Abstract
It is often assumed that moral questions ask for answers in the way other questions do. In this chapter, moral and non-moral versions of the question ‘Should I do x or y?’ are compared. While non-moral questions of that form typically ask for answers of the form ‘You should do x/y’, so-called ‘narrow answers’, moral questions often do not ask for such narrow answers. Rather, they ask for answers recognizing their delicacy, the need for a deeper understanding of the meaning of the alternatives and the fact that moral decisions are, as Gaita formulates it, ‘non-accidentally and inescapably’ the agent’s to make. In short, moral questions often ask for a kind of answer that is highly different from the kind of answer non-moral questions ask for. In presupposing the ideal answer to a moral question to be a narrow answer, moral philosophers have tended to overlook this.
De Mesel Benjamin. 2015. Do Moral Questions Ask for Answers? Philosophia. Philosophical Quarterly of Israel 43: 43–61. Published by Springer. See https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-014-9565-3.
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- 1.
The example is Rush Rhees’s. Rhees discussed it with Wittgenstein (Rhees 1965: 22).
- 2.
Instead of a happy life, Jonathan might say that he is looking for a virtuous life, a moral life or a good life. He might also say that he wants to act rationally or dutifully, that he wants to do whatever has the best consequences or that he wants to treat people as ends in themselves, depending on what he takes to be fundamental matters of moral concern. Whatever he says here, the scenario remains absurd.
- 3.
One could argue that this opening sentence makes every scenario highly absurd. Hence, it becomes difficult to show that S3 is any more or less absurd than S2. I would like to emphasize that even if the opening sentence of S2 and S3 were quite innocent (such as ‘Excuse me, I would like to ask you something’), S3 would not be any less absurd than S2. The fact that Ada recognizes the need for more information does not as such affect the scenario’s degree of absurdity.
- 4.
- 5.
Those who do not think of professors of ethics as paradigms of reliability when it comes to dealing with moral questions are free to change ‘professor of ethics’ by ‘wise person’.
- 6.
If some would object to this example that the stock market question is not difficult enough in comparison to Jonathan’s question, they are free to make Alexander’s question more difficult. It will not fundamentally change the contrast with S2.
- 7.
See, in this respect, also Wittgenstein (1992: 89–90): ‘It’s important, for instance, that one must “know ” someone in order to be able to judge what meaning is to be attributed to one of his expressions of feeling, and yet that one cannot describe what it is that one knows about him.’
- 8.
On the importance of seriousness in characterizations of the moral, see Gaita (2004: passim).
- 9.
An anonymous reviewer remarks that ‘whether Jonathan prefers “You will save many lives” over “You should definitely leave your wife” depends on whether or not he is someone who wants to make his own decisions and take responsibility for them, i.e. someone who values autonomy . Certainly, not everybody does.’ I agree and, as I will repeat in Sect. 7.4, I readily admit that there are cases in which a person is asking for a narrow answer. Indeed, there are situations in which it would be absurd to withhold a quick, straightforward moral judgment of the form ‘You should do x’. Far from claiming that the latter is always unwelcome in moral cases, my claim is that one cannot assume that it is always appropriate. It suffices for my purposes, then, to show that we can clearly imagine a situation in which and a person for whom such an answer would certainly not be appropriate. Therefore, we could simply stipulate that Jonathan values autonomy without harming the argument.
- 10.
The idea that reasons and explanations are not optional in moral cases as they are in many non-moral cases (that the hierarchy between reasons and conclusions is different in moral and non-moral cases) is present in Bernard Williams’s famous remark that ‘anyone who is tempted to take up the idea of there being a theoretical science of ethics should be discouraged by reflecting on what would be involved in taking seriously the idea that there were experts in it. It would imply, for instance, that a student who had not followed the professor’s reasoning but had understood his moral conclusion might have some reason, on the strength of his professorial authority , to accept it […] These Platonic implications are presumably not accepted by anyone’ (Williams 1995: 205).
- 11.
- 12.
