Joshua May's paper in this issue is an empirical study of the kinds of emotional responses that people have to human reproductive cloning (see page 26). This study gets its start from the strong claims made against reproductive cloning by Leon Kass1 and John Kekes.2

May's paper is a good example of clearly targeted empirical research that clearly pinpoints empirical claims made in ethics or bioethics. Leon Kass claims that it is disgust or repugnance that most people feel—‘the widespread repugnances of humankind’—while John Kekes claims that these are behaviours that ‘just about everybody in contemporary Western societies would find disgusting’. So showing that this repugnance is not widespread or that just about everybody does not find reproductive cloning disgusting undermines these claims. May's study gives us some decent and initial reason for thinking that these empirical claims are at best difficult to substantiate and at worst, false.

But what generally are we to say about the role of emotions in ethics and in ethical judgement? We tend to sharply distinguish ‘mere’ emotions or emotional responses from reasoned or rational argument. Clearly, it would seem, if we are to make claims about rightness or wrongness they should be on the basis of reasons and rational argument. Emotions look to be outside of this paradigm concerned as they are with our responses to the world rather than the world itself and the clear articulation of inferential relationships within it. Most importantly emotions are felt subjectively and so cannot lay any generalised claim on others (particularly others who do not feel as the arguer does). The subjectivity of emotions means that they cannot function in arguments because, unless they are universal, they cannot form the basis of a claim on another person. The reason they cannot form this basis is …