processes. The simple argument "She lied to him, but he's always been
perfectly frank with her" is a mix of this kind: it (a) implies that the sit-
uation is a violation of the Golden Rule and (b) appeals to the emo-
tional response that should result from this description. Once you
construe what she did as "harming him in a way he never harmed her,"
a certain emotional overtone is added that should lead to a particular
conclusion. When I say that emotion is involved, I do not just mean
strong reactions of admiration or disgust. Emotion also includes very
weak reactions, barely recorded by our conscious mind, that lead us to
choose one course of action over another. Emotional rewards trigger
behaviors such as holding the door open to let your friend in, or pass- [175]
ing the salt before people ask for it, although the emotional effects are
so slight that we often (and wrongly) feel that the behaviors are not
driven by emotion.
Most psychologists say that the opposition between principles and
feelings is overstated. The emotions themselves are principled, they
occur in a patterned way as the result of mental activity that is pre-
cisely organized but not entirely accessible to consciousness. If this is
the case, then the explicitmoral principles are optional. They are a
possible interpretation of our common intuitions and feelings, rather
than their cause.^3
This explains why it is extremely difficult to elicit general moral
principles in many places in the world. For instance, the Fang find the
explicit principle "Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you" so vague and general that it is virtually meaningless. But these
people are certainly not immoral; far from it. They constantly talk
about this action being right and that one wrong, as is true of every
human group.
So an abstract moral code, with principles and deductions, may
well be a cultural artifact like a writing system or a musical notation.
People everywhere have specific musical intuitions, they judge that
this or that chord, given the parameters of their musical tradition, is
felicitous or not; but it is only in some cultures that people write trea-
tises on harmony to describe these intuitions in a more systematic
way. That people have principled moral feelings without explicit
moral principles would explain why cross-cultural studies of explicit
moral reasoning give very confusing results. There are places where
such reasoning is familiar and places where people find it baffling.^4
Consider another difficulty: If moral intuitions came from moral
reasoning, then people who are clearly immoral would probably be
WHYDOGODSANDSPIRITSMATTER?