Bernard Gert’s moral philosophy is a description of what common morality is, the morality that rational people live by. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that much like grammar, once all the facts are known about a particular situation, rational people almost always agree on what moral decisions must be made. There is still some room for disagreement, but on the large majority of moral questions rational people agree what is moral. We ignore the 99 instances where we agree and focus on the one instance when we disagree and therefore think that morality is controversial. All rational persons favor adopting common morality as a public system that applies to all moral agents. Gert’s description is not derived from an abstract, a priori principle, rather it is derived from observing the moral decisions of rational people.
Judgments about someone’s moral decisions applies only to moral agents, i.e., someone who understands what acting morally means. Moral judgments do not apply to animals, young children or the mentally disabled. At the same time morality protects more than just moral agents, young children are protected by morality, and there is disagreement about whether or not animals and fetuses are also protected by morality.
Morality requires impartiality
Morality requires us to be impartial to ALL moral agents, no exceptions, rationality on the other hand does not require us. Impartiality is defined as follows: “A is impartial in respect R with regard to group G if and only if A’s actions in respect R are not influenced so that members of G benefit or are harmed by these actions.” For example, if Jefferson Davis harms a slave, Dread Scott, to benefit his social class, then he is not being impartial to the slave. When Jefferson Davis harms Dread Scott, he is not harming himself, since an irrational action is only when you harm yourself for no reason. You can only act impartially if you act to the right group, that is all moral agents. If you act impartially to all males applying for a job, then you are not acting impartially.
Moral requirements and moral ideals
Common morality distinguishes between acts that are required and acts that are simply encouraged, moral rules and moral ideals, or Kant’s perfect duties and imperfect duties. Acts that are required are liable to punishment. However we need not punish every trivial violation of the moral law otherwise we would divert resources from more important matters. Everyone is required not to kill, people are merely encouraged to help others, and if not they can be criticized for it but not punished.
It is impossible to follow the moral ideals with respect to all moral agents, since we can only help a finite number of people, for example, when we give to charity, we are favoring one group over those to whom we do not give. If on the other hand, two kids fall out of a boat and one is our son, morality does not require us to help one before the other.
No rational person wants to feel pain, be disabled, lose freedom, lose pleasure or their life, consequently it is easy to imagine why moral agents would favor rules to inhibit this and those for whom they are concerned.
Morality is conditional
Gert admits that morality can be justified only conditionally. Attempts to provide an unconditional justification of morality or to show that it is irrational to act immorally result in rationality and irrationality no longer being fundamental normative concepts. That rationality does not resolve the conflicts that arise between morality and self-interest is quite disappointing to many philosophers. Philosophers have tried to reconcile morality and self-interest or to show that when morality conflicts with self-interest, rationality requires acting morally. However, morality does sometimes conflict with self-interest and when this happens rationality does not require acting morally. For some powerful men it is not in their interest to obey common morality because that would hinder their freedom.
the Ten rules
He divides the moral rules into two broad categories: do not harm and do not violate trust. He further subdivides these rules into five types. There are five types of not harming:
- Do not kill
- Do not cause pain
- Do not disable
- Do not deprive of freedom
- Do not deprive of pleasure
And five types of do not violate trust:
-
Do not deceive
-
Keep your promises
-
Do not cheat
-
Obey the law
-
Do your duty
He then outlines a two step procedure for violating these rules, one, evaluate the situation and if you would favor everyone breaking the law in that situation then it is justified. Step two, involves evaluating the consequences of everyone knowing you can break that law in that situation.
Impartiality does not require unanimity.
Two people can both be impartial but disagree on what constitutes moral, two referees can both be impartial in the way they call fouls yet disagree on what counts as a foul. Common morality can help people make moral decisions but no system, according to Gert, can provide an answer for every situation. This is the main problem with Rawls’ Veil of Justice which misleadingly claims that impartiality requires unanimity. He has no way of limiting rational disagreement once any disagreement is allowed.
