[lit-ideas] Re: The universal applicability of moral judgments
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 16:07:12 -0330
'Tis indeed the best of all possible worlds. Eric D., having returned
refreshed and rejuvinated from extended languid sojourns in Indian culninary
salons of Washington DC, offers us yet another lovely banquet of reflections on
Kantian moral theory. Donal and Omar are both in peak form arguing over the
nature and and import of practical contradictions committed by
non-universalizable maxims. And, last but far from least, it's 17 degrees today
in St. John's Newfoundland!! God love global warming. (Who cares about the
universalizable interest equally in the interest of all denizens of the planet
earth? Global warming ... bring it on! :) ..... But seriously folks ...
There is so much in Eric's post below that I think it would be best to address
it piece-meal. Otherwise we'll be overwhelmed by the variety and complexity of
the topics he raises. Let's start with the question of what ethics is about.
I demur from Eric's view that ethics is "*about* what human beings actually do
to/with one another." But I am happier with his other formulations: moral
maxims
refer to, prescribe, what "could be done" [should one be a rationally
autonomous
agent] and matters regarding how one ought to be treated are co-extensive with
how one "*really* ought to be treated."
And I think we can agree that moral justification must be applicable to real
interactions so long as we recognize that "real interactions" bears no
epistemic
import in the case of moral judgement. That is to say, what people actually do
is of no necessary relevance to what they ought to do. Also, "applicability to
real interactiuons" should not blind us from recognizing that part of the
contemporary discipline of ethics is of a transcendental nature concerned with
identifying universal and necessary features of moral judgement and the
assessment of the objectivity and impartiality of moral deliberation. The
concern here is with philosophical truth, not with convincing people that they
ought to abide by the results of transcenddental inquiry.
Once all are in agreeement, we can move on to the topic of moral rules as
addressed by Eric below. I do not wish to rush the discussion, of course.
Walter O.
MUN
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Back in DC and with Thanksgiving behind us, I return to Walter's comments.
>
> Walter writes:
> > ----------------> Maxims are not T or F in any recognizable sense of those
> > terms. Their moral modalities are "morally permissible," "impermissible"
> and
> > "don't even think about it." (The latter is aptly named "contradiction in
> > conception.") The form of a maxim is either universalizable or not. (This
> has
> > nothing to do with "universal acceptance" of a maxim, which is an
> empirical
> > matter.)
>
> OK; I think I take the point. A moral maxim is something in the imperative
> voice, essentially, and the relevant question is not whether it is true or
> false but whether the expressed injunction applies. A universal maxim is one
> which would always apply, as Walter goes on to say, "to all rational agents
> within relevantly similar circumstances."
>
> Not intending to elide an important consideration, I was using the assertion
> that a maxim M might be "true for all agents" as shorthand for something like
> "The assertion "A should conform to M" is true for all agents".
>
> As to whether a maxim is universalizable or not, I think this is a far
> trickier issue. To say it is a matter of the *form* of a maxim is to allow
> what I'm sure Kant (and anyone basically sympathetic with his position) would
> not want, unless my understanding of 'form' is off here.
>
> Formally, one can make anything universalizable by suitable definition of
> terms. If I define "teacher", idiosyncratically, as what one normally means
> by "teacher" except in the case that the person is myself, then I can affirm
> "teachers should respect the autonomy of their students" as (formally)
> universalizable without it putting any constraint on my behavior. It can be
> made the principle of a universal law (which is what I understand
> 'universalizable to be) without contradiction so long as the designation of
> who's excluded from the strictures is unchanged no matter who's applying the
> maxim -- i.e. so long as I remain the only exclusion from the definition of
> 'teacher' even if you're considering the maxim yourself.
>
> In *form*, the maxim remains universalizable with this idiosyncratic
> definition, but in substance, of course, the entire point to
> universalizability has been lost.
>
> The purpose of this example is to illustrate that 'universalizability' is not
> just a *formal* property of maxims. Instead, it is a substantive notion,
> with a bunch of substantive presumptions that make it work -- such as the
> presumption that the definitions of terms exclude such idiosyncracies as I've
> just invented, idiosyncracies which cannot be eliminated by purely formal
> means.
>
> Walter comes to what I think is the crux of the matter here:
>
> > ----------------> Ethics is the philosophical (transcendental) study of
> moral
> > judgment and deliberation. It is not an empirical discipline. "How human
> > beings actually interact with one another" is of no necessary relevance
> for
> > philosophical inquiry and appeals to such facts have no probative force in
> > moral justification.
>
> I completely agree with Walter that morals is not an empirical discipline in
> the sense that one does not confirm the validity of a moral principle by
> observing human behavior in anything like the sense in which one confirms a
> principle of physics by observing how physical objects behave.
>
> On the other hand, morals is absolutely a discipline that is *about* what
> human beings actually do to/with one another. The entire force of the
> obligations memorialized in moral maxims is in their applicability to real
> life, to what really has been done or could be done.
>
> Walter goes on to talk about how questions of motivation are distinct from
> questions of justification, another point I entirely agree with. But again,
> even with that distinction firmly in mind, justification still has to be
> *applicable* to real interactions, or it's idle.
>
>
> > -------> Moral assertions are prescriptive, not descriptive.
>
> Yes, of course, but what they are prescribing is real human action or again
> they're idle.
