Moral Value and Objectivity
A Virtual Issue
Editor: Guy Longworth
The papers in this collection were chosen as potentially illuminating the nature of moral values and directives. More specifically, each of the papers engages with questions about the extent to which our moral attitudes purport to reflect objective features of the world we share.
As we ordinarily think of theoretical inquiry—for example, inquiry in the natural sciences—we think of it as aiming to uncover such objective features. Thus, we seek to form theoretical beliefs that reflect features of our shared world, rather than attitudes that reflect our own local idiosyncrasies. In light of this, we expect successful theoretical inquiry to terminate in attitudes that are intra- and inter-personally consistent. The questions that these papers address concern the extent to which similar views about moral inquiry and moral attitudes are warranted. Does moral inquiry, and the consequent formation of moral attitudes, aim to reflect objective values and directives? If it does, can it succeed? Should we expect fully successful moral inquiry to terminate in moral consistency or consensus? Should we, therefore, treat residual differences or disagreements as signs of failure and, so, as an impetus to further inquiry? Or should we, instead, allow that fully successful moral inquiry might terminate in moral attitudes that are in conflict with one another and with other, similarly successful, non-moral attitudes?
Essentially Contested Concepts
W. B. Gallie
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 56
Read the commentary
Consistency and Realism
B. A. O. Williams
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Vol. 40
Read the commentary
Moral Consensus
Aurel Kolnai
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 70
Read the commentary
Varieties of Objectivity and Values
A. W. Price
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 83
Read the commentary
Constructivisms in Ethics
Onora O'Neill
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 89
Read the commentary
Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs
David Wiggins
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 91
Read the commentary
Meaning and Morality
Susan Wolf
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 97
Read the commentary
Introduction
The papers in this collection were chosen as potentially illuminating the nature of moral values and directives. More specifically, each of the papers engages with questions about the extent to which our moral attitudes purport to reflect objective features of the world we share. As we ordinarily think of theoretical inquiry—for example, inquiry in the natural sciences—we think of it as aiming to uncover such objective features. Thus, we seek to form theoretical beliefs that reflect features of our shared world, rather than attitudes that reflect our own local idiosyncrasies. In light of this, we expect successful theoretical inquiry to terminate in attitudes that are intra- and inter-personally consistent. The questions that these papers address concern the extent to which similar views about moral inquiry and moral attitudes are warranted. Does moral inquiry, and the consequent formation of moral attitudes, aim to reflect objective values and directives? If it does, can it succeed? Should we expect fully successful moral inquiry to terminate in moral consistency or consensus? Should we, therefore, treat residual differences or disagreements as signs of failure and, so, as an impetus to further inquiry? Or should we, instead, allow that fully successful moral inquiry might terminate in moral attitudes that are in conflict with one another and with other, similarly successful, non-moral attitudes?
W. B. Gallie, in his (1956) “Essentially Contested Concepts”, seeks to show “that there are disputes…which are perfectly genuine: which, although not resolvable by argument of any kind, are nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence.” (p.169) That characterisation presents, and connects, two obvious facets of interpersonal moral inquiry: first, the perceived value of using reason and evidence to address moral questions; and, second, in its spite, the persistence of seeming disagreements about permissible answers to such questions. Gallie discusses the role of his analysis in illuminating disputes about the application of political concepts of democracy and social justice, and touches on disputes about the more narrowly moral concepts of goodness and duty. However, he leaves the fuller articulation of the bearing of his analysis on the nature of our narrowly moral attitudes as an exercise for the reader.
Bernard Williams pursues the question whether—and, if so, precisely where—consistency of attitude is rationally required in his (1966) “Consistency and Realism”. He develops an account which aims to defend the idea that consistency is a rational requirement on theoretical attitudes but is not, or is not in the same way, a rational requirement on practical attitudes. And he suggests that it is a consequence of this idea that moral attitudes can be fully rational without being consistent. It would seem to follow, in turn, that where thinkers’ moral attitudes are inconsistent with one another, there is nonetheless no rational requirement that they seek to resolve such disagreements—or, at least, none arising solely from the fact of their attitudinal inconsistency.
