Moral philosophy arguments seem to assume human moral sentiments are givens. That is, looking at a moral problem from all perspectives and attempting to come up with a morality that is equally valid for all observers (what I interpret Kant and Hume to have done) at bottom relies on each observer judging if something is moral or immoral in a very important sense based on moral sentiments. (Of course understanding that moral sentiments differ wildly with cultures and what not.)
I don’t remember this ever being clearly stated one way or another, but that may just be my lack of background.
It seems to me that taking human moral sentiments as givens makes a very shaky foundation for moral systems.
It would be much appreciated if someone could point me in the right direction on this point.
Well, I think you are a little off in equating Hume with Kant. Hume is a sentimentalist of the empirical nature whereas Kant is a moral rationalist.
They are different, albeit somewhat related. For Hume, foundations are less important, he is after all an empiricist. So what he was trying to do is describe how human beings actually make moral decisions. For him, our passions, our emotional drives come first and broader concepts like rationality come later – rationality is a slave of the passions, after all. Like all empirical systems, it has a very weak base because it is going from observed phenomenon towards principles, many of which are either ill-defined or left almost entirely ambiguous. But since the system isn’t really built off of that rationalist base, it isn’t an issue.
For Kant and other moral rationalists, morality is real usually ordained by some entity like Reason, which is really just a nice abstract, Enlightenmnet-era way of saying God. So, in using rationality to discover the world, we too can hit upon these very real a priori concepts of morality. This is a very weak basis if taken alone but since it is usually also found in place with a Judeo-Christian religious system, its base is firmly rooted in those beliefs or some system directly derived from there.
Xunzian and xzc, I am asking if, at bottom, all of philosophy (even Kantianism) doesn’t ultimately rely on what our moral sentiments define as moral behavior (after cultural differences and the like have been somehow sorted out). As I see it, secular moral philosophers deriving new moralities must start with two premises. Those are 1) a rational definition of morality must make equal sense to all participants (like science is the same for all observers), and 2) the criteria for if they make sense is somehow based on our moral sentiments.
Maybe a clearer way to state the question is does Kant (or any other moral philosopher) claim there is some basis other than our moral sentiments for determining if a proposed morality (like Kant’s categorical imperatives) makes or does not make equal sense for all participants? If not, what can you base such a judgment on (assuming you are trying to derive a new morality)?
P.S. Hume was very explicit about moral behavior being motivated only by moral emotions while Kant emphasizes rational thought. These could be understood as more similar approaches than they first appear (though with different results) if Kant was actually using human moral sentiments to judge if his moral imperatives make sense from the perspective of each participant.
You’re asking whether there is some mechanism other than our moral sentiments which we can utilize to judge a normative ethical theory. As far as I know, no. The way to show that an ethical theory is wrong is to come up with a sentimentally repulsive situation or way of acting. Then you take the ethical theory in question and see whether it deems this situation or way of acting obligatory or permissible. If it implies that you are obligated to act in this sentimentally repulsive fashion or that it is permissible, then you can say the theory is no good–meaning it can’t be true, because I guess of an implied condition which says only moral theories that give the same answer as our sentiments in all instances can be true.
Act Utilitarianism for instance is said to be no good because it implies a doctor is obligated to murder (or allow to die) a healthy patient so that he can then harvest the man’s organs and save five others who would otherwise die without them. Our sentiments tell us this is wrong, yet act utilitarianism implies the doctor must do it, and if he fails to do it, he is doing something wrong (right for him to do it, and wrong for him to not do it). And so because act utlitarianism gives an answer contrary to our sentiments, it is said to be a bad ethical theory. Kant’s categorical imperative, like AU, fails in the same way.
The categorical imperative says for example that you can’t will yourself to be a philosopher because you can’t universalize this will, meaning you can’t consistently will that everybody in a society also will to be a philosopher because a society with only philosophers wouldn’t function or something like that. Hence it is wrong according to Kant’s categorical imperative to will to be a philosopher, but because we intuit (or our sentiments say) that this it’s not right (we feel it’s not wrong to want to be a philosopher), we then conclude by saying the categorical imperative is a bad theory.
Is this good ground upon which to dismiss an ethical theory? I don’t know. My knee jerk reaction is to dismiss any ethical theory that says it’s okay to murder babies for the fun of it as a bad one. I don’t think any ethical theory that says I’m obligated to do some act which my sentiments tell me is wrong is good, or true, or convincing, or whatever.
I’m glad you made this thread, assuming I understand correctly what you’re trying to say, because this problem ate away at me all semester. I’m thinking if the test for a moral theory is our sentiments, then any difference between a descriptive moral theory and a normative moral theory disappears. Do you agree?
Certainly most arguments assume that there is such a thing as “moral sentiments” or the desire or need to act moral. But I think that is obvious. Is what you’re really trying to say above is the arguments assume a more or less universal or common set of moral sentiments? I think you need to explain this term more.
I for one am not perturbed by the fact that a fundamental aspect to moral viewpoints is compassion. Anyone who thinks that they can reduce moral foundations to something similar to the realm of natural science is on a fool’s errand (after 300+ years of such attempts). The key to really understanding what morally philosophy is all about is not to look for an objective standard but an intersubjective one. It’s not about something that is a scientific law that operates whether humans were in this universe or not, it’s instead what follows from the fact that humans do inhabit the universe and what, in the individual’s human experience, can be extensible to a network of human beings. The grounding cannot be determined by deductive reasoning but rather an analogical reasoning of likeness and the similiarity perceived by one being about the value of another.
Xzc, You Have It Exactly! If we were in a pub, I’d buy you a pint!
My question came up because I have read a bit about Kant’s work being based on pure reason, which to me is nonsense. That is, pure reason (for instance some kind of logic machine) is blind to the concepts of ‘duty’ or ‘good’ (both needed for Kant’s arguments) without reference to moral sentiments. If this is true, Kant’s categorical imperatives are based, at bottom, on our moral sentiments and therefore not based only on pure reason.
This lead to my poorly put question whether our moral sentiments are generally accepted as givens by moral philosophers (including Kant).
As to your other points, I agree that moral sentiments, as you suggest, are a proper way to evaluate a normative theory (when that evaluation is done, so far as possible, from the viewpoint of every possible participant and in all circumstances). Further, I would argue they are the only basis for evaluating a normative theory.
And yes, I agree that “if the test for a moral theory is our sentiments, then any difference between a descriptive moral theory and a normative moral theory disappears”.
But it sounds like my question as to what is generally accepted among moral philosophers is still open. Maybe there is no consensus.
There are only very special circumstances where it seems to me that “if the test for a moral theory is our sentiments, then any difference between a descriptive moral theory and a normative moral theory disappears”. That is when a descriptive moral theory, for instance a hypothetical generally accepted scientific theory of moral behavior (an ‘is’ that is more consistent with our moral sentiments than any other theory because it must be to become generally accepted) is restated in the form of a normative theory (what ‘ought to be’). For this special case, an ‘is’ can become an ‘ought to be’. Hume should not be offended because the transition can be fully explained, and Moore should not be offended because the hypothetical theory of moral behavior is based in science, not just based on being some random part of nature (like evolution). This is actually the point of my interest in philosophy and the ultimate source of my question about moral sentiments as givens in moral philosophy.