore knows this to be a wrongful act, but does not feel guilt. This is what we call shamelessness. So your description of "guilt" is not correct.
Because of this, it is questionable whether there is such a thing as the feeling of "guilt", perhaps what you call "guilt" is just a special type of shame. But if we look at guilt directly, we see that it requires necessarily a judgement, and there is a clear division into two types of judgement. One type is when others judge you as "guilty" for having done wrong, and the other type is when you judge yourself as "guilty" for having done wrong. The first requires an exposure of your actions, to others, and recognition by the others that the act is wrong, and so there is a type of "shame" involved for you, with this exposure.
The second involves recognizing one's own acts as wrong, and this is a bit more complicated because there are two distinct and somewhat opposite directions in which one can proceed from this point. The person might be compelled to reveal one's actions to others, "confess", or the person might be compelled to hide one's actions from others. These are two very conflicting feelings, 'I must confess', and 'This must be kept secret', so we cannot class them both together as "the feeling of guilt". Therefore we tend to refer to 'I must confess' as the feeling of guilt. But this leaves 'this must be kept secret' as a feeling distinct from guilt, despite the fact that the person recognizes oneself to be guilty. The feeling of the need to keep something secret might be called "shame", but notice that it is completely different from the "shame" mentioned above which results from exposure.
Quoting David Mo
In this example, the girl and the boy both appear to feel the need to keep a secret, so they both feel "shame" in the same sort of way. However, if the boy is actually feeling the need to expose himself, to "confess", then he is feeling guilt. Notice that the two, the need to keep the secret, and the need to confess, cannot be the same feeling, because they are opposed to each other. However, so long as the secret is kept, there may be confliction between the two feelings (the urge to confess along with the desire not to), and there may also be further complications to keeping the secret (what a web we weave...), and this is why this type of "shame" is so discomforting.
If we go back to the girl, I believe she is also feeling the same type of "shame", to a different degree. The "shame" in both these cases involves the discomforts of having to keep a secret. She does not have the self-imposed judgement of "guilt" against her, which might increase the discomfort with the urge to confess, but she still has the discomfort and "shame" involved with the burden of keeping a secret. We ought to represent the keeping of a secret as a burden, and it is this burden which is associated with the discomfort of this type of "shame".
Quoting David Mo
I would describe this in a different way. The feeling of shame is caused by hiding something within. But shame may be overcome by pride, and this leads to exposure. In relation to guilt then, (as one reason out of many, for hiding something), the urge to confess is a feeling of pride. This leads us toward authenticity, which is to accept oneself as you are, to accept one's past mistakes as part of who you are, hiding nothing, revealing your entire person.
Quoting Banno
I would think that the pride which is somewhat opposed to, and inevitably overcomes the shame in healthy human beings, is better to be counted as the virtue.
You should be ashamed of yourself!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-51504992?fbclid=IwAR3CcLMAeZxAFsZsjCrtzxE3hsqFy0kK8nxEs9ywt5RukGRVmm53V15RRfY
This is the difficulty we are in: philosophers like to declare priorities and foundations, and I am suggesting that shame is fundamental to human society. But it is obvious, I think that societies also induce and use shame as a means of control, as in the above link.
Quoting csalisbury
I think I want to say that one can be shamed because one already has that capacity as it were. And that it is a capacity that develops from identification of the sort that recognises itself in an image, as in a mirror. First, I am X. Then the college says X is unclean or Mummy says X is naughty, or whatever, or perhaps even I myself say it.
So what you call an overly perfect fake self is a photo-shopped colour inverted touched up image derived from what is already an image. Which is to say, in the final analysis that morality is unreal because it is conducted, for good or ill, entirely in imagination.
Yes, I think that's an accurate description of how shame often (usually?) functions. I would be reluctant to say that identification underlies shame. I think shame is one of those things that gets transformed through its encounter with identification (in which case it can look just like what you describe) but can also exist in some other ways before it.
To draw that out: Why does it matter what Mummy says is naughty? thats just a set of phonemes after all. How does 'naughty' (word) become [naughty] (concept)?
Say: Mummy is mad (or disgusted or something else) and that's overwhelming (and threatening). The atmosphere just vibrates with it, and thats scary and suffocating. She looks at you direclty and accuses you of being naughty. Suddenly the whole atmosphere condenses in (1) a word and (2) a source. Naughty means : the feeling of the suffocating atmosphere + mom's glance at you.
Only after 'naughty' precipitates out of something like that can it begin to function as a free-floating predicate. You can almost see the psychological system of airlocks here : Instead of mom's direct glare and the impossible atmosphere, you have a snorkel of mediation. 'Naughty' isn't something applied directly to me but to some x (first defense). Even if I'm being naughty, I ---> x & x ----> naughty gives me a little room to breathe, and space to change. (specuation: Schizophrenia might involve, at some level, having trouble developing the I that relates, at a minimal distance, to predicates, and instead leaves the self as direct rippling of what 'healthy' people experience as a conceptual web that interacts with - tho is separable from - their self.)
The price of this changing of direct shame into the shaming of some predicate is that, in the future, you can be shamed 'at a distance' through syllogistic net-casting. Mum's direct shame was right at me, but the college's 'all x's are y' is something new. It's almost like the space bought through identification, while partially protecting you, also opens you up to more distant sources of shame.
Does that make sense? It seems obfuscatory, but I was really trying not to be.
I think the hurt, the shame, comes with a feeling of unworthiness, of not counting, even of worthlessness. This feeling does not seem to be the same as guilt, or even really akin to it.
So, I could never be ashamed of my nationality; if I could feel anything negative about that it would be a sense of guilt at being complicit in its sins of commission or omission.
What "we" do you mean? Whenever I've read about it I've seen the words shame and guilt used the way I do. It is true that the word shame can be ambiguous in ordinary language, but it is a matter of dissolving that ambiguity through analysis. And that is what psychologists and anthropologists do, starting with Darwin and ending with contemporary studies of empirical psychology.
But I don't think you're using words as is commonly done in ordinary language.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You're confusing the feeling with their circumstances. We're talking about two different feelings and their definitions.
If you know you are guilty but you don't feel anything there is a criminal problem (you are dangerous) but not a problem of definition: you don't feel a specific feeling: guilt. There is no case. The same thing if others say you are guilty and you don't feel guilty. We can talk about the feeling of guilt only when you experience the twinge or discomfort that points to your emotional state.
I must insist: we are talking about feelings, not about justice, public opinion or moral rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It makes no difference whether or not you want to confess guilt or shame to distinguish them . The word "confession" is usually referred to guilt. You confess your guilt in the hope that it will alleviate, the social response that your misbehavior provokes at least. But confessing shame will not relieve you, but may deepen it because your feeling of shame is caused by that exposure. More exposure, more feeling. This is why some pedophiles are forced in some places to publicly confess their guilt for the neighborhood in which they live. That is why one of the typical penalties of times past was the pillory: shame as punishment, not as regeneration of the guilty.
In all this it is clear that we are talking about different feelings: shame arises from exposure to public opinion, the guilt from inner remorse.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is very difficult for the shame of being seen as a pedophile to be overcome by pride in being seen as a pedophile. It's not really reasonable that something that causes shame can also cause pride.
I think we should focus on the features of the usual definition of shame and guilt. The damaged object of guilt is an external Other; there is no external damaged object in shame. It is the Self.
Shame is caused by an external look (being seen). Guilt is caused even without this external exposure (the voice of guilt is internal: the consciousness).
Perhaps we can start with these points.
Traditionally it was thought that shame was the social feeling of primitive societies and that it was evolving towards guilt. The former would be communally closed and the latter more open. Today this theory is being questioned. For example, Bernard Williams has pointed out how societies typically considered as shame societies, like the Homeric one, included feelings similar to guilt in their internalization.
In reality, shame has a double aspect: positive because it socializes and negative because it subjects the individual to the dictatorship of public opinion, which can be more terrible than justice. One or the other can be emphasized.
I think this is the same aspect; there is no difference between socialisation and the dictatorship of public opinion apart from approval/disapproval. I'm trying to stay away from the anthropological tradition because it seems to me rather fixed in its view of the Capitalist Industrial West as the pinnacle of civilisation, and because I want to start again from the beginning, as philosophers usually do. The dual aspect I want to emphasise is the social/psychological one. So, for example, someone like Malcolm X was able to resist and negate the shaming socially applied to black people in the US with a simple affirmation that there is no shame in being black. An incomplete revolution, but a strong one.
Quoting csalisbury
Right. I'm not sure about this, but unless you can push me a bit harder, I am going to maintain that shame is not necessarily traumatic. It is difficult, because we live in traumatic times and traumatised societies, but everyone here is focussing on the socialisation.
And the whole socialisation thing is to me a perversion - or perhaps just distortion - of another process - of individualisation.
I think if you cannot reach the first line of the piece I linked at the beginning, you are going to be at a disadvantage in this thread. I don't think it is a matter for argument, but for sympathy, so I respect your position but have nothing to say to it.
Edit: But it occurs to me to ask if you have ever been ashamed of the state of your room?
Have you never heard the word "shameless" used to refer to a person who has done wrong, knows oneself to have done wrong, yet is not at all ashamed, i.e. feels no guilt? That is what I mean by "shameless".
So, if we say that there is a "shame" which one feels when one knows oneself to have done wrong, but does not reveal this wrong doing to others, and there is also a "shame" which one feels when one's wrong doings are revealed to others, then that is a reason why there is ambiguity in the use of "shame". These two feelings cannot be the same feeling.
To disambiguate one might insist that the feeling is the same feeling, it is like the feeling of guilt, and this feeling of guilt. is exactly the same whether the individual is keeping the secret, or whether the secret has been exposed. The person knows oneself to be guilty and therefore feels guilt, regardless of what is revealed. But this is a falsity which misrepresents the situation because "guilt" is not a feeling, it is a reasoned judgement. And this is why one can judge oneself to be guilty, yet not have the feeling which is supposed to be associated with guilt. That feeling is "shame" and we call this shamelessness.
Therefore a proper disambiguation requires that we separate the feeling which one has when hiding one's guilt, from the feeling which one has when one's guilt is exposed. When expressed in this way it ought to be blatantly apparent to you that these two feelings cannot be the same feeling. How could it be possible that a person could feel and act the same way when hiding something from others, as they feel and act when that something has been exposed? Despite the fact that we call both of these feelings "shame" there is an important need to recognize that they are completely different types of feelings, with completely different associated sub-feelings, if we want to properly dissolve that ambiguity.
