Moral Imagination

The moral imagination is the thing that assigns value to our values. If confronted with a complex moral situation which theory would be best to help us make sense of a confusing situation? How are priorities set and decisions made when there seems to be no clear moral path to take (or perhaps far too many to take); how do we choose? I am currently going through many of these questions and to be honest have been floundering for quite some time. I know I want to go graduate school, unfortunately deadlines are coming up at the end of the month and I am unsatisfied with the strength of what I'm sending in. However, I'm also unsatisfied with my school performance. The more I give to one the more I seem to carve out of the other. Yet, these are two very linked "worlds", especially because I would like to one day go into academia for a living. How can I ask a professor to write me a letter of recommendation when I know I am underperforming in their class? How can I in good conscious convince a grad school that I am professor material when I cannot make it as a student? Should I sacrifice the time I work on class assignments for more time to work on my statement of purpose? What classes must be sacrificed in order to complete the work of another? It doesn't end at school either. How can I tell my friends, who have helped me remain sane for four years, that though this is the last year we have together I don't have time to help with their problems? How do I tell the girl who likes me that though I like her as well I don't have time to be a good boyfriend because my future asks for my present? The categorization and prioritizing of all these problems, costs and benefits, are weighed by the moral imagination. How we assign worth to the constant barrage of opportunities that present themselves, especially when these opportunities are neither entirely good nor entirely bad.
Pardales lists some of the ways our brains assign moral laws and constructs in order to deal with the dizzying number of nuances in most real world situations. The prototype works as a sort of moral induction. Based on previous situations in which a moral category was deployed (such as the idea of "fairness" when one is being cheated) we form exemplars that work to inform us on how to use these moral ideas. In other words every instance of a moral dilemma calls for a category, usually a bit of "stretching" is involved in applying it or perhaps an elucidation which leaves us with a changed, perhaps evolved, category to deploy again when we're done.
Sometimes metaphor guides our thinking. How are we to define and use a term like "justice"? One way is through experiences in which we are informed of what justice is compared to metaphorically. For example going to a court room and seeing the word "justice" deployed in a way to sentence a criminal we may begin to see justice as a redress of a grievance, either personal or against the state. If we reflect on the metaphors we use when talking about a situation we can be informed by the underlying connections within our language to gain a better understanding of how we process morally ambiguous situations. When we talk about justice how do we link this idea to other ideas, perhaps justice is closely tied in our mind with judgment, normalization, and punishment or perhaps we see it as equality and compensation in order to restore a "balance".
The third strategy discused by Pardales is the idea of narrative. I found this to be particularly relevent to my study of history. By creating a story, or perhaps a better word would be fable, we can examine the institutions that putatively "created" us-- things like upbringing, family situation, economic status-- and assign them a narrative quality. The quality of narrative allows you to asses your life like you would the plot of a movie. We can guess the kind of decisions we should make based on where we place ourselves in our narrative and how we construct and value the "actors" in our life. Thinking of things as "events" in your life is probably the most common way of using the narrative source of knowledge. We assign value to these events in order to learn from them, to take them as cues on where our story might go or as warnings and portents for a path that could lead to an unsatisfactory ending.
Lastly moral perception is somewhat a kin to empathy. It's the recognition of callousness or kindness in ourselves, or in other words a constant awareness of our ethical situation that serves to inform our actions. The ability to recognize the moral aspects of a situation is moral perception.
How to cultivate this moral imagination then becomes the best way to ensure a correct moral choice through the proper valuation of principles. I've thought about it a lot today and this article has been extremely important to me. Unfortunately I have to read for another class so I probably won't be able to finish the other two before I go to bed, but I will try. I've tried to take a step back and assess my situation. Why should I go to graduate school unprepared? Why should I sacrifice a semester that could be spent studying in a healthy way (an act I enjoy enough to pursue it as a career) for one that is spent spitting out half finished and unsatisfactory work in classes I should be savoring. These classes could teach me how to better deal with my situation (and they have somewhat thanks to the kindness and advice of professors I respect who are willing to talk to me after class) yet I cannot give them the attention they deserve because the situation that they could enlighten me on precludes me from full engagement with them. In a time of moral (and general) uncertainty why should I destroy both my prospects for entering the best graduate school I can attend, ruin one of the last opportunities I have to get the most out of the end of my undergraduate career, and give up my social life in the process? The article made me realize it is a losing equation to live my life this way. For that reason I've decided (after I talk with my advisor some more about it on Friday) that I'm going to work a year before I attend graduate school and assemble the best portfolio I can in the mean time. This will hopefully free up time to give these classes what they deserve of me and what I believe I can deliver. I feel awful about wasting so much time and putting myself through so much misery pursuing a course I might postpone, but I find this decision to be liberatory. I've come to realize that I took the wrong approach in this class when expecting of it something akin to analytic philosophy, but I've also come to appreciate that in the breakdown of analytic thinking (my Deviance and Philosophy of Science classes have both done most of the breaking down) I needed moral thinking. Before what seemed like nonsense to me is the only thing that is beginning to make sense. The question of "what to do" looms extremely large in this crossroads in my life and it was the lack of an ethical approach and an ethically uncultivated state that prevented me from seeing the forest through the trees. I thought I was being mature about making these sacrifices (is this what being an adult is about? I frequently wondered) but I've realized I was actually immature for treating people and things I cared about as in competition in order to rush something that I perhaps was not ready for but felt was expected of me. I realize this is getting long and a bit rambling but it has come as a bit of a revelation for me. I feel so so much better, and I think it is the kind of good feeling that comes from having taken an ethical (in ways I never would have defined it) approach. It is a very healthy feeling happiness.