The Concept of Morality

Pratima Bowes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000035902
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Ética y filosofía moral

In this book, originally published in 1959, the author believes that general moral concepts embody conceptions of standards in accordance with which particular moral judgments proceed and these may become objects of theoretical understanding and knowledge – and hence be treated as facts in some context of a moral nature – in an ethical enquiry that is philosophical in character. The book clarifies the implications of conceptions which are used when aspects of our experiences are evaluated from a distinctive point of view, namely that of morality. It examines some of the theories which suggest that the function of ethical philosophy is something quite other than what traditional philosophers believed it to be, namely by asking what goodness or justice is.

CHAPTER I

The Nature of Philosophy of Ethics

PART I. IS PHILOSOPHY OF ETHICS POSSIBLE?

The view that what goes by the name of Philosophy of Ethics is a confusion caused by lack of understanding of the use of ethical terms has recently become popular. Philosophy of Ethics, it is maintained, should properly be meta-ethics, i.e. an enquiry into the logic and language of ethical terms. The only objection I have to this recommendation is that it suggests that an enquiry into the logic and language of ethical terms is purely a linguistic enquiry and not, as I believe, into what may be called ‘moral facts or characteristics’ as well.

C. L. Stevenson in his Ethics and Language draws a distinction between normative and philosophical ethics and claims that only the former is legitimate. If I understand him all right the distinction is this. Normative ethics is what we are all concerned with when we make our ordinary value judgments on people’s conduct and character and also on existing states of affairs. Philosophical ethics, according to Stevenson, is based on the mistaken idea that there are certain intrinsic and ultimate ends of conduct which exist quite independently of any matters of fact. As Stevenson may be taken to be representative of the school of thought which denies philosophical ethics its pride of place, we may consider his arguments against it somewhat in detail.

Talking about philosophical ethics, he says that questions of value occur only in connection with questions of fact, and what are called intrinsic ends cannot exist without some means being adopted to bring them into existence. It is therefore futile to treat values as if they exist on their own independently of any fact and as if one could discuss these values quite apart from a factual context. Again, it is useless to suppose that a discussion about intrinsic ends can be profitable quite apart from a context in which the question of adopting some means or other to bring them into existence is relevant. If values do not exist except in so far as facts are considered valuable and if intrinsic ends do not exist except through the instrumentality of means, then questions about intrinsic value cannot constitute an independent study as philosophical moralists thought they can. It is the statesmen, psychologists, social scientists, etc., who pass normative judgments about the particular objects of their concern—people who are engaged in discussing not what is desirable as an end for its own sake but the relationship between certain states of affairs and certain courses of human actions which lead to such states—who are properly engaged on questions of value. And the sort of questions they ask is the only sort of value questions that it is important for us to ask.

Now one would entirely agree with Stevenson that values do not exist except in the context of facts, and that in actual life there are not two sets of questions—questions about values and intrinsic ends to be dealt with by specialists (philosophical moralists) and questions of facts and means to be asked by statesmen, social scientists, etc. One would also agree that it is not the case that if and when the latter group of people wish to decide upon objectives they should consult the specialists in value. Nevertheless, I do not agree that questions about intrinsic ends cannot form an independent study or that philosophical moralists, who in a certain sense divorce questions of fact and means from questions of value and ends, do not ask questions as significant for human purposes as the questions asked by statesmen, etc., who are concerned with directly existing facts and with means to bring about changes believed to be preferable to states of affairs actually existing. I have tried to indicate in my discussions on the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘right’ how the questions of intrinsic ends can become objects of an independent study. Here I shall indicate very briefly what I conceive a philosophical treatment of Ethics to be and in what sense philosophical moralists are justified in divorcing the questions of ends and values from questions of means and facts.

