Moral Thinkers of Twentieth Century ================================ Moral philosophy took a different turn in the twentieth century. Many philosophers gave up the earlier prticular moral systems. Instead, they tended to subject prevailing moral theories to close epistemological scrutiny. From this angle they raised questions about the logical foundations of moral theries. What are the categories or concepts used in moral theories? What are the meanings commonly attached to such moral terms? What is the logical status of statements or propositions used in moral philosophy? Can moral arguments be accorded logical status? Their approach can be described as discussions about moral discussions. This approach is known as meta- ethics. In this process the normative has tended to recede to the background. 1. G.E. Moore In his famous work, principia ethica, moore propounded three doctrines: ideal utilitarianism; “naturalistic fallacy” and moral intuition. The naturalistic fallacy consists in identifying goodness with some natural property. Goodness is a moral quality and differs from physical properties like the wave length of light. Natural fallacy also occurs when for instance, one identifies the good with the pleasurable. It leads to logically inadmissible procedures. One of the tenets of modern logic is that propositions of fact to be separated from propositions of value. Proposition in logic means a statement. Propositions of fact can be either true or false. This can be ascertained by verification. However, statements of value are moral judgments. So they cannot be true or false. Logicians say that one cannot deduce propositions of value moral judgments from statements of fact. But if good is considered a natural property one can draw moral judgments from factual statements. Arguments containing factual notions of pleasure in the premises could logically entail conclusions containing ethical judgments. Moore argues that in fact no description of natural properties even logically commits one to an ethical judgment. Thus even if it is true that X is pleasurable (or that it is a naturalistic statement) one can always ask, “but is it good?” its goodness does not ligically follow. A consequence of this for mooe is that good is a simple notion just as yellow is a simple notion. Good is not to be defined in terms of anything outside itself but this does not make it impossible to grasp any more that the colour yellow. From this it follows that does not make it impossible to grasp any more than the colour yellow. From this it follows that we can speak about the good and indeed can say a great deal about it. What it means is that we see or recognize good through a process of moral intuition. Moore mentions that the principle of utility (or tilitarianism) indicates how one can reason about ethical problems.as we shall see many writers argue that moral issues are not amenable to logical argumentation. They are like our emotional responses to events or psychological preferences. Moore says that utilitarian moral standard can connect ethics to human conduct. When raising the practical question what ought i to do? One must always base his decision on whether the action will be the cause of the good or bring about good effect. From this it follows that right soes and can mean nothing but cause of a good result and is thus identical with useful the final determination of the useful (i.e, the good) was for moore akind of intuition. One sees the intrinsic value of morally practical actions. 2. Sir David Ross Sir david Ross’s ideal are propounded in his book the right and the Good. Ross’s ideas are largely a response to the type of utilitarianism found in Moore’s principia Ethica. Moore says that right mens productive of the highest good. For Ross what makes a right act right is not the principle of utility but an overriding moral duty that might sometimes conflict with moore’s ideal utilitarianism. Moore, for instance says in effect that the only morally significant relation in which my neighbours stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action. This may imply that at times moral principles can be broken. Suppose X a poor man borrows money from Y a rich man. If Y is indulgent it might be harmaless or even beneficial for X to break the promise of repaying the loan. But this would not necessarily make it right to do so. For the moral principle says that promises ought not to be broken. Ross holds that moral agents have certain duties that are based upon the consequences of their adoption but on the rightness of their adoption. This is of course the difference between approaches based on consequences of action (as in utilitarianism) and the inherent moral worth of an action (as in deontology). Now these duties could be kantian in nature, i.e., universal and deontological. Ross calls such general principles prima facie duties in light of the fact that, all things being equal i.e., no opposing circumstances present, we ought to follow the principle. For example all things being equal we ought to keep promises. But moral situations can be complex with a conflict of prima facie duties. On this account, Ross holds that in such situations the actual duty of moral agents will be that which is right for the particular situation. For instance while keeping promises is a prima facie duty in certain situations it is outweighed by another prima facie duty. Ross uses the example of breaking a trivial promise of meeting a friend in order to prevent a serious accident. He writes in this connection: . . . besides