There are three types of violations of moral laws, ones where all rational people agree that the justification was inadequate, strongly justified where all agree that the justification was sufficient, and weakly justified where all disagree that the justification was adequate.
the four categories of moral disagreement
For those situations when disagreement between rational people do arise, Gert places those disagreements into four categories: (1) Who is protected by morality, such as fetuses and animals. (2) differences in ranking harms and benefits, for example is a law requiring the use of seatbelts that takes away one’s freedom worth the compensatory decrease in injury and loss of life. (3) Differences in the consequences of everyone knowing that a violation is allowed in a certain situation, for example, are the consequences too severe if everyone knows they can go through a certain red-light at a certain location in town at 11 pm at night. (4) Differences about whether the action is of a kind that would be immoral if not justified, that is, how do you interpret the moral rules, for example, if a ventilator-dependent patient has refused the ventilator does taking them off the respirator count as killing them.
The proof that violation of any of these rules counts as an immoral act lies in the simple question: would you violate any of these rules for no reason? No rational person would violate these rules without a reason and expect to be called moral. If these rules should be violated then adequate justification is needed. No one debates that these are the rules, what we debate is what counts as a significant violation.
The general point of morality is to lessen suffering. Gert does not say that we are obliged to lessen suffering rather he claims that common morality only applies to rational people and those for whom they are concerned, but moral persons behave morally to all moral agents, no exceptions.
-
Do not kill
The exceptions Gert allows for this rule are when one is in a persistent vegetative state. The other exceptions are controversial such as when a doctor helps a person die or when killing someone who has committed a major crime. Rational people will disagree on whether or not people are justified in violating this rule in this situation. -
Do not cause pain.
Without a reason, no rational person wants pain. There are many reasons when a person will want pain such as watching a horror movie, riding a rollercoaster or even exercising. Gert also counts mental pain as pain, such anxiety, fear and anger. There is one rather general problem with this rule that Gert addresses. Often we cause people mental pain and that is not our intention, such as when a woman refuses a marriage proposal, a teacher giving out a bad grade on a test, or a doctor informing a patient of a terminal disease. Because it is not the intention of these people to harm the other persons, they cannot be said to be immoral. “When a person is completely excusably ignorant that her action would result in anyone having bad feelings and she is not violating any of the second five moral rules, not only should she not be blamed for her action, but no moral judgment should be made about her,” says Gert. -
Do not disable
This includes any action whereby someone deprives you of being able to do something that you were formally able to do, such blinding someone, unknowingly giving someone drugs, causing someone to become addicted to cigarettes or to develop certain phobias. Some exceptions would include the doctor who amputates the leg of an unconscious patient in order to save his life. -
Do not deprive of freedom
This includes altering their environment so that they cannot do something they want to do, such as putting them in jail, blindfolding them, or depriving them of resources such as taking their money, thus the prohibition on theft fits under this rule, even though it also fits under obeying the law. Threats that inhibit someone from doing something count as a violation of this rule, such as telling someone that if they leave home they will kill them. Job discrimination is a violation of this rule, but not if someone more qualified obtained the job. If people are simply deprived of an opportunity then their freedom is not necessarily violated, for instance, if I park in the last parking space remaining I am not violating someone else’s freedom, but if I take up two of the final parking spaces with one car, then I am. If no one has intended to violate your freedom, then you have not been wronged. “This rule not only prohibits depriving persons of the freedom to act but also prohibits depriving them of the freedom from being acted upon,” which would include touching people, spying on people, intentionally bumping into a woman in a subway. In some cases there is disagreement as to what counts as an invasion of privacy, such as looking at someone without their knowledge. -
Do not deprive of pleasure
This would include preventing someone from doing anything that they normally enjoy doing. Putting an alcoholic in an alcohol rehab would be justified since their we are saving them from harming themselves, however rational people will disagree as to what constitutes alcoholism. Certainly, putting someone in a rehab who drinks only two drinks a day and can function and support a family would be immoral, but someone who cannot hold down a job because of alcohol would be justified. It would seem that this rule is unnecessary because all deprivations of pleasure would fall under do not cause pain, for instance, female circumcision even if it causes no harm at the moment, is intended to deprive of pleasure in the future.
These five rules cover all harms, no exceptions. “Two facts support this claim to completeness. First, nothing counts as a punishment unless it involves the infliction of one of these harms. Second, nothing counts as a malady, that is, as a disease or injury, unless it involves one or more of these basic harms.”
What differentiates the second five from the first five is that the second five do not always result in someone being harmed, although they frequently do.
