Abstract
Monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about the structure of the best explanation of the rightness (wrongness) of actions. In this paper I argue that the availability of good moral advice gives us reason to prefer particularist theories and pluralist theories to monist theories. First, I identify two distinct roles of moral theorizing—explaining the rightness (wrongness) of actions, and providing moral advice—and I explain how these two roles are related. Next, I explain what monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about. Finally, I argue that particularists and pluralists are better situated than monists to explain why it is a good idea to think before we act, and that this gives us reason to favor particularism and pluralism over monism.
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Notes
Smith (1988, p. 89).
Bales (1971, p. 260).
Smith and Bales seem to think that in order to provide an account of the rightness/wrongness of actions we must find and formulate exceptionless moral principles of the form: For any action, A, if A exemplifies property P, then A is morally right (wrong). However, we need not presuppose that the only way to explain the rightness/wrongness of actions is to identify exceptionless moral principles—there may be other ways to do so. See Sect. II below and Leibowitz (forthcoming).
Smith (1988, pp. 89–90).
Bales (1971, p. 261).
For simplicity of exposition, I focus on guiding action alone rather than guiding action or judgment. However, everything I say about guiding action applies, mutatis mutandis, to the guidance of judgment as well.
In particular situations moral advice could take a simpler form: perform action A (without the ‘if and/or only if ψ′ clause). I will focus on moral advice that is meant to apply generally, and not only to an individual case. Nevertheless, we sometimes give/receive advice in different forms; e.g., “think about the consequences”, or “if I were you, I would do A”. But strictly speaking these forms of advice do not help us decide which action to perform; they could be helpful if they are understood as shorthand for something like the following: “think about the consequences, and perform the action that you believe would lead to the best possible consequences”; and “Perform action A if you want to perform that action that I would have performed if I were you”. So even if moral advice does not explicitly take the form: perform action A if and/or only if ψ, we should be able to restate it in this format.
Broad (1930, p. 285).
The ‘should’ here is the prudential should; if one wants to act rightly, then one has reason to use good moral advice.
Advice T is distinct from advice S just in case agents who follow T do not, ipso facto, also follow S. For example, if advice S is perform action A only if ψ, and advice T is perform action A only if [ψ and ω] then agents who follow T also follow S. In other words, since T is a precisification of S, agents who follow T do not fail to follow S. This means that it is possible that agents should follow S even if we know that there is some other moral advice, O, that yields a greater rightness-to-wrongness ratio, as long as agents who follow O, ipso facto, also follow S.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this issue.
Smith (1988) suggests the following: “an agent uses a principle as a guide for making a decision just in case the agent chooses an act out of a desire to conform to the principle, and a belief that the act does conform.” (91) She goes on to make several qualifications to this statement on p. 92, and p. 105 n. 18.
I defend this in Leibowitz (forthcoming).
Particularist may be able to say more about why P is right-making in this case. See, for example, Lance and Little (2004). Nevertheless, the key point is that particularists insist that an explanation of the rightness of an action need not be grounded in an exceptionless moral principle.
One might think that if a property is morally relevant in virtue of its intrinsic nature and if the intrinsic nature of a property does not change from one case to another, then a property that is morally relevant in one case must be morally relevant in all cases. However, Jonathan Dancy—the philosopher most associated with particularism—argues that we should distinguish between favorers/disfavorers and enablers/disablers. According to Dancy, a feature that favors an action in one situation may be disabled (or it could fail to be enabled) in another situation. Nevertheless, the absence of a disabler (or the presence of an enabler) in the first situation is not a part of the feature that favors the action. For a detailed account of holism in the theory of reasons see Dancy (1993, 2000, 2003, 2004).
(RD) is a very general form of moral advice, and it can be precisified in various different ways. For example Hébert’s decision procedure in Hébert (1996) can be viewed as one possible precisification of (RD). Ross (1930) seems to endorse some version of (RD) as well: “we are more likely to do our duty if we reflect to the best of our ability on the prima facie rightness or wrongness of various possible acts in virtue of the characteristics we perceive them to have, than if we act without reflection. With this greater likelihood we must be content.” (p. 32).
More accurately, I maintain that RSI-agents can and should use (RD) as long as they are not under pressing time constraints. For simplicity, I will omit this qualification in the main text.
This case description is quoted from Hébert (1996, p. 78) (case 4.7).
There may be other reasons to recommend using (RD). One could argue that agents should follow (RD) not because (or not only because) it increases the likelihood of choosing correctly, but rather for reasons that have to do with moral responsibility, autonomy, or the manifestation of good moral character. However, I will not discuss these alternatives here.
Mill seems to have thought that we can learn from experience that certain factors are reliable indicators of utility maximization (see Mill’s Utilitarianism, Chap. 2). However, if we are never justified in believing of any action that it exemplifies utility-maximization, it is unclear how we can learn from experience that certain factors reliably track this property. See Lenman (2000) for reasons for thinking that we are never justified in believing of any action that it exemplifies utility-maximization.
See Feldman (2006) for an explanation of why a move to expected utility will not help here.
There may be some monist theories that can circumvent this problem. Consider, for example, the following monist interpretation of Ross’s theory of prima facie rightness: An act, A, is morally right iff A maximizes prima facie rightness. According to this interpretation, there is only one IMR-property—namely, prima facie-rightness-maximization. Justice, beneficence, fidelity, and the other prima facie duties that Ross identifies are all extrinsically morally relevant; these properties are relevant in virtue of their relation to the property of prima facie-rightness-maximization. Nevertheless, the relationship between justice, for example, and prima facie-rightness-maximization is, arguably, a conceptual relation. Monists of this variety (with various lists of prima facie duties) may be able to explain how it is that features that RSI-agents consider are (extrinsically) morally relevant.
Of course, not all factors that RSI-agents consider are intrinsically morally relevant. For example, in deliberating about the normative status of an action, RSI-agents may consider whether they would be prepared to make their decision public (see Hébert 1996). Surely the fact that an action has the property of being such that the agent of the act is prepared to make it public is (typically) not an IMR-property. However, particularists and pluralists can explain why this property is (sometimes) extrinsically morally relevant; for example, they could say that considering whether one is prepared to make one’s decision public helps one to adopt an impartial perspective, which, in turn, helps the agent to recognize whether an action exemplifies morally relevant properties such as being just or being beneficent.
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I am indebted to Daniel Doviak for many invaluable conversations and insightful suggestions. I am also grateful to Fred Feldman, Pete Graham, Ori Herstein, Hilary Kornblith, Gareth Matthews, Michael Zimmerman, and an anonymous referee for this journal for instructive feedback and criticisms. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the Florida State University graduate conference, and at the Yale/UConn graduate conference. I would like to thank my commentators Brian Coffey and Gwen Bradford for their helpful comments.
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Leibowitz, U.D. Moral advice and moral theory. Philos Stud 146, 349–359 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9269-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9269-2