>
> > -------> I can go on about how Alex Kovalev ought to be treated, without
> once describing
> > anything about how he is or has been treated.
>
> Yes, but how he, whoever he is, ought to be treated is about how he *really*
> ought to be treated, or it's idle.
>
> > ----------> To determine what "Stop at stop signs" means, one needs to
> > understand the command and the words are important. But even once one
> knows
> > what the command and the corresponding rule states, one does not know how
> and
> > when to apply the rule.
>
> What would "knowing what the command and the corresponding rule states" be if
> it were not knowing how and when to apply the rule?
>
> > -------> I need to
> > look at the features of a set of circumstances external to the rule itself
> in
> > order to be able to decide how to "apply" the rule to that context, or
> whether
> > to apply it at all.
>
> This may be true, but so much the worse for the independent meaningfulness of
> the rule, i.e. the meaning of the rule apart from its interpretation. How
> can I know what the rule is unless I can cite at least *some* instances of
> its applicability? What would it mean to understand the rule otherwise?
>
> > -------> That raises the question whether morality is necessarily
> concerned
> > with universally valid and applicable principles. In that it is the sole
> form
> > of
> > discourse and inquiry known to humans and angels to be concerned with
> > establishing the impartiality and objectivity of moral deliberation and
> > judgement, I would reply in the affirmative.
>
> To put the two pieces together -- universalizability as a formal
> characteristic of a maxim and morality as being about something other than
> real human action -- I think that the idea that morality can be about
> something other than real human interactions underwrites the idea that moral
> maxims can be universalizable by way of a tacit but unfortunately only
> wishful application of the model of mathematical theories in physical
> sciences.
>
> Mathematics is seen to have offered abstract principles that can be applied
> successfully to *de*scribe the behavior of physical objects. In a parallel
> way, morality, as I hear it described by Walter, seems to offer abstract
> principles that, it is hoped, can be can be applied successfully to
> *pre*scribe the behavior of humans, or more generally rational agents.
>
> The problem with the parallel is that the mathematical models for physics are
> self-contained abstractions whose meaningfulness does *not* depend on their
> applicability to anything in the real world. They are, of course,
> constructed for their potential applicability, but there is something to be
> understood apart from their applicability to the real world.
>
> The same, I urge, cannot be said for the principles of a moral theory. The
> terms of a moral theory are idle without their sense of applicability to the
> real world in a way which the terms of a mathematical theory of physics are
> not idle.
>
> One can discover things about the mathematical models of physics simply by
> contemplating mathematical abstractions. One can explain e = mc**2 solely in
> terms of the mathematical abstractions behind each term in the equation, or
> one can explain it by reference to how physical things interact in the real
> world. It is that pair of related but distinct set of meanings of the terms
> which gives traction to the distinction between theoretical and applied
> physics.
>
> I simply cannot see what the *abstract* definitions of "teacher", "student",
> "autonomy", and "respect" would be which would make "teachers should respect
> the autonomy of their students" have a meaning independently of its
> application to the real world. Without such abstract definitions, I am
> unable to understand what a 'theoretical' morals would be, and without a
> notion of 'theoretical' morals, I do not see what it can mean to call a moral
> principle 'universal', other than simply to be a way of saying one approves
> the principle.
>
> By the way, just in case there's any question, I don't think the alternative
> to "universal" moral principles is "culturally-relative" moral principles.
> The alternative, in my mind, is "principles that are always potentially
> subject to qualification" and/or "principles whose applicability is always
> potentially questionable". Sometimes the qualifiers are of the sort that
> might be seen as culturally-relative, but other times they're just qualifiers
> about the messiness of real human interactions. Judgment, in my view, is
> what we exercise when we decide the extent to which the potential qualifiers
> need to be considered.
>
>
> Finally, to bring things full circle, in my view a maxim's form could only
> usefully be seen as determining whether the maxim can be the principle of a
> universal law if all the definitions, grammar and logical apparatus used to
> formulate the maxim had the kind of rigor which mathematical statements have.
> Otherwise, per my example at the start of this, the non-universal nature of
> the maxim can be hidden inside the definitions, grammar or logical
> apparatus.
>
> And in order to have true impartiality and objectivity in matters of morals,
> one would have to have the sort of fixed, incontrovertible definitions which
> a theoretical morals would purport to offer. Without those, it would be
> impossible for one ever to discern for certain the difference between a truly
> impartial judge and a biased one whose decisions happened to agree, at the
> moment, with one's judgment.
>
> If, though, one does not believe in the possibility of such fixed,
> incontrovertible definitions of moral terms, if one, instead, sees the
> quotidian world of actual human interactions as all we have to work with in
> understanding the prescriptions of morality, then one is stuck with partial,
> subjective efforts to achieve a fairness all interested parties accept.
>
> I think that's all one can really hope for and at the same time, I think it's
> more than enough if we just give it a chance. To insist that there are
> universal moral principles is, in my view, of a piece with insisting that
> there is one true religion. If we are to counter the arbitrary and
> destructive forces of fundamentalism, we have to be prepared to recognize
> them at work in our own most cherished ideals and look for ways to preserve
> the way of life we prefer without demanding obeisance to its principles from
> those who don't share its ideals.
>
> Regards to one and all.
>
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
