Michael Smith and the rationality of immoral action

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 1-23

  Gert, Joshua ^a  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Michael Smith; Morality; Permission; Pro tanto reasons; Rationality; Reasons; Requirement

Indexed keywords

EID: 36749006768     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-007-9023-6     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. See note 15, below. Because of this widespread misinterpretation, and although the textual evidence is independently persuasive, I have obtained explicit permission from. Smith to state that he agrees to the following: "That in some conflicts between morality and self-interest, either option is rationally permissible, and that this happens not merely when one of the options is morally supererogatory, but in cases in which the choice is between a genuinely immoral and selfish action, and a morally required one."
2. Michael Smith, "Bernard Gert's Complex Hybrid Conception of Rationality," in Robert Audi and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (eds.), Rationality, Rules, and Ideals: Critical Essays on Bernard Gert's Moral Theory (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002), pp. 109-123.
3. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (London: Blackwell, 1994), p. 183. Although Smith himself cited this passage to me when first expressing his puzzlement that anyone would have thought he regarded immoral behavior as rationally prohibited, it must be conceded that this remark in itself falls short of a conclusive repudiation of the strong rationalist view.
4. Michael Smith, "The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Shafer-Landau," Analysis 61 (2001), pp. 255-257;
5. "The Definition of 'Moral'," in Dale Jamieson (ed.) Singer and His Critics (London: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), p. 57. It is in this latter paper that Smith claims that a view such as his opens up the possibility that moral reasons might be overridden by other, non-moral reasons. In itself this is a weaker claim than the claim that immoral behavior can be rationally permissible. For the possibility of non-moral reasons overriding moral ones is consistent with the idea - for example - that in cases that realize this possibility, the result is that the morally right action becomes supererogatory.
6. See Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 150-163, and 185.
7. Michael Smith, "Normative Reasons and Full Rationality: Reply to Swanton," Analysis 56 (1996), pp. 160-168.
8. See also Smith, "The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Shafer-Landau," pp. 255-256.
9. John Broome "Normative Requirements," Ratio 12 (1999), p. 412.
10. Compare Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 15-38.
11. See also Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 43.
12. Smith, "Bernard Gert's Complex Hybrid Conception of Rationality," p. 117.
13. See also Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 151-152.
14. Smith, "Reply to Swanton," p. 167. Of course the task of individuating desires is a difficult one. But in many cases it is clear that some individuations are acceptable, and others not. Regardless of these difficulties, Smith is committed to an objective notion of "the desires" of fully rational agents. For his account of normative reasons is cast in terms of "the desires" of fully rational agents, and he holds that normative reasons are objective.
15. Smith, "Reply to Swanton," p. 167.
16. Bernard Gert, Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 343.
17. Smith, "Bernard Gert's Complex Hybrid Conception of Rationality," p. 121.
18. Bernard Gert, Morality, pp. 343-344.
19. It seems fair to attribute this misinterpretation to anyone who (a) asserts that Smith holds that moral requirements are categorical requirements of rationality, but (b) does not go on to explain that this should not be taken to imply that immoral action is necessarily irrational. But for more explicit expressions of this very natural misinterpretation, see Brook Sadler, "The Possibility of Amoralism.: A Defense Against Internalism," Philosophy 78 (2003), pp. 63-78;
20. Paul Noordhof, "Moral Requirements are Still not Rational Requirements," Analysis 59 (1999), pp. 127-136;
21. David Copp, "Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith's The Moral Problem," Ethics 108 (1997), pp. 47-48;
22. Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, "Troubles for Michael Smith's Metaethical Rationalism," Philosophical Papers 25 (1996), pp. 204, 209;
23. Christine Swanton, "Is the Moral Problem Solved?" Analysis 56 (1996), p. 156;
24. James Lenman, "Michael Smith and the Daleks: Reason, Morality, and Contingency," Utilitas 11 (1999), pp. 165-177.
25. See Noordhof, "Moral Requirements are Still not Rational Requirements;" Copp, "Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith's The Moral Problem."
26. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 85.
27. Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 85-87. Because he also uses the phrase "absent practical irrationality" to qualify his claims about what we expect agents to do (see the following quotation), it is apparent that the additional phrase "other things being equal" should not be taken to mean, redundantly, "absent practical irrationality." Rather, Smith's "other things being equal" means "other reasons canceling out" or "when there are no other reasons bearing on the case."
28. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 86.
29. Copp, "Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith's The Moral Problem," p. 48.
30. See also Smith, "The Incoherence Argument: Reply to Shafer-Landau," p. 264.
31. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 185, emphasis provided.
32. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 184.
33. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 78.
34. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 84, emphasis provided.
35. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 174. A residual worry here might be that imperatives are not exactly the same as requirements. But Smith, does not seem to make any distinction between requirements and imperatives that is relevant to this issue, and moves back and forth between "categorical imperative" and "categorical requirement" without giving any indication that he thinks that there is a significant difference.
36. Smith, "Bernard Gert's Complex Hybrid Conception of Rationality," p. 121.
37. Bernard Gert makes similar points in his response to Smith. See his "Reply to Smith," Rationality, Rules, and Ideals, p. 287.
38. Smith, "Normative Reasons and Full Rationality: Reply to Swanton," p. 167.
39. This would not follow if the relevant counterfactual conditions did not determine strength of desire. But Smith seems to hold that as long we can give determinate content to the claim that a set of desires is maximally informed and coherent and unified, then there will, be a determinate set of such desires for a given agent [See Michael Smith, "Exploring the Implications of the Dispositional Theory of Value," in Ernest Sosa and. Enrique Villanueva (eds.) Philosophical Issues, 12: Realism and Relativism (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), p. 342].
40. Although I argue against this view of motivational strength in Joshua Gert, "Breaking the Law of Desire," Erkenntnis 62 (2005), pp. 295-319.
41. Michael Smith, "Evaluation, Uncertainty and Motivation," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (2002), p. 316. This remark is admittedly nothing like decisive evidence that Smith holds all desires to be comparable in terms of a univocal strength value. The final paragraph of this section, however, argues that if Smith rejects this view, his overall account becomes quite awkward.
42. See, for example, Joshua Gert, Brute Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 2.
43. This does not mean it is universally accepted. Those who think there is always a unique rational choice will deny the claim. But Smith does not seem to want to belong to this camp.
44. See, for example, Joseph Raz, Engaging Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999), pp. 100-105;
45. and Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). Chang herself takes the same phenomenon to support of the existence of a fourth positive value relation
46. [See Ruth Chang, "The Possibility of Parity," Ethics 112 (2002), pp. 659-688.
47. I suggest another way of accommodating the same phenomena in Joshua Gert, "Value and Parity," Ethics 114 (2004), pp. 492-510].
48. Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 164-177.
49. One problem, of course, is merely that they seem very odd. Indeed, they seem so odd that it may seem pointless to raise this possible interpretation, only to demonstrate that it leads to insuperable problems. But I here register my strong conviction that Smith did indeed intend disjunctive reasons to be understood in this irreducible way.
50. Smith, The Moral Problem, p. 12.
51. Smith might try to deploy his "remarkable fact" argument here. That is, he might point to the "remarkable fact" that good (or "moralist") and strong-willed people necessarily experience a change in motivations when they change their opinion that some action is morally right [See Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 71-76;
52. and Michael Smith, "The Argument for Internalism: Reply to Miller," Analysis 56 (1999), pp. 175-183]. But this argument will not work in the present context, even if it works in others. For Smith's argument against the externalist's explanation of the remarkable fact is the following. The moral judgment externalist, Smith argues, requires us to postulate that good people (or moralists) have a non-instrumental interest in "doing the right thing," where this is read not de re but de dicto. That is, Smith believes that externalists must hold that moralists are not directly concerned to help other people, to be honest, to avoid deception, etc., but rather take such behavior to be a means to the overarching and bizarrely abstract goal of "being morally good," In the present context, however, moral judgment externalists can claim that good people (or moralists) are simply people who (contingently, perhaps as the result of a good moral upbringing) happen to have a non-instrumental concern with the types of reasons that have the distinctive substantive content that Smith himself claims moral reasons have. No peculiar "moral fetishism" need be involved here at all.
53. Smith, The Moral Problem, pp. 177-178.
54. I.e., in the above example, it is a reason in favor of donating to public radio that one's action will contribute some small amount to the entertainment and education of some hundreds of listeners. And it is a reason in favor of donating to Oxfam, that one's action will prevent serious illness and perhaps death for three or four impoverished children.
55. See, for example, Joshua Gert, Brute Rationality, Chapter 5.
56. In "Value and Parity," I offer the consequentialist, with whom I am sympathetic, one way of understanding value in a more adequate way.
57. See Raz, Engaging Reason. A related strategy is found in Chang, "The Possibility of Parity."
58. th International Wittgenstein Symposium of the Austrian Wittgenstein Society, August 2004; Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 93;
59. Bernard Gert, Morality. I do not mean to suggest that Greenspan or Dancy embrace, or deny, the view that immoral action can sometimes be rationally permissible. I only mean to indicate that their views give normative reasons two distinct roles in determining the rational status of action, and that a notion of strength in one of these roles would correspond to what I have called "justificatory strength" above. Derek Parfit's view of rationality, as presented in his forthcoming Climbing the Mountain, also has the implication that altruistic reasons function very much as if they had only, or primarily, justificatory strength.
60. A fuller discussion of this suggestion is presented in Joshua Gert, Brute Rationality, Chapter 6.
61. There are, however, some good independent reasons to give up on this claim. See, for example, David Sobel, "Do the Desires of Rational Agents Converge?" Analysis 59 (1999), pp. 137-147;
62. Donald Hubin, "Converging on Values," Analysis 59 (1999), pp. 355-361.