Reid on the first principles of morals

Abstract

What role do the first principles of morals play in Reid's moral theory? Reid has an official line regarding their role, which identifies these principles as foundational propositions that evidentially ground other moral propositions. I claim that, by Reid's own lights, this line of thought is mistaken. There is, however, another line of thought in Reid, one which identifies the first principles of morals as constitutive of moral thought. I explore this interpretation, arguing that it is a fruitful way of understanding much of what Reid wants to say about the role of moral first principles and drawing some connections between it and recent work on moral nonnaturalism.

Keywords::

• constitutivism
• first principles
• foundationalism
• moral nonnaturalism
• Derek Parfit

Notes

^1. In my formulation of these principles, I stay close to Reid's own wording but in some cases phrase them slightly differently from Reid or abbreviate them. I use subscripts to distinguish the general from the particular principles. I do not know why Reid designates the first set of principles as general and the latter particular. The members of both sets of principles seem equally general.

^2. An identity sentence states a truth only if both terms flanking ‘ = ’ refer to the same thing. In the example I use, they both refer to Obama. Had Obama not existed, however, they would not have so referred. So, the proposition is necessarily true only relative to Obama's actually existing. See Leftow (2012), 4.

^3. The phrase comes from McNaughton (1996).

^4. Reid offers a somewhat fuller list of the principles of justice in PE, 140.

^5. There are two ways to address the concern raised above. First, one could deny that the first principles of morals are general principles. Van Cleve (1999) explores this ‘particularist’ reading with regard to the first principles of contingent truths. Wolterstorff (2004), 92–95 addresses this interpretation, noting that it is difficult to square with Reid's insistence that first principles are principles of common sense, propositions that agents believe in common. Second, one could maintain that Reid also wishes to include among the first principles of morals what I have called the principles of justice. While I cannot rule out this possibility, it is worth noting that in his presentation of the first principles, Reid does not include the principles of justice, which is surprising if Reid thought of them as first principles in the sense specified in the passage quoted above.

^6. An exception might be principle 1P, which states (roughly) that we ought to prefer a greater good to a lesser one. In his gloss of this principle, however, Reid specifies that by ‘good’ he means one's good on the whole (EAP V.i: 272). Strictly speaking, then, this principle is one regarding prudential action: ‘And though to act from this motive solely may be called prudence rather than virtue, yet this prudence deserves some regard upon its own account, and much more as it is the friend and ally of virtue, and the enemy of all vice….’

^7. Patrick Rysiew has suggested to me that there is a third option, which is to reinterpret the sort of epistemic basing or grounding relation that Reid intends to employ. Under this re-interpretation, the grounding relation on which Reid has his eye would be of the presuppositional variety – ‘things we take for granted’ (EIP I.ii) in the forming of various judgments and in whose absence of we could not form such judgments. While the details of this interpretation would have to be worked out, it strikes me as a promising approach that is compatible with the reading of Reid that I offer in this section.

^8. Those familiar with Rysiew (2002) and Wolterstorff (2001), Ch. IX will notice that the interpretation of Reid that I am about to develop regarding the first principles of morals has affinities with their proposals concerning how to understand the role of the principles of common sense.

^9. As it is typically understood, the hypothetical imperative is disjunctive, enjoining us either to take the necessary means toward our ends or to surrender those ends. Korsgaaard does not emphasize the second disjunct of this injunction. Perhaps this is because thus understood the hypothetical imperative is not clearly a norm of efficacy.

^10. Reid's constitutivism is not limited to the moral domain, as he sounds similar themes with regard to some non-moral matters. Regarding reasoning, for example, Reid writes: ‘A man who perfectly understood a just syllogism, without believing that the conclusion follows from the premises, would be a greater monster than a man born without hands or feet’ (EIP VI.v: 481).

^11. Reid elsewhere indicates that the blind do not conceive colors and the deaf do not conceive sounds: ‘Thus a man cannot conceive colours, if he never saw, nor sounds, if he never heard’ (EIP IV.i: 308–309).

^12. This terminology is borrowed from Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014), which offers a defense of moral nonnaturalism that appeals to the fixed points.

^13. Reid is careful to note that a system of morals is not to be equated with a theory of morals. For the latter, Reid writes, is simply ‘a just account of the structure of our moral powers’ (EAP VI.ii: 282). Thus understood, a theory of morals, Reid points out, has ‘little connection with the knowledge of our duty; and those who differ most in the theory of our moral powers, agree in the practical rules of morals which they dictate’ (ibid).