Quoting David Mo
The point is that there is no feeling of guilt. That is to take the analysis in the wrong direction, a ruse. Guilt is simply a judgement. That is why the person with the "criminal problem" can know oneself to be guilty without any feeling of guilt. There really is no feeling of guilt. So if we proceed to talk about feelings which are associated with guilt, we talk about feelings like "shame". But right away we are confronted with the ambiguity, the difference between the feeling of "shame", when the guilt is exposed, and the person is shamed by others, and the feeling of "shame" when one is hiding one's guilt from others.
Quoting David Mo
Shame and pride are distinct, as opposing, so they cannot have the same cause. Shame is associated with the urge to keep a secret and pride is associated with the urge to reveal what has been kept as a secret. That is why pride can overcome shame, when "shame" is used as the internally sourced feeling. Even a pedophile might see the need to confess.
Quoting David Mo
There is clearly a problem with the division proposed here. If the internally sourced form of "shame" which I described above, is simply replaced with the term "guilt" as you propose, to distinguish it from the externally sourced form of "shame", then it is necessarily associated with thoughts of wrongdoing, as "guilt" implies. But this does not properly describe the internally sourced feeling of shame which is independent from any judgements of wrongdoing. That is why "guilt" is the ruse, because you turn outward, toward the conscious judgement, instead of continuing inward toward the source of the feeling, in your attempt to understand the feeling.
So if we keep going inward, away from such judgements of wrongdoing, we can find the feeling to originate in the need to keep a secret. This is evidenced by your example of the girl in menstruation. We cannot associate this with guilt because there might be a good reason for keeping the secret rather than a bad reason. Therefore we cannot judge this internally sourced feeling which is associated with the need to keep something secret as a bad feeling, which "guilt" implies.
There is a Catholic tradition called "confession", which is for the most part absent in modern society. Confession is the means by which people release their inner shame, reveal their secrets, without being shamed by others. It is important to separate the inner feeling of shame from the shame which is cast onto us from others, in order to cope with the inner shame. This is because fear of the shame which will be cast onto oneself by others (punishment), is an enormous part of the inner shame which is associated with keeping the secret, as it increases the perceived need to keep the secret.
Yes, I think we are about in agreement here. It is hard to disentangle because the language of feeling is always associated with behaviour that is very often the defence against that feeling, and/or the projection of it.
I wonder if anyone can relate to just a very simple realisation that one has been inconsiderate, say, and the rejection of that as a way of life for the future. Something a child might do on their own, without pressure from anyone. I think this is the capacity that is exploited to produce a conformist, when we would do better to raise kind and thoughtful individuals who do not need to be told what to be ashamed of.
Edit. It's not that i deny or discount the pressures of the social, and for the child at least, they are irresistible. But these pressures must, I think, operate on an already prexisting sensitivity. One can shame a dog but not a cat, because cats are not social in the same way. So what is that sensitivity to oneself, what is that responsiveness and responsibility without the social pressure?
In a way that's true, but does feeling ever come in discrete packets? Mine doesn't. Shame and jealousy have a lot of the same emotional notes: anger, sadness, distaste. How do I know I'm feeling shame?
Plus emotion is communicable. The crowd feels jubilant, so I do. All the cool kids feel ashamed of their advantages, so I do.
Strong feelings mean something. Discovering what that something is may take time and reflection.
A person who is not ashamed is a person who doesn't give a damn what others think of him. A person who feels no guilt is a person who feels no remorse for the wrong he has done. E.g., X is not ashamed to go naked in public. Y doesn't feel guilty about not taking care of his sick mother. In both cases, they simply do not have the feeling that any "normal" person would have in the same circumstances. Two feelings that are different in one case and in the other because there are a victim or not.
A person who feels shame stops feeling it if he is sure that he will never be seen behaving in a shameful way. He can look at himself naked in front of a mirror and will only feel shame if he can imagine himself being looked or finds that his neighbour is looking at him. A person who feels guilty about hitting his child does not need to imagine being watched.
He will feel guilty even if no one has seen him and even if he is hiding in the darkest corner of the house. This is the main difference between one and the other.
A person who doesn't feel guilty can be ashamed for the same action. This is very common. This shows that they are two different things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is really revolutionary.
One reasoning alone is not the feeling of guilt. That is proven by cases of absolutely impassive criminals who know they have done wrong but feel no guilt at all.They lack the emotion. (There are brain damages that produce this effect).
What happens is that you call both things "shame" as if there was no difference. I don't know if you realise that your opinion is absolutely opposite to a few centuries of philosophy and psychology which differentiate more or less clearly between the two things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not the one who's mixing the two. It's you. Shame always has an external source, real or imagined: let's call it public opinion, for short. Without being seen or imagining yourself being seen doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, there is no feeling at all. Therefore, the source of shame is always external and restricted to local circumstances.
The source of the feeling of guilty is inner. Even in an isolated island you would feel guilty to have done the wrong thing. It is unconditioned and universal.
Shame and guilt are associated with cognitive processes. One cannot feel shame if one is not aware of one's situation. And you cannot feel guilt without similar reasoning and realising your position in relation to a conception of duty. But that does not mean that they are reduced to reasoning. Both are moral feelings (that is what they are called in psychology) that arise around cognitive processes, but they have their own structure.
What you are right about is that there is one thing in common with both: they are aversive emotions and affect self-respect. It is not that they arise from the need for secrecy, but that the self-devaluation they involve causes the individual to try to hide them even from himself, passing them on to the unconscious. Which is a well studied source of neurosis.
A young woman is looking at herself naked in the mirror. She finds herself beautiful. She doesn't feel X or Y.
But suddenly she discovers through the mirror that her neighbor is looking at her. Then she feels a horrible feeling of X.
The neighbor rushes at the young woman. Tremendously excited, he tries to rape her. The young woman resists and the neighbor retreats in fear.
But when he gets home he feels terribly bad. Although no one will believe the girl if she denounces him, he realizes that he has done her some moral damage that he should try to repair. Now he feels Y.
Although the girl and the man prefer to keep the secret, there is a fundamental difference between the two. The girl's feeling comes from being humiliated herself. The man's feeling comes from having hurt another person.
If you don't see this difference, I don't think we can go on.
And feeling humiliated for being seen naked is a aspect of a certain culture. Is shame for hurting people also cultural?
And of course there are paths that lead to freedom from shame (at least on the conscious level).
How is becoming free of shame-X different from becoming free of shame-Y? How are these paths similar?
No, never. Annoyed by it, by the rapid escalation of entropy and the hassles that entails, perhaps. If I were to feel ashamed by it, I think the response would entail feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness, and if I cared about it, but could nonetheless not manage to motivate myself to tidy up the room, then I might feel worthless on account of that.
Guilt is also cultural. In a different way than shame.
Quoting frank
Maybe. But different paths from guilt. Can you specify?
Quoting frank
Y ([s]guilt[/s]) needs reparation to the victim and to society (if any). X ([s]shame[/s]) needs a work of restoration of the esteem of the Self. These are different processes. X is basically psychological, Y is basically social.
(Can we talk without names?)
And this: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/guilt/guilt-vs-shame-whats-the-difference-and-why-does-it-matter/
They may be debatable at some very particular point but clear about the distinction between guilt and shame.
For a more academic and debatable article, which maintains the difference with other criteria, see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6143989/
That is one way to look at it, another is that "guilt" imposed internally, regardless of the social situation, and that shame involves feeling towards others. Hence, "guilt" is usually related to religion, while shame is not.
That is the distinction between Western "guilt culture" and Japanese "shame culture" that Ruth Benedict makes in her famous book "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword". Old, but still relevant imho.
If I define guilt as responsibility towards others based on a moral code, I do not know how I can be understood to be avoiding my responsibility in a social context.
And if I define shame as the de-valuation of self, I don't know how it can be moral.
Morality implies a relationship with someone who has been harmed.
Religion has used the concept of guilt as harm to God through others, but also that of shame in the eyes of the all-seeing God. In reality we owe to religion the perverse union of both. You are guilty because you are bad by nature: humble yourself before God who alone can forgive you.
Religion mixes morality with God. Should we abandon the concept of morality because of it? The psychological analysis of both concepts does not have to be mixed up with these manipulations.
In the same way, the psychological analysis is not the social anthropological one. The invention of cultures of shame and cultures of guilt is often attributed to Ruth Benedict who highlighted the fact that these categories do not exist in isolation. All cultures deal with guilt and shame.
The ‘secret’ is that we are a fragile, vulnerable existence - what did you think it was? We can barely admit this to ourselves even now, let alone share it with future generations, and so the same continues. No one ‘shames’ them for revealing any ‘secret’ - they ‘were ashamed’ at this revelation that they were not what they believed they ought to be.
Well yes, you can do that. What I pointed out is that Ruth Benedict uses a different definition, which I find more useful. In her definition, guilt is internal and shame is external. To put it simply, you feel guilt towards a god figure, wheres you fell shame towards society.
This is the key to understanding my point. The person who has done wrong and knows oneself to have done so, does not necessarily feel guilt. Therefore the feeling which you are calling "guilt" has no direct or necessary relationship to knowing that one has done wrong, and "guilt" cannot be defined as the feeling one has when one knows oneself to have done wrong. You assume that this person simply lacks that emotion. But people don't simply lack emotions, they learn how to suppress and control their emotions so that the person doesn't develop the emotion which another person would develop in the same situation. So there are numerous different emotions involved with knowing that one has done wrong, such as shame, and fear of being caught, pride in one's capacity to successfully do wrong, etc.. There is no one single feeling called "guilt", that is an over-simplification. The person you speak of, the "impassive criminal", cultivates and encourages the good feelings involved in doing wrong, while suppressing the bad feelings. But there is no such thing as a type of feeling which you call the feeling of "guilt".
Quoting David Mo
Let me analyze this particular point you make. The person recognizes himself as having done wrong, so he recognizes that he has made a mistake. Do you agree with this? What you call feeling "guilt" is a matter of recognizing one's own mistake, to have done the wrong thing in the situation, rather than having done a different thing or a number of other possible different things which would have been better. The fact is that the wrong thing was done and the person recognizes that the wrong thing was. done.
Can we call this feeling "regret"? Notice that there are many mistakes which do not involve guilt, but nevertheless involve "regret". When the person feels regret, with an associated guilt, there are a number of ways that one might deal with the feeling. One might feel the urge to apologize, to confess. Or, one might decide that hiding the occurrence of that incident from others, pretending it didn't occur, is the thing to do. Notice the difference between the two. If the person apologizes, then we can forget the incident and get on with our lives. Confession and apology relieves the bad feelings so that the incident may be put aside (forgive and forget). If the person decides to hide and conceal evidence, then there is a secret which must be kept. The need to keep that secret prevents the person from forgetting, and this is what you call the feeling of "guilt".
