Abstract
In this chapter I will try to show how we can use a moral theory like mine to solve problems in applied ethics. The objections discussed in Section 1 of Chapter 4 suggest a need for a detailed account of how we can make and justify moral decisions in complex cases, using the central purpose of morality as I have stated it. The enterprise of morality is, I believe, a goal-directed activity. Those who are conscientious — i.e., trying to do what is right — and those who are trying to get others to act morally, have a purpose. In Chapter 3 Section 3 I tried to show that the major moral rules and considerations receive their justification from the central purpose of morality. This purpose is to make individuals as happy as possible so long as this can be done without making it difficult or impossible for others to attain a like level of happiness.
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Notes
In ‘Practical Reasoning and Historical Explanation,’ History and Theory, 15(1976): 133–140. This position is also taken by Stephen E. Norris, ‘The Intelligibility of Practical Reasoning,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1975): 77–84.
A precursor of this view is to be found in Anthony Kenny, ‘Practical Inference,’ Analysis, 26 (1966): 65–75, where practical reasoning is looked upon as the search for a plan which will suffice for the achievement of our ends.
That actions cannot be universally deduced from ends and circumstances has also been pointed out by Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘Practical Reasoning,’ Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1962): 316–328.
David Gauthier spivn in Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 95–99.
R. M Hare, Practical Inferences (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 61–62.
Brody, Life and Death Decision Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), especially Chapter 4.
David O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 202.
We are now in a position to answer the challenge raised by Gilbert Harman spivn in The Nature of Morality, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), Chapter 1. Harman argues that there are no moral facts, and nothing to observe, that explains our judgment that it is wrong to set fire to a cat or remove the vital organs of a healthy human being to provide transplants for several very sick ones. He maintains that the situation for moral judgments is very different from that of a scientist who observes a track in a cloud chamber and announces that there is a proton.
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Forrester, M.G. (1996). Solving Moral Problems. In: Persons, Animals, and Fetuses. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1633-3_6
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