One could argue that what accounts for our different reactions to S1 (normal) and S2 (absurd) has to do with the fact that Alexander’s question in S1 presents two mutually exclusive options (one cannot both go straight and turn left), while the options presented in S2 are not mutually exclusive (one can be married and do research). Consider, in that regard, S4, where Alexander asks whether he should buy shares in company x or y. These options are not mutually exclusive (one can buy shares in company x and in company y). In a realistic scenario, the economist could ask him why he believes that he has to either buy shares in company x or in company y, and this question could lead Alexander to achieve a better understanding of these alternatives. However, such an understanding is optional. If Alexander would say ‘I don’t want to achieve a better understanding of the alternatives, I just want the economist to tell me what I should do’, we could say ‘Ah, then that’s all right’. By contrast, we expect Jonathan to want to achieve a better understanding of the alternatives. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, we could say that he ought to want that. Thus, the contrast between Alexander’s and Jonathan’s cases remains, even if one compares two scenarios in which the options are not mutually exclusive. Consequently, the difference between their cases cannot be adequately explained by referring to the fact that Alexander’s options in S1 are mutually exclusive while Jonathan’s in S2 are not.
- 13.
This does not mean that ‘You should (definitely) leave your wife’ is always too strong. I readily admit that there are cases in which such an answer would be appropriate and that, as a reviewer pointed out, ‘sometimes our friends know what would be right for us better than we do’.
- 14.
- 15.
One should recognize that Johnston’s notion of moral modesty slightly differs from mine, but the differences are not important for our present purposes.
- 16.
For example, Uri Leibowitz writes that ‘General moral advice is a statement of the following form: perform action A if and/or only if ψ’ (Leibowitz 2009: 350). Notable exceptions to the absence of a demand for moral modesty in moral philosophy can be found in Gaita (2004: 92) (‘It is sometimes presumptuous even to think that another person ought to do something, even though we are quite sure what we ought to do if we were in their situation.’) and Phillips (1964: 39) (‘I do not propose to give positive advice. A man’s life may be at stake whatever you do. I am prepared to clarify the issues involved as I see them, but you must draw your own moral conclusion.’). Not only does Phillips recognize here that the decision is to be made by the person who asks a moral question, there is also a clear commitment to clarification of the meaning of the alternatives. The moral advice offered here is reminiscent of what Wittgenstein says about Rhees’s example (Rhees 1965: 22–23). It is not surprising, in this respect, that some of Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics seem to support a case for moral modesty (see, for example, Waismann 1965:16 and Bouwsma 1986: 45). For a detailed discussion of moral modesty and its relation to Wittgenstein’s ethical views, see De Mesel (2014).
- 17.
See, on this point, Rhees (1999: 50, 89).
- 18.
On the importance of speaking for oneself in moral matters, see De Mesel (2015).
- 19.
I agree with Rhees : ‘Often I should like to know what so and so would have done in my place. And I may find it helpful or believe I shall find it helpful if he will tell me. Helpful in coming to a decision. This is not the same as looking to him for the answer’ (Rhees 1999: 69).
- 20.
- 21.
This way of putting things may be thought to obscure the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. If we want to know what a question means, then why would we have to look at the circumstances in which we use it or how one typically responds to it? The dichotomy between semantics and pragmatics in this objection, between what a question means (‘in itself’, as it were) and what its typical antecedents and consequences are, is deeply mistaken from a Wittgensteinian perspective. As Avner Baz remarks, philosophers looking for the meaning of something often commit the following mistake: ‘[…] differences that may be philosophically important between different words and the ways they function are either ignored, or else relegated to the realm of “(mere) pragmatics” and taken to be inessential to their meaning’ (Baz 2012: 18). If meaning is use, a sharp distinction between semantics and pragmatics will in many cases be unhelpful. However, that does not mean that the distinction becomes entirely useless. For a good discussion, see Baz (2012: 121).
- 22.
Driver (2006) shows that considerations of autonomy may require us not to give a narrow answer in moral as well as in non-moral cases. An anonymous reviewer suggests considering Alexander’s money question in this regard: could it not be that considerations of autonomy will, in certain circumstances, require the economist to give a broad answer here? The answer is yes. What this shows is precisely that the characteristics of moral questions are not to be thought of as necessary (because considerations of autonomy are not equally relevant in all moral cases and may be even irrelevant in some) or sufficient (because considerations of autonomy may well be relevant in non-moral cases too) conditions and that the boundaries between moral and non-moral questions are blurred (one could argue that, by taking Alexander’s autonomy into account, the advisor shows that she is sensitive to a moral aspect of what seemed to be a non-moral question). That does not, however, harm the overall argument. The fact that there are non-moral cases (or cases on the border between moral and non-moral) in which a broad answer is asked for does not weaken the point that it should not be assumed that moral questions ask for narrow answers.
