Is it possible to consider any action which has moral consequences, to necessarily put the non-moral actor in such a situation on the ethical defensive (i.e far from being owed a reason to act morally, he must give a reason why he shouldn’t). Let me be more clear: where action X has possible and knowable (moral) consequence Y, and where person p fails to take Y into account in performing X, can we consider p to necessarily have a case to answer?
Let’s put the same principle another way:
Where action X has possible and knowable moral consequence Y, and person p insists “what good reason do I have to do X so as to limit the harm caused by Y” is it strong enough to reply “because, by definition, any action which can be done well, ought to be done well if we are to consider the action properly done”. Example: a doctor saving lives is not necessarily being a good doctor, but simply doing what a doctor ought to do. In our example above, when p does X, while taking Y into account, he isn’t necessarily doing X well (i.e. doing anything worthy of commendation), he is simply doing X as X ought to be done.
So I guess in short I ask, can a “moral necessity” defense be used to explain why an action with moral consequences must be done a particular way?
I think you’re asking a pretty interesting question, man.
What, after all, is “morally” necessary? Some would argue there is a universal principle (or meta-principle) upon which we can accurately distinguish what must be actively struggled against and what must be endured patiently. In essence, it’s a question of responsibility, right?
So naturally, everyone wants to know: so what’s our duty? --and this is often the aching, mislead start of all sorts of scattered systems-building and so on, so let’s skip to the point: what’s the essence of responsibility?
And I think we ultimately have to say it’s the relation to other people.
The only ethical responsibility, really, is to cut this line, not only ‘theoretically’ but actually, you know? Cutting this dividing line is really the long and short of ethics: our duty is that we’re radically free to interpret our duty.
So in other words, it’s not about being a doctor-- what this means, “to be a doctor,” in ordinary language, is really what we have to call an event, right? That is, doctors are always ‘becoming’ doctors, in those (relatively) infrequent moments when they are called upon, directly as you say, by the Other as a ‘doctor.’ This recognition by the other which demands our social responsibility as such is indeed the foundation of ethics.
But our duty is not to some fragile absolute or “moral necessity.” Our duty, like the doctors’, is to the real people in the actual world, and our duty to them is infinite. And this would be, I suppose, the beginning to a meta-ethics.
My notion of metaethics is very much a realist one. I’ve lately been toying with a kind of Moorean “here is a hand” ‘common sense’ approach to ethics. To that end I’d suggest an intentional defence of moral realism i.e. that moral acts are remedial acts whose aim is to accord the state of reality with the state of necessary beliefs about what is good. This notion of what is good is itself informed by the capacity of human experience. For example the most intuitive response to the declaration “I am hungry” is, “then eat” (assuming it is possible and desirable). There is a necessary fit between the intentional state of being hungry and the action of eating.
In the same way, an action which is counter-intuitive to the human intentional response to it, in that it elicits revulsion, must necessarily be immoral, and thus begging ‘correction’ as it were. A non-moral example is a piece of furniture that is placed so that people are always tripping over it . Far from the proof burden being on the person intending to remove it, it is in fact on the person suggesting we keep it there, or not suggesting anything at all. I believe that some actions must elicit the same intentional response of revulsion in any human being. This alone justifies the fit of moral actions. What makes them universal is that I don’t respond in revulsion because I am Chiron, but because I am human - I am accessing the same faculties of reason that any other human might. What makes the situation bad for me is what makes it bad for you and so we are accessing the same standard of judgement.
In short, any action has multiple axes, and overall, I would say that the summary intention is ‘satisfaction’. To exclude any vital part of what constitutes expectable satisfaction from an action, is to perform a sleight of hand, and cheat it out of a vital quality. When I go out for a meal, it could be argued that my primary purpose is to eat. But that is of course not so. I intend to be satsified in virtue of what I can expect. So the food ought to be delicious, the wine good, the service commendable, the company stimulating etc. To remove any one of those components does not fully express the justified expectation of satsifaction from my night out. The overall satsifaction doesn’t simply lie in the supposed success of the action, but in a more holistic look at all the axes of that action. A moral consequence is thus one which satisfies me by how it has served my expectations.
Not quite. Where somebody has capacity do be satisfied or dissatisfied by a transaction with you, when they have engaged in that transaction with legitimate expectations about the results, then there is potentially a moral consequence.
By “legitimate expectation”, I mean the kind of reasoned assumption you would have about what to expect from a situation, when it was your correct understanding of the nature of the activity you are entering into, that informed your decision to enter into it in the first place. So a legitimate expectation when somebody has made a promise to you, is that they will honour their side.