-
Do not deceive
is a better formulation than the common “Do not lie,” because often we can deceive in a nonverbal way. This formulation is also better than the positive “Tell the truth,” since tell the truth can silence someone from expressing a mere opinion. -
Keep your promises
which is identical to “do not break your promise.” This rule is different in that it presupposes a prior action, namely, having made a promise. There are many instances when it is ok to make a promise that you do not intend to keep, such as when someone forces you to promise something, such as give him money, or he will kill your family. There are also many instances, when you intend to keep your promise but then encounter a reason why you must break it, such as when you have a date, but could not make it because your mother fell ill and you had to drive her to the hospital. Rational people will excuse us for breaking our promise. -
Do not cheat
Since many believe that this rule falls under the rule “Do not deceive,” it has generated so little discussion. However, someone can cheat and not deceive at the same time, such as the boss who cheats at golf even though he knows that his employees know it but does so because they will not say it, or Napoleon who cheated at chess and his opponents did not have the courage to confront him. “Cheating is violating the rules of a game in order to gain some advantage over others participating in that game, and usually there are no penalties other than expulsion.” In the case of basketball where one obtains a foul and a penalty for breaking a rule, this is not cheating and every player recognizes it as legitimate. Cheating at solitaire, however, is entirely legitimate because you are obtaining no advantage over another player, yet if you should report scores, you would have to also report the fact that you cheated. Similarly, if no one is affected it is not immoral but irrational to kill yourself, disable yourself, or cause yourself pain. “All of the moral rules are to be understood as prohibiting or requiring behavior that affects others, directly or indirectly.” Cheating on exams is also a violation of this rule, although cheating based on an honor code is also the violation of a promise and to obey the law of the school. Even when there are penalties for cheating it is still counts as cheating because successful cheating results in gaining an advantage over others. Cheating can also be done in business transactions or in income taxes, in both cases the cheater gains an advantage over the other. It may seem that there is no case when cheating would be ok, but not entirely. When an opponent threatens to kill your family if you lose the game, you would be moral to cheat in order to win. -
Obey the Law
The human tendency to ignore the vast number of good laws and focus instead on the Jim Crow and Nuremburg laws had lead people to think that this is not a moral requirement. Violation of a bad law is justified, however if all that is known about an action is that it is a violation of the law, then that is an immoral act. The justification Gert gives for following the laws is: “Less harm results if everyone follows the same set of rules governing their interactions than if each person follows his own set of rules.” He points out that society could hardly function if it were otherwise and although he does not offer a reason why the functioning of society is an inherent good, that is hardly more than a passing concern, since few people question the innate worth of a functioning society. He defines a law as follows: “A law is a rule that is part of the legal system. The existence of that system is known to all moral agents in that society to which it applies, and that system directly or indirectly significantly influences their behavior. Some of these rules apply to members of that society independently of their wish to be subject to them, and some of them have explicit penalties for violation.” The chief difference between a legal system and a moral system is that a legal system has explicit procedures for resolving disputes. Also a person can be held legally responsible for violating a law that they are ignorant of. No one can be called immoral for inadvertently depriving someone of pleasure by, say, taking another’s cell phone that looked exactly like one’s own. Some actions may become immoral merely because there is a law against them. For instance, there is no reason why a man cannot marry two women, provided both women consent and neither are harmed by it. However, if there is a law against it, the act becomes immoral. This is perhaps the only point in the book that I disagree with. Gert has clearly stated that one need not follow immoral laws, I would also add one need not follow pointless laws, such as the grammatical rule to capitalize, or the Philadelphia rule that sorority houses cannot exist. Laws which cause harm certainly must not be obeyed, but laws which deprive one of pleasure I am willing to question that. -
Do you duty
specifically applies to performing the expected acts that a certain role requires, whether it be a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman, or a policeman. The night watchman is supposed to make his rounds, the fireman is supposed to rescue people from burning houses. People who do not fulfill their duties without adequate justification are acting immorally. Gert points out that no one has a duty to do what is immoral: “Duty has taken on a moral connotation, so that no one can have a duty to do what is immoral. That means that a person does not have a duty to do whatever he is paid to do. A driver of a getaway car may have been paid to help robbers rob a bank, but he does not have a duty to do so.” Similarly the SS officers had no duty to kill jews, especially since they joining the SS voluntarily, or those working in an advertising agency do not have a duty to persuade people to smoke fatal and addictive cigarettes. However, rational people will sometimes disagree whether one can have a duty to deceive people so as to guard legitimate company secrets. But rational people will not disagree that an FBI agent has a duty to deceive so as to prevent a terrorist attack. Gert also claims that we have a duty to help those so as to prevent death, permanent disability or serious pain provided (1) they are close physical proximity to them (2) no one else can provide the help (3) it is relatively cost-free to do so. Rational people will disagree however to what extent all those conditions must be met or not met, but if a person should choose to not do so, they are not liable to punishment. Moreover the duty to help is dissimilar to the perform the role that society expects of you, in that it is not necessarily required.
