The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory

Hugh LaFollette, Ingmar Persson

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118514269
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Building on the strengths of the highly successful first edition, the extensively updated Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory presents a complete state-of-the-art survey, written by an international team of leading moral philosophers.

• A new edition of this successful and highly regarded Guide, now reorganized and updated with the addition of significant new material
• Includes 21 essays written by an international team of leading philosophers
• Extensive, substantive essays develop the main arguments of all the leading viewpoints in ethical theory
• Essays new to this edition cover evolution and ethics, capability ethics, virtues and consequences, and the implausibility of virtue ethics

Part I

Metaethics and Moral Epistemology

Chapter 1

Moral Realism

Michael Smith

In the past thirty years or so, the debate over moral realism has become a major focus of philosophical activity. Unfortunately, however, as a glance at the enormous body of literature generated by the debate makes clear, there is still no consensus as to what, precisely, it would take to be a moral realist (Sayre-McCord 1988a). My aims in this essay are thus twofold: first, to clarify what is at stake in the debate over realism, and, second, to explain why, as it seems to me, the realist’s stance is more plausible than the alternatives.

Moral Realism vs Nihilism vs Expressivism

What do moral realists believe? The standard answer is that they believe two things. First, they believe that the sentences we use when we make moral claims – sentences like “Torturing babies is wrong” and “Keeping promises is obligatory” – are capable of being either true or false, and, second, they believe that some such sentences are true. Moral realism thus contrasts with two quite distinct kinds of view.

The first view shares realism’s first commitment, but rejects the second. According to this first alternative, when we make claims about acts being obligatory, right, and wrong we intend thereby to make claims about the way the world is – we intend to say something capable of being either true or false – but none of these sentences are true. When we engage in moral talk we presuppose that obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness are features that acts could possess, but we are in error. There are no such features for acts to possess. This view generally goes under the name of nihilism or the error theory (Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001).

The second more radical view shares neither commitment. According to this view, the sentences we use when we make moral claims are not used with the intention of saying something that is capable of being either true or false. We do not use them in an attempt to make claims about the way the world is. By contrast with nihilism, we therefore do not presuppose that obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness are features that acts could possess. Rather we use moral sentences to express our feelings about acts, people, states of the world, and the like. When we say “Torturing babies is wrong” it is as if we were saying “Boo for torturing babies!” This view generally goes under the name of noncognitivism or expressivism or projectivism (Hare 1952; Gibbard 1990; Blackburn 1994).

Expressivism and nihilism share a conception of the world as value-free and so devoid of any moral nature. However, they differ in a crucial respect as well. Because nihilism insists that moral thought and talk presuppose that obligatori­ness, rightness, and wrongness are features of acts, it sees the value-free nature of the world as something that demands a reform of moral practice. We cannot continue to assert falsehoods once we know them to be false, but must rather refrain from asserting them at all, or else justify the pretense that the falsehoods are true. Moral thought and talk thus have the same status as religious thought and talk once we become convinced atheists, at which point we must either stop going to church altogether, or else continue to go but do so for nonreligious reasons such as the love of the community or the music. By contrast, expressivism holds that the value-free nature of the world has no such consequence. It holds that moral thought and talk can proceed perfectly happily in the knowledge that the world is value-free because, in making moral claims, we never presupposed otherwise.

The upshot is that there are therefore two fundamental – if rather abstract and general – questions that need to be answered to resolve the moral realism debate. The first is whether sentences that ascribe obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness to actions are capable of being true or false – if we answer “yes” to this question then we thereby refute expressivism – and the second, which presupposes an affirmative answer to the first, is whether any sentences ascribing obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness to actions are true. If we answer “yes” to this second question then we thereby eliminate the nihilist option as well. Answering “yes” to these two questions commits us to the truth of moral realism.

An Initial Difficulty

So described, moral realism looks to be a very demanding doctrine. It can go wrong in two distinct ways. Perhaps it wrongly supposes that sentences ascribing obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness to actions are capable of truth and falsehood, or, granting that it is right about that, perhaps it wrongly supposes that some of these sentences really are true. However, as we will see, the real danger is that moral realism, so understood, is insufficiently demanding. As characterized, it may be too easy to be a moral realist.

