Initial thoughts about moral particularism

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Cirion Spellbinder
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Initial thoughts about moral particularism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

I just read an article on Philosophy Now called Why You Shouldn't Be A Person Of Principle which is intended to briefly introduce the reader to moral particularism. I'm unfamiliar with the idea and frankly find it ridiculous on first glance. Here is the article: https://philosophynow.org/issues/60/Why ... _Principle

The article defines moral particularism as follows:
Ramsey McNabb wrote:I believe that moral judgement is not a matter of applying some overarching universal moral principles. In my view, it is quite the opposite. I propose instead that the moral knowledge we have is founded on particular cases, and that the principles we have are mere generalizations from those cases. Thus, our fourth option when faced with exceptional moral cases is: Allow our particular moral judgements to simply override our principles, thereby invalidating those principles.
McNabb provides many reasons to back this position up: firstly, he appeals to our intuition, suggesting that in urgent moral crises, we don't calculate from principles, but rather, already know what to do in this particular case (if we know anything about morality).

Secondly, he argues that we justify particular cases to ourselves and others with particular reasons. For example, we might, if asked why it is wrong to shoot someone, suggest that it is because "it will kill them" or "their family will be devastated" instead of appealing to guiding principles.

Thirdly, McNabb says that general principles are strange because they are impersonal.

Fourthly, he suggests that we cannot justify general principles without first appealing to specific cases.

Fifthly, he argues that certain factors can contribute to both the immorality or morality of an action given different contexts. It is noted that we do this in other non-ethical inquiries, such as when deliberating where we might want to go, whether or not there are many people there can either be favorable or not depending on the place.

Finally, the author appeals to Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblances suggesting that there is no single ingredient that defines morality as there is no single ingredient that defines games or other ideas, yet both can be understood anyway.

My issue with the first reason is that it places intuition on pedestal it probably doesn't deserve. Even if we usually use our intuition in moral crises, it does not necessarily follow that we ought to act in that way. We may also use our intuition to judge the number of jelly beans in a jar, but we will more often than not fail to guess the correct quantity.

The second reason appears to suffer from bandwagoning. It may be true that we reason about specific cases with specific reasons, but that does not mean they are the best reasons in the same way that we often reason about the qualification of a given person using irrelevant information and stereotypes such as their race or voice.

The third reason is probably the most ridiculous. The "strangeness" and "impersonalness" of our deductions has nothing to do with its truth value just as it may seem strange that there are infinite primes, even though it is true.

The fifth reason completely misses the point is easily solved by consequentialism. Indeed, a given factor may contribute differently to the morality of an action in different contexts, but that is simply because of how it contributes to the root of good or evil in that context. I might like to go to parties with many people, but prefer to go to restaurants with few people, but only because of how that same factor contributes to the same measure (in this case happiness) in different contexts.

I'm not sure what I think about the fourth and sixth reasons, but don't think they really matter if they imply the rest of these reason which I consider not so great.

Tell me what you think.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Initial thoughts about moral particularism

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Good breakdown. The second reason is getting at guiding principles; implicitly, it being wrong to kill or wrong to cause harm or grief in others.

The fourth reason is incorrect and may very well be his worst reason. We most certainly CAN justify general principles without appealing to specific cases. To do that we look at derivation of moral systems. For example, we can value the interests/values of others without having any idea what those are, simply understanding that morality (if it is an objective value system) is the sum of consideration for other values. These are largely semantic or rational ontological type derivations.
He is correct that SOME people attempt to work backwards, deriving a system ad hoc to fit the data points of intuitive moral thought on specific cases, but that's not always the case and in fact seems usually not to be when dealing with actual moral philosophy rather than the malpractice ordinary people get up to when they rationalize what is or isn't OK. No reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. He's either very ignorant or being dishonest here by ignoring all of the broader attempts at metaethics which ignore intuition and don't need to look at particular cases at all to calibrate themselves (from consequentialism such as utilitarianism to deontology).

His sixth reason just seems to be begging the question. However, it wouldn't have to boil down to one single factor (even if it didn't) to invalidate his claims (that would just invalidate them most obviously). Two, three, or even thousands would not support particularism; it would have to be uncountable to support his system. Just because morality may be complicated or contain more than one variable doesn't mean each case is independent and there isn't a higher principle to appeal to in order to understand particular cases more correctly.
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Re: Initial thoughts about moral particularism

Post by Ramsey McNabb »

Hi there,

I noticed you have been discussing my article on moral particularism vs principle-based ethics. I thought I would offer my thoughts on your comments and criticisms.

You characterize my article as offering six reasons to accept moral particularism. But I think you failed to discuss perhaps the strongest of my reasons: that all principle-based systems come up short. Principles are either so general that they fail to guide our actions in difficult situations (like “always be good”), or they invariably run into exceptional cases which cause them to crumble to dust.

