The main questions to be pursued are these: What sorts of thing are moral standards; How are they identified; and Why should they be followed? One important overall problem for moral theory has been simultaneously to account for the objectivity of moral standards and to explain the motivation of a rational person’s following them. The rival traditions each have had difficulties.

      Rationalists (AKA, Intuitionists):

      According to most rationalist theories, moral standards are part of the constitution or structure of reality: they simply are required by the nature or design of reality; and since they have the same status as (say) 2+3=5, they are objectively true. To know them, we must use our faculty of reason—which works like a perceptual organ without the possible distortions due to a perceptual medium (as we find in sight or hearing). Once we see these standards, our bare knowledge of them motivates us to follow them.

      [1] This view, as bizarre as it might seem when we step back and get perspective on it, nevertheless resonates at various specific places with our common sense. In order for moral standards to perform the job we use them for, they must be treated as being objectively true. The whole rhetorical point of moral criticism is lost if it is conceded that one is applying one set of standards which is only arbitrarily distinguished from other possible sets. When we try to articulate the standards, it seems that we are saying things which are obviously and trivially true; even when we examine different cultures, we find that they seem to embody roughly the same general moral rules as our own. When we blame people for not following the standards, we almost never speak as though these persons might have failed to know and appreciate a standard, but instead speak as thought they turned their backs on it in order to get what they perfectly well knew to be improper gains. And when we make moral judgments, it is as though we simply see the principles and only need to take trouble and care investigating the empirical facts—the specific details of the situation to which the principles apply. Moreover, among people of good will, the realization that doing such-and-such is one’s duty is in fact a powerful motivator.

      [2] Nevertheless, this rationalist view is not satisfactory. In order to give a simple articulation to the rationalists’ view of ethics, suppose that we were to grant that God created the world with a specific design, one manifesting the intention and the expectation that we follow certain standards. Exactly how might it follow that we become rationally motivated to follow these standards? Of course, we might imagine that God coerces us with the threat of everlasting damnation: but then our rational motive resolves simply to self-interest for reasons external to the standards. (Anyway, we would need to wonder why God would care about the matter: why would the existence of these natural standards motivate God to reinforce them by means of his powers of coercion?) On the other hand, if we imagine that we are not coerced, then why would it be irrational not to follow the standards? If it is said that these are naturally the best standards, then the question is, I suppose, why should one wish to do what is “naturally the best?” Imagine that something like the republic recommended by Plato were found to exist somewhere: if you think that you would not be happier in it than you are now, then why would you immigrate there? Suppose it to be true that I would be the most efficient stamp-licker in the world, but that I am not in the running for the most efficient teacher; should that, if I be rational, somehow motivate me to change jobs? For perhaps, despite the fact that teaching is extremely challenging and discouraging to me, the thing which I am best at is simply dead-on boring! Why on earth would I switch jobs? (Notice that in the world as we know it, there are incentives to encourage me to limit my practice to jobs which are roughly within my capacity, and to choose that job that I am better at than most. If I try to be a brain surgeon, then because of my incompetence, my services will not be in great demand, and I will starve. On the other hand, if I manage to find a job that I am better at than most people, I will get the best of the rewards which that job can command. And so I will find, through such selective incentives, that it is better for me to be a teacher whose services are in demand than a brain surgeon whose services are not.) But in our imagined (rationalist) situation, we are not to appeal to incentives which touch one’s happiness. And if we do not, it is hard to see how facts about natural suitability can solve the problem of motivation. Thus, the appeal to natural purposes or design doesn’t really get us very far. Anyway, natural features of design would seem to show more about how things are than how they should be: if it were shown that the design of the human back is less suitable for upright locomotion than for a sort of stooped movement, would that provide a rational motive to alter one’s walking despite the greater convenience in traveling upright?

      Surely, any theory must explain how and why it is rational for an individual and for a society of individuals to follow moral rules: if they can be avoided, then what is the rational purpose or function of one’s and our following them? The Intuitionist seems not to consider this a live question; he supposes that once we see that some act is (objectively) wrong, we have a rational ground to refrain from performing that act. But what is it about an act’s being wrong which would demand this? Simply something’s being correctly classified as a “moral obligation” does not explain how it comes to be such, or what is special about moral obligations to give them their authority. The Empiricist at least tries to answer this question by trying to show how morality functions to help individuals to achieve what they can’t help but want, and how, thereby, morality functions to help a society to serve the purposes which a group of people wants to serve. The Empiricist wants to say that we cannot live together in a way which serves our individual purposes unless we observe the moral rules. If their claim can be sustained, then the rationality of moral rules and the rationality of a person’s following them would seem understandable.

