University of Kansas, Spring 2003
Philosophy 161: Introduction to Ethics, Honors
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu
Class notes: meta-ethics
The following notes correspond
roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the
board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we
actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own
observations and records of what goes on in class.
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-
EMP, chapter 2: “The Challenge of Cultural
Relativism”
- section 2.1: “How Different Cultures Have Different
Moral Codes”
- Callatians and Greeks, Eskimos
- what to notice: that moral codes can vary, to a
surprising extent, from one culture to the next
- section 2.2: “Cultural Relativism”
- Rachels gives six statements that relate to
cultural relativism. Although he doesn’t make this explicit in
this section, the fourth and fifth best capture the idea of cultural
relativism.
- Rachels mentions that cultural relativism
“challenges our ordinary belief in the objectivity and
universality of moral truth” (p. 18). This is an important idea
that will come up in the next chapter as well.
- section 2.3: “The Cultural Differences Argument”
- This is the main argument for cultural relativism.
Its premises are (1) different cultures have different moral beliefs
and (2) these differences show that there are no universally correct
moral standards. (And the conclusion, of course, is the thesis of
cultural relativism: there are no universally correct moral
standards, but only culturally relative ones.) Note then, that the
bare fact of cultural differences is only part of an argument for
cultural relativism, not proof all by itself. Another premise,
relating these cultural differences to morality itself, is needed.
- That premise was stated above as “(2) these
differences show that there are no universally correct moral
standards.” This is pretty much how Rachels presents it. But to
make this more rigorous, and to make the underlying thought of the
argument more explicit, the second premise should be stated like
this: “(2) The best explanation for these differences is that
there are no universally correct moral standards.”
- one objection to the argument: An objection to this argument can be generated by
substituting something for ‘moral beliefs’, such as ‘beliefs
about whether the world is flat or round’ or ‘beliefs about
arithmetic’. If people disagreed about these things, would we
conclude that cultural relativism is true for these areas of
thought, too? (Would the lack of some fact of the matter about these
things be the best explanation of this disagreement?) Or wouldn’t we just conclude that some people make
mistakes about these areas of thought? (That is, wouldn’t we just
conclude that the best explanation for this disagreement is not that
there is no fact of the matter, but that some people don’t have
all the facts?)
- another objection to the argument: Another objection to this argument can be
generated by leaving the phrase ‘moral beliefs’ alone, and
substituting something for ‘cultures’, such as ‘persons’.
The resulting argument would imply that morality is relative not to
cultures, but to individual persons. So if the cultural relativist
accepts the form of the cultural-differences argument, it is unclear
why he or she draws the line at cultures, and concludes with the
doctrine of cultural relativism, instead of going further, to
individual persons, and concluding with a doctrine that might be
called individual relativism.
- section 2.4: “The Consequences of Taking Cultural
Relativism Seriously”
- If cultural relativism were true, then all of the
following would be true as well:
- We could have no logical basis for saying that
the customs of one society are morally superior to those of
another.
- Why does this follow from cultural
relativism? Because if cultural relativism is true, then
there is no objective standard by which to judge various
cultures. There are only the standards that obtain within
each culture.
- Why is this problematic? Because we often
want to evaluate the relative merits of various societies’
customs, and feel as if we could have some logical basis for
doing so, if we thought carefully, collected all the facts,
etc. But cultural relativism pronounces any such endeavor as
misconceived from the start.
- All you need to do to see how you ought to
behave is to see what your own culture says about how you ought
to behave; and you cannot (logically) make any moral criticism
of your own culture’s norms or practices.
- Why does this follow from cultural
relativism? Because if cultural relativism is true, then the
only available standard is a culturally relative one: that
of one’s own culture. Thus your moral obligations are
entirely and conclusively specified by your culture’s
practices; and it would make no sense to say, “Some of our
culture’s practices are immoral,” since this would (if
cultural relativism were true) be equivalent to “Some of
our culture’s practices are not allowed by our culture’s
norms”—and it is hard o see how one could logically say
this.
- Why is this problematic? Two reasons.
First, we do not think that ascertaining what we ought to do
is as easy as just seeing what our culture says we ought to
do; rather, we think it’s harder, and involves critical
reflection on the norms of our own culture (instead of just
taking them for granted). Second, we often think that there
must be a way to “step outside” of one’s own culture
and evaluate it from an objective standpoint. But, as
before, cultural relativism pronounces such an endeavor as
misconceived.