the duty of fulfilling promises I have and recognize a duty of relieving distress and that when I think it right to do the latter at the cost of not doing the former, it is not because i think I shall product more good thereby but because I think it the duty which is in the circumstances more of a duty.” In this case the latter duty is our actual duty, is our actual duty, though both prima facie duties maintain their deontological nature. Ross’s explanation of right action remove the emphasis on utility in moore’s ethics emphasizes the notion of moral agent’s duty to do the right thing. The views of moore and Ross reflect the spirit of the classical debates between the utilitarians and the kantians. Moore good than evil into the world. Ross proposes a conception of action based upon the morally good person’s fulfilment of his sense of duty in light of what is ethically right. 3. A.J.Ayer Sterictly speaking, A.J.Ayer is not a moral thinkar. He belongs to a philosophical school called logical positivism. The main aim of logical positivists is to remove metaphysical speculations from philosophy. They proposed a criterion of truth permits only certain categories of statements into philosophy. The criterions says that the meaning of a statement is the manner of its verification. What it means simply is that if there are no means of checking a statement’s truth in practice or in principle it should not treated as a logical proposition. Based on this view ayer proposes to exclude almost all ideas of art literature and morals from the category of logical propositions. He calls them meaningless.’ For Ayer there are only two kinds of statements the analytic and the synthetic. Analytic statements express the factual statements they have to satisfy the verificationlist principle of meaning which states that any genuine proposition must at least be capable of being reduced to observation statements which depict some possible empirical situation if propositions fail to conform to such criteria, they fail to conform to conditions under which a sentence can be literally significant. Such propositions are therefore not really propositions at all but rather meaningless pseudo- propositions. According to ayer, sincethe propositions of ethics fail to reduce to statements capable of empirical verification, they fall under they under the category of pseudo-propositions and are not literally significant. Ayer expounds his ideas in his book, language, truth and logic. It is writen in a clear lucid and elegant style. Even general readers can easily read and understand it with a little effort. However the book contains no substantial discussion on ethics. The question which ayer raise is wpistemological or concerns theory of knowledge: what kind of propositions can be considered epistemological or concerns theory of knowledge: what kind of propositions can be considered part of philosophy? This leads him to a discussion of the logical status of mora; statements. He ends with the doctrine of emotivism or the view that moral judgments are only expression of our emotions. 4. C.L. Stevenson Stevenson workrd out in greater detail the impications of emotive thery of ethics. He develops emotivism into a theory of ethical language according to which moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but rather express the moral emotions of the speaker and attempt to influence others. He extends the distinction between facts and values (ethical norms into ethics as a distinction between beliefs attitudes. Beliefs belong to the realm of facts. Attitudes refer to the psychological states of approval or disapproval. Moral judgments are concerned with recommending something for approval or disapproval; and this involves something more than a disinterested description.” When anyone says that something is good or bad, or right or wrong it seems on the face of it, that he is describing attributing to the thing some property that goodness or badness, or rightness wrongness. What could these property that is goodness or badness or rightness or wrongness. What could these properties be? How do we find out about them?much of philosophical moral theory seeks to answer these questions. But according to stevenson, questions about the nature of moral properties are misconcived. Moral judgments do not at least primarily describe at all. In other words they are not about facts. Uttering moral sentences has a different function: to express emotions and to influence or invite otheres to share them. People often moral judgments that something is good or bad. Such statements simply reflect whether they like or dislike that thing. The purpose of such statements is to presuade the audiene to adopt the attitude of the speaker. Moral expressions are, due to their strong emotive content particularly well suited for sch persuasion. Stevenson argues that moral judgments are simply a cover for the attempts which people make to persuade each other into adopting a particular normative attitude. Stevenson maintains that the meaning of moral language is exhausted when it expreses, or endorses powerful human feelings. Emotivism rejects the idea of ethical absolutes and analyzes moral argument in terms of the emotive uses of language. For example saying dowry taking is wrong is just a very strong way of stating that the speaker disapproves of dowry taking. The purpose of the statement is to evoke similar disapproval from others. It thereby attempts to influence the future conduct of both speakers and listeners. Stevenson introduced the phrase persuasive