Value questions, as Stevenson says, arise only in factual contexts. When statesmen are engaged, in dealing with international political problems in the course of which they deliberate whether they should go to war to solve a dispute or whether they should meet the opponent half-way (speaking figuratively) and settle the issue peacefully they are engaged in settling questions of value. Let us suppose that the statesmen engaged in a conflict between two governments are X and Y and the issue is Z, and naturally it is highly complex. That is to say, it has not got a simple, clearcut, precise nature that can be got hold of by using our senses and it itself is composed of different issues of a less general kind or has many aspects.¹ Now both the statesmen X and Y are concerned with Z but with different aspects of it or with Z as looked at from different points of view, and let us suppose that these are P and Q. P and Q themselves are systems of things rather than particular things, and as systems are in some ways opposed to one another. X upholds P and opposes Q, while Y does the reverse. Let us suppose, further, that they then pass the value judgments ‘P is so much better than Q that one is justified in going to war in order to have P instead of Q’ and Q is so much, etc.’.

Now R, who is an ordinary citizen in either of the countries the governments of which are in opposition, might find that his own reactions to the matter are somewhat different. He might feel that neither P nor Q is thoroughly good or thoroughly bad and it is not at all obvious to him that P is so much better than Q that one is justified in starting a war that has immeasurable powers of destruction in order that P may exist as against Q or vice versa. As some people say that P is good and Q bad and others make the opposite judgment, R feels that he needs a standard acceptable to all reasonable people by which to decide—if such a decision is at all possible. The issue is so important for so many people that he feels that it ought not to be decided in such a way as inflicts a lot of suffering on them—purely on grounds of personal preference.

¹ For instance if the issue is human freedom one could discern various aspects of the problem and talk about freedom of speech and political opinion, economic freedom or basic security and a standard of life for the mass of population which is in keeping with the wealth of the country, freedom or opportunity to exercise genuine choice in selecting one’s career in accordance with one’s capabilities and so on.

R might find in the course of deliberation that P appears good as against Q because of its aspects a, b, c, etc., the comparable ones in Q being i, j, k; and Q appears good as against P because of its aspects e, f, g, etc., the comparable ones in P being m, n, o. The aspects i, j, k, etc., in Q are such that their existence definitely makes it difficult and in certain cases even impossible for some individual human beings to fulfil some of their deeply felt needs, as a result of which they cannot develop themselves in their own ways or live their own lives as they would like to, whereas the existence of a, b, c does not mean this for the same group of people. Again, the aspects m, n, o are such that their presence means the continuation of an injustice of a certain kind to some people, whereas the presence of aspects e, f, g does not mean this. When X says ‘P is good’ he is possibly talking about the aspects a, b, c, etc., in it, and the standard by which he is judging such things to be good is the conception ‘opportunity for people to develop and live in their own ways’. When Y says ‘Q is good’ he is possibly talking about the aspects e,f, g in it, and the standard by which he is judging such things to be good is the conception of ‘justice’. These conceptions are acceptable as standards of evaluation because the conceptions which oppose them like ‘lack of opportunity for people to develop and live in their own ways’ and ‘lack of justice’ cannot, from the very nature of the case, be appealed to by reasonable people to support the worthwhileness of what they value. That is to say, these concepts are such that they show themselves to be reasonable courts of appeal in certain contexts of evaluation, while the opposite conceptions show themselves to be unreasonable. The man may further reflect on the question, why is it that we accept these conceptions as standards and not the conceptions which oppose them, and find that these conceptions are consistent with the possibility of the happiness of human beings as individuals, while the conceptions which oppose these are not. And he further finds that it is reasonable, from the very nature of the case, to prefer human happiness to unhappiness, while it is unreasonable to do the opposite.

R thus finds that there are certain conceptions of standards by appealing to which the worthwhileness of certain things valued may be supported and this support may be expected to be satisfactory to people who will take up a reasonable attitude towards the question. That is to say, these standards have been conceived in such a way that an appeal to these rather than to their opposites is reasonable and this appeal does not need the support of arguments to show that it is reasonable. It is then the case that the notions of certain self-justified standards or ends are actually implied in our evaluation of human affairs when we believe that our evaluation stands for something over and above personal preference, i.e. when we believe that if people are reasonable they will accept the worthwhileness of what we are valuing.