- Moral progress never occurs.
- Why does this follow from cultural
relativism? Because the very idea of moral progress involves
(it seems) comparing two cultures, or one culture at two
different times (which we’ll regard as two different
cultures), and judging one to be better than the other. But
if (as cultural relativism maintains) there is no standpoint
outside of a given culture for judging its norms and
practices, then there is no standpoint for making such a
cross-cultural comparison. (Notice that cultural relativism
does not, then, deny that what we regard as moral progress
has actually taken place; it just denies that such events
can logically be labeled “progress,” or with any term of
praise or condemnation.)
- Why is this problematic? Because we are
inclined to regard certain changes as constituting progress,
and others as regressions, and still others as morally
neutral changes. But, again, cultural relativism says there
is no logical room for such evaluations, no standpoint from
which they can be made.
- The fact that cultural relativism has these
problematic implications suggests that it clashes with several
intuitions we have about the kinds of moral judgments it’s
possible to make and what it takes to make them. This may be a
reason to reject it (or it may be a reason to reject all of the
intuitions it clashes with).
- section 2.5: “Why There Is Less Disagreement Than It
Seems”
- Customs and norms result from both values and
factual beliefs. Sometimes, a difference in norms can appear to
indicate a difference in values, but actually reflects only a
difference in factual beliefs.
- To see the relevance of this to cultural
relativism, recall that the cultural differences argument begins
with the premise that different cultures have different moral
beliefs. If this apparent difference in moral beliefs comes to seem
doubtful or less extensive than it seemed at first, then a premise
of the cultural differences argument will be weakened.
- section 2.6: “How All Cultures Have Some Values in
Common”
- Cultures cannot persist without certain kinds of
behavior being prevalent, such as caring for infants, respecting
persons’ lives, and telling the truth. So, almost as a matter of
anthropological fact, there are certain limits to how much practices
can vary from one culture to another.
- The relevance of this to cultural relativism is
roughly the same as before: since the cultural differences argument
begins with the premise that different cultures have different moral
beliefs, limits on how varied cultures’ moral beliefs can be have
the effect of limiting the support for cultural relativism.
- section 2.7: “Judging a Cultural Practice to be
Undesirable”
- Rachels describes a girl fleeing her society
because of its practice of excision. This case can be used to
explore your intuitions about cultural relativism. Suppose you knew this girl and
were advising her. Would you tell her that the practice is right,
because it’s an integral part of the culture? Or would you
evaluate the practice by some standard that is independent of the
culture of which it is a part?
- Rachels proposes that the practice can be
evaluated without resorting to a culture-neutral standard of right
and wrong, by appealing to a standard having to do with promoting or
hindering the welfare of the everyone affected. The important thing
to appreciate here is not the specific content of the standard
Rachels proposes, but his continuation of the considerations of
sections 2.5 and 2.6: here, the thought that our disagreement with
societies that practice excision is not only or entirely a disagreement in values,
but a disagreement in beliefs about matters of fact (specifically,
how the practice affects individuals’ welfare).
- Judging a cultural practice to be undesirable
should not be confused with (1) thinking that we should intervene,
such as in diplomatic or military ways, in order to get the practice
stopped, (2) refusing to be tolerant towards practices we regard as
undesirable, or (3) judging the entire culture of which it is a part
to be a bad culture. So, one can reject cultural relativism without
being committed to intervention, intolerance, or judging an entire
culture negatively.
- section 2.8: “What Can Be Learned from Cultural
Relativism”
- Rachels distills two lessons from the considerations surrounding
cultural relativism.
- Not all our preferences, or even all the moral
judgments we take very seriously, are based on an absolute rational
standard. Many of them—perhaps most of them—may be based on
accidental features of our culture. (Where cultural relativism goes
wrong is in assuming that all of them are like this.)
- It is necessary to keep an open mind about moral
questions, and be willing to reconsider our moral beliefs.
- Note that neither of these “lessons” of
cultural relativism requires us to subscribe to cultural relativism
itself—Rachels’s point is that one can reject cultural
relativism while still profiting from the above “lessons.”
- true or false?
- If people have different beliefs about something, then each of their
views is equally plausible—there’s no “fact of the matter.”
- Cultural relativism could be true even if the cultural-differences
argument is unsound,
as Rachels claims it is.