So what you call feeling "guilt" is just a matter of remembering the mistakes you have made which have had a negative affect on others. If we confess and apologize, this is the move toward forgetting, relieving the guilt. If we do not, we remain conflicted, should I confess and apologize, or should I keep on hiding the incident. The criminals whom you say "lack the emotion" have developed ways to look at what they are doing as good. They have no need to apologize or forget what they have done because they are proud of it.
Quoting David Mo
So, I disagree with this external/internal portrayal of shame/guilt, completely. I think you are attempting a simplification which just doesn't work. What I think is required to understand these feelings is to analize in relation to time, past and future. Some aspects of one's psyche are directed toward the future (anticipation), and some are directed toward the past (memory). The two are very much tied together and intertwined.
"Regret" clearly is based in memories of the past, as is what you call the feeling of "guilt". But "shame" reflects both memories and anticipations, and this is why it is extremely difficult to apprehend its character. You say "Shame always has an external source, real or imagined." But the "imagined" is obviously an internal source, and that's why your portrayal is faulty. The imagined shame is the anticipation of consequences. So shame exists right in the present, as regret concerning the past, and anticipation of future consequences, all tied together.
Quoting David Mo
I can't see the point of your example. It appears to me like you are attempting to create a separation within the feeling of "regret", between different types of mistakes. A mistake which hurts another person you are proposing as different from a mistake which hurts oneself. The former causes "guilt", the latter does not. I agree that there is such a difference, but the difference is in relation to one's future actions, one's anticipations, not in relation to one's current repentance. I have made a mistake, I have done wrong, is no different, whether it hurt myself or it hurt another, though there are differences in the magnitude of the error.
But if we take mistakes of equal magnitude, one hurting oneself, and the other hurting another, the consequences and therefore future action required, are completely different. It is this requirement, for future action, the apology, compensation, which characterizes the feeling of guilt. If there was no need for this future action, the two mistakes would be equivalent, except the hurt to oneself would have more lasting pain. It is the need for the expression of an apology and to compensate, which is an outward expression, which characterizes guilt. So again, your internal/external dichotomy is a misrepresentation.
Quoting unenlightened
I'd like to say that I was a bit inconsiderate earlier in the thread. I said some things before completely understanding what you said, and misrepresented what you had said. I suppose there was pride and confidence which led me to say what I did, and some shame followed when I realized the mistake.
But I really don't think that a child, or anyone, can determine what being inconsiderate is, without learning that. We can easily learn hurtful actions which hurt oneself, because we feel the pain. But how can we learn the actions which hurt another, without being shown the pain? We have the golden rule which we are taught, so we know that the same type of action which would hurt oneself would also hurt another. But what about all the different feelings which different people have developed in different ways? Don't we need to "conform", to have the same feelings, and therefore know when we might be hurting another?
Guilt, from Old English gylt has a dual meaning. It can mean crime and it can mean remorse. It's true that a person can have guilt without feeling remorse, so I guess you have to look to context.
It overlaps with shame, which can mean the feeling of guilt, but it can also mean dishonor or disgrace. A person can definitely feel disgraced without feeling guilt.
There's a scene at the end of Suspiria, where the incarnated witch tells a German man that the world needs shame, but it doesn't need his, so she erases his memory of having abandoned his wife in Berlin when the allies invaded. She frees him of remorse by freeing him of his memory. And then we wander back to a tree with the couple's initials carved in it. It's disconnected from human events because no one remembers the love this couple shared.
Guilt and shame are how events are carried forward into the future. They're an aspect of memory.
Just rambling.
Internal and external are also in the common definition I have provided here makes some comments. I would like not to introduce God here. The Genesis narrative is confusing. Notice that Adam and Eve hide from Yahweh's gaze because they are naked = shame. The concept of God in the Bible is anthropomorphic.
I think Benedict's concept of shame is similar to mine. I'll check my notes. My memory is not very good.
"God" here is simply meant as something that you can not hide from or lie to. I did not imply Yahweh, Allah, or any of that sort, although in the context of Benedicts book she obviously referred to the Christian god.
Knowledge of the consequences of your action is a necessary but not sufficient condition to feel guilty.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Many emotions may be involved in a case but this does not mean that they are the same. Guilt and fear - which you mention - are not the same emotion. They arise from different motivations and have different consequences. Fear does not imply a victim and fear does not produce remorse. Guilt does. Therefore, you can distinguish guilt from fear or shame, even if they are entangled in some cases, not all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That guilt produces -sometimes- regret doesn't mean that everything that produces regret is guilt. You are falling in a fallacy. What defines guilt is the set of features. Not one alone.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is an interesting fact that doesn't nullify the other features.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Guilt and shame are moral emotions. They happen inside man. But shame has an external source. Even imagined, you suppose an external observer that triggers your shame. You feel as if you were observed.
This is probably the most debated feature of the shame/guilt distinction. But it is generally considered useful.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You do not realize that the difference is not primarily in the present or the future but rather the nature of the damage and how to repair it. When you "hurt" yourself you are destroying your self-confidence, you are degrading the idea you have of yourself as a person. Even partially, it is an erosion of self-esteem. In guilt you hurt another person in different ways that do not necessarily involve his or her self-esteem. In the first case there is no punishment or repair that can restore your self-esteem because it affects your being. In the second case, reparation is possible in the form of material compensation, punishment or regret. Therefore, the treatment of both damages is different. So different that one can be legally penalized and the other cannot.
You can see that we are talking about two very different things, let's give them the name you want.
And of course, it has nothing to do with the magnitude. You can inflict a slight damage on a person and feel it, and you can inflict a devastating damage on yourself without a trace of remorse. It is the type of harm and the subject who suffers it that makes the difference between the two.
Agree.
I'm not talking about guilt in the legal sense (crime). I am talking about a feeling that almost always leads to remorse, although not always. Many criminals do not have the slightest feeling of guilt for their crimes. And some criminals feel guilt but not remorse because they think their crimes have been necessary or caused by a greater evil.
Quoting frank
Indeed. Because to feel guilty one has to have hurt someone, while shame comes from the idea of being hurt. But without specifying the different natures of both harms we do not move forward.
Your example is confusing guilt and shame. This is very common. Even Primo Levi, who lived his whole life obsessed with the shame of surviving Auschwitz, does so.
Well, I read Benedict's book on Japan: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She didn't speak much about Christianity. But the biblical example is very well analyzed by Agnes Heller, who maintains that the distinction between guilt and shame is not as drastic as is usually claimed. She has her share of reason.
No, but the context of her book was to contrast Japan`s society vs American one. And in the West, the moral system is linked to Christianity of course. Benedict was not comparing Japan to i.e. India or China, in which case she would have written the book slightly differently.
One can learn without being taught. One sees quite easily when one has hurt someone, and one quite naturally regrets it and seeks to comfort. This sensitivity can be seen in quite small children, and doesn't take any religious or moral training.
And that really is the beginning and end of it. How shall we live together? We need to communicate, so we need to be truthful and honest, we are vulnerable so we need to look after each other, we need to cooperate and share to survive and thrive. And these thing are such obvious truths that they are built into the genes and do not need justification from philosophers or prophets, nor do they need a special training scheme. But we have devised a whole system to convince ourselves of the opposite, and to replicate the opposite in each other. And we call that morality, and justice, and civilisation. And it is destroying us.
It is such a shame.
What's the difference between shame and repentance? Are the two inseparable in that we can't have one without the other? I wonder which is preferable, in the sense of being a better way of making amends for your actions? Perhaps both shame and repentance, together, constitute what is a "proper" response for a perpetrator of an evil deed.
Quoting Nobeernolife
This is an issue which relates to David's internal/external division which needs to be cleared up, so we can't dismiss God so easily.
God is thought of as someone, or something, which you cannot hide anything from, God knows. If God is just like another person, a person which you cannot hide anything from, then imagining God as knowing is an instance of imagining an external person who is watching, and knows. The problem here is that the person imagining God as watching, is just assumed to be imagining that God is watching from an external view point. However, God cannot be seen, and God's view point cannot be seen. So, it is equally possible that God is within everyone,, and is watching from that internal view point.
If this is the case, that God is watching from within, then the "shame" or what David calls "guilt", which a person feels when they do something wrong in the presence of no other people, but are still concerned about God, is internally sourced. David wants to dismiss the fact that such imaginary scenarios are internally sourced, by saying that the person or thing imagined as knowing, is necessarily an external thing. But if God's observation point is imagined to be within, and the reason why one cannot hide from God is because God can see what you do from within yourself, then David's internal/external division is decisively refuted. And, since we are talking about imaginary exposure, the proof that God actually is within, is not required for that refutation. All that is required is that one imagines one's own actions to be revealed to God from within, and this is sufficient for the refutation.
Quoting David Mo
You keep talking about "guilt" as if it is a feeling. I've disputed this claim. And the fact that people can knowingly do wrong without feeling guilt is evidence that guilt is not the "feeling" associated with knowingly doing wrong. So unless you can describe to me what type of feeling "guilt" is supposed to be, there is no point in continuing to talk about it as if it is a feeling. There is no validity to your claim that "guilt" is a feeling.
Quoting David Mo
My example above, of God as an imaginary internal observer, is sufficient to refute this claim that all shame (including imaginary sourced shame) is always externally sourced.
Quoting David Mo
This is not at all true. We learn from our mistakes, so the experience of hurting oneself is often turned into a confidence building experience. Whether the self-hurt destroys ones confidence, or builds one's confidence depends on one's view toward the future. So in athletic training for example, one must intentionally hurt oneself to build strength (no pain, no gain). The hurting experience actually builds confidence.
Despite the fact that you are arguing against this scenario you seem to already recognize it when you refer to "how to repair" the damage. Clearly this is a view toward the future. So your argument here is completely off base. Even if hurting oneself is sometimes an act of damaging one's self-esteem, there is always the question of reparation, and this is a view toward the future, just like restitution is a view toward the future when another is hurt. .
So the point which I made still stands. The act which causes hurt to oneself is essentially the same sort of act, as the act which causes hurt to another. It is a mistake. Therefore the "feeling" associated with these two acts, when viewed in the past, as a memory, is essentially the same feeling. It is a recognition of mistake, and a feeling of regret. The distinction which you are trying to make, that the latter is the feeling of guilt, and the former the feeling of shame, is unjustified. It is only when we take into account the actions which one takes starting immediately after the mistaken action, that we proceed in two distinct directions.
The fact that there are two distinct directions is due to the difference in who was hurt by the action, oneself or another. This difference is a manifestation of how we choose future actions at that time, immediately after the mistake occurs. If the hurt is on another, we immediately apologize and offer to do whatever we can to help in the healing. We proceed toward restitution. If the hurt is on oneself, all we need to do is work on the healing, reparation. The feeling of "shame" or "guilt" relates directly to the past, mistaken action, regardless of who was hurt. If "guilt" is a feeling, I can feel guilty for an act which hurt myself. The feeling here, more properly called shame than guilt, is directly related to the recognition of mistake, and is characterized by regret. There is no difference between "shame" and "guilt" here, but one is a better choice of words. However, when we look toward future actions, after the occurrence of the mistake, recognizing a difference is necessary.
