CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 This page intentionally left blank i CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 Ethics Done Right Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory Ethics Done Right examines how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory. Elijah Millgram shows that the key to thinking about ethics is to understand more generally how to make decisions. The papers in this volume support a methodological approach and trace the connections between two kinds of theory in utilitarianism, in Kantian ethics, in virtue ethics, in Hume’s moral philosophy, and in moral particularism. Unlike other studies of ethics, Ethics Done Right does not advocate a particular moral theory. Rather, it offers a tool that enables one to decide for oneself. Elijah Millgram is E. E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Utah. He is the author of Practical Induction and the editor of Varieties of Practical Reasoning.Hehas written on moral philosophy, coherence theory, and late British Empiricism. He has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Endowment for the Humanities. i CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 ii CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 Ethics Done Right Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory ELIJAH MILLGRAM University of Utah iii cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9780521839433 © Elijah Millgram 2005 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2005 isbn-13 978-0-511-13057-1 eBook (NetLibrary) isbn-10 0-511-13057-0 eBook (NetLibrary) isbn-13 978-0-521-83943-3 hardback isbn-10 0-521-83943-2 hardback isbn-13 978-0-521-54826-7 paperback isbn-10 0-521-54826-8 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 For (and against) John Rawls v CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 vi CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 Contents Acknowledgments page ix Introduction: The Method of Practical Reasoning 1 1 What’s the Use of Utility? 33 2 Mill’s Proof of the Principle of Utility 56 3 Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will? 89 4 Reasonably Virtuous 133 5 Murdoch, Practical Reasoning, and Particularism 168 6 Was Hume a Humean? 198 7 Hume on “Is” and “Ought” 218 8 Hume, Political Noncognitivism, and the History of England 247 9 Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning 273 10 Commensurability in Perspective 295 11 Varieties of Practical Reasoning and Varieties of Moral Theory 312 References 327 Index 339 vii CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 viii CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 Acknowledgments “What’s the Use of Utility?” appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs 29 (2), Spring 2000: 113–35. c 2000 by Princeton University Press. “Mill’s Proof of the Principle of Utility” appeared in Ethics 110 (2), January 2000: 282–310. c 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. “Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will?” appeared in Philosophical Review 112 (4), October 2003: 525–60. “Murdoch, Practical Reasoning, and Particularism” appeared in Notizie di Politeia 18 (66), 2002: 64–87. “Was Hume a Humean?” appeared in Hume Studies 21 (1), April 1995: 75–93. “Hume on ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’” appeared (under the title “Hume on Practical Reasoning”) in Iyyun 46, July 1997: 235–65. Reprinted with the kind permission of the editor of Iyyun. “Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning” reprinted by permission of the publisher from Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Rea- son, edited by Ruth Chang, pp. 151–69, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- versity Press. Copyright c 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. “Commensurability in Perspective” appeared in Topoi 21 (1–2), 2002: 217–26. c 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers, with kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers. ix CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 x Acknowledgments “Varieties of Practical Reasoning and Varieties of Moral Theory” (origi- nally titled “Varieties of Practical Reasoning”) appeared in Georg Meggle (ed.), Analyomen 2: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference “Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy” (de Gruyter, 1997), vol. III, pp. 280–94. Iamgrateful for fellowship support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sci- ences; financial support was provided through the Center by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 Ethics Done Right Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory xi CUNY100-FM CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 27, 2005 5:2 Char Count= 0 xii CUNY100-int CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 14, 2005 23:21 Char Count= 0 Introduction The Method of Practical Reasoning In philosophy, choice of method matters. You’re about to read an adver- tisement for a method: namely, that the right way to do moral philosophy is to start by working out your theory of practical reasoning. By way of introducing the book-length argument, I want first to explain what I mean by that. Then I’ll give some reasons for using the method, and hand out some promissory notes for the reasons I can’t give up front; I’ll also flag some of the issues I won’t be taking up here. By way of clear- ing the ground, I’ll discuss so-called reflective equilibrium, which has been, for some time now, the method of choice, or anyway the default method, for moral philosophers of the analytic stripe. I’ll briefly indicate the advantages my proposed method has over the reflective equilibrium competition. Next I’ll provide a site map for the volume, which will describe how the subsequent chapters advance the main argument. Almost all of these were originally written as freestanding papers, and have agendas of their own; since they are (with occasional exceptions) unrevised, their respective conclusions are not always the contributions I want them to be making to the argument of the book. Accordingly, I’ll provide more or less chapter by chapter orientation and reading instructions. Finally, I’ll wrap up by looking beyond the work I do in this volume, to some of the further possibilities of the Method of Practical Reasoning. 1 First, terminology. Substantive moral or ethical theories1 answer ques- tions like: What is it morally permitted for me to do? (Is it all right to 1 CUNY100-int CUNY100/Millgram 0521 83943 2 April 14, 2005 23:21 Char Count= 0 2 Ethics Done Right cheat on my taxes?) What actions are morally required? (Do I have to help out my neighbors, even if I dislike them for very good reasons?) What kind of person should I be? (Ambitious? Modest?) What sorts of outcomes count as generally positive, or as generally negative? (Is hap- piness apositive outcome? Everyone’s happiness, or just my own?) How should I treat my fellow human beings? (With respect? Even if they’ve done nothing to earn it?) Substantive theories of practical reasoning, on the other hand, an- swer questions further upstream: What considerations should I look to in making decisions? (Am I just looking for ways to achieve my goals?) What makes one kind of consideration as opposed to another count as a reason to do something? (If it’s a reason this time, does it always have to be a reason?) More generally, what’s the right way to figure out what to do? (For example, should I be aiming for the very best, or is “good enough” good enough?) If you were to try to give a step-by-step rendering of the Method of Prac- tical Reasoning, it would look something like this. First, get an overview of as many different theories of practical reasoning as possible. Second, puzzle out what moral theories those accounts of practical reasoning give rise to (or anyway, leaving aside for a moment issues of what’s responsible for what, which of the former are yoked to which of the latter). Third, without appealing to any substantive moral theory, determine which theory of practical reasoning is correct. Fourth and last, adopt the moral theory with which you have paired it. The stepwise rendering is too clunky to be realistic philosophical pro- cedure, and when you get there, you’ll notice that the claims defended in subsequent chapters are more complicated than it suggests. But it will do as a first approximation, one which will help explain what’s new about the present approach.