- In showing the consequences of taking cultural relativism seriously,
Rachels shows that cultural relativism is internally inconsistent.
- If Rachels’s criticism of the cultural differences argument in section
2.3 were not sound, then his objections in section 2.4 would be left
without support.
- EMP, chapter 3: “Subjectivism in Ethics”
- section 3.1: “The Basic Idea of Ethical Subjectivism”
- The basic idea of ethical subjectivism is that our moral opinions are
based on our feelings, and on nothing more. In other words, it is the view
that moral judgments do not reflect facts about the world, but reflect
only our feelings about facts about the world.
- The feelings that we have about various issues, and the moral opinions
that result, may be based on some view of the facts of a given situation,
but (according to a subjectivist) there are no moral facts for our
moral opinions to match up with or get wrong.
- Like cultural relativism, this not a theory of what’s right and what’s
wrong; rather, it’s a meta-ethical theory: an account of the nature of
morality. Cultural relativism says morality is relative to each culture;
subjectivism goes further and says that it’s relative to each individual.
- So stated, the theory is rather vague. Beginning in section 3.3, we’ll
consider two versions of subjectivism.
- section 3.2: “The Evolution of the Theory”
- The two versions of subjectivism we’ll consider come in a certain
order.
- One of them was proposed first, but then objections to it led certain
philosophers, sympathetic to subjectivism but aware of the difficulties
with the first version, to propose another.
- section 3.3: “The First Stage: Simple Subjectivism”
- According to simple subjectivism, when a person makes a moral
judgment, he or she is stating or reporting his or her
feelings of approval and disapproval. For example, “X is good” means
something like “I approve of X.”
- One objection to this view is that it makes making correct moral
judgments look like a much easier endeavor than we ordinarily believe it
to be. For if (1) “X is good” means nothing more than (2) “I approve of
X,” then one can make a correct moral judgment (such as statement 1) as
easily as one can make a correct report of one’s feelings (such as
statement 2). But we tend to think that it’s much harder, and requires
much more thought, to come up with correct moral judgments than it is to
come up with correct reports of one’s feelings. As a result, simple
subjectivism ends up giving an account of moral judgment that is at odds
with something we think we know about what it takes to make a correct
moral judgment. (Rachels puts this in terms of infallibility, but I find
this term a little misleading.)
- A second objection to this view is that it denies that moral
disagreement is present in many circumstances in which we would think,
intuitively, that it is present. For example, if Falwell says (1)
“Homosexuality is immoral” and Foreman says (2) “Homosexuality is not
immoral,” then we would take them to be disagreeing: we would take them to
be saying things that can’t both be true at once. But according to simple
subjectivism, what Falwell is saying has the same meaning as (3) “I [Falwell]
disapprove of homosexuality” and what Foreman is saying has the same
meaning as (4) “I [Foreman] do not disapprove of homosexuality.” And
statements 3 and 4 can both be true at once! So simple subjectivism
implies that two statements we regard as not capable of both being true at
once (1 and 2) actually mean the same things as two statements that can
both be true at once (3 and 4). (For clarification: What does Rachels mean
when he says “changing the subject” (p. 36.3)?)
- A third objection to this view, one not mentioned by Rachels, is that
simple subjectivism not only fails to account for moral disagreement,
but also (and in precisely the same way) fails to account for moral
agreement.
- section 3.4: “The Second Stage: Emotivism”
- In response to the difficulties with simple subjectivism, another, more
sophisticated, version of subjectivism, one known as emotivism, has been
proposed. According to emotivism, when a person makes a moral judgment, he
or she is expressing his or her feelings of approval and disapproval.
For example, “X is good” means something like “Yay, X!”
- The difference between simple subjectivism and emotivism depends on the
difference between stating or reporting something and
expressing it. Unlike statements or reports of attitudes, expressions of
attitudes are neither true nor false, neither correct nor incorrect.
- This subtle difference between simple subjectivism and emotivism enables
the latter to avoid being vulnerable to the two objections to the former we
considered earlier:
- The first objection was that simple subjectivism makes making correct
moral judgments look a lot easier than we believe it to be. But emotivism
avoids this implication, by denying that moral judgments can be correct or
incorrect at all.
- The second objection was that simple subjectivism fails to regard, as
disagreement, two people whom we, intuitively, would regard as disagreeing.