The distinctive feature of the two abstract and general questions just asked is that they each involve semantic ascent; that is, they each speak of a feature that must be possessed by the sentences we use when we make moral claims, or a relation that must obtain between these sentences and the world. But the fact that they each involve semantic ascent poses an initial difficulty. If a commitment to the truth of moral realism comes by answering “yes” to these two abstract and general questions, then it looks as if such commitment might come cheaply, at least to competent speakers of English who have any moral commitments at all. Let me illustrate the difficulty.

Like most people reading this essay, I have various moral commitments. For example, I am quite confident that torturing babies is wrong. As a competent speaker of English, I am therefore willing to say so by using the English sentence “Torturing babies is wrong.” Imagine me saying this out loud:

Torturing babies is wrong.

Moreover, as a competent speaker of English, I am also willing to say so not just by using this sentence of English but also by mentioning it. Imagine me saying this out loud:

“Torturing babies is wrong” is true.

Or even

“Torturing babies is wrong” is really true.

This is because, in common parlance, mentioning this sentence and saying of it that it is true is simply an alternative way of saying what I could have said by using the sentence. “ ‘Torturing babies is wrong’ is true” and “ ‘Torturing babies is wrong’ is really true” are simply long-winded ways of saying that torturing babies is wrong – ways that involve semantic ascent.

Given the initial characterization of what it takes to be a moral realist, it therefore seems to follow that I am a moral realist. After all, since I willingly assert the truth of “Torturing babies is wrong” it follows that I think that the sentences I use when I make moral claims – sentences like “Torturing babies is wrong” – are both capable of being true or false and that some of these sentences really are true . . . oh dear. Something has clearly gone wrong. Perhaps a commitment to moral realism follows from the mere fact that I have moral commitments, together with the fact that I am a competent speaker of English, but it seems very unlikely. But what exactly has gone wrong?

An obvious suggestion is that the surface grammar of moral sentences is potentially misleading, masking some deeper metaphysical fact. Though we say that these sentences are true and false, this is loose talk. What moral realists really believe, the suggestion might be, is that the sentences we use when we make moral claims are capable of being true or false strictly speaking. Expressivists, by contrast, hold that moral claims are only capable of being true or false loosely speaking. Everything thus turns on what it is to speak strictly, as opposed to loosely, when we say of sentences that they are true or false.

Minimalism

What do the words “true” and “false” mean strictly speaking? One very popular view nowadays is minimalism about truth (Horwich 1990; Wright 1992). According to this view, the role of the words “true” and “false” in our language is simply to enable us to register our agreement and disagreement with what people say without going to the trouble of using all the words that they used to say it.

For example, suppose A says “Snow is white, and grass is green, and roses are red, and violets are blue,” and that B wants to register agreement. If the word “true” was not a part of our language then, in order to do so, B would have to quote what A said and then disquote. B would have to say “A said ‘snow is white’ and snow is white, and A said ‘grass is green’ and grass is green, and A said ‘roses are red’ and roses are red, and A said ‘violets are blue’ and violets are blue.” But that requires B to use more than twice the number of words that A used. The role of the word “true,” according to the minimalist, is simply to allow B to register agreement more efficiently. Because we have the word “true” in our language, B can quantify over all of the things that A said and then say, all at once, “Everything B said is true.”

The upshot, according to minimalism, is that all there is to say about the meaning of the words “true” and “false,” strictly speaking, is precisely what we said when noting the initial difficulty. All there is to know about the meaning of the word “true” is that, when “s” is a meaningful sentence of English, and when “ ‘s’ is true” is also a meaningful sentence of English, someone who says “ ‘s’ is true” could just as well have disquoted and said instead “s.” When you mention or quote an English sentence and meaningfully append “is true” to it, this is just another way of saying what could have been said by using or disquoting that English sentence. Minimalism about truth thus suggests that when I say “ ‘Torturing babies is wrong’ is true,” rather than “Torturing babies is wrong,” I am speaking strictly, for I thereby register the appropriateness of disquotation.

Accordingly, it seems to me that we should therefore put a very first realist option on the table. Minimal moral realists believe three things. First, they believe that the sentences we use when we say that actions are right and wrong are true or false strictly speaking, rather than merely loosely speaking; second, they believe that some of these sentences really are true; and third, they believe that, strictly speaking, the meanings of the words “true” and “false” are fully explained by the minimalist’s story. Minimal moral realism is a very cheap doctrine indeed: if you accept the minimalist’s story about truth then, if you have any moral commitments at all, you are a moral realist – or, at any rate, you are a minimal moral realist. Nihilism and expressivism are eliminated in one fell swoop. The obvious questions to ask are whether we should all be minimal moral realists and, if so, whether nihilism and expressivism really are so easily eliminated.