Quoting unenlightened
I think "hurt" is a lot more complicated than that. We hurt people emotionally, and sometimes the hurt is not evident. Failing to keep a commitment for example, hurts the other, and sometimes the commitment might not even be explicit, but implicit, and the person who doesn't hold their end might not even notice the hurt to the other. Further, there are such "little hurts" which we might actually learn to ignore because they're so little. And that's the problem with learning, so much is learnt, that if we stop teaching good habits there will be a hole in that learning, where learning something is required, which could be filled with learning a bad habit. We can learn bad behaviour just like we can learn good behaviour. To return to the example of commitment, if I view "the contract" as something there to protect my rights, then I am only seeing half. And if I am only seeing that half, I'll learn to use the contract for my advantage. Then cheating is fair game, I make sure the contract allows me to cheat, and as much as possible closes the door to cheating from the other side. Cheating is learned behaviour.
Quoting unenlightened
Look at what you say here, "we have devised a whole system". If we can devise systems, then the system ought to be just as much a part of the solution as it is a part of the problem. Notice, "the system" is an inanimate thing, it doesn't recognize hurt, like a child does, the system is indifferent and it can go either way depending on the will of the people who devise it, their successes and failures. The system consists of institutions of law, education, etc., and since it can go either way it actually does need justification from philosophers, etc..
We cannot cast shame on the system, blame the system, claiming that the system has taken a turn for the worse, and hope that the system feels shame and fixes itself, because it doesn't make sense to blame that inanimate thing. And we can't say that the system's all messed up so let's just get rid of it all and have no system, living like children with no authorities, trying to observe each other to see what works the best, because bad habits are just as likely, or more likely, to reign, as are good habits. So a system is needed.
Inevitably, mistakes are made. We relate "shame" to the occurrence of such mistakes and attempt to assign guilt. But "shame" goes even deeper, such that we are ashamed of the mistakes of nature, chance occurrences, and this is the real reason why we need to separate shame from guilt. There are many things occurring which are wrong, not right, and those things need to be addressed. We ought to feel ashamed of these things regardless of the guilty party, there may not even be a guilty party. Therefore we ought not seek to blame and cast shame, hoping that others who are responsible for creating the wrongs will fix the wrongs, we need to feel the shame ourselves, regardless of guilt, and we do feel that shame, and so are inspired to fix the problems.
So "shame" involves no boundaries between individuals in the thing which causes the shame, it simply describes how an individual relates to a deprived situation.
Yes, sometimes one cannot see it, as sometimes it is dark. But in the first place, one does not need to be taught.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Exactly! Once you remove the (m)other who projects shame onto you, there is simply the response to the world, and the responsibility for the world.
When I talk about system, I mean really this endless projection of responsibility onto others. The child is 'naughty' because he is brought into a supermarket filled with delights and expected to understand the nonsense of property rights and so on. That is what is taught, and it drives us mad.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When we refer to external vs. internal we do not mean that the causes of a feeling are on the outside or the inside. We refer to the fact that a particular emotion arises from the subject's belief in being under the gaze of a real or imagined external observer. Whether the sources are in the Oedipus complex or in social pressure is another matter. We are now at the level of description not causal analysis. In the Bible God is not internal to Adam. He is an external gaze of an external entity from whom Adam and Eve try to hide themselves.
Everyone knows that there are criminals who feel no guilt. Everyone knows there are libertines who feel no shame. This is banal. But it does not invalidate the fact that shame and guilt exist and are different things. You do not distinguish between the necessary and the sufficient condition. Some cognitive processes are a necessary but not sufficient condition of moral emotions. That is, without them the emotion doesn't exist, but they alone are not enough to produce it. That explains your false objection.
Of course I have given you enough descriptions of the difference between shame and guilt, but you don't want to call them so. That's why you're never satisfied. Have you read the articles I recommended - at least the first two? If you had, you wouldn't be asking me for examples of guilt. There is a lot.
I'm trying to fit all these things together:
Shame is necessary as a social glue. It's bad to hurt others and we know that naturally, and don't need to be taught. Kids don't know not to take whatever they want at the supermarket, and its a symptom of a broader problem that we hold them accountable for it. Shame is about taking responsibility, but we shouldn't shame people for not taking responsibility for things they don't know not to do.
At the limit, I suppose we could hold accountable the birth of agriculture which led directly to civilization and its discontents, but the birth of agriculture is well-insulated from shame.
Is 'not taking from the supermarket' really part of a system, in the sense Anscombe is describing? (it seems to me like what's she doing is reframing modern utilitarian morality as rationalization (ala Macbeth & his lady on regicide) + Insurance math. 'Not taking from the supermarket' appears to be an implicit rule of conduct (otherwise who'd set up shop?) that developed organically and was later codified in law (and law-like moral systems). Isn't it true of all humans, in all times, that we're 'thrown' into a social reality in the process of development (both based on tradition and evolving) and that shame is a way of adjusting the person to that social reality, so they won't eventually have the greater shame (and life-threatening danger) of exile?
Yes, absolutely. The example I like is which side of the road one drives on. I seems not to matter which side it is, as long as everyone settles on one side or the other. It's not something one can know from birth. And one cannot know from birth that it's ok to take berries from the hedgerow but not apples from the orchard. But one knows without explanation to comfort the crying.
I think the upshot is that though you need an explanation of how a library works differently to a supermarket, and the protocol of communicating with air traffic control, you don't need any lessons in being ashamed. IOW. Shaming another is abuse, and manipulation.
Now this is true of anyone who has that social empathy that gives one a sense of shame when things go awry, and it is a fortiori true of anyone who lacks the capacity - the notorious psychopath. Because any attempt to manipulate the young psychopath is simply a lesson in manipulation, and as has been talked about here with some lack of clarity, there is no point at all in trying to shame someone who is incapable of that feeling. The psychopath is unashamed and unrepentant. The best bet therefore is to teach them that kindness works, which is easy because it does.
I think that shame itself is not something that needs to be taught, but a person's response to it, is what is learned and developed over time. This is why I see the need to distinguish shame from guilt, in any attempt to understand these feelings, but it needs to be done in a way which does not constitute misunderstanding. And I think that the practise of confession was a start in that direction.. Not only does associating shame with guilt increase one's shame when the person has done wrong, but it also works the other way so that we can decrease our shame by assigning guilt to another person's wrongdoing.
To rectify this we need to allow shame, encourage the feeling to surface without prejudice, as it is those judgements of guilt we associate with shame, which cause shame to become unintelligible. Then when shame surfaces, we can deal with it by addressing the source of it, regardless of legal "responsibility".
Quoting David Mo
This doesn't address the issue, which is the issue of the internal observer. A person's own sense of God need not be describe by the Bible when we're talking about an imaginary observer, it might be described as schizophrenia. The argument was meant to show the logical problem with your internal/external division. But if that didn't help you, all you need to do is think about what we call "conscience".
If you recognize the reality of conscience you'll see that one's sense of wrong and right comes from within. Then you ought to also see that the feelings associated with the judgement "I have done wrong" are derived from this internal judgement. I believe that you already see this because you say that "guilt" is a feeling derived from such an internal judgement.
Now, you want to disassociate shame from conscience, as if shame is not derived from one's conscience, the sense of right and wrong, but is derived from one's fear of others. I have a fear of others, it's a shyness, a bashfulness, a timidity. But these feeling of shyness are completely unrelated to my feelings of shame. Shame is associated with my sense of what is right and what is wrong, and that is conscience. So I really believe that you are putting "shame" into the wrong category by classing it as a fear of others..
Quoting David Mo
I am not denying a distinction between shame and guilt, I am saying that I think the way you have created the boundaries between them is incorrect. To see it my way, consider that feelings must be analyzed, and classified to be given a name. So we have a large group of unpleasant feelings involved with the recognition of something which is wrong, and we call this "shame". You are arguing that in some instances of feeling shame there is also a recognition that the wrong was caused by me, I have done wrong, and this you call the feeling of "guilt". But then you want to separate "guilt" from "shame" as if they are two distinct types of feelings, instead of one being a subcategory of the other, so you attempt to impose a faulty internal/external division between them.
But if you would simply analyze the feelings themselves, you would see that they are all internally sourced. And, you would see that the different feelings are assessed, analyzed, and judged. This act of analyzing and judging is what creates the categories of separation. So, we can see that shame involves a judgement that something is wrong, and that guilt involves a further judgement of that wrong thing, as to who is to blame for it. Neither of these requires external observers. The fact that shame can be amplified by external observes saying "guilty" is irrelevant. And, if there is a need to place a person in relation to other people (external observes), it would only come about in the second judgement, the judgement of guilt. So in reality we feel shame regardless of any individuation of different people, nor the determination of any external observers, and it is only in the determination of guilt that we need to separate ourselves from others, to assign guilt to the person who is to blame.
If you want to go deeper, to analyze "shame" itself, we might find that this feeling is rooted in an even wider category of some sort of fear of others. But we really need to take a look at "conscience" first, because we haven't distinguished "good for me" from "good" in the wider sense, and this division is critical to your supposed import, within one's feelings, of external observers. So I'm not willing to go this way with you until we have worked out a proper relationship between shame and guilt. The point is that feelings are all internally sourced, so one feeling is sourced in another feeling, as a broader category, creating types or families of feelings. If we take one type of feeling, and relate it directly to something external, as you do with "shame", then we put an end to our capacity to further the analysis. This is why I propose that we relate feelings only internally, one feeling to another, and not get distracted by relating the feeling to some supposed external observers, until we have a satisfactory principle by which the external observer can be shown to be important..
I asked you the question before and I'm asking it again. You say that "we" call shame... What "we" do you mean? I have not found in my readings a philosopher or a psychologist who speaks or defines the concept of shame as you do. And, apart from the articles that I have recommended and that you don't want to read, I can quote you at least ten leading authors from Darwin to Nussbaum that you wouldn't understand because they talk about shame in the terms that I do, not yours. It is not my creation. It is what I have always readen.
Leaving aside other statements that you unduly attribute to me, I will ask you one more crucial question. There is a feeling that comes from the fact that my self-esteem has been damaged. Another feeling arises because I have hurt someone. Where is the difference?
A loss of self-esteem is a loss of confidence, self-worth. This is associated with a lack of ambition and melancholy. Hurting someone results in all sorts of different feelings. That's what I've been trying to tell you, there are all sorts of feelings which may be associated with hurting someone, so it's a mistake to claim that there is this one feeling "guilt", which arises from hurting someone.