Emotivism accounts for this disagreement by distinguishing between (1)
disagreement about facts and (2) disagreement in attitude, and by regarding
moral disagreement as disagreement of the second kind.
- section 3.5: “Are There Any Moral Facts?”
- According to emotivism, any consideration that influences someone’s
attitudes counts as a reason. But this admits, into the class of things
regarded as reasons for moral judgments, many things that we intuitively
would not think should count as reasons. So emotivism seems to
offer an inadequate account of the connection between reason and moral
judgment.
- As a middle ground between any subjectivist view and the view that
there are moral facts that are just like “facts about stars and planets,”
Rachels proposes that we regard a moral judgment as true if it is
supported by the strongest reasons.
- section 3.6: “Are There Proofs in Ethics?”
- Subjectivist views may seem appealing because we seem to have much
more trouble finding convincing proofs for ethical truths than for truths
in other fields, such as the sciences. This suggests to many people that
there are no proofs in ethics.
- But what about the “proofs” of “ethical truths” that Rachels offers?
Are these proofs, or could one accept their premises and reach different
conclusions?
- The thought that ethical truths can be proved becomes easier to accept
when one
- stops holding proofs in ethics to an overly demanding standard
- observes that although there are many contentious ethical issues on
which people persistently disagree, there are also many on which there
is wide agreement
- distinguishes proof from persuasion, and does not mistake the
absence of the latter for the absence of the former
- deriving morality from nature
- the standard form of the argument and its difficulties
- There is a standard form of argument that is generally applicable to
attempts to derive morality from nature, and here it is.
- X is unnatural. (X could be homosexuality, or abortion, or equal
rights for women and men, or whatever.)
- Whatever is unnatural is wrong.
- Therefore, X is wrong.
- The challenge for any proponent of such an argument is to find an
interpretation of ‘unnatural’ so that, for some X,
- The first premise is true.
- The first premise is not question-begging. (So, for example,
‘unnatural’ should not be interpreted as evil.)
- The second premise is true.
- The second premise is not trivially true. (The is basically the
same constraint as the second one: ensuring that ‘unnatural’ is not
interpreted in a morally-loaded way.)
- The word ‘unnatural’ has the sane sense in the first premise as in
the second—i.e., that the word is not used ambiguously in the two
premises.
- The problem for deriving morality from nature is that it seems extremely
hard to come up with an interpretation of ‘unnatural’ that satisfies all the
foregoing criteria.
- section 3.7: “The Question of Homosexuality,” through the first full
paragraph on p. 46
- Rachels presents a set of considerations in
defense of his view that homosexuality is not immoral.
- He also considers the claim that homosexuality is unnatural. To
assess this claim, he distinguishes three senses of the word
‘unnatural’, each of which may figure in a claim made about
homosexuality.
- ‘unnatural’ as statistically uncommon, or rare
- ‘unnatural’ as not in accordance with (natural) function
- ‘unnatural’ as wrong
- It is important to see that Rachels’s main
purpose in this passage is not to convince us that homosexuality is not
unnatural—though he does believe this—but to show the futility of
using the notions of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ to establish moral
conclusions.
- section 4.3: “The Theory of Natural Law”
- This theory is a particularly sophisticated way of trying to derive
morality from nature.
- main components of the theory
- The first component is a theory of what the
world is like. According to this theory, the world has values and purposes built
into it. For example, animals are resources for humans,
plants are food for animals (and also humans), and rain falls for the
sake of plants (and animals and humans, presumably). This theory
is, of course, completely incompatible with the modern
scientific worldview of everything in nature as just there, with
no scheme or plan built into it; and this incompatibility
between this component of natural-law theory and the modern
scientific worldview makes many people skeptical of this
component of natural-law theory.
- The second component of the theory of natural
law is the thought that the purposes things serve are the purposes they ought to serve; and that
any deviation from these purposes is bad. This sort of thinking
has been taken to lead to such conclusions as (1) people ought
to be helpful to one another, because it’s clear from the way
humans are designed that they were meant to live cooperatively
and (2) people ought not to have non-procreative sex, because
the true, legitimate purpose of sex is procreation. The leading
objection to this component of natural-law theory is that it
seems not to have adequate reason for its claims of how things ought
to be just on the basis of its observations of how things are.
(Rachels mentions that a second objection rests on the
incompatibility of natural-law theory with the modern scientific
worldview, but I think this makes more sense as an objection to
the first component of the view, as noted above.)