- 23.
Some may find it misleading that I have been assuming that moral questions, although they do not always ask for narrow answers, are to be thought of as real questions. The early Wittgenstein, for example, wrote that ‘a question [can] only [exist] where there is an answer’ (Wittgenstein 2005: §6.51), and he seems to use ‘answer’ in the sense of ‘narrow answer’. Thus, one could say that a question is not really a question if it does not ask for a narrow answer, or that it is then ‘only’ a broad question. However, this is not really an objection to my view. If someone denied that moral questions are always real questions because they do not always ask for narrow answers, I would be happy to allow for the term ‘request’ or ‘invitation’ instead of ‘question’. I would be equally happy with ‘response’ instead of ‘broad answer’.
- 24.
This is what Leibowitz suggests. Although he takes the general form of moral advice to be ‘perform action A if and/or only if ψ’ or ‘perform action A’, he admits that ‘we sometimes give/receive advice in different forms; e.g., “think about the consequences”, or “if I were you, I would do A”. But strictly speaking, these forms of advice do not help us decide which action to perform; they could be helpful if they are understood as shorthand for something like the following: “think about the consequences, and perform the action that you believe would lead to the best possible consequences”; and “perform action A if you want to perform that action that I would have performed if I were you”. So even if moral advice does not explicitly take the form: perform action A if and/or only if ψ, we should be able to restate it in this format’ (Leibowitz 2009: 350).
- 25.
In my view, then, the conflict between the early Wittgenstein’s ‘ethics cannot be expressed’ and the fact that the later Wittgenstein seems to allow for (or at least not to offer principled reasons against) meaningful moral language is not in the first place a conflict between views on ethics, but a conflict between understandings of ‘saying’ and ‘expressing’. If one limits what can be said or expressed to bipolar propositions (as Wittgenstein does in the Tractatus), if one uses ‘saying’ and ‘expressing’ in a limited technical sense, then ethics cannot be expressed. But if one broadens what can be said or expressed to what we take ‘saying’ and ‘expressing’ to mean in everyday use (Wittgenstein 2009: §116), then ethics can be expressed. Thus, both the early and the later Wittgenstein would refuse to limit ethics to bipolar propositions, but neither the early nor the later Wittgenstein would claim that, if we understand ‘saying’ and ‘expressing’ as we do in everyday life, ethics cannot be expressed.
- 26.
Moral judgments are mostly understood as judgments that apply moral concepts to actions, persons or personal qualities (Crary 2007: 1) , and that is how I use the term here. Although there is considerable disagreement over which concepts are moral, concepts like ‘right’, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘wrong’, ‘duty’, as well as concepts for virtues and vices (‘courage’, ‘brutality’, ‘kindness’) are commonly taken to be such concepts. To morally judge is to tell somebody what would be right, good, bad, wrong, courageous, etc. for him/her to do, and therefore (if we assume that one has to do what is right, good or courageous and refrain from doing what is bad or wrong) to tell him/her what (s)he is obliged, should or ought to do.
- 27.
- 28.
For example, theories claiming to provide a decision procedure often do not distinguish between the person who asks a moral question and has to make a decision (Jonathan) and the person who is asked to answer the question (Mary). The latter is offered a decision procedure, but she is not the one who has to make the decision. For Wittgenstein’s insistence on the essentially relational character of ethical reflection, see Christensen (2011).
- 29.
For a useful overview of literature on moral dilemmas , see McConnell (2014).
- 30.
This is why ‘ethicists as diverse as Kant, Mill, and Ross have assumed that an adequate moral theory should not allow for the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas ’ (McConnell 2014).
- 31.
For an overview of literature on this dual role of moral theories, see Leibowitz (2009).
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De Mesel, B. (2018). Do Moral Questions Ask for Answers?. In: The Later Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97619-8_7
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