I've started on a TYLEC course (basically teaching English to young learners, abroad) and we are being taught about classroom management techniques and how 'a certain level of manipulation is needed' through reward and punishment, praise and criticism.
I don't really agree with this as I see a child be 'naughty' as something created by wider (mad) society. I think there is a better way than the reward and punishment route as I see this method as further imposing the ideals of society on the student. I just don't know what the better way is yet...
Sorry, I didn't ask "how many" but "what's" the difference. You admit there's a difference but you avoid saying what it is.
I ask you in another way: can you identify some of these feelings that, according to you, arise from the consciousness of having hurt someone? Fear, love, indignation, disgust... (You can see a list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_emotions#Types_of_moral_emotion ) Which can produce remorse and desire for reparation?
If you want to start an education thread sometime, I'll likely be all over it. in the meantime, I'll just mention J Krishnamurti, A. S. Neil, Paulo Friere, Maria Montessori, as sources for varied better traditions, in case you don't already know them.
I don't quite know what you mean by "identify" some feelings. It seems like we disagree as to what the actual feeling is, which is signified by a name, so naming feelings is rather pointless. Therefore I've tried to describe the feelings. But then you disagree with my descriptions, claiming you've never heard anyone describe feelings in this way. I'm beginning to think that you've never heard someone describe feelings, that you've only seen them named in conceptual schemes.
As I suggested earlier, I have two broad categories of feelings, feelings related to the future, anticipations, and feelings related to the past, memories. So disgust and indignation would relate to the past, the act itself, which has already occurred. The desire for reparation relates to the future. The two types of feelings are distinct, so one does not produce the other, though they are intertwining and have affects on each other.
Here's an explanation of why these two types need to be understood as distinct. Suppose I act in a way which hurts someone, and I recognize that the act was a mistake. That's the first point, to recognize the mistake as a mistake. Please do not immediately assume guilt, because "mistake" necessitates that I did something wrong, which may be an innocent mistake. If I dwell on this mistake, referencing my memory of it, this may encourage feelings such as disgust, remorse, lack of self-esteem. These feelings are not pleasant, so I need to get beyond this mistake, and that requires a plan for the future. The goal now is to get the memory out of my mind, get rid of the unpleasant memory with those unpleasant thoughts, so I am now talking about anticipatory feelings. There are two distinct avenues I can take. I can apologize and offer compensation, so that the hurt person and myself, can both get on with our lives to the best of our abilities, or, I can pretend that the mistake never happened, walk or run away from it.
Notice that the two ways of dealing with the bad memory, the mistaken action, which in this case caused hurt to another, are completely different. One way is to face the mistaken act, understand it, and do whatever is possible to repair the damage. This produces a clear conscience, allowing the ugly aspects to slip from the mind. The other way is to ignore the act, get away from it as quickly as possible, so that it can slip from the mind this way. This is the action of a person lacking in conscience. You can see that "conscience" is concerned with how I relate things which have occurred in the past to what I ought to do in the future.
The feelings involved in any such situation often involve a confliction in the conscience. That is indecisiveness. There is often a natural tendency to recoil, get away from the horrible disgusting memory as quickly as possible, because it is painful to the mind, this is a tendency to hide my mistaken action. However, the conscience tells me to face it, and deal with it properly. So there is confliction, no decision, and therefore a need to resolve, or the bad memories persist. The confliction and lack of resolution produces feelings, urging me one way or the other, but the feelings themselves conflict, due to the contradicting possibilities for resolution.
Here's how I see the significant difference between your perspective and mine. I see conscience as the feature which makes a person judge oneself as guilty. And you might agree with this. But your description proceeds to make a person's apprehension, or imagination, of an external observer the root of shame. Recognition of an external observer causes shame. But I see this imaginary, external observer, as simply a reformulated conscience. You still need a true form of conscience to justify one's own feeling of guilt, then you propose a second form of conscience as one's perceived relationship with external observers.
Therefore, in your separation of guilt from shame you really have two forms of conscience, one from within, which validates one's feeling of guilt, and another form of conscience which is the person's imagined relationship to external observers. In my perspective there is just one conscience.
The distinction you make between different feelings is irrelevant. They all have references to the past and the future. You fear a dangerous man (past) and try to avoid them (future). You are ashamed of having been seen naked (past) and avoid being seen again (future). All feelings can be remembered consciously or buried in the unconscious. Time and consciousness are not defining characteristics.
The main difference between shame, pride, guilt and other feelings is that they affect self-esteem. This is why they are called "moral emotions".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
With respect to shame and guilt the main difference is that shame attacks self-esteem directly while guilt only affects self-esteem through a reconsideration of the harm I have done to another person. Therefore, there is not the possibility of remorse in shame because I have not done any harm to other person. Therefore shame can have a moral content or not. I can be ashamed of my bad English spelling, for example, and this is not moral. (Moral implies a relation with other).
It is under discussion whether shame implies a form of consciousness or not. Recent studies have shown that the shame pang is instantaneously and is possible in babies (I have some doubts). In the same moment that you perceive someone seeing you in a dishonorable situation you flushed and turn away your look. May be there is a non-reflexive consciousness that implies some social or biological code, but it seems different to reflexive consciousness that provokes remorse. I think so, but it is not very clear.
Yes, it's true that anticipatory feelings are tied together with memorial feelings, but that does not mean the distinction is irrelevant, it just means that feelings are difficult to understand because of this complexity.
Consider your example and my response. You have hurt someone (past). The inclination to walk away and hide from this, and the inclination to face the person with apology and repentance, involve completely different feelings which are derived from the very same event. The difference between these two distinct types of feelings is not related to that particular instance of hurting someone, yet both are derived from it. The difference is completely related to your future actions in relation to that instance, how you will respond.
Quoting David Mo
It really makes no sense to say there is no shame in the recognition that I have hurt another person, that there is only guilt in this apprehension. That's nonsense, and it makes far more sense to follow my model in which there are both types of feelings involved here, feelings associated with shame, and feelings associated with guilt. Shame is involved with walking away from, or hiding the event, and guilt involves facing the event and addressing it. Both types of feelings are derived from the conscience in a consistent manner, but it is confliction within the conscience which causes conflicted feelings.
Also, the idea that there is shame without reconsideration of the event is consistent with what I've said, and it does not actually support your position. Shame is consequent upon the recognition that something is wrong, deprivation in the present situation, and it does not require a memory of the cause of this, or even an identification of exactly what it is that is wrong. That's why shame is involved with walking away from, or hiding from, a bad situation, which may be a mistaken action. In its naked form, shame is an innocence in the sense of an incomprehensible discomfort, within an unknowing naivety.
It requires a further judgement of conscience to produce guilt from shame. Guilt involves the recognition that the cause of shame, hiding the deprived situation, or hiding from the deprived situation, recoiling into one's own presumed innocence, or naivety, is itself something wrong, a pretense. That is what forms the relation between shame and guilt, the recognition that shame indicates hidden knowledge which it is wrong to hide, disguised as naivety.. Pretending that I didn't see what I saw, that I don't know what I know, or that I didn't do what I did, is judged as wrong, a self-deception, dishonesty, and this is the judgement of guilt which inclines us to face the problem. Therefore guilt is a possible, but not necessary, consequence of shame. And the two cannot be separated in the way that you suggest.
If shame is, as you say, involved with external observation, this itself, is a reconsideration of the event, and that's an inconsistency in your description..
The same feeling of guilt gives rise to two different responses: hiding the guilt or acknowledging it. These differences are due to different circumstances and additional feelings: fear of punishment, sense of moral responsibility, the link with the victim, etc. But the original feeling is the same: guilt for having damaged someone. I don't see why you think these are two different feelings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Shame may or may not be associated with guilt. Shame associated to guilt only arises when the crime is public. A criminal may feel guilty but not ashamed if he only knows his crime. There are a lot of examples. A criminal may feel guilty but not ashamed if he despises the society that reproaches him for his crime. See Jean Valjean in Hugo's Les miserables.
Conversely, you can feel shame without any sense of guilt: I can be ashamed when someone tells me that I am a coward. Where is the harm I have done to others? Where is the guilt here?
If there is guilt without shame and shame without guilt, it is necessary to reach a conclusion: they are different feelings.
Why? The situation that causes shame can be effective immediately, like a reflex, without thoughtful consideration. Where is your problem?
I am talking about the inclination to hide, and the inclination to confess, which exist at the very same time. I am not talking about having chosen one or the other in response. These are distinctly different feelings associated with the supposed "guilt". To say that the person has conflicting feelings, and that's what "guilt" is, to have conflicted feelings, does not describe a feeling of guilt. All you do is avoid analyzing the actual feelings involved, and class distinct and opposing feelings together as the feeling of "guilt".
Quoting David Mo
As I said, there is no guilt without shame. Guilt is an extension of shame. The primary judgement by the conscience is that there is a specific type of deprived, unpleasant, uncomfortable situation, and this is shame. A secondary judgement assigns blame for the deprived situation and this is the designation of guilt. Notice that there cannot be a judgement of guilt (responsibility for the wrong), without first a judgement that there is something wrong. And, the judgement that something is wrong is what produces shame.
As I explained to unenlightened, proceeding to that secondary judgement, assigning blame, the judgement of guilt, is not necessary. When we recognize that the uncomfortable feeling (shame) is a response to a situation which is apprehended as a deprived situation (something's wrong), we can act immediately to rectify the situation; thereby relieving the shame, without any judgement of blame or guilt. But if the uncomfortable feeling of shame was not present we would not be moved to act in this way. This I believe is the intent of the Catholic tradition of confession, we can act to remove the shame without proceeding to guilt. That is the essence of forgiveness, we all act together to improve our situation, remove the unpleasantness of shame, without resorting to judgements of guilt.
Quoting David Mo
The situation must be remembered, or else the shame will disappear as quickly as it appeared, just like a reflex. If the shame is ongoing, then exposure to the situation which causes the shame must be ongoing as well. If it is a past event which causes the shame, then that past event must be remembered, if the shame is to persist.
If it is the thought of an external observer which causes the shame, as you contend, then in order for the shame to be ongoing, the memory of the event, along with the thought of an external observer of the event, must be present to the person. This is a reconsideration of the event.
Suppose though, that the feeling of shame is created simply by the apprehension of an external observer, regardless of the act, and therefore without any reconsideration of the event. This is what is required if shame occurs without a reconsideration of the event, shame is caused solely by the apprehension, even if imagined, of external observers, regardless of the situation. Then we would always be in shame all the time, regardless of what we were doing, wearing, etc., because shame would simply be caused by the recognition of a possibility of external observers. But this is clearly not how shame is. Sometimes the thought of external observers creates pride, conceit, and vanity, while sometimes it creates shame. These are opposing types of feelings, created from the apprehension of possible observers. So it is clearly not the recognition of external observers which creates shame.
