Abstract
The primary object of this chapter is to bring to light a number of important facts about morality and moral discourse of which a satisfactory meta-ethical theory must give account. Its secondary purpose is to indicate the sorts of considerations which tell against a number of important theories, and, on the basis of which these theories must be rejected. Because not all actual and possible theories (and refinements of them) can be examined here, only those standard versions of positions, the criticisms of which further the development of the main thesis of this Part, are examined here. The criticisms to be noted (e.g. those relating to the meaning of moral expressions, the nature of moral disagreement, the justification of moral judgments, etc), are all well-known and widely accepted as telling objections, and they are alluded to here partly to remind the reader of the sort of case which may be developed against the various positions, but primarily to bring out that these widely accepted criticisms have what force they have because they draw attention to and rest upon important logical features of morality and moral discourse. For the most part it is the same set of characteristics which underlies the criticisms of the various theories, although the ways in which the different theories come to fail to take account of them differ. The fact that these features are very often noted by exponents of the various theories in their criticisms of other theories, although not in respect of their own, is of considerable significance.
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References
Summa Theologiae, I, II, 94, 5, 2.
See Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 1, ch. 28, 30, 31, 44, Bk. 2, ch. 24. If Aquinas is not to be interpreted in this way, he either becomes involved in the difficulty of denying God’s omnipotence, that he can create different ‘human’ natures, or in an infinite regress explaining the ‘rationality’ and non-arbitrariness of God’s ultimate acts of creation. See also Summa Theologiae, I, 15, 1.
I, II, 91, 2. This and all subsequent quotations are from the translation of the English Dominican Fathers.
Ibid, I, II, 94, 2.
Ibid, I, n, 94, 4, ad. 3.
“The Naturalistic Fallacy”, Mind, XLVIII, 1939, pp. 464–477.
p. 16.
D. H. Monro: Empiricism and Ethics: Cambridge, C.U.P., 1967, ch. 8.
Op. cit.
See A. N. Prior: Logic and the Basic of Ethics: Oxford, Clarendon, 1949: ch. 1, and W. K. Frankena: Ethics: Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1963: pp. 81-2.
Here I am discussing ‘approve’ in general and not merely ‘morally approve’. Because moral approval and moral attitudes and feelings rest on and involve moral judgments they share with them their universality, and involve, in consistency if not in fact, morally approving of what is like A in relevant respects, if we morally approve of A. We morally approve of A because we judge A to be morally good; we feel moral shame because we have done what we ought not to have done. However, it is true that these feelings may persist for a time after the judgments on which they rest have been revised.
Conscience theories come in many forms, some of which have close affinities with this simple subjectivist theory. Theories of the form that conscience makes to be good those actions which are good, and to be evil those that are evil, by judging them to be so, or by approving or disapproving of them, are of such a type and, like it, encounter the major difficulties to which it is exposed. These conscience theories offer definitions which commit the naturalistic fallacy, for we can significantly and without self-contradiction assert that the judgments of conscience are mistaken, its approvals and disapprovals misdirected. This is true whether or not conscience is explained in terms of natural feelings such as shame, guilt, remorse or as some special kind of moral faculty. Thus we may admit that we were wrong in feeling shame or guilt in the past, and may significantly allow that perhaps our present moral feelings are misdirected. The fact that the consciences of sincere men in fact respond in different ways renders such a theory a simple and naive form of subjectivism. It implies that what is evil for Smith at the outset of his criminal career becomes morally neutral and even good as his conscience becomes corrupted; and, of course, that what is good for Smith at any stage of his career may be evil for Jones. Yet clearly, an act cannot be right for the wicked, and evil for the virtuous, all other considerations being the same. (It is true that beliefs are relevant, but they are relevant at a second-order level). In the same sort of way, the various difficulties relating to moral disagreement, verification or justification of moral judgments, their universality, necessity and timelessness, could be shown to arise; and obviously, the theory does nothing to explain the claim to authority of moral judgments. Rather, it would suggest that it is reasonable to ignore a troublesome conscience, or at least to seek to make it less troublesome.
Ethics and the Moral Life: London, Macmillan & Co., 1958, p. 42.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford, p. 261 footnote. See also Appendix 1, p. 289.
Ethical Theory, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1959: p. 173. See also R. Firth’s “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XII, 1952, pp. 317-345. Also relevant here, although not advancing a definition in terms of the impartial observer, is W. Kneale’s “Objectivity in Morals”, Philosophy, XXV, 1950, pp. 149-166.
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© 1969 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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McCloskey, H.J. (1969). Theistic and Naturalistic Meta-Ethical Theories. In: Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9299-6_2
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