Psychology as Explaining Conduct

• The business of psychology is to explain conduct, not to justify or condemn it, which is the business of ethics.

• Explaining an action means setting forth its relations to other facts, especially mental processes preceding it.

• Antecedent mental processes may be said to cause an action, though this causation differs from physical causation in sciences like physics or chemistry.

• While psychology cannot justify or condemn, its explanations can influence ethical judgements; e.g., acts of violence are condemned less if done after great provocation.

• The French proverb “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner” captures this idea, though sometimes greater psychological knowledge can increase condemnation (e.g., lying with malicious intent is worse than lying in ignorance).

• Four main mental processes determine conduct; two are especially important for ethics:

  • (a) Ideo-motor tendency: some or all ideas may automatically produce movements without conscious desire (e.g., shutting a door when feeling a cold wind).

  • Conscious awareness can interrupt this automatic action if a stronger desire arises (e.g., desire for fresh air over warmth).

  • Some psychologists deny a pure ideo-motor tendency, claiming it is really a desired and intended action made habitual through repetition.

  • Automatic ideo-motor actions are involuntary; only when affected by conscious desire do they become voluntary and subject to ethics.

  • If ideas tend to lead to actions, it is important to have the right ideas in mind, as expressed by St. Paul’s exhortation to think on what is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy.

  • (b) Desire: most common cause of actions (e.g., hunger → eating; curiosity → study). Desire is a developed mental process and central to moral action.

  • (c) Unconscious mental tendencies: sometimes seen as unconscious desires or wishes that work like conscious desires but are less controlled and less shaped by social conventions.

  • These tendencies may involve primeval urges (e.g., sex) and unconscious regulation of behaviour (e.g., sleepwalking).

  • Actions from unconscious tendencies are involuntary, but can become partly voluntary if influenced by conscious desire (e.g., desire for psycho-analysis).

  • Only the possibility of desire intervention makes them objects of moral judgement.

  • (d) Sense of duty: often regarded as the highest form of moral action.

  • Some psychologists see it as just another, though complex, desire; others see it as a separate determining tendency called conscience.

  • This conscience will be studied further in later analysis.