The search for a principled ethic, though noble, has proved ultimately fruitless. It is time to look at things differently. Maybe we have been looking at things backwards. Rather that having a principle from which we deduce proper moral actions, maybe our principles are simply our attempts to describe patterns that we have seen. Take violence, for example. We see a bunch of acts of violence that have caused pain and injury. So we generalize that violence is wrong. Consider these two statements:

1) Causing pain to innocent people is wrong because it is violent.
2) Violence is wrong because it hurts people.

If you tend toward option 2, you are drifting toward moral particularism, even if you haven’t realized it yet. We don’t think it’s wrong for a man to beat his wife because violence is wrong. We think it’s wrong for a man to beat his wife because it will hurt her.

Now, on to your criticisms...

RELATING TO YOUR DESCRIPTION OF ARGUMENT 1
Cirion Spellbinder – you state that I appeal to intuition, suggesting that in urgent moral cases, we don’t calculate from principles, but already know what to do. Generally, I think this is a fair representation of my position. You state:

"My issue with the first reason is that it places intuition on pedestal it probably doesn't deserve. Even if we usually use our intuition in moral crises, it does not necessarily follow that we ought to act in that way. We may also use our intuition to judge the number of jelly beans in a jar, but we will more often than not fail to guess the correct quantity."

Admittedly, our intuitions can fail us. And admittedly, when complex moral dilemmas arise, we often do not know what is the right thing to do. So, I agree with you that intuition should not be put on a pedestal, and to be clear, I do not want to advocate for any pedestal-putting. But where exactly does this leave us? Does your point prove that there must be universally true moral principles? And does it prove that correct moral thought is a matter of deducing what to do in this particular situation from your universal principle? I think not. You criticize the particularist position because intution can, and often has, failed to supply correct answers. Would you also criticize the universalist (principled) position because centuries of human contemplation have failed to supply a correct universally true, action-guiding principle? If not why not?

There is a burden of proof issue here. And I believe I am on the right side of it. I will say more about this later.

ARGUMENT 2
You see a girl crash her bicycle on some train tracks. She is knocked unconscious and a train is approaching. What goes through your mind? I state that you simply do not deduce from a general moral principle. As a moral person, you don’t perform a utilitarian calculation, or consult the categorical imperative, and then compare your two options – saving her or letting her die. You act. You save her. If you know anything with regard to morality, you know this. Moral knowledge begins in cases like this. And if asked why you saved her, all you need to do is point out the suffering or death that would have occured had you done nothing.

This example is used by me to point out that we in fact don’t need moral principles to be morally capable persons. We can and do justify our actions by considering particular details.

You state that this appears to “suffer from bandwagoning.” I don’t believe I was ever claiming anything along the lines of:

Everyone knows that our moral reasoning relies on particular details rather than universal principles.

That would indeed be bandwagoning. But my point has nothing to do with how many people see it the way I see it. My point is just that when we see morality in action, it does not need to involve any universal principals, nor any deduction from those principles.

It does not seem right that proper moral thought depends on deducing proper moral action from a universal principle which none of us know.

We have all seen moral actions. We have all seen immoral actions. But we cannot seem to formulate a universally valid action-guiding moral principal. Maybe we don’t need one to be moral.

Your point that people often give bad specific reasons in specific cases does little to invalidate moral particularism. There are at least two reasons. First, people can behave badly for bad reasons, but that doen’t change the fact that people can behave morally when they act on good moral judgements made using good particular reasons. Second, bad universal principals can be formulated using bad reasons too. Bad thinking can lead to bad particular claims and bad universal claims. The fallibility of human thought in no way justifies siding with the univeralist over the particularist. Again, there is a burden of proof problem here.

ARGUMENT 3
You say that my third argument is as follows:

"Thirdly, McNabb says that general principles are strange because they are impersonal."

And you refute it thusly:

"The third reason is probably the most ridiculous. The "strangeness" and "impersonalness" of our deductions has nothing to do with its truth value just as it may seem strange that there are infinite primes, even though it is true."

Im afraid this is a straw-man argument you are making. You are refuting an argument that I did not present. If I wrote that all strange things are untrue, and since it’s strange that general principles are impersonal, they must not be true, then you would be correct to call my argument ridiculous. However I made no such claim. This is what I wrote:

"... for universalists, (believers in universal principles), our moral competence depends on how well we serve universal principles. Yet there is something strange about the notion that morality is ultimately a matter of applying impersonal moral principles to particular cases – morality becomes a matter of calculation rather than care."

