Moral Rules

Ethics

Volumn 107, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 584-611

  Shafer Landau, Russ ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0041676759     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233761     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. See R. M. Hare ("Principles," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 73 [1972]: 1-18) and Martha Nussbaum (Love's Knowledge [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], pp. 38-39, 67-68) for instructive remarks on the distinction between generality and universality.
2. See R. M. Hare ("Principles," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 73 [1972]: 1-18) and Martha Nussbaum (Love's Knowledge [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], pp. 38-39, 67-68) for instructive remarks on the distinction between generality and universality.
3. Thus my talk of "moral properties" is intended to be metaphysically neutral. Realists will take such talk literally. For an antirealist, a moral rule is genuine just in case the instantiation of a nonmoral grounding property invariably justifies assent to a particular moral evaluation. Those with antirealist preferences are invited to make the necessary substitution in all that follows.
4. See Donald Davidson ("How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in his Essays on Actions and Events [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980], pp. 21-42) for a criticism of this way of putting the logical form of a prima facie rule. Despite this disagreement, however, we agree on the key issue, namely, that the grounding property in any well-formed prima facie rule must be universally morally relevant.
5. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930).
6. Though sympathetic with many of their claims, here I disagree with Mark Johnson (Moral Imagination [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993], chap. 7) and Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (The Abuse of Casuistry [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], chaps. 1, 2), who seem to assume that practitioners of rule- based ethics must view their enterprise as one of parceling out a thoroughly determinate moral order.
7. Though sympathetic with many of their claims, here I disagree with Mark Johnson (Moral Imagination [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993], chap. 7) and Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (The Abuse of Casuistry [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], chaps. 1, 2), who seem to assume that practitioners of rule-based ethics must view their enterprise as one of parceling out a thoroughly determinate moral order.
8. Jonathan Dancy, "On Moral Properties," Mind 90 (1981): 367-85, esp. pp. 376-77. See also Dancy, "Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties," Mind 92 (1983): 530-47, esp. pp. 533-34, 541-42, and Moral Reasons (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 92-107.
9. Jonathan Dancy, "On Moral Properties," Mind 90 (1981): 367-85, esp. pp. 376-77. See also Dancy, "Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties," Mind 92 (1983): 530-47, esp. pp. 533-34, 541-42, and Moral Reasons (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 92-107.
10. Jonathan Dancy, "On Moral Properties," Mind 90 (1981): 367-85, esp. pp. 376-77. See also Dancy, "Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties," Mind 92 (1983): 530-47, esp. pp. 533-34, 541-42, and Moral Reasons (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 92-107.
11. David McNaughton, Moral Vision (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 193.
12. See Dancy, Moral Reasons, pp. 60-66, for this strategy.
13. Ibid., pp. 60-61.
14. Some may balk at my use of thick concepts to construct counterexamples to the strong particularist thesis. Trepidation may arise from two sources. First, thick concepts have a relatively small set of grounding properties that are definitionally associated with them, and so differ from more general terms of moral appraisal ('right', 'wrong', 'good', 'bad', 'praiseworthy', etc.) that figure in most "fundamental" moral rules. And second, some of the grounding properties that I cite (cruelty, unselfishness) are themselves moral properties, and so cannot be grounding properties in the strict sense. To take these in reverse order: some examples I provide do not employ moral properties as grounding properties, and so escape whatever force this second objection may have. In any event, this second objection misses the mark, because rule-based grounding properties in the strict sense are simply those whose instantiation is invariably relevant to the instantiation of some other property. There is no reason to suppose that moral properties cannot be invariably relevant in this way. If, for instance, cruelty is in every instance a wrong-making feature, then it makes perfect sense to express this fact in a rule (very likely a prima facie one). That the rule relates two moral properties to each other does not make it any less a moral rule. Nor does it matter that many of the examples I supplied rely on grounding properties that have some definitional association with their correlated moral properties. Moral rules exist just in case the instantiation of a moral property is invariably related to that of some other property (or properties). Thick properties seem to me especially good illustrations of this possibility. Though it is admittedly easier to construct rules from thick rather than thin moral properties, the crucial question is whether we can construct them at all; that we can is sufficient to undermine strong particularism.
15. 3.
16. 3.
17. Contrast Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Self-Defense and Rights," reprinted in her Rights, Restitution and Risk (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 33-48. Thomson seeks to preempt consideration of candidate rules by a set of general arguments against specification. The strongest criticisms are that (i) specified rules fail to be appropriately morally explanatory; (ii) compensatory claims cannot be justified by means of such rules; (iii) specified rules yield a convoluted moral epistemology; (iv) specification entails an odd moral ontology. I defend specificationism against each of these criticisms in "Specifying Absolute Rights."