Whilst Gallie and Williams both seem to make space for the possibility of moral disputes that are rational but irresolvable, Aurel Kolnai, in his (1970) “Moral Consensus”, seeks to defend the claim that there is an internal connection between the nature of distinctively moral attitudes and the possibility of reaching consensus with respect to those attitudes. In mounting that defence, he rejects the idea that there can be absolutely irresolvable moral disputes and, at the same time, rejects the idea that morality is somehow relative to communal practices in a way that would be apt to undermine the idea that inter-communal differences can constitute genuine disputes. Thus, he argues that there can be genuine moral disputes and, furthermore, that moral consensus is, in principle, achievable. However, despite his in-principle optimism, his defence of the importance of moral consensus is sensitive to the difficulties attending its achievement: “Moral laws, in spite of their intimate mutual nexus and consonance, are indeed not absolute in the sense of providing sure and handy directives for doing right in every practical situation; what is absolute is the validity and claim for earnest consideration of all moral points of view, always, everywhere, and in all circumstances.” (p.108)
Anthony Price, in his (1983) “Varieties of Objectivity and Values”, considers a number of different accounts of what it would take for moral values to be objective and argues that none of those accounts clearly sustains the claim that moral values are objective. Some of the accounts he considers seem to fit moral values, but don’t clearly specify sufficient conditions on those values being objective. Others do a better job of providing sufficient conditions for objectivity, but don’t clearly apply to moral values. Insofar as the idea that it is possible in principle to achieve moral consensus is bound up with the idea that moral values are objective, Price’s challenges to the latter amount to challenges to the former. (As an aside, it would be interesting to consider the extent to which the concept, or concepts, of objectivity that are in play in Price’s paper are captured by Gallie’s account of essentially contested concepts.)
Is it possible to reject the idea that moral attitudes are objective, in something like the way that theoretical beliefs are, without being induced, thereby, to adopt a policy of laissez-faire relativism? Onora O’Neill aims, in her (1989) “Constructivism in Ethics”, to argue that it might be possible. The key to this possibility, she argues, building on John Rawls’ pioneering account, is to view moral directives as constructed. Her idea is that moral directives are to be identified as the outcome of a constructive procedure of selecting all and only those directives that would not be rejected by any of a potentially interacting plurality of agents insofar as those agents meet only minimal conditions of rationality, independence, and (because of their potential interactions) potential inter-dependence. Her thought is, first, that if the conditions on the basis of which agents participate in the constructive procedure are sufficiently minimal, then there will be no risk of parochiality, and so no risk that local differences amongst rational agents might lead the imposition of directives that it would be rational for some other agents to reject. And her thought is, second, that despite the minimality of those conditions, they might impose sufficient constraints on the operation of an appropriate selection procedure to determinately impose some directives on all rational agents. If both thoughts were defensible—and O’Neill claims here only that they might be—then her proposal would deliver a form of moral consensus grounded not, or not only, in specific features of our shared world, but rather in a combination of very general, structural features of our shared world and basic features of our practical rationality.
David Wiggins, in his (1991) “Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs”, seeks to address a version of Price’s challenge. His central idea is that we can understand a way in which moral attitudes attain objectivity—in Wiggins’ terms, we can defend a form of moral cognitivism—if we can defend the idea that moral values figure essentially in explaining our beliefs about them (a form of which proposal was considered, and rejected, by Price.) Wiggins’ idea is in some respects similar to Kolnai’s. (Indeed, in defending that proposal, Wiggins draws, in passing, on a distinction of Kolnai’s between morality proper, which for Kolnai is absolute and impartial, and the more parochial systems of ethos.) However, Wiggins allows for a weakening of Kolnai’s requirement of in principle moral consensus: in place of consensus, Wiggins’ allows that mere convergence can suffice for moral values to exhibit an appropriate form of objectivity.
Susan Wolf discusses an aspect of Williams’ challenge to the dominion of morality in her (1997) “Meaning and Morality”. We saw above that Williams thinks that some forms of moral inconsistency are permissible. Similarly, he has argued elsewhere that, in at least some cases, activities and non-moral attitudes that are inconsistent with moral demands can also be permissible. Wolf suggests that Williams’ most powerful argument in favour of the latter permissive claim derives from cases in which adhering to operative moral demands would preclude activities that give meaning to an agent’s life. Although she thinks that—when properly understood—such cases are less threatening to the dominion of morality than Williams suggests, she thinks that they nonetheless impose significant constraints on accounts of the nature of morality, and of the ways in which moral thinking can interact with non-moral thinking.
