Applying Moral Theory to the Retarded

Abstract

A reasonable, unengaged Martian, scanning terrestrial disputes about moral worth, entitlement, rights, obligations, and the good life would very quickly perceive that earthly creatures had failed to prove that moral values and moral norms can be straightforwardly discovered or that any universal moral consensus of a more than trivial sort can be expected to be achieved. Beyond this, he would find that large convictions of principle were hopelessly deadlocked against one other. He would be bound to conclude that the pursuit of moral principles and moral criteria was ineliminably partisan, embodying one or another such conviction, not itself demonstrably valid or correct — without, however, condemning moral reflection to the irrational for that reason. For example, he would be bound to notice that there is no earthly way to choose convincingly and decisively between the principle that the interests and goods of a limited number of persons may be sacrificed if that would contribute to a significant increase in the benefits and well-being of the majority (an increase not otherwise accessible) and the principle that human persons must without exception be assured a certain minimal measure of respect (so-called human rights) basic to all other pertinent disputes and precluding such sacrifice. In the idiom of the day, these opposed doctrines are said to be utilitarian and contractarian, respectively. The quarrel between them — and many others of the same sort — seriously affects questions of policy regarding the public treatment of retarded persons. But, being human and not Martian, one has the sinking feeling that that quarrel and others like it are cast in such large terms — in universal terms, in fact — that we are actually deflected by them from attending to manageable issues, or human disputes are, ultimately, conceptual frauds.