- The third component of the theory of natural
law has to do with how we know what’s right and wrong. It is
the claim that we know what’s right and wrong through the
exercise of our reason: that God has endowed each of us with the
capacity to detect what’s right and wrong, and to act
accordingly.
- Hume on ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’
- In the first sentence, the phrase ‘these principles’ refers to
principles distinguishing virtue from vice, or moral principles.
- He considers several ways of distinguishing the natural from the
unnatural.
- non-miraculous vs. miraculous
- common vs. rare
- not artificial vs. artificial
- Then he rejects each of these as mapping onto the virtue/vice
distinction.
- Virtue is not more non-miraculous than vice. (Indeed it seems that
virtue and vice are equally non-miraculous.)
- Virtue is not more common than vice. (If anything, the opposite seems
to be true.)
- Virtue is not less artificial than vice. (Indeed it seems that virtue
and vice are equally in this regard.)
- deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’
- like deriving morality from nature: This is like deriving
morality from nature, but more general. (Think of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’
as the genus, and deriving morality from nature as a species within it.)
- Hume on deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’
- relations of ideas
- ingratitude in humans vs. trees
- incest in humans vs. animals
- matters of fact
- willful murder
- ‘is’ and ‘ought’
- Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”
- section I (aim: to describe Stevenson’s goal, and to refute one attempt
at achieving that goal)
- p. 14.5: Notice the aim of translating ethical questions
into clearer, less mysterious questions, or of providing definitions of
ethical terms. Notice also how clearly Stevenson presents the aim of his
paper—he does not leave the reader wondering what he’s going to do, or
clueless as to what she should watch out for as the paper proceeds.
- p. 15.2: a criterion of adequacy that must be met in order for a
definition to be “relevant”
- p. 15.4: very clear transition to next tasks (of considering definitions
of ‘good’ and then providing one)
- p. 15.5: two proposals (both being interest theories, or theories having
to do with persons’ interests)
- good = desired by me
- good = approved by most people
- p. 16.3: three things we know about the word ‘good’ that disqualify at
least some interest theories
- when moral disagreement is happening (recall Rachels’s second objection)
- the ‘magnetism’ of whatever is good
- not scientifically verifiable (recall Rachels’s first objection)
- p. 18.4: helpful summary of preceding claims
- section II (aim: to describe Stevenson’s understanding of ethical terms)
- p. 18.5: “vary from tradition”—philosophers are often concerned about
showing how their views differ from what’s come before, lest their own views
seem uninteresting
- p. 18.7: reference to traditional interest theories’ descriptive
orientation
- p. 18.9: a new approach to the connection between ethical statements and
interests
- p. 19.4: reasons simply as means of facilitating influence
- p. 19.5: desert simile
- p. 19.9: statement of what Stevenson is currently doing
- p. 20.3: ethical terms as instruments
- p. 20.9: information about upcoming topics
- section III (aim: to explain the notion of emotive meaning)
- p. 21.3: descriptive use vs. dynamic use
- p. 22.3: very clear transition to the topic of meaning
- p. 22.4: identifying a word’s meaning with the psychological effects it
tends to have
- p. 23.2: emotive meaning—tendency to produce an affective response;
contributes to dynamic use
- p. 23.4: very clear transition to the topic of the connection between
dynamic use and emotive meaning
- section IV (aim: to clarify ‘good’ by appealing to emotive meaning)
- p. 24.3: helpful statement of next task
- p. 24.4: starting with “an inaccurate approximation”—sometimes useful in
explanations
- p. 24.4: ‘This is good’ is sort of like ‘We like this’, used dynamically.
- p. 25.4–5: But this is not really a satisfactory definition.
- p. 25.6: the pleasing emotive meaning of the word ‘good’
- p. 25.8: the impossibility of finding a helpful synonym
- p. 26.4: claim of success in “clarifying” the word’s meaning
- section V (aim: to defend understanding ‘good’ in terms of emotive
meaning)
- review of the requirements from section I
- first requirement: accurately reflect when moral disagreement is happening
- p. 27.1: disagreement in belief vs. disagreement in interest
- p. 26.5: the problem with previous “interest theories” (such as simple
subjectivism)
- p. 27.8: second requirement: “magnetism” of ‘good’
- p. 28.2: third requirement: not scientifically verifiable
- further explanation of Stevenson’s view
- p. 28.2: A crucial part of Stevenson’s view is that that no matter how
much agreement there may be on facts, ethical judgments will not necessarily
coincide.
