References
- Bradley , F. H. 1927 . Ethical Studies Oxford : Oxford University Press . [1876], 58.
- Prichard , H. A. 1968 . Moral Obligation Edited by: Goldman , A. I. and Kim , J. 1 Oxford : Oxford University Press . At one time, Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1978], 126) agreed with Plato that “if justice is not a good to the just man, moralists who recommend it as virtue are perpetrating a fraud.” Likewise, David Gauthier (Morals by Agreement [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], 2) says “the acceptance of duty is truly advantageous.” Kurt Baier (”Moral Reasons and Reasons to Be Moral,” in Values and Morals, ed. [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978]) and Kai Nielsen (Why Be Moral? [Buffalo: Prometheus, 1989]) agree that “Why be moral?” is a legitimate question, although Nielsen's answer is pessimistic. On the other side, Prichard's view that the question itself is illegitimate is endorsed by J. C. Thornton (”Can the Moral Point of View Be Justified?” in Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory, ed. K. Pahel and M. Schiller [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970]), Dan Brock (”The Justification of Morality,” American Philosophical Quarterly 14 [1977]), and John McDowell (”Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 52 supp. [1978]), among others. Prichard was not the first to take such a view, either. For example, see Essay II of F.H. Bradley's Ethical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1876] 1927) or Henry Sidgwick's introduction to The Methods of Ethics 7th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1907] 1962).
- 1992 . Morality and Moral Theory New York : Oxford University Press . Anti-theorists characterize (and consequently reject) moral theorizing as an attempt to mechanically deduce all particular moral conclusions from a single universal principle. Robert Louden [], chaps. 5 and 6) agrees that any theory fitting that description ought to be rejected but argues that the best and historically most prominent moral theories (i.e., those of Aristotle and Kant) do not fit the description.
- Falk , W. D. 1986 . “ (”‘Ought’ and Motivation,” reprinted in ” . In Ought, Reasons, and Morality Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press . []) accuses Prichard of equivocating between internalist and externalist senses of moral “oughts.” The only other substantial critique of Prichard, to my knowledge, is Kurt Baier (”Moral Reasons and Reasons to Be Moral,” in Values and Morals, ed. A. I. Goldman and J. Kim [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978], 231–38). For an especially acute critique of intuitionism more generally, see Stephen Darwall, “Ethical Intuitionism and the Motivation Problem,” in Ethical Intuitionism: Re- Evaluations, Philip Stratton-Lake, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- Actually, I suppose today we frame the question in terms of right action rather than moral action. My main reason for moving between these terms is stylistic, speaking of doing what is moral when I am trying to follow Prichard and of doing what is right otherwise. When speaking of persons rather than of actions (being moral as opposed to being prudent), or of separating the subject of morality from other subjects such as prudence, I find “being moral” and “morality” more natural than “being right” and “rightness,” but again, my reasons for choosing one word rather than another are in most cases stylistic rather than deeply philosophical.
- Prichard . Moral Obligation 2
- It seems easier here to speak of wrongness rather than Tightness as being associated with special reasons for action. That one course of action involves telling the truth does not imply that one should take that course, but that another course of action involves telling a lie has clear implications. Roderick Wiltshire (”The Wrong and the Good,” unpublished) argues that wrongness is a natural kind and Tightness is not. Rightness is simply the logical complement of wrongness, in the way “non-dog” is the logical complement of “dog.”
- I use the terms “categorical” and “deontological” almost interchangeably. An imperative is categorical if it makes no appeal to the agent's interests and desires, and deontological if it makes no appeal to consequences of any kind. Thus, as I use the terms, a categorical imperative is a kind of deontological imperative.
- Prichard . Moral Obligation 3
- Pahel , K. and Schiller , M. , eds. 1970 . Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory Englewood Cliffs , NJ : Prentice Hall . Ibid. And, as Stephen Toulmin (”The Logic of Moral Reasoning, and Reason and Faith,” in ed. [], 417) adds, making us want to do what we ought to do is not the philosopher's task.
