Intuition and Security in Moral Philosophy

Michigan Law Review Volume 82 Issue 4 1984 Intuition and Security in Moral Philosophy Stephen R. Munzer University of California, Los Angeles Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Stephen R. Munzer, Intuition and Security in Moral Philosophy, 82 MICH. L. REV. 740 (1984). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol82/iss4/11 This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INTUITION AND SECURITY IN MORAL PHILOSOPHYt Stephen R. Munzer* MORAL THINKING: ITS LEVELS, METHOD, AND POINT. By R.M. Hare. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1981. Pp. viii, 242. Cloth, $22.50; paper, $8.95. I. UNIVERSAL PRESCRIPTIVISM AND UTILITARIANISM In Moral Thinking Professor R.M. Hare refines and extends a metaethical theory that he began to develop over thirty years ago. 1 The theory is universal prescriptivism. It holds that moral judg ments are universalizable, prescribe rather than either describe facts or merely express feelings, and override other kinds of judgments, such as aesthetic or prudential judgments, in cases of conflict. In his new book Hare discusses how to think about moral problems and tries to show why sound thinking about them leads to utilitarianism. The book is self-contained and therefore accessible to the reader un acquainted with Hare's earlier works. Although Hare's views are now somewhat out of fashion, the new book demonstrates that he still has much to say and says it as compactly, lucidly, and wittily as anyone writing moral philosophy today. It would be a mistake for his opponents to ignore it. To think well about moral problems, Hare maintains, requires that we distinguish two levels of moral thinking - intuitive and criti cal. At the intuitive level we accept and employ prima facie moral principles for deciding what we ought to do. Typically, these princi ples stem from our upbringing. If, as sometimes happens, these prin ciples conflict, we must move to the critical level. Critical thinking resolves conflicts and in general tries to select the best set of intuitive principles. Both levels are necessary. Intuitive principles are usually simple and general - for example, "Do not kill," "Tell the truth," "Keep your promises." They must be so in order to be easy to learn and difficult to manipulate for our own purposes or situation. But because they are usually simple, they can conflict, and we need criti cal thinking to resolve the conflicts. At the critical level we may rely t I wish to thank David H. Dolinko, Dale Jamieson, James W. Nickel, Donald H. Regan, and Frederick Schauer for helpful comments and suggestions. • Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles. B.A. 1966, University of Kan• sas; B.Phil. 1969, Oxford; J.D. 1972, Yale. - Ed. 1. Important earlier works include R.M. HARE, THE LANGUAGE OF MORALS (1952); R.M. HARE, FREEDOM AND REASON (1963). 740 February 1984] Moral Thinking 741 on linguistic intuitions regarding the logical properties of moral words but not on intuitions of moral substance. Hare then proposes a method for rational thinking about moral questions at the critical level. The method involves a close look at the facts. Because of the consequences of acting on prescriptions in concrete situations, all prescriptions, in order to be rational, require cognizance of the facts. The principle of universalizability requires that identical moral judgments be made in factual situations identi cal in their universal properties. It is the logical requirement to uni versalize our prescriptions that generates utilitarianism: [T]he method of critical thinking which is imposed on us by the logical properties of the moral concepts requires us to pay attention to the satisfaction of the preferences of people (because moral judgements are prescriptive, and to have a preference is to accept a prescription); and to pay attention equally to the equal preferences of all those affected (because moral principles have to be universal and therefore cannot pick out individuals). [P. 91]. So long as we put to one side philosophical skepticism about the very existence of other minds, Hare believes that interpersonal com parisons will not trouble the utilitarian. Such comparisons occasion no difficulty for intuitive thinking; at the intuitive level we believe that we can rationally compare degrees or strengths of preferences of different people. At the critical level, the key move is "to reduce comparisons between other people's preferences to comparisons be tween our own" (p. 128). We do this by asking ourselves what we would prefer were we forthwith put into someone else's position with his preferences. This approach to moral questions yields, Hare believes, a conclu sive response to those who