Moral Imagination

When I first saw the phrase “moral imagination”, I thought of a secular philosopher trying to defend the position that all people can be moral in their own way. I’m not really sure why I first thought this. Maybe I thought this because I had just had a conversation with a person about how Hume builds a moral foundation without the existence of a god or a higher power. But anyways…
I assumed that moral imagination would differ from person to person and that no one could ever have the same beliefs as another. “Imagination”, to me, promotes the use of radical ideas and extreme thoughts. I don’t know why I had such a negative connotation to this. I think I was just being bitter about the absence of religion in some of these moral theories. But, after I realized I was being irrational (Kant would be proud of me!), I decided to read the articles with a more open mind. I decided that I would give them the benefit of the doubt and listen for their argument. Also, Professor McCrickerd also stated in class herself that she wouldn’t just randomly assign articles and reading. She only gives us stuff that she thinks in very interesting and relevant to the topics we are discussing in class. I realized that these articles had to be somewhat entertaining.

I found it very true that reading literature helps cultivate moral imagination. This made perfect sense to me. Very few things in this class make perfect sense the first time I read it, so I was very excited that I understood a concept right off the bat. I am becoming a better philosopher!! I understood it as, the more we read, the more experiences we gain. Also, these experiences are better because we do not have to suffer the negative consequences of them first-hand. We just get to observe and make judgments. We get to see how our moral acts play out without even being involved directly in the situation. And judgment helps us gain perception and knowledge about the world around us. And when we know more about our surroundings, it is easier to make moral judgments.

I also found it to be true that people do take offense to education of emotions, as discussed in the Maxwell and Reichenbach article. We were discussing this fact in our Intro to LPS class this morning. We were talking about the Amish and how they give their children no choice of what religion they want to practice. They do not give them choice in their life style until they are older. They socialize them to believe and think in certain ways. Many people were very opposed to this lifestyle and to this thinking in our class. We discussed whether there is a right protecting these children from this religious/emotional socialization.

The final article made sense to me. I was not surprised by the findings of the experiments. People are self centered and do not want to give up their own pleasure in extreme amounts. People are willing to sacrifice some, to the point where they are still comfortable, but no more. This seemed reasonable to me.

I would encourage people to observe and read and take in as many opportunities as possible to learn about your surroundings. It is easier to make judgments this way. People will be more informed and you will be able to recall situations that are similar to the ones that you are currently involved in. You will have examples of behaviors that worked and examples that didn’t. You will have a grounding and actual evidence to base your claims off of.