The Minimum for Moral Judgements
I think that one of the chapters in my thesis was called “the minimum for moral judgements”. The minimum for moral judgements, as such, was a commensurability with our own values. This, then, was the view for which I defined the term “commensurability”. However, looking at this view with eight years' hindsight, I no longer find it very plausible because it conflates two separate perspectives on morality:
I think that this distinction clarifies the issue considerably: Does a moral (2) judgement, therefore, also need in some way to be a moral (1) judgement, commensurably with our own values? I certainly would not have thought so, nor do I think Ayn Rand would have thought so. She would have called it the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, whereby one were confusing morality in general with a specific moral code.
If that is the case, however, then that would also have been a problem for my claims. For I was trying to question the value of morality based on what I deemed to be moral judgements. According to Rand, there were other moral theories that I could think perfectly valid.
The reason that I wanted to distinguish my theory from a moral theory was different from that, though. I didn’t think that it would necessarily be plausible as a moral theory. It would be vulnerable to all sorts of principled objections that would simply have resulted in hypocrisy. I guess the reply to that argument would have been that the answer would still not have been to criticize morality in general. It would have been to criticize the nature of the moral discourse in question. It would not be enough, in that case, simply to argue for a particular theory of ethics. Due to the practical nature of ethics, one must also be prepared to practice what one preaches. If one does not, then certainly one is vulnerable to allegations of hypocrisy. But this cannot be a separate issue from whether the theory that one is espousing is actually correct or not.
For the reason why, consider an analogy with epistemology. We already find lines of reasoning like that to be plausible in epistemology. If someone claims to be a skeptic about induction, it is not difficult to accuse her of hypocrisy. It is easy to catch someone in the act of committing an inductive inference, because inductive skepticism is impossible to practise consistently. But many people also seem to think that that is an argument against inductive skepticism. This is because actions speak louder than words. If a person regularly performs inductive inferences, it must actually be because she does believe, in her heart of hearts, that induction is, in fact, rational. And in regularly performing induction, one can rightly claim that her actions speak louder than her words.
I do not see why this should not hold in ethics as well. If someone is in the habit of acting against what he professes to be moral, then this seems an effective objection to his moral views. One can argue that he himself does not believe in them, as evidenced by his own actions. His actions speak louder than his words.
- normative morality, or judging anything as moral or immoral; and
- descriptive morality, or judging anything as moral as opposed to aesthetic, prudential, and so on.
I think that this distinction clarifies the issue considerably: Does a moral (2) judgement, therefore, also need in some way to be a moral (1) judgement, commensurably with our own values? I certainly would not have thought so, nor do I think Ayn Rand would have thought so. She would have called it the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, whereby one were confusing morality in general with a specific moral code.
If that is the case, however, then that would also have been a problem for my claims. For I was trying to question the value of morality based on what I deemed to be moral judgements. According to Rand, there were other moral theories that I could think perfectly valid.
The reason that I wanted to distinguish my theory from a moral theory was different from that, though. I didn’t think that it would necessarily be plausible as a moral theory. It would be vulnerable to all sorts of principled objections that would simply have resulted in hypocrisy. I guess the reply to that argument would have been that the answer would still not have been to criticize morality in general. It would have been to criticize the nature of the moral discourse in question. It would not be enough, in that case, simply to argue for a particular theory of ethics. Due to the practical nature of ethics, one must also be prepared to practice what one preaches. If one does not, then certainly one is vulnerable to allegations of hypocrisy. But this cannot be a separate issue from whether the theory that one is espousing is actually correct or not.
For the reason why, consider an analogy with epistemology. We already find lines of reasoning like that to be plausible in epistemology. If someone claims to be a skeptic about induction, it is not difficult to accuse her of hypocrisy. It is easy to catch someone in the act of committing an inductive inference, because inductive skepticism is impossible to practise consistently. But many people also seem to think that that is an argument against inductive skepticism. This is because actions speak louder than words. If a person regularly performs inductive inferences, it must actually be because she does believe, in her heart of hearts, that induction is, in fact, rational. And in regularly performing induction, one can rightly claim that her actions speak louder than her words.
I do not see why this should not hold in ethics as well. If someone is in the habit of acting against what he professes to be moral, then this seems an effective objection to his moral views. One can argue that he himself does not believe in them, as evidenced by his own actions. His actions speak louder than his words.
Comments