- p. 29.2: very illuminating analogy between imperatives and ethical
judgments
- p. 29.4: example of agreement about facts, but disagreement in attitude
- p. 29.6–9: no rational method for settling ethical disagreement! It's all
just persuasion!
- p. 30.3–4: helpful summary of main claims in this rich section
- This is a crucial element in Stevenson’s view—that
- section VI (aim: to rebut the objection that something is missing)
- p. 30.8: the main concern: that emotive meaning and suggestion don’t add
up to “moral truth”
- p. 30.9: Stevenson’s reply: that this “moral truth” is extremely
mysterious
- EMP, chapter 4: “Does Morality Depend on
Religion?”
- section 4.1: “The Presumed Connection between
Morality and Religion”
- Rachels writes that “People commonly believe
that morality can be understood only in the context of religion”
(p. 49). What does this mean? Does it mean that a non-religious
person cannot have moral beliefs?
- What is the connection between (1) the
“meaning” given to life by most religious viewpoints and (2)
morality?
- section 4.2: “The Divine Command Theory”
- This is the most important section in the chapter.
In this section, Rachels’s strategy is to argue against this
theory of morality by
- claiming that this theory has two possible
interpretations
- arguing that each interpretation is
problematic in some way
- concluding that, therefore, the overall theory is
problematic as well
- The general theory is the thought that what is
right is what God commands (or has commanded), and what is wrong is
what God forbids (or has forbidden). The attractions of this theory
are that it (1) provides a non-relativist, non-subjectivist account
of morality and (2) answers the question of what reason one has to be
moral (answer: because God will reward you if you are, and punish
you if you are not).
- The first interpretation of this theory is that
what is right is right because God commands it. That is,
God’s commanding something is what makes it right. But this
theory (i.e., this interpretation of the divine-command theory) has
two problematic implications.
- The first problematic implication is that no
matter what God commands, it’s right—even if God were to
command us to be greedy, dishonest, or murderous. For if God’s
commanding something is sufficient to make it right (which is
what the theory claims), then there’s nothing that we could
(logically) refuse to regard as right, if it were to turn out to
be commanded by God.
- The second problematic implication is that the
claim that God is good ceases to be a statement of praise and
becomes a mere tautology, since this theory denies us any
vantage point from which we can logically praise God’s
commands as wise, or God himself as good. For if whatever God
commands is necessarily right, then there’s no way God could
possibly have ever commanded anything wrong, and there’s no
error that God has steered clear of in commanding what he has
commanded. Another way of seeing this point is to observe that
if this interpretation of the divine-command theory is taken to
be correct, then to claim that God’s commands are good
is nothing more than to claim that they are consistent with
God’s commands. And this is no praise at all. (It’s not a
complaint, either; it’s just a morally neutral observation.
The point is that this interpretation of the divine-command
theory makes it logically impossible to morally judge God at
all.)
- The second interpretation of the divine-command
theory is that God commands what is right because it is right.
This interpretation avoids the first problematic implication of the
previous interpretation by viewing God’s commands as being based
on what’s antecedently right and wrong; and it avoids the second
problematic implication of the previous interpretation by viewing
God himself as an extremely reliable, indeed infallible, reporter of
what’s good and right (which presumably is a pretty good
thing).
- The problem with this interpretation, for many
religiously minded people, is that it denies God any role in
determining the content of morality. If the content of morality
is determined independently of God’s will, then he is in no
way the “author” of morality, but just a very helpful guide
to it.
- Despite this shortcoming in this
interpretation of God’s will, it is widely viewed as more
acceptable than the first interpretation, since the first
interpretation makes it tautologous to call God good (and most
people are loathe to give up the intuition that God can be praised
as good).
- section 4.4: “Religion and Particular Moral Issues”
- problems with basing moral decisions on religious teachings
- difficulty of finding scriptural guidance
- ambiguity of scriptural guidance
- What does Christian scripture say about abortion?
- First, there is a passage in the book of
Jeremiah in which Jeremiah quotes God as having said that he
“consecrated” him even before he was born. It should be
noted, though, that the context is not about abortion, or the
status of fetuses, at all.