Why Minimalism Does Not Really Make a Difference

Minimalists about truth tell us that all there is to know about the meaning of the word “true” is that, when “s” is a meaningful sentence of English, and when “ ‘s’ is true” is also a meaningful sentence of English, someone who says “ ‘s’ is true” could just as well have disquoted and said instead “s.” But this story – at least in the form in which it has just been told – buries an extra, crucially important, piece of information about truth, for it fails to tell us the conditions that need to be satisfied by “s” in order for “ ‘s’ is true” to be a meaningful sentence of English. In other words, it fails to tell us what it is about a sentence that is capable of truth and falsehood that makes it capable of truth and falsehood. Let me spell out this problem in greater detail (Jackson, Oppy, and Smith 1994).

Everyone agrees that “Snow is white” and “ ‘Snow is white’ is true” are both meaningful sentences of English. Moreover, everyone also agrees that though “Hooray for the Chicago Bulls!” is a meaningful sentence of English, “ ‘Hooray for the Chicago Bulls!’ is true” is not. But why is there this difference between the two sentences? What do the meaningful strings of English words that are truth-apt have in common that they do not have in common with those strings of English words that are non-truth-apt? What feature of the truth-apt sentences of English makes them truth-apt? Minimalism about truth, as so far characterized, does not provide an answer. Yet surely an answer to this question is part of what we need to know, when we know all there is to know about the meaning of the word “true.”

Minimalists about truth typically insist that they can provide a suitably minimal answer to this question (Wright 1992; Horwich 1993). Consider three strings of English words: “Snow is white,” “Torturing babies is wrong,” and “Hooray for the Chicago Bulls!” The standard minimalist suggestion is that the first two strings of English words are truth-apt, and the third is not, because of a purely syntactic feature that they possess and the third lacks. The first two strings of English words, they suggest, are of an appropriate grammatical type to figure in a whole array of contexts: the antecedents of conditionals (for example, “If snow is white, then it is the same color as writing paper” and “If torturing babies is wrong then I will support the existence of a law against it” are both well-formed sentences), propositional attitude contexts (“John believes that snow is white” and “John believes that torturing babies is wrong” are both well-formed sentences), and so on and so forth. But the third sentence, by contrast, is not of the appropriate grammatical type to figure in these contexts (neither “If hooray for the Chicago Bulls then I will get tickets to see them play next season” nor “John believes that hooray for the Chicago Bulls” are well-formed sentences). It is this syntactic feature of the first two sentences that, according to the minimalists, makes it appropriate for them to figure in “ ‘——’ is true” contexts, and it is the fact that the third lacks this feature that makes it incapable of figuring in such contexts – so, at any rate, minimalists typically argue.

However, for reasons Lewis Carroll made plain in his wonderful poem “Jabberwocky,” this minimalist account of truth-aptitude is unsatisfactory (Carroll 1872/1998). “ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe” looks like a conjunction of sentences which, syntactically, are of the appropriate grammatical type to figure in the antecedents of conditionals (thus, for example, “If the toves are gyring and gimbling in the wabe then I will watch them” looks for all the world to be a well-formed sentence), to be embedded in propositional attitude contexts (“I believe that the toves are gyring and gimbling” looks to be a well-formed sentence), and so on. Indeed, it looks like these sentences can have “true” predicated of them (“ ‘The toves are gyring and gimbling in the wabe’ is true” looks to be a well-formed sentence). But it does not follow that these sentences are truth-apt. Indeed, we know that they are not truth-apt because, notwithstanding their syntax, they are nonsense sentences – sentences without any meaning whatsoever. They are therefore incapable of being either true or false. The idea that mere syntax is sufficient to establish truth-aptitude is thus absurd.

We must therefore ask what a sentence with the right syntax must have added to it in order to make it truth-apt. For example, what feature would Carroll’s sentence “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe” have to have added to it, in order to make it truth-apt? The obvious answer to this question is that the sentence would have to be meaningful, rather than nonsense, and for this to be the case the constituent words in the sentence – words like “tove,” “gyre,” “gimble,” and “wabe” – would have to be associated with patterns of usage that make it plain what information about the world people who use the words in those ways intend to convey when...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Blackwell Philosophy Guides
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Notes on Editors and Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Metaethics and Moral Epistemology
• Part II: Factual Background of Ethics
• Part III: Normative Ethics
• Index