Moral dilemmas, collective responsibility, and moral progress

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 104, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 203-225

  Marino, Patricia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33751574849     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010357607895     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. To fill this out, we could either insist that one side is always stronger, or we could stipulate that in cases of equality, our all-things-considered obligation is to pick one alternative and fulfill it. See Immanuel Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 16-25;
2. Alan Donagan, "Consistency in Rationalist Moral Systems," Journal of Philosophy (1984): 291-309;
3. and David Brink, "Moral Conflict and its Structure," Philosophical Review 103 (1994) 215-247,
4. reprinted in H. E. Mason, ed., Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 102-126).
5. Earl Conee suggests this in his "Against Moral Dilemmas," Philosophical Review 90 (1982), pp. 87-97.
6. Reprinted in C. Gowans, ed., Moral Dilemmas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 239-249.
7. Ruth Barcan Marcus, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 121-36. Page numbers refer to the reprinting in Gowans, pp. 188-204.
8. Ruth Barcan Marcus, "More about Moral Dilemmas," in H. E. Mason, ed., Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
9. Marcus, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," p. 195.
10. Marcus, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," p. 194.
11. Marcus, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," p. 189.
12. I call it the stringency objection because it suggests that if dilemmas are real, then the agent seems blamed for things beyond his control, and thus the moral requirements involved are too strict, or "stringent."
13. This objection is raised in several of the papers cited in the next section, especially by Philippa Foot. A form of it was also raised by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, in "A Moral Argument Against Moral Dilemmas," at a colloquium at the University of California, Irvine (January 14, 2000). The formulation given by Sayre-McCord focused specifically on the unfairness of any code that demands the impossible. It then relied on this unfairness as grounds for rejecting a code that allows dilemmas in favor of a modified version of that code that didn't generate dilemmas but otherwise (so far as possible) contained the other moral features of the code.
14. Bernard Williams, "Ethical Consistency," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XXIX (1965), reprinted in Gowans, pp. 115-137, page numbers refer to the reprinting in Gowans.
15. See especially pp. 123-124. Foot's views are explained in her two papers, "Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma," Journal of Philosophy LXXX (1983), pp. 379-398,
16. and "Moral Dilemmas Revisited" in Sinott-Armstrong, Raffman, and Asher, eds., Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 117-128. Foot and Williams use "remainder" for what I am calling the residue.
17. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 129.
18. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 122.
19. Williams, "Ethical Consistency," p. 125. This is a simplification of Williams's views. He does end by considering the possibility that while the feelings are irrational, it may sometimes be best to be irrational.
20. Foot, "Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma," p. 382.
21. Foot, "Moral Dilemmas Revisited," p. 126-127
22. and "Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma," p. 387.
23. Foot, "Moral Dilemmas Revisited," p. 127.
24. Note that on Marcus's view, it is not necessary that there should be any punishment or public sanctions, what matters is that the weaker obligation has not fallen away.
25. Patricia Greenspan, "Perspectival Guilt," in Modality, Morality, and Belief (see note 10), pp. 129-151.
26. Greenspan, "Perspectival Guilt," p. 142.
27. Greenspan, "Perspectival Guilt," p. 147.
28. Foot, "Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma," p. 387.
29. These worries are suggested by Greenspan in her "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt," Philosophical Studies 43 (1983): 117-125.
30. She addresses them later, in her book, Practical Guilt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and to some extent in "Perspectival Guilt." Because the moral I want to draw diverges from that later discussion, I will explain the issues independently of her proposed resolution. There is some overlap in our discussion; where appropriate I will make note of it.
31. William Styron, Sophie's Choice (New York, Bantam, 1979). The scene is described on pages 480-484.
32. Greenspan, "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt," p. 118.
33. Greenspan, "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt," p. 121.
34. Greenspan, "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt," p. 120.
35. Greenspan, "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt," p. 123.
36. Styron, Sophie's Choice, p. 478.
37. Styron, Sophie's Choice, p. 478.
38. Greenspan discusses collective action in her later "Perspectival Guilt," and in Practical Guilt. One virtue of the perspectival approach to guilt, she says, is that an individual could be part of a group that is guilty, without being personally blamed, if he did nothing wrong. That person could clear himself by focusing on the right perceptual slices (p. 135). She also suggests a distinction between holding someone guilty in a backward-looking sense and holding them responsible in a forward-looking sense (p. 137). Her comments are in the spirit of the analysis I am suggesting here.
39. Greenspan, "Moral Dilemmas and Guilt." See especially page 121.
40. Thanks to Patricia Greenspan for bringing these questions to my attention.
41. One other question might be whether it is true that a feeling of guilt would motivate us in the way described here. Perhaps it would have an opposite effect. For example, the guilt might function the way shame sometimes does, when it causes us to go on as before rather than face unpleasant realities. I don't know, as a matter of psychology, to what extent this might be the case, and the problem raises difficult questions. It seems to me that in a wide enough range of cases, its plausible that the motivation might work roughly the way I've suggested. The relevance of exceptions to this raises complex issues about the proper relationship between real emotional life and moral theory, issues I can't address here. I do discuss some related things in the last two paragraphs of this section. For more on emotions and morality, see Patricia Greenspan, Practical Guilt.
42. When he considers whether the pain is the real motivator. See the beginning of section II, and see Williams, "Ethical Consistency," page 125. He argues that the reason the pain isn't the true motivator is that the residue arises via a "moral thought," but doesn't consider what happens if there is no bad outcome at all.
43. This is an oversimplification of what is a subtle and complex problem, but I think the basic idea can be captured easily in an example. For those of us who think the right of women to vote has a moral component, we might have intuitions that fighting against that right now is reprehensible, while feeling simultaneously that fighting against it years ago is a much milder moral transgression, if it is one at all.
44. Greenspan hints at something like this in her discussion of the appropriateness of guilt. See note 30, above.
45. Again, thanks to Patricia Greenspan for raising this.
46. See, for instance, Howard Selsam, Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World (New York: International Publishers 1965);
47. Donald Hodges, "'Moral Progress' From Philosophy to Technology," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28, pp. 430-436;
48. Leslie Sklair, "Moral Progress and Social Theory," Ethics 79, pp. 239-234;
49. and Leslie Sklair, "Moral Progress Revisited," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 31, pp. 433-439. These works aren't entirely limited to the Marx/Hegel approach, but to the extent that they depart from it, the questions are more abstract than those considered here.
50. Ruth Macklin, "Moral Progress," Ethics 87 (1977): 370-382.
51. Macklin, "Moral Progress," pp. 371-372. This is only a part of Macklin's complete definition.
52. Marcus, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," p. 131-132.
53. I am not claiming that abortion is an analogous case. Merely that it would be for someone who already conceived of abortion as a moral dilemma.