definition” which has become very popular. It refers to a situation often found in ethical argumentation. It involves use of expressions that have two particular characteristics: (i) having emotive overtones/meanings (positive or negative) (ii) being vague in their descriptive content Some examples are democracy, fredom repression and terrorism. The result of the discussion may revolve on which of the parties is able to join a positive expression to the definition” of his cause and a negative one to the opponent’s. The persuasive definition uses the inherent vagueness of a term which give room for many possible definitions, facilitating clever use of emotively charged expressions. Stevenson emphasized that his work has no substantive moral judgments. It comprises analytic ethics,” or what is now commonly called “metaethics” the branch of moral theory that is about ethical discourse and ethical language. Attitude can never, in principle, be reducible to a disinterested description. Onr attitudes are neither tru nor false but simply beyond the sphere of facts. Most of his ideas appeared in Ethics and language and in a collection of papers, facts and values. Ayer and stevenson belong to the twentieth century anglo-american positivistic position.positivism refuses to engage in moral discussions. It makes no moral assumptions; nor does it pass moral judgments on things, individuals social situations or social instituons. It aims at dispassionate factual analysis. It strictly follows the distinction between facts and values. We now look at moral philosophers who tried to get over the distinction between facts and values and restore ethics to its own language.” 5. R.M.Hare R.M. Here explains the rationality of moral beliefs. His moral theory is known as prescriptivism. It is based on Immanuel kant’s moral philosophy and the linguistic analysis of J.L. austin. Here first presented his theory in the language of morals. Here rejected the prevailing emotivism. Which maintained that moral statements are merely expressions of individual preference. For Here, moral statements are prescriptions or guides to conduct. They are universalizable i.e. they apply to everyone. Suppose I am prescribing for myself and othe the command of for instance not harming others. That type of prescription demands my acting in accordance with it. First the very language of morals involves a commitment to conduct. Secondly, our reasoning about the ethical situation contains the principle of universality. Taken together, these wo ideas create the sense of the ethical sphere. Hare thinks from within the sphere of ethics and avoids broader metaphysical or epistemological considerations. Such considerations lead moral discussions astray. As we have noted earilier, in analytical philosophy (for example in Ayer and stevenson) reasoning about ethics has become an investigation into ethical reasoning. There is virtually no moral content in such discussions. Hare has later introduced utilitarian concerns or considerations of consequnces of actions into his theory. We will now give a simple version of hare’s conception of a moral argument. As we noted before, some philosophers reject the very possibillty of moral arguments. According to hare if the premises contain moral terms along with factual statements, a valid argument will result. The basic form of the argument is shown below. All animals in distress ought to be helped. This dog is in distress This dog should be helped. The main point to note is that moral arguments are not irrational but fall within reasonable discourse. Natural language has a particular logical aspect. It generally expresses moral judgments using the term “ought” or by saying what is right”. Such moral judgments are bindind on all people and have overriding force. The universal applicability of moral judgment can be illustrated as in the following example. Consider the judgment, “a outght to do x to B and C”. When universalized, it also implies the judments “B ought to X to A and C ought to do to A and B” Irrespective of who the benefactors and beneficiaries are, the moral judgment will still apply. Or one must accept the moral judgment irrespective of what one’s individual preferences are i.e whether one is a rather than B or C. Here says that kant’s view that moral laws or judgment have universal applicability implies preference utilitarianism. For to sincerely adopt to ought claim or moral judgment is to prefer that it should be done, even if one had to occupy, successively the positions of each and every one of the persons involved. Here’s principle that moral judgments heve universal application combines two ideas. One is the traditional Golden Rule, do to others what you want then to do you”. This is a simple intuitive idea that human relation should have reciprocal equity. To this intuitive christian belief, hare joins the precise philosophical condition which underlies the universality of moral prescriptions. In following a moral principle, a moral agent has to imagine himself as haveing the others prefences rather than his own. Hare gives a secular defence of the Golden rule Golden Rule leads to preference utilitarianism. Hare argues that human beings, depending on their intellectual endowments rely on their intuitive moral beliefs or on critical thinking. In either case the fundamental human moral beliefs are the same. But men differ in their critical reasoning abilities and in their ability to recognize the moral components of a situation and reaching the appropriate moral judgments. In other