[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and Foot on the foundations of morality
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 15:55:37 -0230
Thanks to Phil for a very thoughtful, well-reasoned and interesting reply. I
believe we disagree on less than his post below suggests. Let me here address
for now what I take to be the crux of the apparent disagreement. Other
interesting matters will have to wait or may be addressed in ripostes to my
response.
The view I am presenting and defending, which in truth is Habermas's Discourse
Theory of moral justification and rightness as I understand it, is an epistemic
thesis on the conditions of justification of claims to moral rightness. It's
fundamental principle (D) is that only those norms (or maxims, policies,
judgements) that could meet with agreement in discourse under conditions of
symmetry and reciprocity can count as justifiable claims to moral rightness.
What makes a claim morally justifiable is that all persons potentially or
actually affected by the judgement reached through discourse could agree to it,
accept or believe it to be right both from their own perspective and from the
perspectives of the other involved interlocutors.
This view does not deny that different cultural, political and philosophical
traditions understand the rightness/wrongness of particular actions or maxims
(such as slavery) in ways reflective of their respective historical
experiences. Culture P may indeed understand why slavery is wrong in terms
different from culture Q. Either P or Q or both may make reference to such
metaphysically realist expressions as "the intrinsic nature of human beings,"
or to "the empirically demonstrable character of the needs and wants of human
beings" in justification of its/their position(s) on the moral impermissibility
of slavery. (Or permissibility?) However, from the perspective of Discourse
Theory, such justificatory appeals do not provide sufficient grounds of
justification. For such empirical or metaphysical appeals invoke "substantive
doctrines" that could not meet with agreement under discursive conditions.
A minor point: I would not want to conflate the conception of the lawfulness of
laws as defined by conditions of universalizability with a conception of it as
being equivalent to the legislation of positive laws by democratically elected
representatives. Cases of the latter form of legislation may be in violation of
the former conception. They as such constitute instances of the unbearable
awfulness of law (sorry). "Current laws on the books" have no necessary
epistemic authority in the adjudication of claims to moral rightness.
One more minor point: The Discourse Theory gives the Categorical Imperative a
clear dialogical twist. No individual rational agent possesses the resources
for determining whether a maxim could hold also as a universal law. Discourse
is "epistemic" precisely in that universalizability can only be reciprocally
and jointly established under conditions of discourse.
Transcendentally-pragmatically yours,
Walter O.
MUN
Quoting Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Walter O. wrote:
>
> "In other words, rightness is internally related to belief. Nothing in
> the world decides the rightness or wrongness of a moral claim - only
> rational belief can do that. On this constructivist (anti-realist)
> conception, what makes slavery, for example, morally wrong, is that
> not all persons affected by a maxim of slavery could agree to it,
> believe it to be justifiable. The moral wrongness of slavery has
> nothing to do with any 'intrinsic' or 'worldly' or 'empirical' feature
> of human beings that fails to be recognized by a maxim of slavery."
>
>
> I wonder about this. It seems to me that Walter is both correct and
> mistaken in his comments here. The universalizability of moral maxims
> is certainly part of our understanding slavery as morally wrong.
> However, it seems to me a mistake to claim that the moral wrongness of
> slavery has nothing to do some other feature of human beings. Let me
> use the analogy of laws to tease out the mistake.
>
> In a liberal democracy, what makes an act a crime, that is legally
> prohibited, are laws passed by representatives of the citizens.
> Because the laws come from a representative body, the laws are
> understood as the universalization of a general will. The lawfulness
> of these laws comes from the fact that all citizens could accept
> themselves as legislators and subjects of these laws. However, that
> Canada has the laws it has, and the U.S. the laws it has, is a
> consequence of the experiences of Canadians and Americans, so that the
> laws of Canada are different from that of the U.S. The Canadian
> experience of becoming a nation was different from that of the U.S.
> and so there are differences in Constitutions and laws. The
> lawfulness of laws - that all citizens could accept themselves as
> legislators and subjects of these laws - in both Canada and the U.S.
> are necessarily identical. The legal systems and laws in Canada and
> the U.S. are necessarily different.
>
> So long as we are talking about the lawfulness of laws - or the
> rightness/wrongness of actions - then I agree with Walter that this
> "has nothing to do with any 'intrinsic' or 'worldly' or 'empirical'
> feature of human beings". Borrowing from Kant, this talk belongs to
> pure practical reason. However, if we begin to talk about the
> morality of specific actions, like slavery, then we move, to some
> degree, into the realm of experience, and with it, empirical features
> of human beings. Just as the Canadian and U.S. legal systems differ
> as a result of differing historical contingencies, so also will there
> be different moral judgments on the points of slavery. It is possible
> to assert that "what makes slavery, for example, morally wrong, is
> that not all persons affected by a maxim of slavery could agree to it,
> believe it to be justifiable" - this is its moral wrongness - and
> still differ about the moral wrongness of slavery in Canada or the
> U.S.
>
> The empirical contexts within which we assert the moral wrongness of
> slavery is crucial for making moral judgments in a manner that is
> analogous to the debates surrounding the legislation of laws. If,
> then, we are talking about the lawfulness of slavery - or the
> rightness/wrongness of slavery - then I think Walter is mistaken.
> Suggesting that "the moral wrongness of slavery has nothing to do with
> any 'intrinsic' or 'worldly' or 'empirical' feature of human beings
> that fails to be recognized by a maxim of slavery" is akin to
> suggesting that the legislation of laws concerning slavery, by
> democratically elected representatives, has nothing to do with any
> 'worldly' or 'empirical' will or wishes of citizens that can't be
> found in the laws of Canada or the U.S. Put more simply, it seems to
> me that an analogy to Walter's argument would be to claim that all we
> need to know about the illegality of slavery in the U.S. is to study
> the current laws on the books now. However, this synchronic approach
> to moral judgments or laws ignores the fact that moral judgments and
> laws have histories. The specifics surrounding our judgments
> concerning slavery - what is slavery? what makes slavery wrong? who is
> a slave? - have changed over time as have the laws of the U.S. It is
> this historical, contextual quality of moral judgments that Walter
> ignores when he claims that the moral wrongness of aspects of
> experience have nothing to with, well, experience.
>
> Again, in one sense, that of the lawfulness of laws, Walter is
> correct. The moral rightness or wrongness of moral judgments do not
> depend on any aspect of experience. However, when we are considering
> either the wrongness or illegality of slavery in the U.S., it is a
> mistake to think that all there is to say on the subject is what we
> can find in the categorical imperative or in law books. Slavery
> belongs to experience and so any moral judgment regarding slavery will
> be, in some sense, dependent on the worldly and empirical features of
> human beings. The wrongness of slavery is, therefore, both a result
> of necessity and contingency
>
>
> Both necessarily and contingently,
>
> Phil Enns
> Indonesia
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