- Prichard . 1970 . Moral Obligation Edited by: Pahel , K. and Schiller , M. 117 Prichard's point applies to theories grounding Tightness in collective prudence as well. So Prichard's objection not only challenges the Platonic project but also most contractarian theories as well. For example, the objection cuts against the view expressed by Kurt Baier (”Why Should We Be Moral?” Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory, ed. [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,]) that we should be moral because being moral makes us all better off.
- Prichard also rejects the idea that an action's Tightness lies not in its actual result but rather in its intended result. I am inclined to disagree, depending on whether we really are talking about evaluating the action's Tightness rather than, say, the agent's praiseworthiness, but present purposes do not require us to address this further argument.
- Prichard . Moral Obligation 2
- Ibid., 7.
- Ibid., 16.
- Ibid., 8.
- To call an act right is ambiguous. One might be saying the act is required or that it is permitted. The former sense is more relevant here. I use “right” and “required” interchangeably in what follows.
- Prichard . Moral Obligation 10 Perhaps this is why Prichard thought the connection between the sense of Tightness and one's reason to be moral has to be “absolutely immediate.” If anything intrudes between the two, one will no longer be doing the right thing for the right reason.
- Prudence involves acting in one's best interest simpliciter rather than acting in one's best interest because it is in one's best interest. Otherwise, if we interpret prudence in the latter sense, prudence and morality exhibit a particularly uninteresting kind of incompatibility; the real issue about the overlap between moral and prudent behaviour will inevitably resurface, cast in other terms.
- 1991 . Rationalism in Politics 5 – 8 . Indianapolis : Liberty . One could see Prichard as rejecting rationalism in ethics in the same way Michael Oakeshott rejects rationalism in politics. That is, we understand and appreciate ethical traditions only from the inside, by living within them and by knowing their history. It is hubris to criticize traditions on the grounds that they fail to serve purposes we think ought to be served, or that they do not serve their purposes as well as imaginable alternatives. Such criticism is from the outside in, which is not a legitimate critical perspective. Instead, one must get inside the institution and experience the duties it imposes face-to-face and case by case. See the title essay in Michael Oakeshott, 6–42. This theme also runs through the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. (The thesis that modern moral concepts are holdovers from earlier traditions, in which they had a significance that has since been lost, finds one of its earliest and most concise expressions in G.E.M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 [1958]: 1, Now, there is merit in the Anscombe-MacIntyre-Oakeshott line of argument. Nevertheless, moral philosophy is itself a body of traditions and practices. Distancing oneself from the practice of criticizing ethical traditions and viewing that practice with a critical eye amounts to taking an outside-in approach to a central tradition of moral philosophy. Thus, to indulge in such criticism is also to tacitly endorse outside-in criticism. In effect, it involves criticizing philosophy from outside in by pointing out that philosophy too partakes of outside-in criticism. A telling critique will say something interesting about how to distinguish between the use and misuse of outside-in criticism.
- Although Prichard's article does not say what triggers our intuitions, those who worked within the intuitionist tradition had a great deal to say about it. The point, though, is not that nothing can be said, but rather that something needs to be said. And when we begin to say what warrants us in intuiting that X is wrong, we begin to leave Prichard's brand of intuitionism behind.
- With more ordinary intuitions, the answer might be experience. That is, we may have learned from experience to trust that sort of intuition. (”No, I do not want to get into that person's car. I see no reason not to, but something is telling me not to.”) Still, the lesson of experience will not be simply that we should trust intuition, but that we have reason to trust intuition— doing so is for our own good, and we have a history of regretting the consequences of failing to do so. (So, I am not intending this as a concession to Prichard.) I owe the thought to Paul Bloomfield.
- This is one of intuitionism's core insights. Another is that, in forming moral judgments, we draw upon tacit knowledge, some of which we are not capable of fully articulating. Similarly, a wine taster may have an astonishing ability to discern when and where the grapes came from, yet the information he or she finds in the wine's taste may be too subtle to put into words. These two ideas— that our knowledge is fundamentally of particulars rather than universals and that much of what we know is incorrigibly inarticulate— are also central tenets of the moral anti-theory movement (cf. footnote 2). A reading of Prichard thus is a useful introduction to the antitheory literature.