words, while making moral judgments, some people follow their moral intuitions, and others rely on their reason. This leads hare to the conception of two- level utilitarianism. Intuitive level of thinking implies that moral decisions are based on rile utilitaranism. People use prima facie principles which apply to common general general types of situations or occurrences. People follow this approach when there is time for critical thinking or when they do not trust their critical faculties. Critical level thinking implies act utilitarianism. Hare an individual analyzes the likely consequences of an individual action, and considers whether on balancce they will be good or bad.act utilitarianism comes into play in (i) in unusual cases; (ii) when prima facia principles are in conflict; (iii) when it is clear that utility can be maximized by adopting a particular course and one is sure that it is in fact so. Hare believes that common morality professional ethics and personal morality have their roots in intuitive beliefs. Common social morality refers to basic standards which everyone in society is expected to follow. It has sources in the common problems which human beingsin society face and in the universal features of human condition. Ethics in any particular occupation arise from the common problems which its practitioners repeatedly encounter. They represent the generally agreed responses to such professional problems and the means of satisfying the customers. Personal morality depends on an individual’s ability to reason independently. Human beings adopt different but similar personal codes. While personal ethics at an intuitive level tends to be common people can differ in their analysis of particular situations. In conclusion, we may note that hare uses the techniques of analytical philosophy to elucidate the meaning of our ethical expressions. The language of morals is essentially prescriptive in nature yielding universalizable imperatives in particular circumstances. In the sixties the theories of ethics which philosophers propounded since the beginning of the twentieth century were studied from the point of view of analytical philosophy. Analytical philosophers refrain from propounding any world views, social philosophies or moral systems. They focus on the meanings of terms or clarification of concepts used in philosophy and sciences. Some critics think that like medieval scholasticism analytical philosophy has led to intellectual sterility and dilettantism. But in a sense, this conceptual analysis opened the way for new hinkingin the seventies. In this regard john searle deserves a mention. He uses J.L Austin’s concept of “performative utterance” to illustrate a moral principle. Performative utterance is a kind of sentence Utterance is simply an oral statement or what we say or utter. In some situations, our utterance indicates we have done something: I pulled the trigger’. In other words in certain circumstances, when we say something we have essentially done it. This applies particularly to promise. If you promise to marry your girl friend, you are committed to marrying her. This approach shows a willingness to discuss ethical issues from within ethics and to attempt an understanding of the moral point of view. In this case, philosophers analze what it means to enter into the promising game”. Wittgenstein considers many contexts of human life and activity as comparable to games with rules. Hence they can be analyzed in terms of the elements of a game and its rules. This general shift in moral philosophy is movement towards understandin what ethics is meaning by ethics not first order like “right” and “good” but rather the analysis of second order notions making up the very sense of the “moral institutions.” The current endeavour is not to promote certain goals or principles, or to only such words as right and ought but rather to grasp the nature of morality itself as compared with law, religion or science.” 6. John Rawls Contemporary thinkers generally try to understand the institution of morality. Unlike analytical philosophers, they avoid hair splitting and logic-chopping discussions of moral terms or concepts. Yhis recent approach explains the contemporary interest in John Rawls, whose treatise A Theory of justice has strongly influenced recent moral philosophy. We will have occasion to mention john Rawls also while discussing administrative ethics. John Rawls does not discuss general ethics but examines a particular species of ethics, namely justice. But the wide canvas of A theroy of justice covers several ethical themes rangins from intuitionism and utilitarianism to the ethics of kant and Aristotle. As such it contains the central issues of ethics from within its own interest. John rawls argues that the adoption of two fundamental principles of justice would guarantee a just and morally acceptable society: (1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic libertiec compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. (2) social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (i) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and (ii) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. Rawls tries to show how such principles would be universally adopted, and in this way moves party towards general ethical issues. He introduces a theoretical veil of ignorance”. It ensures that all the players in the social game would be placed in a particular situation. Rawls calls it the original position.” In this position, everyone only has a general knowledge about