This is not to say that being satisfied is a symptom of a morally good deed. When my barber cuts my hair well, it would be hard to call his enterprise ‘moral’. Let’s reverse the situation to better understand what I mean by ‘satisfied’. Supposing my barber deliberately cuts my hair badly: I had entered into my transaction with him on the assumption that he would do what barbers ought to do - to cut hair; and the assumption that barbers who cut hair well, are good barbers. I would assume that all barbers ought to aspire to be good barbers, to fully fulfil the criteria of being called a barber. When he goes so deliberately against my reaosnable assumptions, his act is immoral.
one small problem with this idea is the fact that the hedonistic scale you suggest as moral arbiter is completely subjective…
let’s take your example :“…When my barber cuts my hair well, it would be hard to call his enterprise ‘moral’. Let’s reverse the situation to better understand what I mean by ‘satisfied’. Supposing my barber deliberately cuts my hair badly: I had entered into my transaction with him on the assumption that he would do what barbers ought to do - to cut hair; and the assumption that barbers who cut hair well, are good barbers. I would assume that all barbers ought to aspire to be good barbers, to fully fulfil the criteria of being called a barber. When he goes so deliberately against my reaosnable assumptions, his act is immoral.”
your barber thinks that the best haircut is a spiked mohawk. he sports one and thinks it is great- he is very satisfied with his morally superior haircut… being a good and moral barber, he gives you a spiked mohawk as well… he deliberately cut your hair to his satisfaction and did it well… your reasonable assumptions? he did what was demanded of good and moral barbers and your dissatisfaction with his just and moral deed is simply immoral…
I personally see no problem here. If you recall, I specified that an expectation must be justified in terms of what you could correctly expect by engaging in that activity. I would presume that if I go to a barber and ask for a haircut, I ought to tell him what sort of haircut I desire, so as not to leave it up to his discretion. If I fail to do this, then I have no justified expectation of satsifaction from the transaction. I entered into it in bad faith. I’d say the premise still holds.
Why? The barber doesn’t have to make a moral choice to do the right thing, he just has to cut my hair properly - which means cutting it as I asked him to.
not at all… in his mind, the good and moral thing to do is make sure you have a spiked mohawk. to him, it would be immoral to give you a plain old haircut…
His mind is largely irrelevant to his duty. The success of a claim that he is a good barber depends necessarily on my, or any given specific individual who comes to him for the service, justified (i.e. in terms of what I had good faith to expect) satisfaction from the service he offers. If I desire to have my haircut, it is not unreasonable for me to ask a barber to do it. If he deliberately does it badly, or wilfully fails to seek and fulfil my request, he has committed an act with moral consequences (whether we might call it “immoral” per se is a different matter).
but “badly” was a perfectly subjective consideration. to him, the haircut was swell… the only moral consequence of his act was to fullfill his moral that alll should wear a spiked mohawk…
No more than a doctor who is rightly called a doctor, makes a moral choice to perform the definition of being a doctor. He just does it, and if he doesn’t he ought to, if he claims to be a barber. By definition he ought to cut hair, and if he cuts hair he would be a good barber if he cut it well. And if I come to him to cut my hair, I would prefer that he cut it well. I am not unreasonable in expecting that he can at least cut it as I require him to cut it, but if he does it well, all the better. He has no choice in how to define my objectives in that transaction. By changing the definition in his own mind of what he owes me, and taking no consideration of what I have justifiably come to him for, he is going beyond anything he reasonably should.
Hardly. It’s a necessary consequence of being called a barber - I didn;t invent the morality fo the claim, it exists by virtue of his claiming it implicitly, in the very nature of being a barber.
His “moral” is baseless. He has no grounds to claim that, even if he can claim grounds to prescribe it as professional advice. There is no transaction relationship that requires me to accept that he has authority enough to suggest and perform without my permission, a haircut I didn’t ask for.
In response: Let me say that the proposition is in order, and correct when tested. If p performs X under circumstances whereby a knowable conclusion (end result) Y could be and was forseen by p, then p is responsible for the method(s) (X) which p chooses to employ in pursuit of Y, and as well p is responsible for conclusion Y itself. Simply and more well known: The end does not justify the means. Before p enacts X to achieve Y, p must consider not only Y itself, but also the moral/ethical values and consequences of all possible methods X (i.e. X1, X2, X3 etc.).