Where did I say that?
Where did I say that? Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's not true. I've already given you an example.
Quoting David Mo
Can you answer to my objection? I doubt it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That definition serves many different emotions. It's not specific. It doesn't distinguish anything.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Social condemnation can serve to designate both shame and guilt. If they are distinguished it is because social condemnation is based on different things. Your "definitions" do not define anything in particular.
Everything that follows fails because it is based on undefinition from the beginning. It is an empty discourse.
This doesn't make any sense. The act is a fundamental part of shame: being seen (really or imagining) doing something that one shouldn't be doing at that moment by the observer who shouldn't be seeing it. This is the exact definition of the situation that causes shame.
I hesitate to interrupt a roundabout at full gallop, but are you guys disputing the meaning of words, the nature of psyche, ethics, or something else?
Honestly, I don't know.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I believe you, but I'm discussing facts. That shame and guilt are two different emotions. That guilt is not a consequence of shame and that the time sequence does not intervene at all in the definition of both. (By de way, these are facts commonly accepted in psychology).
Whether they are called one way or the other doesn't matter to me. What is absurd is to say that one is a subspecies of the other as Metaphysical Undercover has said. This is a false statement of fact.
In guilt there is implied a victim. In shame there is not a victim. Examples: regret to have raped a woman. Disgust to myself for being a coward. Don't you see the difference, unelightened?
Why are you discussing facts? Do they not speak for themselves?
Quoting David Mo
These are not facts. This is a distinction you are making that has some merit in terms of clarity and convenience, but does not at all exhaust the meaning and usage of the words.
But let us then impose your distinction on the myth of the Fall: we might say that Adam and Eve feel guilty about disobeying God and eating the fruit, and also ashamed of their nakedness. So these are different and separate, but the ancients in their folly have conflated them. Why have they done that do you think?
You haven't done very well in any effort to explain why you believe guilt is an emotion. And for the reasons I've explained, it appears impossible that guilt is an emotion.. Guilt involves conflicting feelings, opposing emotions, therefore it cannot be an emotion. Guilt is a judgement of responsibility, blame. If you've ever judged anyone, including yourself, as guilty, you would see that the feelings involved with any particular instance of this judgement are extremely varied and conflicting. Have you ever been on a jury? That's why it's impossible that guilt is a feeling, or emotion, a judgement of guilt involves many distinct feelings and emotions.
If you really believe that guilt is a feeling, you ought to be able to describe this feeling to me, in a way which characterizes it as something other than an extension of shame. Instead you just refer me to other people who have claimed that guilt is a feeling, and insist therefore that this is a fact. The problem, as I've explained to you, is that there are two distinct urges (types of feelings) which follow from one's own judgement of personal guilt, one urge is to deny the guilt and hide responsibility, the other is the urge to face responsibility and make restitution. Since both of these very different, and conflicting types of feelings can be involved with the same judgement of guilt, it is impossible that there is a feeling called "guilt".
I don't understand the question. Please be clearer.
Quoting unenlightened
That certain emotions arise in relation to a victim and others do not is not an arbitrary distinction. It is a distinction based on an undeniable and observable fact (except for our colleague, who has a personal logic). That some emotions only arise in function of an observer and others do not, is a distinction based on unquestionable and observable facts. That the emotions that arise in function of a victim are those that arise without the need of external observers but by an internal process is an observable and undeniable relationship. That this internal process is based on sympathy for the victim and the acceptance of certain norms related to it, while the triggers of the first emotions are based on the loss of self-esteem, are undeniable and observable facts that psychology has studied for some time. That the classification of moral emotions has been useful in those studies, is something that anyone who is a little aware of current psychology knows.I don't know of a single study of philosophy or psychology that doesn't make the distinction between shame and guilt. If you know of any, I'd like you to quote it to me. I'd be interested in it. Truly.
Quoting unenlightened
In ordinary language, art or mythology, guilt and shame are sometimes intertwined. This is due to their proximity as moral emotions and because they have some of their characteristics in common: both are based on a concept of what should and should not be done (that's why they are moral) and both involve self-esteem (that's why they are also called emotions of the Self). In the case of the Bible the confusion is easier because it is the product of a society in which tribal pressure and morality are confused. This refers to the problem of the existence of societies dominated by the sense of shame-honour and guilt societies. Traditional Jewish culture would be among the first.
You confuse the guilty verdict in a court of law with the guilty feeling of the guilty. We're talking about the former. They are very different things
I would ask you once again, instead of wandering on your own, to take some of the examples in the articles I quoted and discuss them.
What does Judas Iscariot feel in the Bible? He feels guilty about giving up Jesus. Yes or no?
Matt 27, 3-5.
Do you want restrict to this biblical example?
You confuse two things: the urge to hide the malicious act and the feeling of having committed a truly malicious act. You can try to hide the act without any feeling of guilt because of fear of punishment. They are two different things. This fear and feeling of guilt are not the same.
Guilt is the feeling of being responsible for a wrong committed on someone. Whether or not you want to make amends for that wrong comes after the discomfort of feeling guilty. Some people prefer to endure that discomfort and some people need to take away this charge. But the discomfort of guilt comes before the second step.
Well I am confused too. Disentangle tribal pressure from morality for me. You see again, you seem to think you are talking about facts; you are aware of the fact/value distinction?
Of course. It is a fact that guilt is a feeling that affects many people, who judge that what they have done is wrong. The fact is the burden of guilt. Value is how the guilty judges the fact. I don't judge if he is wrong in his belief. I am not a priest nor a moralist. I analyze the causes of his discomfort (fact). I am a psychologist.
You see this just sounds like pontification of the most dogmatic kind. How can an emotion be moral or non moral, what even is it for something to be moral? These are the questions that I think need answering by looking at shame, but you are already using them to define shame as if morality is less problematic than emotion.
Quoting David Mo
Yes. And I am a philosopher. I analyse the causes of your confusion. You have no idea what you are talking about because the thing that is the proposed cause of the feeling you are analysing, does not exist in your philosophy. Guilt is reduced to discomfort and therefore painkillers will cure it. That is degeneracy of the first order.
When we talk about moral emotions in psychology and philosophy, we understand that they are those that affect my relationship with others. In addition to guilt and shame, this often includes pride, moral outrage and so on. Defining what is moral is complicated, but this definition is operative and serves to understand us in this field.
Every emotion can be altered by the use of drugs. This is a problem in psychiatry. What are effective, what are the side effects, etc. If the use of such drugs is morally acceptable, it is to move into the realm of philosophy. I have no problem entering it. I'm very interested in it. But they are two different problems. And don't make me say what I haven't said. Have you read Brave New World? A great novel that raises the philosophical problem.
For the record, the definition of guilt and shame I have given is the one used by philosophers as well. The ones I've read, at least. Scheler, Sartre, Taylor, Wollheim, Heller, etc. It is a universally accepted distinction, unless you have an example to the contrary.
Quoting David Mo
So shame and guilt are moral emotions and moral emotions are those that affect relationship with others, that is to say social relations, and the bible confuses morality and and social pressure.
You are so full of arrogant shit my head has just exploded and unfortunately I will be unable to engage further.
I'm sorry you take things that way. A debate is just a debate and not having arguments to answer is no shame. It happens to all of us sometime.
There is no such thing as "the feeling of having committed a truly malicious act". That one's act is truly malicious is a judgement. And, every time a truly malicious act is judged to have been committed the feelings are different, and mixed. That is why you are barking up the wrong tree here. We cannot, and therefore ought not try, to create a category of feeling called "guilt", because the feelings involved with guilt are so varied and mixed up.
Quoting David Mo
Do you not see how you contradict yourself? The person here has "the feeling of having committed a truly malicious act", and wants to hide that act because of fear of punishment. So you say that the person does not feel guilt. Yet you have defined guilt as "the feeling of having committed a truly malicious act". So the person explicitly does feel guilt. It's blatant contradiction, and that's why your declaration of a feeling called "guilt" is incoherent and unintelligible.
Quoting David Mo
Being responsible, is a judgement, just like guilt, it is not a feeling. So you are just persisting in the same mistake here. We judge responsibility, we do not feel it. So a judgement of responsibility will have associated with it, the same variance in feelings between fleeing from, and facing one's responsibility.
Quoting David Mo
There is no such thing as the feeling of the guilty. That's what I keep trying to tell you, the guilty have a multiplicity of different feelings, so it is impossible to conclude that there is such a thing as the feeling of guilt.
Quoting David Mo
We're not going to get anywhere on this issue by discussing the Bible, because it can be interpreted in many different ways.
Quoting David Mo
I don't know what Judas felt. I am not him, and I would not trust a hand-me-down account to tell me what a person felt two thousand years ago. We have no model for how human feelings may have evolved over that time period. I believe Jesus' death was a staged event, a sacrifice planned before hand, so I think Judas would have had some very mixed up emotions at the time. I think that popular translations say that Judas felt "remorse". This would mean that he regretted being in the situation he was in.
Quoting David Mo
This is the heart of the problem. Defining what is moral is not complicated nor difficult. Morality involves judgements of good/bad, right/wrong, correct/incorrect. As such, we separate morality from feelings and emotions, which are not based in judgements, though they influence judgements.
You want to conflate this separation, talking about "moral emotions". This would require that we bring judgements of good and bad right into the emotions, as inherent within these emotions. But clearly this is wrong, as emotions are occurring independent of judgement, influencing one's judgement, not vise versa.
I've said this already, and I'll say it again now, we need to address the subject of "conscience". The position of conscience in relation to judgements and emotions, and it's role in the development of these, is crucial to this issue. David, you seem to have an aversion to "conscience". Do you not believe that there is such a thing? If not, how do you propose that a human being makes judgements? You seem to believe that the judgement is already inherent within the emotion (moral emotions).
This allows that the emotion "shame" arises freely, prior to, and independent from any such judgement of good or bad. Now we can look at it, and see that we've come to associate this "bad" feeling with "bad" situations, and this is our habit, so "shame" has bad connotations. The problem though is that the situation which causes shame is not necessarily a bad situation, we've only come to look at it this way through some sort of habit of generalization. If we exchange the word "shame" for "embarrassment", we can use the new word to describe the very same feeling. But now we remove the bad connotations, because embarrassment can be felt equally in good situations and bad situations.
David Mo, I'll offer you a new starting point here, a compromise, if you'll put aside your notions of moral emotions, and guilt, as a distraction, and our discussion of this as a digression. Let's say that "shame", like "embarrassment", is associated with the way that we relate ourselves to others, just like you suggested. However, we must place this relation as independent from, and prior to any judgements such as wrong or right. So we have feelings concerning our relations with others, which are not at all influenced by moral judgements. Therefore we throw away your internal feeling of guilt, and we replace this with internal feelings which are derived from perceived relations with others, feelings which are independent from such judgements of wrong or right.