      Empiricists:

      The empiricists reject, as of course they must, a number of the crucial pieces of rationalist machinery: in particular, they reject the special role of reason, and therefore reject any conception of morality which requires reason to be a super-empirical means of identifying the true standards. But a thoroughgoing analogy between ethical theory and scientific theory might nevertheless look suggestive and inviting. Rawls has plausibly argued, in his discussion of method in ethics, that we do, both in ethics as well as in science, test our theories against our perceptual observations or considered intuitive judgments. And such a parallel might suggest a more exciting one: that just as our perceptual senses detect sensory properties in the world, so our moral intuition is literally a sense by means of which we detect moral properties in the world.

      Unfortunately, there seems to be a striking difference between the way (say) vision works and the way our “moral intuition” works: “The difference is that you need to make assumptions about certain physical facts to explain the occurrence of the observations that support a scientific theory, but you do not seem to need to make assumptions about any moral facts to explain the occurrence of the so-called moral observations ... In the moral case, it would seem that you need only make assumptions about the psychology or moral sensibility of the person making the moral observation.” [Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (Oxford: 1977), page 6] In the scientific example, “One can count his making the observations as confirming evidence for his theory only to the extent that it is reasonable to explain his making the observation by assuming that, not only is he in a certain psychological ‘set,’ given the theory he accepts and his beliefs about the experimental apparatus, but furthermore, there really was [the sort of phenomenon which the theory postulates in this case]. (This is evidence for the theory to the extent that the theory can explain [the observations] better than competing theories can.) But, if his having made the observation could have been equally well explained by his psychological set alone, without the need for any assumptions about [a theoretical entity — moral intuition — postulated by the theory], then the observations would not have been evidence for the [theoretical explanation], and therefore would not have been evidence for the theory. His making the observation supports the theory only because, in order to explain his making the observation, it is reasonable to assume something about the world over and above the assumptions made about the observer’s psychology. ... [To understand the moral example, it] would seem that all we need assume is that you have certain more or less well articulated moral principles that are reflected in the judgments you make, based on your moral sensibility. It seems to be completely irrelevant to our explanation whether your intuitive immediate judgment is true or false.” (Harman, pages 6–7) Harman continues, “The observation of an event can provide observational evidence for or against a scientific theory in the sense that the truth of that observation can be relevant to a reasonable explanation of why that observation was made. A moral observation does not seem, in the same sense, to be observational evidence for or against any moral theory, since the truth or falsity of the moral observation seems to be completely irrelevant to any reasonable explanation of why that observation was made. The fact that an observation of an event was made at the time it was made is evidence not only about the observer but also about the physical facts. The fact that you made a particular moral observation when you did does not seem to be evidence about the moral facts, only evidence about you and your moral sensibility. Facts about [the physical phenomena] can affect what you observe ... But there does not seem to be any way in which the actual rightness or wrongness of a given situation can have any effect on your perceptual apparatus. In this respect, ethics seems to differ from science.” (Harman, pages 7–8) Thus, “Observational evidence plays a part in science it does not appear to play in ethics, because scientific principles can be justified ultimately by their role in explaining observations ... by their explanatory role. Apparently moral principles cannot be justified in the same way. It appears to be true that there can be no explanatory chain between moral principles and particular observings in the way that there can be such a chain between scientific principles and particular observings. Conceived as an explanatory theory, morality, unlike science, seems to be cut off from observation.” (Harman, page 9) So, from the fact that a given situation strikes us as an instance of injustice or moral wrong, we cannot predict that the situation must include some moral detail which was not already disclosed to us, and then, independently, confirm the detail; instead, we first require the complete description of the situation before we can go on to give a reliable assessment of whether it involves a wrong. We cannot “observe” whether an example involves a wrong independently of our inventory of details which we already noticed in the example; evidently, it cannot be that in morally reacting to an example, we are detecting as yet undisclosed features of the example—as though we might first feel that Ralph’s action is wrong, and then predict that the act will be found to have been an instance of promise-breaking or lie-telling. So while we can “test” our moral theory against our considered moral judgments, we cannot really “test” it against the world.

