Applied Ethics
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Chapter 16 Last Rights: Applied Ethics BELIEVE that it is now pretty generally accepted by profes- sional philosophers that ultimate ethical principles must be ‘Iarbitrary’,1 wrote Brian Medlin in 1957. That may have been a slight exaggeration, but the tendency of philosophy in the mid-cen- tury was certainly towards an extreme minimalism in ethics. Mackie, as we saw, agreed with Medlin and denied that there was any such thing as ethics. He argued that moral properties would be ‘queer’ ones, from a scientific point of view. Where is the cruelty of an act, he asks, over and above the pain it causes and the subjective responses in the observers?2 David Armstrong spoke for many philosophers who were not primarily interested in ethics when he claimed that objec- tive value is not the kind of thing that can be causally efficacious — it would be a kind of metaphysical superfluity to the world revealed by science.3 In Melbourne, they did not go quite as far as that. Philosophers there agreed in part, but believed there were ways of refuting selfish- ness without the need to suppose there were any really moral values. There was, they thought, plenty of scope for reason in ethics, and its 1 B. Medlin, ‘Ultimate principles and ethical egoism’, AJP 35 (1957): pp. 111–8, repr. in W.P. Alston & R.B. Brandt, eds, The Problems of Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Boston, 1967), pp. 229–35. 2 J. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, pp. 38–41; similar in P. Godfrey-Smith, ‘No, Virginia, there is no right or wrong’, Proceedings of the Russellian Society 10 (1985): pp. 1–13; I. Hinckfuss, The Moral Society (www.uq.edu.au/philosophy/morsoc); reply in J. Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford, 1983), pp. 57–60. 3 D.M. Armstrong, ‘A search for values’, Quadrant 26 (6) (June 1982): pp. 65–70. 400 Corrupting the Youth purpose was to achieve co-ordination of interests.4 Kurt Baier’s The Moral Point of View, the most famous work of this school, emphasised that moral rules function to resolve conflicts between individuals by adopting a non-person-relative perspective.5 Outside professional philosophy, meanwhile, the social sciences tended to take for granted a relativism about ethics, with anthropol- ogy especially concentrating on the differences between the mores of cultures. Philosophers impressed with these currents have produced a stream of books dominated by the thought that valuation needs a val- uer, and are inclined to see moral value as nothing over and above what valuers do; relativism is suggested by the fact that there are dis- agreements among valuers.6 Until about 1970, such general questions about the nature of ethics dominated philosophical work in the subject. Philosophers (except Catholics) didn’t take sides, or tell people what to do. They only clari- fied the principles. If one asked mainstream philosophers for advice as to what one should actually do, the main suggestion they had to offer was utilitari- anism. Its standard version, ‘hedonistic act utilitarianism’, claims that 4 S. Grave, A History of Philosophy in Australia (St Lucia, 1984), ch. 7; B. Scarlett, ‘Moral philosophy 1945–1980’, in Essays on Philosophy in Australia, ed J.T.J. Srzednicki & D. Wood (Dordrecht, 1992), pp. 53–79. 5 K. Baier, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics (Ithaca, 1958) (summary in F.N. Magill, World Philosophy: Essay Reviews of 225 Major Works (Englewood Cliffs, 1982), vol. 5, pp. 2478–89) (p. 299 of Baier’s book has occasioned comment from logicians); later, K. Baier, The Rational and the Moral Order (Chicago, 1995); K. Baier, Problems of Life and Death (New York, 1997); Reason, Ethics and Society: Themes from Kurt Baier, with His Responses, ed. J.B. Schneewind (Chicago, 1996); also P. Edwards, The Logic of Moral Discourse (Glencoe, Ill, 1955; New Delhi, 1971); D.H. Monro, Empiricism and Ethics (Cambridge, 1967); J. Kovesi, Moral Notions (London, 1967); similar later in M. Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford, 1994), on which symposium in Ethics 108 (1) (Oct 1997); M. Smith, Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Metaethics (Cambridge, to appear); M. Smith, ‘Moral realism’, ch. 1 of Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H. LaFollette (Malden, Mass, 2000); F. Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics (New York, 1998), ch. 5; similar but more Hobbesian in R.E. Ewin, Co-operation and Human Values (Brighton, 1981). 6 G. Gaus, Value and Justification (Cambridge, 1990); F. Snare, Morals, Motivation and Convention (Cambridge, 1991); F. Snare, The Nature of Moral Thinking (London, 1992); T. Trainer, The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to the Subjectivist Perspective (Aldershot, 1991); discussion in N. Levy, Moral Relativism: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2002); relevance to education in D.N. Aspin, ‘The nature of values and their place and promotion in schemes of values education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 31 (1999): pp. 123– 43. 