I think you were right the first time. I think every emotion is a judgement. To have an emotion is to give a damn. To call it uncomfortable is already to have judged. The judgement provides motivation - grab that fig leaf.
I cannot apprehend my emotions as judgements. They seem to be nothing more than feelings which relate to the particular situations which give rise to them. But they really do not seem to consist of any judgements concerning the situation. "Grab that fig leaf" is the judgement. The emotion provides motivation to make the judgement, but isn't itself a judgement.
Suppose I start feeling embarrassed. This feeling wells up inside me, but the feeling itself doesn't really give me any information about the situation, which a judgement concerning the situation would give me. It's just a strange feeling. If I reflect, I will see a pattern of various times when I get this same sort of feeling. When I do something which attracts attention to myself, this tends to produce embarrassment. So I can make a judgement that this sort of situation, attracting attention to myself, causes embarrassment. But I really can't see how there could be a judgement already inherent within the feeling itself.
However, since that feeling really only comes in that particular type of situation, I might admit that logically there must be some sort of judgement inherent within the feeling. Whatever it is that produces the feeling, must have made a judgement of the situation, in order to produce the same sort of feeling in similar situations. But in my experience, I do not make a conscious judgement of the situation being an embarrassing situation. The feeling just pops up, and sometimes I'm embarrassed when I least expect it, or not embarrassed when I would expect to be embarrassed. So whatever type of judgement this is, which causes the occurrence of embarrassment, it is not a conscious judgement, and that makes it awkward to even call it a judgement.
The contradiction is only in your head. It is not true that guilty is a judgement and not a feeling. The criminal that hide his crime just because he fears to be punished has no feeling of culpability, although he knows he has done something wrong. This is a very common fact between mafiosi and pathological killers. This contradict your claim that guilt is only a judgement.
Quoting unenlightened
This is the absurd conclusion. In fact, the argument invalidates any kind of emotion. They all involve cognitive processes. Fear, for example, also involves an assessment of the situation. I judge that I have done wrong, I judge that there is something dangerous in the situation, I judge that this is outrageous. Then there are no emotions. Neither fear, nor indignation, nor guilt, nor shame, nor love, etc. are emotions, according to your argument. An absurdity.
To say that cognitive processes are present in emotions at some point does not deny that emotion exists, only that it is a complex phenomenon that affects both mind and body.
No agreement is possible. All so-called moral feelings involve relationships with others and a certain sense of right and wrong. Indignation, pride, resentment, guilt, shame, etc. are different because their cause is different: the evil that I have committed, the ideal of the 'I' that I have violated, the evil that has been infringed upon another person, the harm that has been done to me, the act that others approve of, etc. Consequently they are associated with different ideas and also have different effects. Therefore, moral emotions are mental complexes that cannot be broken down, except analytically. You cannot take away "the judgment" -as you say-or the feeling that is associated with them, because they are part of that emotional complex that psychology studies.
So we can't agree on the basis of a monumental error. You pretend to invalidate all psychological studies of emotions. You don't seem to care about such a feat. I do care.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You could escape your contradictions by eliminating the term judgement. An unconscious judgment is not a judgment strictly speaking. It would be more correct to say that there is an evaluation or perception of the situation.
Yes, I can sympathise. judgement is commonly considered the province of the thinker, the rational faculty. But while rationality can make the measurement, and decide which dick is bigger, it cannot decide whether bigger or smaller is better, one has to have a feeling about it.
[quote=Hume]Reason is and ought to be the slave of passion.[/quote]
Which is to say that reason can tell you what's what and what's not, but only passion can make you care, and so only passion can make you act.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nor should it. It is a response to the situation; the character of the emotion directs the action which in the case of a 'negative' emotion is to change the situation in some appropriate way, eg to cover one's nakedness. Without the judgement that nakedness in this situation is 'bad', the cover-up makes no sense and would not happen. Reason alone is incapable of making such a judgement.
Philosophy has been very poor at understanding psychology because philosophers (and psychologists) like to think of themselves as ruled by reason, and studiously avoid these basic insights of Hume that lay the foundations of a clear understanding of human nature. This is what I call 'identification' and it always leads too prejudice. I like to think of myself as rational; therefore I am rational. Therefore it is rational to cover my genitals.
Exactly, the contradiction is in my head, as all contradictions are always, necessarily, in someone's head. So this does not make the contradiction any less real. The feelings I have concerning guilt are contradictory, and that is a fact.
So you again demonstrate the same contradiction here. It is nothing other than the apprehension of culpability which drives a person to hide one's own crimes. if someone did not recognize one's own actions as culpable, there would be no need to hide the action . So you are continuing with the same contradictory nonsense, to say that the person who hides one's own crimes does not feel culpability.
Quoting David Mo
This distinction does not make any sense to me. All feelings start with "I". That is what a feeling is, something inside of me. Attempting to make a distinction between feelings which start with "I", and other feelings, is just to make a randomly arbitrary set of classifications, because all feelings start with "I". So to say that ideas associated with feelings starting with "I" are distinct from ideas associated with other feelings, is just an untenable designation.
Quoting David Mo
Of course any "breaking down" is analytical only, but that does not mean we cannot make valid analysis based on sound principles. Your distinction of feelings which start with "I", and other feelings is nothing other than a breaking down, an analysis. But it is not based in sound principles.
Quoting David Mo
This demonstrates your continued refusal to address "conscience", and this amounts to a denial of facts. The facts are that we make judgements, and, that judgements are very closely related to feelings. Your refusal to address judgement is the "monumental error" here. You propose a division between "I" based feelings, and other feelings, when this division is nothing other than a distinction between judgement-based feelings, and non-judgement-based feelings. Now you say let's pretend that judgement is not relevant here. It is clearly you who is making pretense.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm not sure I can accept this. You are distinguishing judgement, as the measurement of does x qualify as good or bad, from the knowledge of what constitutes good and bad. I can accept this distinction, in principle. However, you then associate knowledge of good and bad with feeling, as if the difference between good and bad is something we feel rather than something which is decided by rational judgement.
What I see is that these are two distinct types of rational judgement. The knowledge of what constitutes good and bad must be given to us through rational judgement, or at least something other than through feelings or else we would not be able to judge feelings as good or bad. A good feeling would necessarily be good, and a bad feeling would necessarily be bad, and all of our judgements (measurements) as to whether something is good or bad would be based on whether the thing was producing a good feeling or bad feeling. However, ethics and moral principles are based in the assumption that we decide the essence of, or nature of, good and bad, according to rational principles, not by our feelings.
Quoting unenlightened
Now you've introduced another principle, "passion". Passion is what makes a person act, but passion is something distinct from the two forms of judgement discussed above. Knowledge of what is good and what is bad does not inspire one to act. Nor does the judgement (measurement) that a certain thing is good inspire one to act. Procrastination is an example of seeing what is good but not doing it. So we need to put "passion", which is inspiration, in a different category altogether.
Quoting unenlightened
Sure, I see this clearly, but the problem is when the feeling inclines one toward a certain action, but the action is judged as bad, so the action must be suppressed. I cannot say that I ought to do what the feeling inclines me to do, as you seem to imply. I appeal to rational principles to over rule the feelings, and decide what I ought and ought not do, based on these principles. So the bad feeling of shame or embarrassment is telling me to coverup and fix the negative situation to make the bad feeling go away. It is inclining me toward a reflexive judgement that the situation is bad. But a rational judgement might be telling me that the bad feeling is misleading me. There is no need to coverup, I ought to suck it up and live through the bad feeling, for the sake of a higher (rational) good.
This sentence doesn't make sense. What is guilty is not the action but the person. I recognize myself as guilty of having done something wrong. Please submit your objection correctly written. When you've done that, we can discuss what you mean.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have not made this distinction. One can rationally judge (or make a proposition, what is the same) about what is good or bad. But there is also the feeling that what I am doing is wrong, which may happen in a direct or non-reflective way, as you yourself will later acknowledge. But this is not a judgment about right or wrong, but about my action.
This has nothing to do with ethics, which is a philosophical discipline about what good means, but with the way human beings behave and feel. Psychology, if you like. Ethics can consider this as a fact, but it is not its main objective.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have not spoken of " starting ", but of a type of emotion that concerns the ideal of the Self. It is shame.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When did I say such a thing? The conciousness of something does not need to be reflexive. Although it often is. I'm aware that I'm being watched, without having to reflect on it.
I think this is special pleading. Take a simple conflict. I like ice-cream, but it makes me fat. Which is rational, liking ice-cream or not liking fat? I say neither.
You don't realize that I'm not in the field of morals or ethics. I'm not recommending anything. I'm explaining what moral emotions are and how they work. I mean, psychology.
There can be a contradiction between a moral feeling and a rational judgment. It is the obsessive leitmotif of Dostoevsky's novels and the center of Hume's ethics. Dostoevsky was an irrationalist. Therefore, he gave absolute primacy to the feeling of Love (with a capital letter). Hume was an Enlightened one, but he was aware of the importance of sympathy for morality. The same with Spinoza. Both believed that morality is based on reason, but without moral emotion there can be no impulse to do good. Therefore we can say that they called for a synthesis between them. If they split up, both of them could be wrong.
I don't need to say that I agree with them. Reason alone can be directed in the wrong direction. Selfishness, for example. Moral emotion alone can be stupidly applied. A synthesis is necessary. Finding the right synthesis is not easy, but it is necessary.
I do not believe there is such a feeling. That's the root of our difference. People definitely talk as if there is, "I get the feeling that this is the wrong thing to do", but I do not believe there is any such feeling.
I have never actually experienced such a feeling. I might get an uneasy feeling, an uncomfortable feeling, and associate this feeling with the judgement that the action is wrong, but I do not believe I've ever really had a feeling that what I am doing is wrong. It's always a thought that what I am doing is wrong, not a feeling.
If, in psychology they assume that there is such a feeling, then I think this is wrong. I can suppose that it is possible that you and other people have had such a feeling, but I have not, but when I do, I see that this is illogical, and so I dismiss this as people not properly describing their feelings. So I really do not believe that such a feeling is possible and I will explain why. The word "wrong" refers to a concept with an opposing term "right". And anytime we use a word to describe a particular situation, this requires a conscious judgement that the situation fulfills the requirements of using that word. So when I say "that's a house", "that's a car", "the colour of that thing is red", or "that action is wrong", I've made a conscious judgement concerning the thing.
Feelings do not come with words attached to them, such that we can take the word and say that this is the feeling. It takes a judgement to say what type of feeling any feeling is. But the judgement that such and such is wrong, or such and such is right, is a very special type of judgement. There is no real model to indicate what right and wrong looks like, to aid us in making such a judgement, so we might just assume that we "feel" what right and wrong are like. This is what you, and unenlightened as well, seem to be claiming that we just "feel" the difference between right and wrong. But I think that this is clearly a mistaken assumption. In reality we must judge the difference between right and wrong, by reference to some principles, as I explained above.