18. Shelly Kagan appreciates the force of the relevant generalist intuition here, all the while remaining suspicious of what I am calling the delimiting thesis. For a fine, complementary discussion of many of the issues I raise in this article, see Kagan, "The Additive Fallacy," Ethics 99 (1988): 5-31.
19. No commitment to realism or other forms of objectivism is intended by the reference to brute facts. I mean all references to such facts to be construed according to the reader's metaphysical preferences.
20. For (i), see Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45; and Thomas Carson, The Status of Morality (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984). For (ii), see Thomas Scanlon, "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103-28. For (iii), see James Griffin, Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
21. For (i), see Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45; and Thomas Carson, The Status of Morality (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984). For (ii), see Thomas Scanlon, "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103-28. For (iii), see James Griffin, Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
22. For (i), see Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45; and Thomas Carson, The Status of Morality (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984). For (ii), see Thomas Scanlon, "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103-28. For (iii), see James Griffin, Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
23. For (i), see Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45; and Thomas Carson, The Status of Morality (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984). For (ii), see Thomas Scanlon, "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103-28. For (iii), see James Griffin, Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
24. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72, and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Scanlon.
25. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72, and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Scanlon.
26. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72, and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Scanlon.
27. Firth; and Griffin.
28. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), p. 30n.
29. Not that providing definitional criteria is any guarantee that underspecificity will be eliminated. Though we can define 'bravery', for instance, this isn't sufficient to fix everything that belongs within and without the set of brave things. One is brave if and only if one (i) faces significant danger, (ii) appreciates the nature of the threatened harm, and (iii) stands fast before it, (iv) provided the danger is not too great. But what's to count as "significant," as "too great" - even as "standing fast" - is not itself determined by the rule. Nor is it given by a further set of rules. (What would such rules look like?) These notions, crucial to an understanding of bravery, are themselves underspecific. To know whether someone is brave, or some consequences catastrophic, we need to exercise a kind of judgment that is something very different from trying to apply rules to cases.
30. If failure to obey an absolute rule is always wrong, and absolute rules can conflict, then genuinely tragic cases of moral dilemma may arise. To avoid this possibility, absolutists need to show either that (i) no such conflict can arise, or (ii) violation of an absolute rule is sometimes permissible. This last has been thought implausible, and so we have a ready explanation of the absolutists' desire to avoid conflict among their favored rules. This explanation forces a particular reading of what it is for a rule to be maximally stringent. This notion is ambiguous between (1) never overridden and (2) always overriding. The stronger (2) is necessary if absolute rules are to fix moral verdicts. Option (1) would allow conflict among rules that would yield moral dilemma. (Walter Sinott-Armstrong [Moral Dilemmas (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)], seeking to defend the existence of moral dilemmas, endorses [1] but not [2].) To serve a fixing role, the presence of a grounding property in such a rule must be determinative of a verdict. If (1) alone is the proper reading of maximal stringency, then so-called absolute rules can conflict and will no longer be always determinative. Only by thinking of absolute rules as never overridden and always overriding will one ensure a fixing role for such rules, by eliminating the prospects of conflict.
31. The general problem for advocates of double effect is their inability to identify a conceptually coherent account of direct and indirect intention that also bears the moral weight needed to make distinctions among their paradigm cases. The most sophisticated defense of the doctrine is presented by Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1989): 334-51. It is ably criticized in a wide-ranging article by Donald Marquis, "Four Versions of Double Effect," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 515-44. A similar problem arises for proponents of the doctrine of doing and allowing. Kant and Mill, and many others following in their footsteps, tried to provide a distinction between perfect and imperfect duties that would be both conceptually plausible and morally significant. But all efforts to define the separate spheres have failed to mark an invariably morally relevant distinction. The standard strategy is to divide requirements into a set of negative and positive ones, elevating the negative to absolute or perfect status, while allowing the positive obligations to be overridable. But no one has provided a conceptually plausible account of the negative and the positive duties that also justifies (i) the assumption that negative requirements cannot conflict, and (ii) the absolute moral priority of negative requirements over positive ones. Quinn ("Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 98 [1989]: 287-312) has provided the most sophisticated defense of the doctrine of doing and allowing. It has been soundly criticized by John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Quinn on Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 343-52.