      But in any case, if moral standards are objectively true, there must be something giving them that status. Empiricists typically look to human decisions, either individually or in groups, as the source of such standards. One advantage of focusing on human decision is that it seems capable of explaining the important role of social institutions in morality. And perhaps we might show that certain situations constitute, by definition, an infringement of obligation or right. But even if we can explain how certain standards come to be authoritative—even if we can give a plausible account of what sort of thing it is that moral judgments are true or false of—there will be a further question about what will motivate a person to follow them. Why would a rational individual conform his behavior to standards which embody, or are created by, the wishes of a person or entity other than himself?

      The empiricist—in answering the question of motivation—tends to come back to that basic motivation which is natural to humans: self-interest. If a person sees that something is in his own interest, he will be motivated to do it. But even if we can show that moral standards do benefit the majority of persons, it will not follow that conforming to them is in the self-interest of any given individual on any given occasion.

      Of course, if an individual could be instilled with a desire to follow the standards, then it might seem that the question of motivation would be forestalled—since now he would desire to conform to the standards. Hume and Mill speak as though society goes about instilling such desires in people, by contriving to make their obedience the means to gain other things that people naturally want. Yet the rational response to society’s attempt to program (say) Ralph to get Ralph to do what is not genuinely in his best interests would seem to be for Ralph to de-program himself; and then to give the appearance of going along, but actually to go against the standards when he can get away with it.

      Mill, for example, goes back and forth between the notions of “motive to obey” and “source of its obligation.” His doing so is similar to that of political scientists who go back and forth between “power” and “authority”: Mill is nervous that the intuitionists, i.e. the rationalists, are hypostacizing duties and rights; he tries to resist this by locating duties and rights in the mind as sentiments or emotions. Such things are easily understood by a strict empiricist. But the trouble is that if a duty or a right is a matter of the actor's inclinations which frustrate his self-interest, then the question arises whether he rationally shouldn’t try to shed such inclinations. And so the role played by rights and duties evidently cannot be played by sentiments and emotions. Similarly, Mill sometimes seems to shift the question from what would serve to justify me in my conduct to what would serve to motivate me to act in this way — yet these seem to be quite different questions.

      Hume also, to make the empiricist's project more workable, recognizes the existence of human concerns which go beyond self-interest: according to his plausible view, we humans naturally take some concern in the plight of others, and sympathize with their sufferings even when these do not directly affect ourselves. Yet that does not provide sufficient motivation for us to accede to the kinds of frustration of self-interest which moral standards regularly require; besides that, as Bernard Harrison will note, a general benevolence might not explain the rule-directed way in which morality requires one to take interest in the affairs of others—properly taking more interest in the affairs of some people than others.

      So empiricists get this far: if I want to follow these standards, and I can identify them, then I will conform to them. But, as Bernard Harrison will try to show, this project does not seem to work: it looks as though we cannot account for morality on the basis of the vocabulary and machinery for understanding the so called “natural—empirically discoverable—world.” We can see how our sense organs enable us to detect properties of things in the world; we find that these properties are linked with each other so that we can discover causal laws governing the linkage. Thus we can, for example, predict how hot molten metal is by means of the spectrum of the colors of its glow. But moral “properties” seem not to be connected in this lawful sort of way with empirical properties, and that suggests that the moral “properties” are not genuine features of the world. Some empiricists are inclined to give up on the claim of objectivity, since it seems so hard to see how that could be grounded: they cannot appeal to necessary features of the world; and human decisions would seem to allow for variations which will compromise the claim of their being one objective set of applicable moral standards. So, these empiricists are inclined to suppose that moral judgments are not really true or false, but simply manifest certain attitudes held by the speaker; indeed, there are hints of such a position even in Mill’s Utilitarianism (see our text, pages 36–7). By compromising on the claim of objectivity, the motivational worry might be eased, for individuals or groups of people might be thought to accept certain attitudes, from which we might expect consonant behavior. For nothing would seem to make one set of attitudes “correct” in comparison to other sets; the best which could be demanded is consistency within a system of attitudes.