When R has come to have a fuller understanding of the conceptions that have been involved as the standards of evaluation of the states of affairs P and Q he might find that the actual judgments passed on P and Q are not fully satisfactory from the point of view of morality. Although aspects a, b, c, etc., of P are in accordance with a self-evident standard and in that sense good, there are certain other aspects of P, namely m, n, o, which do not satisfy another self-evident standard as well as the aspects e, f, g of Q do. Therefore the judgment ‘P is good’ is not tenable as a value judgment if it is meant to be an unqualified judgment to the effect that P is good through and through and not merely that P is good in so far as P involves a, b, c, etc. A similar remark holds of Q. R might still find that it is possible to say that P is on the whole better than Q and vice versa if it is at all possible to find that the one or the other leaves greater scope for the happiness of human beings as individuals when considered in the totality of their aspects. But he finds that the judgment P is so much better than Q that one is justified in going to war so that one may have P instead of Q’¹, or vice versa, is untenable as a value judgment because it is inconsistent with the requirements of human happiness as individuals. War as a method of solving disputes is one matter when it injures a restricted group of people directly involved in fighting, it is quite another when the lives and possessions of a large number of people are involved who are neither responsible in any way for creating tension nor are personally interested in solving the dispute to such a degree that they do not any longer consider their lives and possessions to be valuable. For in the latter case starting a war means forcing a lot of people to be extremely unhappy when the unhappiness involved is such that the people concerned neither desire nor deserve it. Reflections on the meaning of ethical terms—when these terms are used in a judgment which the evaluator believes to stand for something more than an expression of personal opinion—then may actually lead us to consider some value judgments passed to be unsatisfactory or not wholly tenable, in so far as these judgments claim to be objective.

¹ The actual judgments passed are much more complex. I have taken a simplified case for the sake of argument.

Philosophical ethics has to do with our thinking about ethical issues and with the satisfactory or unsatisfactory use of ethical terms in a value context which is accepted by the disputants to be in some sense objective (otherwise there can hardly be any argument and the matter would end with the voicing of personal preferences). It is then concerned with the clarification of the meaning of ethical terms in one sense and with intrinsic ends or self-justified standards of value in another, for unless conceptions of such standards are involved in the use of ethical terms the value context is not such that a judgment which is more than an expression of a personal preference can be passed. It is concerned with the clarification of the meaning of ethical terms in this sense. Ethical judgments use such terms of evaluation as ‘right’ and ‘good’. Some ethical judgments, at any rate, claim to be more than expressions of personal attitudes and preferences inasmuch as people making such judgments believe that others would find them acceptable if they looked at them from a value point of view that is rational. Now reasonable people may be expected to accept these judgments only if such judgments are in accordance with conceptions of standards that they will find acceptable because of their being what they are. In normative judgments of the sort that we are discussing, then, the terms ‘right’ and ‘good’ may be expected to involve certain self-justified standards of value or, which is the same thing, to be consistent with conceptions of intrinsic ends. Philosophical ethics may profitably enquire what these self-justifying standards (and their implications) are that are involved in the use of the terms like ‘right’ and ‘good’ in ordinary normative discourse when that discourse is held consistently within a characteristic point of view and when it is presumed to be based on something more than personal preference. To do this is, in a sense, to explicate or analyse the meaning of these terms. And this analysis can be a guide in our approach to some of the actual uses that are made of such terms. For instance, if we say that a part of the meaning of the ethical term ‘good’—when this term is used consistently within a characteristic point of view—is that whatever is referred to by that term may be supposed to be consistent with the conception of greatest good (a state of affairs in which it is possible for everyone concerned to be as happy as it is in his nature to be), then a particular use of the ethical term ‘good’ (or ‘better’) as in ‘it will be better to go to war for P than not to have P’ may be shown to be ethically untenable, if there is reason to think that the war in question will cause more unhappiness to human beings as individuals than the state of affairs lacking in P. Or again, take another ethical term ‘justice’ which stands for a self-justifying standard generally believed to be good. If we define justice as a state of affairs in which nobody is treated prejudicially or preferentially in respect of fulfilment of his felt needs—and we can do so if we find that this is how this term is used in ordinary normative discourse when it is used consistently—then the use of the term ‘just’ as in ‘a society in which people do their duties belonging to their stations in life is just’ may be shown to be ethically untenable. But this analysis of the meaning of ethical terms is at the same time an enquiry into intrinsic ends or self-justifying standards. For philosophical ethics does not just discuss the different senses in which ethical terms are actually used but tries to discern that particular meaning, out of all that are current in usage, which can be consistently applied from a characteristic point of view; and such consistent use of a value term can only be understood with reference to the conception of a standard that does not need any further support of arguments to show that it is acceptable.