32. The general problem for advocates of double effect is their inability to identify a conceptually coherent account of direct and indirect intention that also bears the moral weight needed to make distinctions among their paradigm cases. The most sophisticated defense of the doctrine is presented by Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1989): 334-51. It is ably criticized in a wide-ranging article by Donald Marquis, "Four Versions of Double Effect," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 515-44. A similar problem arises for proponents of the doctrine of doing and allowing. Kant and Mill, and many others following in their footsteps, tried to provide a distinction between perfect and imperfect duties that would be both conceptually plausible and morally significant. But all efforts to define the separate spheres have failed to mark an invariably morally relevant distinction. The standard strategy is to divide requirements into a set of negative and positive ones, elevating the negative to absolute or perfect status, while allowing the positive obligations to be overridable. But no one has provided a conceptually plausible account of the negative and the positive duties that also justifies (i) the assumption that negative requirements cannot conflict, and (ii) the absolute moral priority of negative requirements over positive ones. Quinn ("Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 98 [1989]: 287-312) has provided the most sophisticated defense of the doctrine of doing and allowing. It has been soundly criticized by John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Quinn on Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 343-52.
33. The general problem for advocates of double effect is their inability to identify a conceptually coherent account of direct and indirect intention that also bears the moral weight needed to make distinctions among their paradigm cases. The most sophisticated defense of the doctrine is presented by Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1989): 334-51. It is ably criticized in a wide-ranging article by Donald Marquis, "Four Versions of Double Effect," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 515-44. A similar problem arises for proponents of the doctrine of doing and allowing. Kant and Mill, and many others following in their footsteps, tried to provide a distinction between perfect and imperfect duties that would be both conceptually plausible and morally significant. But all efforts to define the separate spheres have failed to mark an invariably morally relevant distinction. The standard strategy is to divide requirements into a set of negative and positive ones, elevating the negative to absolute or perfect status, while allowing the positive obligations to be overridable. But no one has provided a conceptually plausible account of the negative and the positive duties that also justifies (i) the assumption that negative requirements cannot conflict, and (ii) the absolute moral priority of negative requirements over positive ones. Quinn ("Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 98 [1989]: 287-312) has provided the most sophisticated defense of the doctrine of doing and allowing. It has been soundly criticized by John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Quinn on Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 343-52.
34. The general problem for advocates of double effect is their inability to identify a conceptually coherent account of direct and indirect intention that also bears the moral weight needed to make distinctions among their paradigm cases. The most sophisticated defense of the doctrine is presented by Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1989): 334-51. It is ably criticized in a wide-ranging article by Donald Marquis, "Four Versions of Double Effect," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 515-44. A similar problem arises for proponents of the doctrine of doing and allowing. Kant and Mill, and many others following in their footsteps, tried to provide a distinction between perfect and imperfect duties that would be both conceptually plausible and morally significant. But all efforts to define the separate spheres have failed to mark an invariably morally relevant distinction. The standard strategy is to divide requirements into a set of negative and positive ones, elevating the negative to absolute or perfect status, while allowing the positive obligations to be overridable. But no one has provided a conceptually plausible account of the negative and the positive duties that also justifies (i) the assumption that negative requirements cannot conflict, and (ii) the absolute moral priority of negative requirements over positive ones. Quinn ("Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 98 [1989]: 287-312) has provided the most sophisticated defense of the doctrine of doing and allowing. It has been soundly criticized by John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Quinn on Doing and Allowing," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 343-52.
35. They could claim that the properties are always determinative, but I will assume that this is implausible.
36. I take it that Samuel Scheffler's arguments against agent-centered restrictions imply the unsoundness of all absolutist theories. But I cannot comment here on the success of his arguments. See Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), and "Agent-Centered Restrictions, Rationality and the Virtues," Mind 94 (1985): 409-19.
37. I take it that Samuel Scheffler's arguments against agent-centered restrictions imply the unsoundness of all absolutist theories. But I cannot comment here on the success of his arguments. See Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), and "Agent-Centered Restrictions, Rationality and the Virtues," Mind 94 (1985): 409-19.
38. I provide the details of such a theory in "Ethical Intuitionism Redux" (unpublished manuscript).
39. I have offered an account of the nature and sources of moral indeterminacy in "Ethical Disagreement, Ethical Objectivity and Moral Indeterminacy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 331-45, and in "Vagueness, Borderline Cases and Moral Realism," American Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1995): 83-96.
40. I have offered an account of the nature and sources of moral indeterminacy in "Ethical Disagreement, Ethical Objectivity and Moral Indeterminacy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 331-45, and in "Vagueness, Borderline Cases and Moral Realism," American Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1995): 83-96.