the of life and society”. Therefore, each player is to make a rationally prudential choice” concerning the kind of social institution they would enter into contract with. As the players have no specific information about themselves, they cannot adopt a partisan or self regarding view. They are forced to adopt a generalized point of view that bears a strong resemblance to the moral point of view. Moral conlusions can be reached without abandoning the prudential standpoint and positing a moral outlook merely by pursuing one’s own prudential reasoning under certain procedural bargaining and knowledge constraints.” This view of Rawls represents “rational choice within a veil of ignorance”. This is an appropriate point to close our discussion on twentieth century moral thinkers. We need to discuss only the major thinkers. We need to follow the main trends of moral theories in the twentieth century. As we saw, till about sixties, barring a few philosophers adopted a positivistic and analytical approach. They their work has no normative content. This approach is hardly relevant to practicing administrators. Ast best it can help in uderstanding moral concepts that come into plar in many administrative situations. But , as we shall see, administrators have to havecommitment to definite moral values. Huwever, as we saw philosophers from the seventies shifted again to moral norms as part of society and as games’ reflecting many situations of life. SUMMARY Many twentieth century philosophers gave up the earlier prevalent practice of prescribing or espousing particular moral systems. Instead they tended to subject prevailing moral theories to close epistemological scrutiny. Moore propounded three doctrines: ideal utilitarianism; “naturalistic fallacy”; and moral intuition. The naturalistic fallacy consists in identifying goodness with some natural property. One of the tenets of modern logic is that propositions of fact have to be separated from propositions of value. But if good is considered a natural property one can draw moral judgments from factual statements. Arguments containing factual notions of pleasure in the premises could logically entail conclusions containing ethical judgments. This is an illicit procedure. Moore held that we see or recognize good through a process of moral intuition. Moore’s version of utilitarianism is idealistic because he rejects hedonism. Moore says that right means productive of the highest good. “for Ross, what makes a right act right is not the principle of utility but an overriding moral duty that might sometimes conflict with moore’s “ideal utilitarianism”. This may imply that at times moral principles can be broken. Moral agents have certain dutain that are not based upon the consequences of their adoption, but on the rightness of their adoption. Ross calls such general principles prima facie duties. But moral situations can be complex with a conflict of prima facie duties. On this account, ross holds that in such situations the actual duty of moral agernts will be that which is right for the particular situation. A.J. Ayer belongs to a philosophical school called logical positivism. Ayer says that as the propositions of ethics fail to reduce to statements capable of empirical verification, they fall under the category of pseudo-propositions and are not literally significant. They are merely expressions of emotions. Ayer’s work contains no substantial discussion on ethics. The question which ayer raises is epistemological or concerns tery of knowledge. According to stevenson, moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but rather express the moral emotions of the speaker and attempt to influence others. Moral judgments are not about facts. Uttering moral sentences has a different function: to express emotions and to influence others. The purpose of such statements is to persuade the audience to adopt the attitude of the speaker. Stevenson also argues that moral judgments are simply a cover for the attempts which people make to persuade each other into adopting a particulat normative attitude. Stevenson introduced the concept “persuasive definition. Ayer and stevenson belong to the twentieth century anglo-american positivistic position. Positivism refuses to engage in moral discussions. Here rejected the prevailling emotivism, which maintained that moral statements were merely expressions of individual preference. For hare moral statements are prescriptions or guides to conduct. They are universalizable i.e. they apply to everyone. Some philosophers reject the very possibility of moral arguments. According to hare, if the premises contain moral terms along with factual statements, a valid argument will result. Moral judgments use the term “ought” and say what is “right”. Such moral judgments are binding on all people and have overriding force. Hare introduced the conception of two-level utilitarianism. Intuitive level of thinking implies that moral decisions are based on rule utilitarianism. Critical level thinking implies act utilitarianism. Hare believes that common morality, professional ethics and personal morality have their roots in intuitive beliefs. Analytical philosophers refrain from propounding any world views, social philosophies or moral systems. They focus on the meanings of terms or clarification of concepts used in philosophy and sciences. John Rawls argues that the adoption of two fundamental principles of justice would guarantee a just and morally acceptable society.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:25:35 +0000