- Second, in the 21st chapter of Exodus, we
learn that in the law of the ancient Israelites, the
penalty for murder was death, but the penalty for causing a
woman to have a miscarriage was only a fine. The separate (and
lesser) penalty for ending the development of a fetus suggests
that this was not regarded as murder, and that fetuses were not
accorded full human status.
- What does the tradition of the Christian church say about
abortion?
- St. Thomas Aquinas (12th century) maintained
that an embryo did not have a soul until it was several weeks
old, and the church officially adopted this view in 1312.
- But the in the 17th century, the church
adopted the view that the fetus is just a very tiny person, with
the same status as (other) actual people.
- Although modern biological knowledge disproves
this view, the church has maintained the moral prohibition on
abortion.
- Rachels’s point: the Christian scriptures' and
tradition's uncertain answers to these questions should make us wary
of thinking that religion can be an adequate source of moral
guidance and judgment.
- section 3.7, from the second full paragraph on p. 46
- Here, too, Rachels explores the possibility of finding moral guidance,
in this case in regard to homosexuality, from religious sources. (This
actually doesn’t begin until the third full paragraph on p. 46—the second
full paragraph, which is the first one following what we last read from
this section, deals neither with deriving morality from nature nor with
basing moral decisions on scripture.)
- Rachels identifies two problems with looking basing moral decisions on
scripture.
- There’s a lot of scripture that many people would be uncomfortable
with, to say the least.
- It should be possible to find reasons for what scripture says
to do and not to do.
- EMP, chapter 5: “Psychological Egoism”
- section 5.1: “Is Unselfishness Possible?”
- This question is important because just about
every moral theory tells us that it is, from time to time, our duty
to be unselfish. If this is not possible, then the whole project of
normative ethics will falter on an overly optimistic view of human
nature.
- Psychological egoism is the view that every human action is
motivated by self-interest. Slightly different, and perhaps more
precise and representative of the debate over psychological egoism, is
the following view: people act
only in ways that they believe are consistent with maximally
advancing their own interests.
- section 5.2: “The Strategy of Reinterpreting
Motives”
- An obvious apparent objection to psychological
egoism is the claim that people do things for altruistic reasons all
the time (or, at least, pretty often). In response to this, the
standard reply of the psychological egoist is to impute to the
person some other, essentially selfish, motivation. Hobbes went so
far as to provide psychological-egoistic interpretations of charity
and pity:
- He said that charity, in all cases, is
enjoyable to us because it demonstrates our superiority over
those to whom we are charitable.
- He said that that pity is ultimately
self-interested because it reflects our fear of suffering
misfortune.
- It should be noted that this strategy, however
plausible one may find it, only proves that psychological egoism is
possible: it does not show that it’s true. Or, in other words that
put the point somewhat more accurately: it shows only
that one may be able to interpret all behavior as
self-interested; it does not show that the self-interested
interpretation of all behavior is the best one.
- section 5.3: “Two Arguments in Favor of
Psychological Egoism”
- first argument
- Here’s one representation of the first
argument:
- Whenever people act, they do what they
most want to do.
- Whenever people do what they most want to
do, they act selfishly.
- Therefore, whenever people act, they act
selfishly.
- There are two problems with this argument.
- First, the first premise is false: people
do not always do what they most want to do. Sometimes,
people do what they feel obligated to do instead of what
they most want to do. For example, it would make perfectly
good sense for a person to say, “I want to go to the
movies, but I promised my roommate I’d help her with her
math homework.” And although it is open to the
psychological egoist to claim that such a person would be
speaking colloquially, or in a logically imprecise way,
most people would not join the psychological egoist in
claiming this. Most people would say, rather, that it’s
perfectly reasonable for a person to claim, on occasion, that
what he or she is doing is not what he or she would most like to be
doing.
- Second, the second premise is false: doing
what one most wants does not mean that one is acting
selfishly. If what you most want to do is to deliver meals
to shut-ins, then most people would say that having this
desire is the sort of thing that makes one an unselfish
person, and that acting on it is unselfish action.
- Because of these objections, this argument has
few supporters.
- second argument
- Here’s one representation of the second
argument:
- Whenever people act in apparently selfless
ways, they derive satisfaction from acting in those ways.
- If a person derives satisfaction from
acting in some way, then acting in that way is selfish.
- Therefore, whenever people act in
apparently selfless ways, they are acting selfishly.