attempt to show utilitarianism unaccept able by bringing it into conflict with some received moral opinion or intuition regarding, for example, loyalty to one's family or matters of justice and rights. At the critical level such appeals to moral intui tion are out of court. At the intuitive level they are, of course, al lowed, but only pending their certification by critical thinking. Hare perceptively discusses some of the stock examples in the literature.2 He contends that it is, at the least, extremely difficult for the anti utilitarian really to prove that the received moral intuition is both correct and incompatible with utilitarianism. Lastly Hare comes to the point of his method: Why should we want to use it rather than some other way of thinking morally, or indeed rather than some other kind of practical thinking (say, pru- 2. Pp. 48-49, 132-40, 154-56. See, e.g., Smart, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics, in J. SMART & B. WILLIAMS, UTILITARIANISM: FOR AND AGAINST 3, 69-73 (1973) (sheriff "framing" and executing an innocent man in the general interest); Williams, A Critique of Utilitarianism, inid at 77, 98-118 (one person killing an innocent man to avoid someone else's killing twenty persons). 742 Michigan Law Review [Vol. 82:740 dential thinking)? To take the second limb of the question first, Hare believes that the issue of "Why should we be moral?" resolves, in part at least, into the issue of whether there are prudential reasons - that is, reasons of perceived self-interest - for being moral. He responds that, while it is not always in our self-interest to be moral, prudential reasons support inculcating a wide range of prima facie moral principles. Resistance to moral thinking might also come from the "fanatic" and the "amoralist." These are terms of art in Hare's lexicon, and there are sub-types of each. Hare argues that the sort of pure fanatic who is able and willing to think critically but who holds opinions inconsistent with utilitarianism is not even a theoretical possibility. On the other hand, Hare acknowledges that to refrain from making moral judgments at all (universal amoralism) is a posi tion that his theory cannot rule out. As to why we should use Hare's method rather than some other method of moral thinking, his an swer is simply that it is the only way of reasoning securely about moral questions. For his method puts into play only ordinary facts and the logical properties of moral words. It requires no special "moral" facts known only by intuition, and thus avoids the irrecon cilable conflicts that mark all forms of intuitionism. This essay concentrates on the leading theme of Hare's book: that his moral philosophy is more secure than, and therefore superior to, all forms of reliance on moral intuitions. It pursues this theme through discussions of intuitive and critical thinking, the limits of universalization, and preferences and their alteration.3 I shall sug gest that linguistic intuitions and methodology are less secure, and some moral intuitions are more secure, than Hare believes. Strong warrant exists, moreover, for holding that in spite of Hare's argu ments utilitarianism rests on a moral intuition of substance. In the current state of moral philosophy it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is a plurality of moral principles or considerations that sometimes conflict in ways that no priority rules can satisfactorily resolve. 3. As a result it is impossible to examine other aspects of Hare's book. Among them are his stimulating discussion of personal identity, pp. 96-99, 119-21, 221-23, his device of archan gelic moral thinking, pp. 44-64 andpassim, his acute analysis of prudence and supererogation, pp. 188-205, and the details of his case against anti-utilitarians, pp. 130-68. I also leave aside the important issue of whether Hare has made his system of moral reasoning so inspissated that he falls into naturalism - roughly, the doctrine that the meanings of moral words derive from the nonmoral properties of acts. Hare has been one of the most vigorous and persuasive critics of naturalism and is anxious to show that his new views do not commit him to it. See pp. 68-71, 186-87, 218-28. My view, briefly, is that Hare comes close to but does not embrace naturalism because of his insistence that people are free, first, to refrain from making moral judgments altogether, see pp. 182-87, 219-20, 228, and second, to prefer what they prefer sub ject to universalizability, see pp. 225-28. I would add, however, that the more Hare stresses the liberty-to-prefer escape route, the more trouble his theory is likely to have in rationally evalu ating and altering preferences (see Part IV in.fra).

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