Rational persons agree that violation of the moral laws is permitted so long as everyone under the same circumstances is permitted to do likewise, such as someone killing another in self-defense. Gert outlines a two step process for doing this. The first step is to gather all the relevant information which is gathered from facts on the ground not a priori principles. -
What moral rule is being violated
For instance, one needs stronger reasons to kill someone than they do to merely to deprive them of pleasure. -
Which evils or harms (including their kind, severity, probability, the length of time they will be suffered, and their distribution) are being (a) caused by the violation, (b) avoided (not caused) by the violation, or (c) prevented by the violation?
In this case one must take into account the foreseeable consequences of the moral violation. Some agents are incapable of foreseeing some harms, whereas other agents are, such as the voter who votes for a war president is more culpable if he is a war veteran and seen its ugliness than the voter who has never seen war only seen it in movies, even though that is bad enough. -
What are the desires towards whom the rule is being violated.
For instance, a patient desires the rule “Do not cause pain,” to be violated so that he can receive a treatment, or the person suffers from an irrational desire to kill themselves because their fiancé has broken off the engagement. This is popularly known as obtaining a patient’s consent before doing an operation on them. -
Is the relationship between the person violating the rule and the persons toward whom the rule is being violated such that the former sometimes has a duty to violate moral rules with regard to the latter independently of their consent?
This rule allows for parents to deprive children of freedom in order to compel them to do homework, for instance. This also explains why governments may force someone to sell their property to build a road, but a private individual does not have that right. -
Which goods or benefits (including kind, degree, probability, duration and distribution) are being promoted by the violation?
“Unless the violation of a moral rule is trivial, this feature is morally relevant only when the previous feature applies or when one has or justifiably expects the immediate consent of the person toward whom the rule is being violated.” When dealing with governments it seems to be permissible to promote some benefits even though some will be harmed in the process, governments however act on the consent of the governed, at least in theory, private individuals do not have this luxury. This is a key flaw in Classical Utilitarianism. -
Is the rule being violated toward a person in order to prevent her from violating a moral rule when her violation would be (a) unjustified or (b) weakly justified?
This would include police officers attempting to prevent a terrorist attack, or sociologists posing as gang members in order to obtain sociological knowledge for a research project. “A positive answer to this answer does not justify all violations of moral rules, not just anything can be done to prevent violations of moral rules,” for instance one cannot preemptively bomb a country based on the flimsiest of evidence that an attack is an eminent. -
Is the rule being violated toward a person because he has violated a moral rule (a) unjustifiably or (b) with a weak justification?
This rule allows for punishment of immoral people. The object of inflicting the evil must be with the aim towards preventing future harms. -
Are there any alternative actions or policies that would be morally preferable?
Some alternative do not include violating a moral rule, for example, one can take time to explain a procedure to a patient rather than paternalistically deceiving them about it in order to get them to submit to it. Also, doctors may inform patients that they can refuse food and drink if they wish to die which is actually quite painless, rather than attempting to assist them commit suicide. -
Is the violation being done (a) voluntarily or because of a disability or [lack of technology], (b) freely or because of coercion, or (c) knowingly or without knowledge of what is being done? (d) Is the lack of knowledge excusable or the result of negligence?
For instance in some cases, a doctor may have choice of saving either the fetus or the mother but not both. This harm results from a lack of technology even though Gert does not use that phrase in his formulation, further the act is known knowingly but not intentionally. -
Is the situation an emergency such that people are not likely to plan to be in that kind of situation?
“In these circumstances doctors are allowed to abandon patients who have a very small chance of survival in order to take care of those with a better chance.” In the ordinary practice of medicine, a doctor is not allowed to do this since it will have undue influence on people’s behavior and anxiety. Doctors are also more at liberty to inflict pain on patients and ignore their lack of consent in an emergency. The Utilitarians who look at only the consequences do not understand that common morality allows rules to be broken in emergency situations.