When we are trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, what, or who, is it that we want to serve? What is the point of doing right? If a baby is drowning, do you save it because you want to honor your principle? Or is it that you want the baby to live, and you want its parents to be spared the unbearable grief that is sure to befall them if the baby dies? It would indeed be strange if you robotically followed the principle with no care for the individuals involved. It is because we care for individual people that we have principles in the first place. The principles are there to serve the people, not the other way around.

So, yes, I did use the term ‘strange’. But you have misunderstood, or misrepresented, my use of the term in at least two ways. First, I did not say that general principles are strange. In fact, I don’t think they are strange at all. They are very natural inductive generalizations, and as generalizations, they work as rough and ready guides. We fall back on them when we don’t have the time, information, or wisdom, to accurately judge the specifics of the situation under consideration. So, it’s not the principles that are strange. Rather, it is strange to think that morality is is ultimately a matter of just applying these principles to particular cases. This is quite a different statement than you accuse me of advocating. The second thing wrong with your characterization of my use of ‘strange’ is that you seem to believe that I have offered it as a proof that since strange things are untrue, principles must be untrue because they are strange. I agree with you that strange things can be true. Strange things can also be untrue. My use of ‘strange’ is descriptive. If morality is computation devoid of care, that seems strange to me.

ARGUMENT 4
You state that my fourth reason is that we cannot justify general principles without first appealing to specific cases. This is essentially an accurate restatement of my position.

This argument is rebutted by brimstoneSalad, so I will reply to brimstoneSalad here...

brimstoneSalad – you state that this may be my worst argument. You state that it is incorrect, and that I am either very ignorant or dishonest.

You also state that:

"We most certainly CAN justify general principles without appealing to specific cases. To do that we look at deriviation of moral systems. For example, we can value the interests/values of others without having any idea what those are, simply understanding that morality (if it is an objective value system) is the sum of consideration for other values.”

A few thoughts...

First, I don’t think it is certain that any action-guiding universal principle has EVER been justified. Principles have been argued for, but never completely successfully. Either the principle, though true, fails to guide our actions in difficult situations because it is too vague, or the principle encounters problematic exceptions. If you know of an action-guiding principle that always guides us correctly, even in difficult situations, then you will have accomplished perhaps more than anyone in the history of moral philosophy. But if you don’t, then it’s not really true that these principles can ‘certainly’ be justified.

Second, I will consider your example. You state, seemingly as an example of a justification of a universal action-guiding moral principle, that we can value the interests of others without knowing what those interests are.

One problem with this example is that it isn’t clear that a principle of this sort would be universally action-guiding in difficult situations. What are some examples of hard moral dilemmas that are solved by the application of this principle?

But more importantly, I do not think this is an example of justiying a univeral principle without appealing to specific cases. It strikes me more as an assertion – the interests of other people matter, regardless of whether we know the specifics of their interests.

I see a claim. I do not see an argument.

I happen to agree with the claim. I believe that the interests of other matter even if I do not know the specifics of their interests.

But this isn’t a justification. It is not a proof. Indeed, I wonder...

WHY do their interests matter? WHY should I care? Why should I give their interests any consideration?

MY answer...

Their interests matter because EACH of their interests matter... because John wants to pursue his passion for surfing, and purposefully breaking his leg would be detrimental to that goal... because Rudy really does not want to eat that sauerkraut, and forcing it upon him would cause him anguish... because Jill wants to go to university and study medicine, so forcing her to work in the coal mine would steal away the future of which she has been dreaming.

The interests of others matter because each person matters. If there were no particular people, with particular hopes and dreams, struggles and triumphs, we would have no need for morality in the first place.

ARGUMENT 5
What you call my fifth argument is taken from Jonathan Dancy, likely the leading proponent of moral particularism. He states that certain factors can contribute differently to the morality of an act depending on the situation. So causing inconvenience to someone would generally be a bad thing, but causing inconvenience to a kidnapper could be a good thing. Dancy states that moral philosophy generally assumes that factors always have the same moral polarity. For example, stealing is always wrong, even though there might be other factors that outweigh its wrongness in certain situations. Dancy disagrees, thinking that stealing might occasionally have a reversed polarity. So for Dancy, stealing a knife from a crazed murderer might be purely right, while the traditional view would be that it would be wrong, but not as wrong as letting the murderer continue on his rampage.

You state that this misses the point and is solved by consequentialism. I don’t think it misses the point. What point? Dancy is characterizing how, in his view, particular factors can contribute relevantly to moral situations. I find this reasonable. Also, you are probably correct that consequentialism may not be troubled by the variable polarity of factors in different situations. But that doesn’t mean that utilitarianism wins the day. And it certainly doesn’t mean that utilitarianism wins the day on behalf of universalism. Utilitarianism has its own problems, and the EXCEPTIONAL cases are deadly to utilitarianism.