Philosophical ethics then divorces the conceptions of ends for a specialized study from the questions of means, i.e. it discusses what is involved in the conception of the self-justifying end called ‘justice’ without discussing how justice in some particular sphere or other can be brought about. (I do not say that a philosopher cannot do this as well.) But the conception of the end called ‘justice’ with which it is legitimately concerned is not a conception that is spun out of a philosopher’s head, rather it is a conception that is found by the philosopher to be implicit in the undertaking of certain means by some people to bring about certain changes in the existing states of affairs, as also in some actual normative discourse. Only, the philosopher endeavours to choose a meaning that can be consistently employed within a certain characteristic context of discourse.

The justification of a philosophical treatment of Ethics then lies in this. It is not that the statesmen, social scientists and the like should learn what things are intrinsically good from the philosophers, for they themselves are not lacking in the ideas of ends. On the contrary, they are concerned with the question of means only because they have ends to realize. But ethical terms stand for conceptions that are abstract and complex in nature and it is not unlikely that in a normative discourse they are sometimes used inconsistently, i.e. the same term is used to imply different things not consistent with one another in different judgments put forward in the same context of discourse. A philosopher’s study of the implications of an ethical term may here be of use by helping the argument to be consistent and to the point. The philosophers do not contribute to the laymen the conceptions of intrinsic ends, for they themselves arrive at the ideas of these ends in course of reflecting on some of the conduct, character, emotions, thoughts, and aspirations of people, including non-philosophers. Their contribution—supposing that they succeed in contributing anything—lies in explicating the consistent implications of these ends when the ideas of these ends are used from a characteristic point of view.

If philosophical ethics is conceived in the manner indicated above, then some of the damaging criticisms that Stevenson offers against philosophical ethics, which he calls the ‘specialist’s conception of ethics’, will not affect our position. One of his main criticisms is that philosophical ethics requires that we should derive moral conclusions about matters of fact by way of deduction from self-evident premises with which only philosophical moralists, the specialists in value, have any concern.

But I do not think that a philosophical moralist is necessarily committed to the opinion that moral arguments are deductive. He might say that instead of starting with a general proposition that something or other is intrinsically good we actually start with the opinion that something or other in particular is good or bad and when such opinion is questioned we advance general considerations of the nature of standards on which our valuation can find a support in the eyes of others, or again we might be faced with a situation which we find to be unsatisfactory in some ways but do not know at a glance what exactly is bad or wrong about it or how it sho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I. The Nature of Philosophy of Ethics
• Chapter II. In What Sense is Ethics a Theoretical Study of Objective Facts?
• Chapter III. Rationality of Morals
• Chapter IV. The Decision, Attitude and Command Theories of Morals
• Chapter V. The Characteristics of Moral Values
• Chapter VI. The Concept of Good
• Chapter VII. The Concepts of ‘Ought’, ‘Right’ and ‘Duty’
• Chapter VIII. Moral Praise and Blame
• Index