Abstract
In this paper we point out some interesting structural similarities between vagueness and moral dilemmas as well as between some of the proposed solutions to both problems. Moral dilemma involves a situation with opposed obligations that cannot all be satisfied. Transvaluationism as an approach to vagueness makes three claims concerning the nature of vagueness: (1) it involves incompatibility between mutually unsatisfiable requirements, (2) the underlying requirements retain their normative power even when they happen to be overruled, and (3) this incompatibility turns out to be rather benign in practice. Given that transvaluationism is inspired by moral dilemmas, these claims are assessed in respect to them. Transvaluationism provides a smooth account of the mentioned claims concerning vagueness. Following a brief discussion of Sorensen’s views on moral dilemmas and conflict vagueness, we offer a model of moral pluralism accommodating structurally similar claims about the nature of moral conflict and moral dilemmas.
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Notes
It may be added that neighbors of items have the same status.
Actually, such a boundary would be questionable by the neighbors' same-status requirement.
Horgan and Potrč (2008: 199) also point out that they are using Nietzschean term transvaluationism in order to emphasize that it is not a species of what Williamson termed nihilism, e.i. the view that vague expressions are empty.
The ISS principle is generalist in that it does not allow any exceptions to the same status requirement for each successor in the sequence. The collectivistic prohibition allows the CSI principle to be followed, although not in all cases.
"Consider, as a suggestive model, a kind of situation that sometimes arises in the sphere of morals: a person finds himself with two conflicting moral obligations; both obligations remain in force, even though they conflict; yet the person is morally required to uphold one of these obligations specifically, and to violate the other one specifically.” (Horgan 1995)
We leave aside the debate as to whether such genuine moral dilemmas are actually possible at all and also the debate about what is the proper deontic logic interpretation of moral dilemmas. We also wish to remain neutral regarding what proper metaethical, i. e. cognitivist or expressivist, interpretation one should adopt in the light of such dilemmas.
This still allows both moral dilemmas and epistemic dilemmas to often appear together and for the existence of a "grey area" between them, as, e.g., in the case of not knowing whether a given moral principle applies to the case at hand, which could be a moral and an epistemic issue.
Regarding this aspect, moral conflict is radically different from the situation where we have two conflicting ordinary beliefs (A,B) that cannot both be true. When faced with such a situation and resolving it in the end (e.g. finding out that A is true) the false belief does not “survive” past this point. (Williams 1978)
We wish to avoid this particular debate here. Although we later argue for moral pluralism, which most often harbors a cognitivist view of moral judgments, we will not argue against Williams’s argument. You can find the arguments against Williams in Strahovnik (2008, 2009). The model we are presenting here strives to be independent from this metaethical dimension.
Sorensen (1991) locates five structural aspects involved in the debate on conflict vagueness and moral dilemmas, namely (i) source statements, which represent the description of a dilemma and moral requirement involved in it; (ii) the modal consequences of these requirements (e.g. that you are obliged to do A and to do B); (iii) the counterfactual that highlights weird consequences of the case, e.g. that you have a non-overridden obligation to do both A and not to do A; (iv) the claim about the impossibility of having an obligation to do A and not to do A; and (v) the claim that such described scenarios are possible. If we apply these elements to a well-known case of Sophie’s Choice dilemma (in the novel Sophie's Choice (1979) by William Styron one of the main characters, Sophie is confronted by a difficult choice forced on her by a sadistic doctor in a Nazi concentration camp; she has to choose which of her two children will die immediately in the gas chamber and which will be left to live on in the camp), we get the following. 1. A mother must save her child from any foreseeable disaster. 2. If so, then Sophie is required to save child A and child B. 3. If Sophie were required to save child A and A can be saved only by not saving child B (and vice versa), then she has a non-overridden requirement to save A and a non-overridden requirement not to save child A. 4. It is impossible for Sophie to have a non-overridden requirement to save child A and a non-overridden requirement not to save child A. 5. It is possible that Sophie only is able to save one child by not saving another. Sorensen argues that the best way to resolve the issue is to deny 3; accepting instead that she has an obligation to do A or B (Sorensen 1991: 300-308).
Using a different terminology one could say that this multitude of principles or moral values that are associated with them are incommensurable and therefore one cannot formulate the meta-principle that would prioritize or weight them.
Here is the definition of a prima facie duty provided by Ross that stirred much controversy and various interpretations over the years. "I suggest `prima facie duty´ or `conditional duty´ as a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e. g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant. Whether an act is a duty proper or actual duty depends on all the morally significant kinds it is an instance of. The phrase `prima facie duty´ must be apologized for, since (1) it suggests that what we are speaking of is a certain kind of duty, whereas it is in fact not a duty, but something related in a special way to duty. […] (2) `Prima´ facie suggests that one is speaking only of an appearance which a moral situation presents at first sight, and which may turn out to be illusory; whereas what I am speaking of is an objective fact involved in the nature, though not, as duty proper does, arising from its whole nature." (Ross 1930: 19-20)
We are aware that there might be other positions that would be able to handle moral conflict by accommodating claims M1-M3 and would strictly speaking not count as “moral pluralism.” In that case their plausibility would depend upon giving a proper picture about the relationship between moral reasons and moral principles in order to account for M1, i.e. there being a genuine moral conflict.
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Potrč, M., Strahovnik, V. Moral Dilemmas and Vagueness. Acta Anal 28, 207–222 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-011-0140-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-011-0140-2