- Prichard . Moral Obligation 4
- Hart , H. L.A. 1961 . The Concept of Law 89 – 93 . Oxford : Clarendon .
- Coleman , Jules , ed. 1988 . Markets, Morals, and the Law 3 – 27 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . We speak here primarily of determining law in an epistemic sense, but, in Hart's theory, secondary rules also determine the law in an ontological sense. For a discussion of the different senses in which secondary rules determine the law, see “Negative and Positive Positivism” in
- I think the most defensible reading of the principle of utility would say not. Recognition rules are not ultimate rules of conduct; primary rules are not mere rules of thumb. Primary rules do not defer to the “ultimate” rules in cases of conflict. Again, consider the legal analogy. In a situation where obeying the speed limit somehow interferes with reading the signs, the primary rule is still binding. The speed limit does not give way to a “higher” law bidding us to read the signs. Likewise, in ethics, if we recognize that, in the world we actually live in, following the rule “keep promises no matter what” has better consequences than following alternative rules like “keep promises if and only if doing so maximizes utility,” then the principle of utility (qua recognition rule) picks out “keep promises no matter what” as being among morality's rules of conduct.
- I acknowledge that there are broader conceptions of deontology than this, revolving around a more general idea that being moral is a matter of having reverence for the moral law.
- Scheffler , Samuel . 1982 . The Rejection of Consequentialism New York : Oxford University Press . defends a “hybrid” theory, which departs from act-utilitarianism by holding that maximizing utility is sufficient but not necessary for an act's morality.
- 1990 . Plural and Conflicting Values New York : Oxford University Press . As Michael Stocker says, “Good people appreciate the moral world in ways which go beyond simply seeing what is to be done.” 114.
- Schmidtz , David . 1990 . “Scheffler's Hybrid Theory of the Right.” . Noûs , 24 : 622 – 27 . , at 622.
- Ibid., 627.
- 1986 . The View from Nowhere New York : Oxford University Press . There is truth in Thomas Nagel's thesis (see Nagel, []) that individuals inhabit both personal and impersonal points of view. The distinction between first-person singular and first-person plural perspectives, though, borrowed from Gerald Postema (”Conflict, Conversation, and Convention: Reflections on Hume's Account of the Emergence of Norms of Justice,” unpublished), captures that truth in terms that seem more concrete and more firmly rooted in everyday experience. We can, though, imagine cases where the personal/impersonal distinction arguably would be more natural. For example, we might ask whether Robinson Crusoe can inhabit a plural perspective (and, if not, would he be incapable of moral endorsement?). Presumably, the answer is yes, at least in a subjunctive sense. (That is, Crusoe can ask himself whether he would want his eventual rescuers to understand what he did to survive, whether he expects they would approve.) But this distinction is not far from being what we might instead capture in the terminology of personal and impersonal. Finally, the idea that to endorse something as moral is to endorse it from a plural perspective does not beg the question against egoist or otherwise individualist moral theories. It is within the realm of possibility that I might endorse a sufficiently refined sort of egoism not only for me but for you too, and not only because it is best for me but because it is best for you too. In short, I can from a plural perspective endorse that we each tend our own gardens. Again, to belabour a distinction that I know from experience to be not at all obvious, recognition rules are not rules of conduct. Rules of conduct are what we look at. Recognition rules are what we look with.
- 1986 . Morals by Agreement Oxford : Oxford University Press . See especially David Gauthier,. A Prisoner's Dilemma is a game in which individuals make separate decisions about whether to contribute to cooperative venture. In essence, the problem is, if an individual contributes, the benefits will be dispersed in such a way that the marginal benefit per unit of contribution is less than one unit to the contributor but more than one unit to the group. See David Schmidtz, The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), 105. In an obvious way, people are better off as a group if they contribute, but in an equally obvious way they are better off as individuals if they do not.