- The first premise may be false, but let’s
ignore that. The essential problem with this argument lies in
its second premise. As before, if someone desires to help other
people and happens to derive satisfaction from that, then does
that make his action selfish? Or, rather, is the desire to help
other people, and the satisfaction that results from the
satisfaction of that sort of desire, the mark of an unselfish
person?
- section 5.4: “Clearing Away Some Confusions”
- There are some confusions on which the apparent
plausibility of psychological egoism may rest.
- One is the confusion between selfishness and
self-interest. Earlier Rachels argued that not all behavior is
selfish. Here his point is that even if all behavior is
something similar to selfish—namely, self-interested—that
would not mean that all behavior is also selfish, since self-interest
is different from selfishness. (It is unclear why Rachels thinks
this is much of a response to psychological egoism, since that
doctrine does not claim that all behavior is selfish; it just
claims that all behavior is self-interested. So the truth of
psychological egoism is not directly threatened by the observation
that not all self-interested behavior is also selfish.)
- Another is the confusion between acting
self-interestedly and acting in pursuit of pleasure for oneself.
Sometimes, people act in pursuit of pleasure for themselves in
ways that actually harm themselves. Unlike the remarks just
noted, these do work directly against psychological egoism, since
they suggest that no matter how often people act in the pursuit of
pleasure, we can’t infer that they are also acting
self-interestedly.
- A third is the confusion between self-interest and disregard
for others’ interests. It is perfectly possible for someone to act
self-interestedly, but also to have considerable regard for others’
interests. Again (i.e., as in the case of the first “confusion”
mentioned above), the bearing of this on the thesis of
psychological egoism is unclear. Rachels’s point seems to be this:
that even if we can reasonably describe a whole lot of behavior as
self-interested, that is not as dire as it might sound, given the
extent to which self-interest is typically compatible with concern
for others’ interests.
- Once these confusions are cleared up,
psychological egoism may lose some of its appeal.
- section 5.5: “The Deepest Error in Psychological
Egoism”
- The deepest error of psychological egoism is its failure be testable, or falsifiable. For an analogy, consider a
psychiatrist who believes that someone is insane, and who persists
in interpreting all of someone’s behavior as evidence of insanity,
regardless of how sane the person may seem to others who are not
guided by the hypothesis that the patient is insane. The
psychiatrist’s hypothesis is not testable or falsifiable, since
the doctor does not regard his hypothesis as being tested against
observable facts, or falsifiable by certain behaviors of the patient
(such as plainly sane behavior). The claim that someone is insane
must be testable; otherwise it provides no information at all.
- Similarly, psychological egoism must be regarded as testable
if it is to informative. Otherwise, it is just a
decision to use the concept of self-interest to encompass all of
human behavior, instead of an assertion that human behavior has a
property (that of being governed by self-interested) that we
didn’t realize it had. In other words, if psychological egoism is
understood in a way that makes it testable, but instead is held as an
interpretive framework into which all observations of behavior are to
be shoehorned, then we must ask, how useful is this framework, this
lens through which all behavior is seen as self-interested? How useful
is the thesis of psychological behavior in the task of explaining
behavior?
- As Rachels shows with his example of the psychiatrist,
psychological egoism is not alone in being the sort of thesis that one
can hold as an irrefutable interpretive framework, rather than
subjecting it to testing. For an additional example (and here we go a bit beyond where
Rachels goes), imagine someone holding a view that we might call
psychological altruism: the view that people act
only in ways that they believe are consistent with maximally
advancing others’ interests. A psychological altruist could be
just as relentless in interpreting individuals’ motives as
altruistic as a psychological egoist might be in interpreting
individuals’ motives as egoistic. The fact that the strategy of
reinterpreting motives could lead to such a stalemate shows that it
is not a source of good reasons for a psychological theory. And here
are a couple of further, more far-fetched but still analogous,
examples:
- “People only act in ways that they believe have some special
connection with the number 7.”
- “Everything, when you dig deep enough, is made of cheese.”
- true or false?
- If someone is a psychological egoist, then he or she always acts in
ways that he or she believes will maximally promote his or her
self-interest.
- If someone is a psychological egoist, then he or she believes that
people believe that people always act in ways that they believe will
maximally promote their interests.
- If someone is a psychological egoist, then he or she believes that
people always act in ways that they believe will maximally promote their
interests.
- If someone thinks some people always act in ways that they believe
will maximally promote their interests, then he or she is a psychological
egoist.