Step two: evaluating the consequences
Since if a violation is committed one has to take into account the consequences of everyone being able to do such a violation. Cheating usually has no bad consequences, particularly in exams, but if everyone were allowed to cheat, then that would have large consequences. This is where Gert takes issue with Mill who proposed that when the consequences of an immoral act will result in a net positive for society, then the rule should be weakened. For instance, should a pre-med student cheat on an exam when one, it is based on the honor system so there is no possibility of being caught, two, it is pass/fail so none of the other students will be harmed by it, three, it is inconsequential to his career because the test is in metaphysics and, four, if he fails his parents will have to pay more money for him to complete his education. Cheating on an exam is an immoral act irregardless of the positive consequences that result from it.
Requiring that violations be described using only the morally relevant features prevents a person from describing the violation in a way that would benefit him or others. Gert’s “explicit list of the morally relevant features that are used in determining what counts as the same kind of violation removes the subjectivity that plagues anyone who attempts to formulate the maxims which are supposed to be tested by the Categorical Imperative.” The above list is not exhaustive since there is no precise way to determine when is a moral feature not a moral feature. Nevertheless it acts as a good guide to help rational people evaluation the situation at hand.
Only when the beliefs rational persons use are limited to those beliefs that all rational persons hold, must all rational persons endorse morality, this means that they cannot use their religious, scientific beliefs or their special status as reasons for not endorsing common morality.
Definition of Rationality
Gert’s definition of rationality is descriptive not prescriptive. He does not say what rationality should be, he says what rational behavior is by observing what rational people do, just as the dictionary describes how words are used, not how they ought to be used. He is only interested in the definition of the word rational with respect to actions. What he says is that rationality is like French, if you cannot speak it or understand it, then you are not French. He has already outlined what irrational acts are, but as in French there is no good reason why merci means thank you, those sounds were chosen arbitrarily. Rationality is the beliefs that rational people share. “If you cannot understand why you should behave rationally then you are not rational,” just as if you cannot understand French, you’re not French. Similarly, those who do not understand why they should act rationally, do not care if others act rationally or do not act rationally. In any situation there is always at least one rational action and that rational people know what that action is. If one choice is good and the other evil, they will choose good, if all choices are evil, the rational will choose the less evil, if all choices are equally evil, then it is not irrational to choose one of them. If three choices are irrational and four choices are rational, than any of the four rational ones can be chosen. “All moral agents would advocate to every person for whom they are concerned, including themselves, that the person never act irrationally.”
Rational behavior is: “A person correctly appraises an intentional action as objectively irrational when he correctly believes that, one, it will cause or significantly increase the probability of the agent’s suffering avoidable death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, or loss of pleasure and, two, there is no objectively adequate reason for the action. An objectively adequate reason is when he correctly believes that the action will avoid, prevent, relieve, or significantly decrease the probability of avoidable death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, or loss of pleasure or that it will cause or significantly increase the probability of greater consciousness, ability, freedom or pleasure for anyone.” For his definition of what is an objectively adequate reason, again we look to the French metaphor, a word is a French word when a group of French speakers say it’s a word, or: “A reason is objectively adequate when a group of reasonable people say it is objectively adequate.”
A small problem with this is that what do you do when rational people disagree and at what point does some disagreement make a rational act not rational. However, on further inspection is not a very large problem, for instance, the fact that some calls in a baseball game are problematic does not discount the fact that many calls are objectively true. Because the human senses at one level are imprecise does not discount the fact that under many circumstances human senses properly appraise the truth. Furthermore, in baseball with computers, video cameras and instant replay, balls and strikes can be objectively determined on analysis, but at first glance without computer humans in some cases are not able to determine a ball from a strike. That does not mean that an objective answer exists. Gert claims that after sitting for 20 years on a hospital ethics committee that once all the facts are known regarding a certain case, there is rarely any dispute about what should be done.
Although it is usually not rationally required to act morally, it is never irrational to act as morality encourages or requires. The reason in favor of acting morally always have sufficient justifying force to make it rationally allowed to act morally. This may not satisfy those who want it to be rationally required to act morally, however, it is the best that can be done without distorting the relevant concepts of morality and rationality.
Rational persons want to avoid harms and they realize they are capable of being harmed by others. They understand that if they do not act morally to others, they will be at risk of others acting immorally to them. In other words rational people understand that what goes around comes around, or you reap what you sow.