If in examining all X’s possible to achieve Y p finds that there a no morally right X’s by which to pursue Y, then p cannot be justified in pursuing Y, post-X. If p chooses to employ an immoral X to achieve Y, then in using immoral X p negates any moral properties of Y.
In practical application: p is poor, and as a result p has not eaten for several days. It is given that p’s neighbor r is also poor, and has not eaten for several days. If p does not eat soon he will die, and so it is the same for r. Let’s say that r comes to posess an apple through moral acquisition. Now, p sees r’s apple and seeks to acquire said apple to prevent himself from dying. Instead of dying, p seeks to live, therefore he must eat (Y).
Consider now the different propositions presented by the following outcome for p based on the above premise:
In order to acquire the apple posessed by r, p decides to employ method X (murder). As a result, p murders r and acquires the apple; p eats the apple and thus survives (at least temporarily), achieving Y. P has employed immoral X to achieve Y, and therefore p has negated any possibility that Y can be justified as a moral end. P bears the burden of proof to show that Y retains a good moral value when X is known to be immoral, and cannot be indepedently justified. However, the concept which asserts that p could possibly justify X with the goodness of Y begs the question…Would not p be neccessarily responsible to prove that the value of r’s life was less than the value of p’s own life, and that the preservation of p’s life takes precedent over the preservation of r’s life? In making such argument p would inevitably arrive at a point where his only evidence for the value of his life and its respective preservation being greater than the value and preservation of r’s life would be an appeal to authority. In this case p would need to appeal to his own authority, meaning that those seeking to question the morality of X or Y, or both. This predicate would establish that morality is determined (or contingent) on the authority of p. However, as p is being examined for the choice to use immoral X or Y respectively, it is inferred that the examining party (z) is challenging the authority of p. To follow logically, p cannot prove the moral authority of p over z and vice versa without appealing to their own authority respectively. As such this creates two violations of philosophical reasoning.
Since p and z must appeal to their own authorities respectively to counter each opposing argument, they create an infinite regress (and/or circular reasoning). As such, there is no beginning or end to the arguments of Proposition 1, which infers that Proposition 1 cannot have a conclusion; therefore, Proposition 1 cannot be proved either true or false and is ultimately negated.
If moral authority can be established by any individual through an appeal to said individual’s own authority, then p is correct and Y justifies X, and z is correct that the same Y does not justify X in the same respect and at the same time; said proposition violates the Law of Non Contradiction, and therefore Proposition 2 is False.
To use your term “moral necessity,” it seems that both method X and consequence Y must each be independently moral respectively, and retain their independent morality, yet be also cohesively moral when X is employed to achieve Y and vice versa. However, the premise you offered provides the given that either X or Y is knowably immoral, while their respective opposite in any combination of given propositions. Therefore, your premise and related propositions violate (or do not meet) the criteria established for the moral goodness of X or Y, respectively, to justify their immoral opposite in the propositions arising from the premise. The term “moral neccessity” as used in the premise is rendered a non sequitur, as what is neccessary behavior and pursuit for p, is contingent upon what is knowably morally good. What must be done by p is to employ a morally good X to achieve a morally good Y, and ultimately retain a morally good XY; and if such is not possible then p must abandon both X and Y in order to avoid that which is knowably immoral.
Yes, p bears the burden to give answer whenever p pursues a knowably immoral X or a knowably immoral Y. However, as already established, p cannot justify the knowably immoral X or Y by means of the moral goodness of their respective opposites in any given proposition. Therefore, while p may give answer, p cannot be justified.
Thanks for a great response. Hoping I have understood your position correctly, can I accost you on your logical renderring of the scenario, as exposited from the beginning of the above excerpt onwards. I do not se X and Y as being logically independent, and in fact see X AND Y as being part of a conjunctive proposition, so that to say “X” entails saying “Y” as well; and where Y has not followed X, then X has quite simply not been done properly, assuming that X must entail Y (which is why I don’t find the objections about the barber and the mohawk are compelling). Do you think this would do?
His mind is clearly incorrect. By your reasoning, I could decide what constituted correct use of any rule at all, without regard for the actual correctness of it. This would make it very difficult to speak a language.
No, not at all.
We are the members of a community in which normative expectations arise from certain authorities. We can very much tell him that his mohawk religion has no place in his barber’s duties. He is simply not required to and is forbidden to add anything to the definition of what he has led me to expect. A doctor who thinks itis part of his duty as a doctor to make your breasts larger while you are having a your tonsils removed, is quite simply wrong. It’s not what I reasonably signed up for in assessing the definition of the transaction I entered into to have my tonsils removed.