ARGUMENT 6
The sixth argument you mention is my use of Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblances. We are able to use the concept ‘game’ even though we can’t give a universally accurate definition of a game. There is no one thing that makes a game a game, and yet we use the term ‘game’ with little difficulty. Some moral particularists suggest that concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are similar to ‘game’ in that we are able to use and understand them even though we are unable to formulate perfect definitions.

brimStoneSalad accuses me of begging the question here.

But no. No.

First, I actually presented this argument because I was introducing moral particularism, and this is an important argument that has been made by others. I can hardly be begging the question by explaining how some other moral particularists characterize aspects of moral thought.

Second, this Wittgensteinian argument, as I see it, is meant to strengthen the particularist position, not to prove it. The argument isn’t that we can use the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ without detecting their essences, so moral particularism must be correct. The argument is, rather, a defense against those who might attack particularists for thinking they can use terms like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ without being able to formulate principled definitions of those concepts.

In other words, some people might say, “Hey, utilitarianism has a clear definition for doing the right thing, but particularism is stupid because it can’t even give a clear definition or principle for doing the right thing.”

The Wittgensteinian family resemblance argument stops this line of attack. It is a defensive argument. Not a proof for particularism. It makes a descriptive point – that concepts can be used even when they are not perfectly formulated in a definition or principle.

A COUPLE OF FURTHER THOUGHTS
There seems to be an ongoing bias in moral philosophy that favors universal moral principles over particular moral judgements. This continues to be the case even though there are no proved universally applicable action-guiding moral principles. Despite thousands of years of searching, we have yet to find them. And yet most moral philosophers seem to think that this is still the way to proceed, rather than genuinely consider the alternative.

It is a question of deduction vs induction. Is morality a matter of deducing from a universal action-guiding principle? Or are moral principles inductively formulated generalizations from particular situations?

Most people interested in moral philosophy seem to think that there just MUST be universal principles behind moral thought. This is simply faith.

They are quick to point out the fallibility of intuition when the particularist attempts to explain how moral thought might work, but slow to recognize the fallibility of thinkers attempting to formulate universal rules.

The particularist doesn’t have all the answers, and the universalists treat that as a victory for themselves, ignoring the blatantly obvious truth that they have also failed to provide all the answers.

BURDEN OF PROOF

While the universalist seems to unfairly place the burden of proof on the particularist, I believe the universalist actually has a much greater burden.

Take murder, for instance. Let’s imagine that Hector is contemplating murdering Charlie.

If Hector is a particularist, he might consider the pain that Charlie might experience, the future that will be taken from him, and the pain and grief that Charlie’s family will experience. He also imagines what it would be like if someone murdered him. In the end, he decides against murdering Charlie.

Notice that Hector only had to prove that one murder was wrong.

But if Hector is a universalist, he will need a principle. Maybe he has this principle:

Murder is wrong.

Saying that murder is wrong and using it as a universal claim means precisely that each and every case of murder is wrong, which could be expressed as a conjunction with a conjunct for each possible murder. Where M stands for murder, and M1 stands for the first murder in the set, we could say that:

Murder is wrong = M1 is wrong & ... & Mn is wrong

Here, Mn is considered to be the last murder in the set, however large the set is. This covers every murder and every hypothesized murder as well. Hence the universal principle “Murder is wrong” is equivalent to a long conjunction of claims, each of which claims a particular case of murder to be wrong. Hector murdering Charlie is one of these conjuncts, but so is Roboxok murdering Keelmok in the year 4067. Why should Hector have to prove that it is wrong for Roboxok to murder Keelmok just to conclude that it is wrong for him to murder Charlie? Well, if he is a universalist, he is committed to just that.

That is quite the burden.

Now let’s say that somehow, amazingly, Hector does prove that every murder is wrong. He now knows that this is true:

M1 is wrong & ... & Mn is wrong.

If he knows this, he already knows that murdering Charlie is wrong. In fact, relying on this conjunction to prove that it would be wrong for him to kill Charlie would be begging the question, since his conclusion is the same as one of the conjuncts of his premise. The principle “Murder is wrong” is unsupportive when Hector is deciding whether to murder Charlie. When Hector proved that all murders are wrong, the wrongness of murdering Charlie was proved concurrently. But the claim that murder is wrong does not add to the wrongness of killing Charlie. It simply states that killing Charlie is wrong, and a bunch of other murders are wrong too. The universal principle is just a grander claim. And a harder one to justify.

CONCLUSION

Despite the criticisms, I am delighted to see my article being discussed. I hope it has given you something to think about.

I would happily welcome further discussion.

Best wishes,

Ramsey McNabb
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