16. Last Rights: Applied Ethics 401 the right action in any circumstance is the one that (most likely) leads to maximisation of happiness.7 The theory has a definite appeal. Happiness is something everyone is in favour of, and it is remarkable how often the aim of maximising happiness results in recommenda- tions that agree with normal moral intuitions. Nevertheless, the theory has some well-recognised problems. Firstly, why maximise just happiness, as opposed to other goods that could be thought of? The main Australian defender of utilitarianism, Jack Smart, defends happiness as the sole aim of ethics thus: ‘What could be better than to maximize happiness? Any theory that was not equivalent to hedonistic act utilitarianism would imply that on occa- sion one should make the world less happy than it would otherwise be.’8 And again, ‘The chief persuasive argument in favour of utilitarianism has been that the dictates of any deontological [i.e., rule-based] ethics will always, on some occasions, lead to the exis- tence of misery that could, on utilitarian principles, have been pre- vented.’9 That is the only justification he offers. He does not mean that the theory of utilitarianism is correct — much less that he has proved it correct. He believes, like Mackie and others, that there are no genuine moral facts, but he himself recommends utilitarianism and hopes others too will find it preferable as a guide to action. Difficulties for utilitarianism arise from its commendation of the total quantity of happiness, as opposed to its distribution. It is not ex- actly true that utilitarianism prefers the situation with the least misery. If in some case we have a choice between distributing a burden to many, who suffer mild discomfort, and heaping it all on a scapegoat whose life becomes a torture, utilitarianism recommends the latter if the total unhappiness is less, however slightly. That is, utilitarianism recommends more misery, since in the equal distribution there is none — no real misery, that is, only a widely distributed discomfort.10 A problem of this kind arises especially over the possible conflicts between happiness maximisation and justice. Consider the case of a sheriff in a town of the old South who is faced with a choice between 7 Early discussion in J. Anderson, ‘Utilitarianism’, AJPP 10 (1932): pp. 161– 72, repr. in Studies in Empirical Philosophy (Sydney, 1962), pp. 227–37; A.K. Stout, ‘But suppose everyone did the same?’, AJP 32 (1954): pp. 1–29; Grave, History, pp. 148–54; also R. Goodin, Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, 1995). 8 J.J.C. Smart, ‘Utilitarianism and its applications’, in New Directions in Ethics, ed. J.P. DeMarco & R.M. Fox (New York, 1986), pp. 24–41, at p. 24. 9 J.J.C. Smart & B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973), p. 62. 10 J.J.C. Smart, ‘Utilitarianism and punishment’, Israel Law Review 25 (1991): pp. 360–75. 402 Corrupting the Youth executing an accused black he knows is innocent, and allowing a white mob to riot and kill many.11 According to utilitarianism, he must kill the innocent man to prevent the greater evil. Smart accepts that utilitarianism does recommend unjust killing in such cases, though he hopes they are rare.12 But the problem is not merely that this is a difficult case, but that utilitarianism gives no weight at all to the injustice. Even someone who thinks the sheriff ought to hang the black if the riot will be bad enough feels there is some problem of injustice that the size of the catastrophe must outweigh. Utilitarianism is a harsh doctrine for those whose desires for them- selves are at odds with what many others want them to do. HE counterattack on behalf of objective ethics has included three TAustralians among its leaders — Alan Donagan, John Finnis and Raimond Gaita. Donagan, a Melbourne graduate who unusually included studies in law in his undergraduate degree, was for many years Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.13 The definite article in the title of his book The Theory of Morality is important. He argued that there is a coherent theory underlying the general moral outlook and behaviour of all (normal) people, though it is not necessarily con- sciously expressed. Rules of ethics are not basic. Instead, they are gen- erated by a more fundamental assumption, that persons are valuable in themselves. Thus, the reason why murder is wrong is not anything to do with the co-ordination of society or the maximisation of happi- ness, much less the command of a deity. Nor are rights basic: a right to life is simply the wrongness of destruction of a life, from the point of view of the person living the life.14 What is wrong with murder is 11 Originally in H.J.