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Full Idea
The reference to a man's emotions has a significance for our understanding of his moral sincerity, not as a substitute for or addition to how he acts, but as, on occasion, underlying our understanding of how he acts.
Gist of Idea
Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions
Source
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.223)
Book Ref
Williams,Bernard: 'Problems of the Self: Papers 1956-1972' [CUP 1979], p.223
A Reaction
Williams aims to rescue emotion from the emotivists, and replace it at the centre of traditional modes of moral judgement. I suppose we could assess one rogue robot as behaving 'badly' in a community of robots.
| 24007 | Emotivism saw morality as expressing emotions, and influencing others' emotions [Williams,B] |
| 24008 | Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions [Williams,B] |
| 24009 | Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B] |
| 24010 | An admirable human being should have certain kinds of emotional responses [Williams,B] |
| 24012 | Kant's love of consistency is too rigid, and it even overrides normal fairness [Williams,B] |