- I especially want to thank Philip Pettit for pressing me on this point.
- Sayre-McCord , Geoffrey . 1994 . (”On Why Hume's ‘General Point of View’ Isn't Ideal— and Shouldn't Be,” . Social Philosophy and Policy , 11 []: 202–228) directly addresses this issue. The original version of this essay went to press before Geoff's article appeared, but the ideas in this paragraph are similar enough to Geoff's to make me wonder whether I got them from him. In any case, I thank Geoff for wonderfully illuminating conversations on such topics over a period of years.
- The scope of my plural perspective will not always coincide with the scope of yours, which is one reason why we sometimes disagree about what is moral. Discussing our differences often helps us extend our perspectives in ways that bring them into alignment, though, so disagreement that can be traced to differences in perspectival scope need not be intractable. If you convince Kate that her we-perspective until now has failed to encompass the interests of members of other races, for example, then she will broaden her perspective accordingly. Or if she willfully refuses to do so, then her kind of toe-perspective reveals itself to be quite unlike the perspective that I am attributing to people who earnestly ask the “Why be moral?” question.
- Note that this is a characterization of the perspective from which we formulate recognition rules. Whether being moral necessarily involves taking a plural perspective is a separate question. (Do morality's rules of conduct include an injunction to take a plural perspective? No, they do not, any more than the rules of the road include an injunction to read the signs.)
- I suppose that if all we knew was that X is a lot of fun and does no harm whatsoever, then we might consider that grounds for endorsing X as morally permissible. If given the additional information that X = Disneyland, we might not retract our endorsement. We would not have judged X to be morally required, though, even before learning that X = Disneyland.
- Partly for this reason, I think a method of seeking “reflective equilibrium” is practically unavoidable in moral theorizing. I do not think of seeking reflective equilibrium as a meta-principle or a moral theory or even a formal philosophical method, really. 1 think of it simply as a matter of remaining responsive to that which is pre-theoretical. In the context of a given subject matter, we assess candidate action-guides (for example) by the light of our recognition rules. In turn, though, we assess our recognition rules by asking whether the action-guides they yield are plausibly responsive to what, pre-theoretically, seems important about that particular subject matter. I thank Thomas Pogge for discussions of this point.
- At best, Prichard says, the element of truth in the view that Tightness is tied to goodness is that, unless we recognize that an act will give rise to some good, we would not recognize that we ought to do it. But, he adds, this does not mean pain's badness is the reason not to inflict it (5). This looks like a massive concession, but Prichard mentions it in passing as if it were unimportant. In a footnote, Prichard claims that if pain's badness grounded the wrongness of inflicting it, then inflicting pain on oneself would be as wrong as inflicting it on others. But this does not follow. Suppose two rules of conduct (Do not inflict pain on others; do not inflict pain on yourself) are grounded in the same principle (Pain is bad). Contra Prichard, the common grounding implies nothing about whether the two rules of conduct are equally stringent.
- 1971 . A Theory of Justice Although John Rawls's official position is that in justice as fairness the right is prior to the good [Cambridge: Belknap], 31), his theory's recognition rule is paradigmatically teleological. We're to recognize a principle as just by asking whether people behind a veil of ignorance would perceive a basic structure informed by the principle as being to their advantage. “The evaluation of principles must proceed in terms of the general consequences of their public recognition and universal application” (1971, 138). This is not the sort of statement one expects to find at the core of a theory in which the right is supposed to be prior to the good. Perhaps what Rawls really wants to say is that the right is prior to the good at the action-guiding level.
- Even so, we should not concede to Prichard that pointing out good reasons to keep promises is always irrelevant to someone who believes promise-keeping is required. Even someone who believes promise-keeping is required might be unable to articulate good reasons to keep promises and might learn something from discussion.
![Supercharge Your Next Research Paper: Research and write your next paper with Jenni AI.]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/112444/Skyscraper-humanities.png"})