^14. Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) work out the details of this approach, distinguishing different types of conceptual necessity. Fundamental to the approach is the claim that conceptual truths needn't be empty of content or obviously true.

^15. Reid, as I will note in a moment, does say that we have conceptions. What Reid means by a ‘conception’ is, however, a vexed issue. But it is clear that he does not have anything like Fregean concepts in mind. As Castagnetto (1992) points out, Reid seemed to think that when it comes to the nature of thinking, we have two options: either its immediate objects are Lockean ideas or worldly objects themselves. Reid opts for the latter.

^16. ‘In every other proposition,’ Reid writes, ‘the predicate at least must be a general notion; a predicable and an universal being one and the same’ (EIP VI.i: 415; cf. EIP IV.i: 302 and VI.iii: 439).

^17. Might Reid be using the term ‘meanings’ simply to talk of referents? Other passages suggest that he is not. Concerning the meaning of general terms, Reid writes: ‘That such general words may answer their intention, all that is necessary is, that those who use them should affix the same meaning or notion, that is, the same conception to them. The common meaning is the standard by which such conceptions are formed, and they are said to be true or false, according as they agree or disagree with it. Thus, my conception of felony is true and just, when it agrees with the meaning of that word in the laws relating to it, and in authors who understand the law. The meaning of the word is the thing conceived; and that meaning is the conception affixed to it by those who best understand the language.’ (EIP IV.i: 303) While this passage raises questions about Reid's views, it strikes me as good – albeit not decisive – evidence that meanings are not, for Reid, merely referents. Cf. EIP 408. For a different view, see Rysiew (forthcoming).

^18. See, for example, what Reid says about real essences at EIP V.ii. One might propose, on Reid's behalf, that these moral principles are not conceptual truths but metaphysically necessary truths that are self-evident. This proposal would not, I believe, dissolve the puzzle facing Reid's view. Reid's understanding of self-evidence is, after all, the traditional one: self-evident propositions are ‘no sooner understood than they are believed. The judgment follows the apprehension of them necessarily’ (EIP VI.ii: 452). It might be that, according to this understanding of self-evidence, those who deny self-evident moral propositions are not competent moral agents. But now suppose that propositions are constituted by universals, as Reid believes. We still need to know what is it about those universals that constitute the self-evident moral propositions which guarantees that when someone considers and fails to believe these propositions, he thereby fails to engage in competent moral thought in the sense that Reid specifies.

^19. ‘The nature of every species, whether of substance, of quality, or of relation, and in general every thing which the ancients called an universal, answers to the description of a Platonic idea, if in that description you leave out the attribute of existence’ (EIP IV.ii 319).

^20. Reid does not always state his position so starkly. Elsewhere he writes: ‘Ideas are said to have a real existence in the mind, at least, while we think of them; but universals have no real existence. When we ascribe existence to them, it is not an existence in time or place, but existence in some individual subject; and this existence means no more that they are truly attributes of such a subject. Their existence is nothing but predicability or the capacity of being attributed to a subject. The name of predicables, which was given them in ancient philosophy, is that which most properly expresses their nature’ (EIP V.vi: 393). In this passage, Reid's view sounds even closer to Parfit's, as Reid is willing to talk of more or less robust ways in which a thing exists. In EIP.iv: 373, Reid claims that only individuals exist. Universals, since they are not individuals, do not exist. This thesis would allow Reid to claim that God exists even though God is not temporally or spatially located. To my knowledge, Reid never offers an argument for thinking that only individuals exist, simply following Locke and Berkeley on this issue.

^21. Tuggy (2000) explores Reid's quasi-occasionalism.

^22. Thanks to Rebecca Copenhaver, Patrick Rysiew, and René van Woudenberg for their feedback on an earlier draft of this essay, as well as to the participants at the New Essays on Reid Conference at the University of Vermont in November 2013.

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Terence Cuneo

Terence Cuneo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vermont. In addition to having co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid (2004), he has published widely on Reid's ethics. His articles include “Reid's Ethics” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011), “Signs of Value: Reid on the Evidential Role of Feelings in Moral Judgment” (British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2006), and “Reidian Moral Perception” (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2003). He has also published two books in ethical theory, The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism (Oxford, 2007) and Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking (Oxford, 2014).