Imagination, Sympathy and Decisions of Principle

Abstract

The primary intention of Hare’s moral theory was, as we recall, to repair the irrationalist defects of emotivism by securing a more significant place for reason in moral thinking than that which Ayer and Stevenson had been prepared to grant it. For Hare, it was not enough to merely ‘twit about the inconsistencies’ that one might encounter with people who hold double standards or make exceptions to their own espoused attitudes to suit themselves, there was also a need to challenge those consistently-adhered-to attitudes which are, despite their being consistently adhered to, narrow-minded. But, as we have just seen in our dealings with the Family Hypothetica and its internally consistent, narrow-minded moral attitude, the arguments which Hare and Singer (arguing on Hare’s behalf) brought forth were ineffective in getting the Family to budge.