      On the other hand, a recent and quite different foray of empiricism is represented in Searle’s attempt to show that because “institutional facts” are objective features of the social environment which humans have constructed, the logical result of those facts—moral judgments—express objective truths (John Searle, “How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'” [73 Philosophical Review, 1964]). Yet the difficulty in solving simultaneously the problem of objectivity and the problem of motivation can be found in Searle, too. For even if Searle has succeeded in showing that it is objectively wrong—given an existing human institution of promising—to break a promise, nevertheless, it does not follow that one would naturally or rationally be motivated to avoid doing wrong. Imagine that we add as a sixth statement to Searle’s five: “(6) Jones has reason to pay Smith five dollars.” Even though we concede that Searle can, in some circumstances, get to (5), it looks as though he cannot get to (6). For although a person might happen to be motivated to do what he ought, the existence of a practice will not somehow automatically bring this about. So although Searle might be able to account for the correctness of moral judgments, he would have difficulty in showing why a rational person must be motivated to conform himself to what the moral judgments demand.)

     

      What I would like to be able to say about morality, and have a theory confirm:

      1. Moral judgments are objectively true or false.

      2. It is not irrational, but is on the contrary reasonable, for one to try to conform to moral standards—i.e., to be moral.

      3. In blaming others for their conduct, we are not simply imposing our power on them: there is a difference between the imposition of demands on others by people by reason of their collective power, and the criticism of others’ behavior on the basis of moral standards. (If a gunman makes demands on me, notice that although he can “punish” my refusal to accede, there is no literal way in which I can be blamed—aside, of course, from the grounds of imprudence.)

      In his “Moral Judgment, Action and Emotion,” Bernard Harrison goes some way toward answering these questions.

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      See also Bernard Harrison, “Morality and Interest,” 64 Philosophy 303 (July 1989) . In something of a continuation of the earlier topic, Harrison makes the following points:

      “The theory of civil association, whether expressed as contractarianism or as utilitarianism, has provided the English-speaking intellectual culture for the past three hundred years with a dominating paradigm of moral rationality.” (“Morality and Interest,” 303) Such a theory, “a radical shift from a theological to a naturalistic conception of morality,” (303) “requires us to think of a moral code not as an array of divinely sanctioned prohibitions, but as a device, instituted by human societies, for mediating conflicts of interest between individuals ... to make for the greatest possible satisfaction of interests on the part of all parties to an association.” (303–4) Both traditions take these interests as specifiable or definable independently of reference to the institutions created by the associations; and both take law and morality to be different systems of restraint on “the free pursuit by individuals in order to secure the optimal satisfaction of interests.” (304) In opposition, Kant claimed that morality presents us with an array of non-instrumental, ‘categorical’ commands which take precedence over all extra-moral considerations” which include considerations of interest. (304–5)

      Harrison distinguishes between narrow personal interests—interests in the strict sense—impersonal interests, and extended personal interests. As an example of the first, one might cultivate a person because his investment advice is useful; for the second, one might give money to a beggar simply so that he will not be so miserable, or support the continued existence of the California Redwood forests; and for the third, one’s identification of someone as his friend, his child, or of something as his party or country. An extended personal interests requires the blurring of the boundaries of one’s person beyond merely his bodily outline and mental states, and one may have to give up personal pleasures for the sake of such extended personal interests. One crucial aspect of the extended personal interests is that, in general, other people (one’s friends, one’s family, one’s fellow party members) must also dissolve the boundaries of their selves; if not, then there is the mere appearance of friendship, e.g., not the genuine existence of it. “Reciprocal commitment to a moral relationship requires each party to the relationship to treat the interests of the other as continuous with his own.” (312) “[W]hat makes it rational to accept certain kinds of moral restraint as the price of entering a moral relationship is not that their acceptance will in any way enhance one’s chances of satisfying one’s interests, but rather that accepting such restraints is a necessary precondition for merely possessing the extended personal interests which the relationship makes available to me.” (310) Behavior which we take as prima facie wrong is behavior which, prima facie, are incompatible with the maintenance of reciprocal commitments to a relationship; for such requires a respect for motivational autonomy. (323) Kant, then, is correct in so far as he opposes morality to the maximization of interests, since moral rules are really principles which state restrictions on the choice of permissible strategies of action; for, of course, what he and others mean by “interests” are narrowly personal ones. (317–8) For the same sorts of reason, one’s choices of extended personal interests are scarcely voluntary—though one could decide to withdraw from an already-existing relationship.