Quoting David Mo
This is another example of your mistaken attitude. This is a description, "I'm being watched". You are claiming that you are aware that the situation fulfils the requirements of "I'm being watched" without reflecting on the situation. Can you see how this is impossible? In order for you, or any person to apply these words to the situation, it is necessary that you reflect on the situation and make that judgement. Even if your claim is that there is a situation which fulfills the requirements of the judgement "I'm being watched", and this situation exists independently of that judgement, how would you propose that a person might recognize oneself to be in that situation, without reflecting on it? What you are arguing is simply, and blatantly, illogical and impossible. You are claiming that recognition occurs without reflection. So you are assigning to "feeling" what can only be accomplished by a conscious judgement, and that is simply a mistaken premise.
Quoting unenlightened
Why would you say "neither" when the answer is clearly both? Both, "I like ice cream", and "I do not like fat", are conscious, rational judgements. You can see that these two contradict each other, because ice cream contains a lot of fat. But distinct rational judgements often contradict each other, due to lack of knowledge (not knowing that ice cream has fat), or simple sloppiness in the acceptance of principles or premises. So in this case you can know that ice cream contains fat, and also know that you like ice cream, therefore knowingly make contradictory statements, while each statement is itself based in a rational judgement. However, I might accuse you of being irrational, and if we analyze the two statements we might find enough ambiguity in the use of the word "like", to account for the appearance of irrationality. Then I'd recant, saying you're not really irrational, you're only using "like" in different ways.
Quoting David Mo
And I am explaining to you why your concept of "moral emotions" is incoherent, irrational, and unintelligible. You would need to somehow clear up, and get beyond the fundamental contradictions which you have displayed to me, in order to explain moral emotions to me. However, the problem seems to be very deeply seated, inherent within your perspective, and your desire is simply to assume that "moral emotions" makes sense, and proceed from there.
Quoting David Mo
Do you not see the contradiction here? If morality is truly based on reason, then it is contradictory to say that it is emotion which gives us the impulse to do good. What is missing here is the separation of what unenlightened called "passion" from morality, which involves the distinction between bad and good. When we allow that "passion", as the motivator for action, is something separate from the faculty which judges bad and good (like the Platonic tripartite psyche), then the emotion which gives us the impulse to act, are independent from any judgement of bad or good. In the Platonic description, emotion or "passion", is simply the inclination or urge to act, and it can be directed toward either bad or good. So in the Platonic description, the person of power, ability, capacity, in a position to act, might be directed towards either good or bad.
That might serve to exemplify what I find as the deficiency in your concept of "moral emotion". Emotions are just the urge to act, independent of any judgement of bad or good. So an emotion cannot be "moral", because it has no regard for good or bad. The urge to act must be directed in order that the action go toward something good rather than bad. This implies a necessary separation between "moral" and "emotion", as "moral" is applied to that faculty which directs the emotions. And emotions themselves have no dependence on bad or good, they are properly independent of such judgements.
Therefore when we say that a feeling, or emotion gives a person the urge to act, we have no principle whereby we might say that this urge is toward something good or bad.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you saying that until you think "This is a house" you don't have the perception of a house? Your life must be hard. You should see a specialist.
Joking aside, when you perceive anything you get a complex of intuitions and mental constructs without having to reflect on them. Only people with brain damage dissociate (sensations from) forms and (perceptions of) things. Similarly, when I experience a feeling of discomfort it is intentional: that is, it has a specific sense. For example, fear is very different from guilt. They have different causes and effects. A further analysis is verbal, of course. "This is a panic attack" is a reflexive verbal act. It is even possible that this analysis is wrong. I can believe that I hate a woman even though a further analysis may show that my feeling was really a frustrated love. It is wrong because it doesn't reflects the very feeling. What means that the feeling exists before and without the reflective analysis.
I don't think you don't have differentiated feelings. When a feeling is associated with some characteristics (of fear or guilt) - as you said - it is because they are in the very same feeling. You don't need to say "I had a panic attack" to have had a panic attack. You can rest assured: you don't need a specialist. You just need to think better about what you're saying.
I don't see any contradiction. It's one thing to know and another to want. The person who says "I know very well that I shouldn't eat chocolate, but I can't resist" is expressing that difference. On the other hand, Hume showed that you cannot rationally prove that you should do something. Reason can show the consequences of drinking chocolate, but not that you should prefer to refrain from eating chocolate than to face the consequences. There is no contradiction in preferring a short and intense life to a long but insipid one.
Therefore, if you want to live a moral life you will have to base it on moral emotions. It will be based on reason, to the extent that it can rely on them. Reason must know how to use the emotions that suit it in order to reject those that do not. Without this reason is morally useless. Beautiful, but useless. Pure idealism.
Don't give me platonisms. Plato was very intelligent and wrote very well, but his idea of the Ideal Good seems to me to be pure illusion.
In my opinion, reason and moral emotion are a tandem. If one stops pedaling, we're not going anywhere.
You don't seem to grasp your error, so I'll explain it to you in another way, as a category mistake. Let's assume that we can apprehend feelings like pain and pleasure, directly, as pain or pleasure, without any reflection. We know that it's pain, or that it's pleasure simply from the feeling, it's enjoyable, or unpleasant. Despite the fact that one might say it "feels good", or it "feels bad", this is not "good
" and "bad" in the moral sense. To say that it feels good, therefore it is good in the moral sense of "good", is a category error, because moral goods are determined by rational judgements, not by feelings. The category of pleasure and pain is distinct from the category of good and bad. One is a type of feeling, the other a type of rational judgement. Maintaining this distinction is what allows us to say that some pleasures are not good, and some pains are good. To conflate these categories is a category mistake.
Quoting David Mo
The contradiction is in saying that morality is based in reason, yet emotion gives us the impulse to do good. If emotion gave us the impulse to do good, then we would not need reason for morality, we could just follow our emotions, and therefore do good. Morality would not be based in reason it would be based in emotions.
You might say the person knows better than to eat the chocolate, but eats it anyway, therefore the feeling is the motivator, the driving force. But the issue is the person who succeeds in resisting the temptation. What about when the person resists eating the chocolate and eats the salad instead? Because there are two distinctly opposing outcomes from the same feeling, the urge to eat the chocolate, we cannot say that it is the urge itself, which causes the good outcome. This is why the driving force, the motivator, the "passion", what we call the "feeling", in this case we could name it simply as "hunger", is apprehended as independent from the moral good. That passion, inclination to act, urge, or feeling, may be directed towards either bad or good, but there is no good nor bad inherent within that feeling. The urge toward a particular end, to eat the chocolate, would be what is called an apparent good, like when something feels good, but that is not the moral good. There's a difference in category between things which appear as good, because they feel good, and things which are morally good.
Quoting David Mo
Plato has produced the most comprehensive moral philosophy ever, and Christian ethics are based in it. Christian ethics, which tell us to be guided by eternal truths of the intellect, rather than bodily feelings, are responsible for leading the western world through the scientific revolution into the modern era. So it's foolish to dismiss Plato's work as pure illusion, it would be better described as visionary.
You have a feeling of shame or guilt. This is the psychological fact. After that you can think about what you've had and categorize it as shame or guilt. What you called "knowing" is the latter. Obviously you need to think about it to know what it is. But to be X and to think what X can be are different actions.
Feeling good is not doing good. Feeling that I'm doing good for someone is not the same as feeling good about hurting someone. The first is empathy; the second is sadism. They are different things with different implications. So what?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have already answered this. There are two bases of morality: reason and emotion. I used the metaphor of a tandem.
For example, Spinoza: passions are stronger than reason. So reason needs to ally with them and reinforce the passions that aim at rational or moral ends.
You can disagree but you can't say that this is a contradictory theory.
Hume says that reason tells me that if I eat too much chocolate it will raise my blood sugar level. But I can answer that I prefer a shorter and more pleasant life to a tasteless long life. Reason can't say anything against a radical hedonistic choice. Listen, I've already written this for you. Did you read it?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
According the Fathers of the Church, intellect is a servant of faith. We're not getting into theologies now, I hope.
OK, so here's the problem. A feeling comes without any judgement of good or bad. It has not been categorized. Then the feeling must be judged as good or bad in relation to the current situation. The same type of feeling might be judged as good in some situations and bad in others. That is the nature of a "feeling". But your supposed feeling of "guilt" already has that judgement built into it, it's always has the same categorization in relation to good or bad. Therefore "guilt" cannot be a feeling.
Quoting David Mo
This is unacceptable. Having two distinct bases, as you propose would lead to inconsistency and contradiction of principles, therefore indecisiveness, and the inability to decide moral questions.
Quoting David Mo
In the sense that it supports contradictory principles, such as the ones you've expressed, it is a contradictory theory. Why do you think that a theory which allows contradictory principles to be true ought not be called what it is, a contradictory theory?
I didn't say that feeling includes a judgment. Feeling is the perception of have injured someone. Just as empathy does not include the judgment of feeling what another feels. But it is felt. You see the color red before you are thinking that this color is different from blue. The same is true for moral emotions. May or may not be accompanied for judgments about them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't see why. My understanding of what is good can be supported by the feeling of empathy and result in an action that my reason recognizes as good. Where do you see contradiction? On the contrary, it is obvious that some feelings and reason may coincide. It has been said since Socrates, if not before.
That's better called a memory. It's not what people would normally call a feeling.
Quoting David Mo
I already explained all this. Just because there are times when an action urged by a feeling is consistent with reason, this doesn't mean that it is always the case. When it is not the case, as is common, then there is contradiction. So, having both emotion and reason as the basis for morality allows for contradiction. Simply put, the two statements "morality is based in reason", and "morality is based in emotion" are contradictory.
To resolve the contradiction we might say, as I suggested, that emotion and reason are two distinct aspects of morality. Emotion gives us the urge to act, while reason gives us the capacity to judge what is the appropriate act. But if we separate these two like this, to allow that emotion is part of morality, we ought not confuse what each part gives us. So a feeling, such as your proposed feeling of "guilt", cannot give us the urge to do a good act. A feeling can only give us the urge to act, and reason must determine what is the good act when that feeling occurs. As I told you numerous times already, when a person recognizes oneself as being guilty (what you call the feeling of guilt), the person might choose either good or bad actions in relation to the feeling. And the same is true for all feelings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not speaking of the past, but present. Red perception is not a memory.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Who is denying that?
Quoting David Mo
You said, the perception of having injured someone. And you also said something about having to see red before you can judge that it is different from blue. What you are referring to are memories.