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‘The right and the good’ and W. D. Ross's criticism of consequentialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
The theme announced for these lectures is the philosophy of value. It may seem that moral philosophy, along with aesthetics, the philosophy of art, the philosophy of environment … ought to be a proper part of the philosophy of value. I have chosen mottoes to illustrate the dangers of that supposition.
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1 Ross seconds this weakening of ‘right’. ‘It may sometimes happenthat there is a set of two or more acts, one or other of which ought to be done by me rather thanany act not belonging to the set. In such a case any act of this set is right, but none is my duty; my duty is to do “one or other of them’. (p. 3). He acknowledges an element of stipulation in this finding.
2 For the expression ‘ethical neutralism’, as used of Moore, see Broad, C. D. in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, (ed.) Schilp, P., (Evantston and Chicago 1942), especially pp. 43Google Scholar and 51.
3 See Geach, P. T., Reference & Generality (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1968), p. 61Google Scholar.
4 See Richard, Cartwright's essay ‘Propositions’, reprinted in his Philosophical Essays (Cambridge, Mass., 1987)Google Scholar.
5 See Hornsby, Jennifer ‘Which physical events are mental events’ PAS 81 (1980–81)Google Scholar; her review of Davidson, at Ratio, 24,(1) (1982), 88–9;Google Scholar and Simple Mindedness (Harvard 1997), v. index, s.v. ‘actions’.
6 The supposed neutrality of these two duties is not exactly the same.
7 If the example just given does not carry conviction, apply the recipe again and find another one. The example does however stand in need of clarification, as Professor C. B. Ricks has made me see. The patriot's idea (let me explain) is not that some cloistered virtue of racial non-quarrel-someness can exist wherever everyone is of the same race (or everyone sees everyone else in this way). The patriot's idea is that, in the short term future of certain torn communities, the question of race must be put therapeutically to sleep, so that in the longer term, among new generations to come, ordinary questions that will arise of race and racial difference can be managed more calmly and reasonably. Compare the advice of an allergy specialist that, for a considerable period, the patient should withdraw from all contact with an irritating agent to which he has become hypersensitive — before resuming ordinary life on a better regime. The patriot's idea is not confused, or even simple minded. But the magnitude of thedistant prize and the consequentialist framework in which the patriot has chosen to deliberately distract his attention from the true nature of that which he is preparing to countenance. Or so Icontend. Whatever prospect his idea holds out for human peace and virtue stretching into an open-ended future, it will give cover in the present to other and much more disquieting intentions.
8 Cp. Foundations of Ethics, page 319. ‘If we are right in holding that the general nature of things that are obligatory is that they are activities of self-exertion, what can we say about their particular character? Perhaps the most widely current view on this question is that the special character of all acts that are right, and that which makes them right, isthat they are acts of setting oneself to produce a maximum of what is good. This seems tome far from being, as it is often supposed to be, self-evident, and to be in fact a great oversimplification of the ground of rightness. There is no more reason, after all, to suppose that thereis one single reason which makes all acts right that are right than there is for supposing (what I fancy no one who considers the matter will suppose) that there is a single reason which makes all things good that are good. And in fact there are several branches of duty which apparently cannot be grounded on the productivity of the greatest good … fulfilling promises’.
9 Ross writes ‘actions’, forgetting (as so often) the excellent preliminaries set out in chapter 1 of The Right and Good, already here rehearsed, concerning acts and actions.
10 Or ‘for every non-tragic context in which a conflict of prima facie duties arises’, one might prefer Ross to say, though he does not.
11 To say that much, however, is not of course to deny that such a consideration will commit those who accept it to something universal. For on a proper understanding of the distinctness of generality and universality, the consideration could be utterly specific and still point towards something unqualifiedly universal. It is useful, here and everywhere, to make use of Hare's, R. M. distinction in Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar, chapter 3, between the general/specific distinction and the universal/particular distinction. See also Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Cp. Nic. Ethics 1143.b Nb. especially the anapodektoi phaseis ton presbuteron. If you do not believe me when I say this on Ross’ behalf, then you should take note of the fact that, typically, the premises of a practical syllogism that expresses ordinarypractical insight into a given context are neither numerous nor long. A practical syllogism only needs premises that are adequate for its context. That is what makes the practical syllogism finite, manageable and serviceable. Why should it count against our claim to have practical knowledge if we are unable to rewrite the premises of our moral reasoning in a form that makes suchreasoning self-sufficient and independent of context?
13 I formulate the schema in this way ie may be true universal prohibitions. Note here that there is not a doing of the act of refraining from φ-ing (an action of refraining from φ-ing) wherever someone does not φ
14 Cp. Scheffler, S.: ‘One thing they all share is a very simple and seductive idea: namely that… what people ought to do is to minimise evil and maximise good, to try in other words to make the world as good a place as possible’. Consequentialism and its Critics (Oxford University Press, 1988), page 1Google Scholar.
15 Note however that the beneficent person is not as such readily identifiable with anyAristotelian stereotype.
16 The best remark I know about this comes (not at the beginning but towards the end, alas) in Philippa Foot's, ‘Action, Outcome and Morality’, in Honderich, T. (ed.), Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L. Mackie (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1985)Google Scholar. My indebtedness to this article and its companion piece, ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’, Mind 94, 1985 will be manifest.
17 The text published here overlaps but does not coincide with the lecture given at the Royal Institute of Philosophy. In the text given here, I dwell mostly on an earlier phase of the debate about consequentialism than the Philippa Foot – Samuel Scheffler phase that consumed the major part of the lecture actually delivered. For criticisms and amplifications of some of the claims advanced here about Ross and Moore, see the comments that Jonathan Dancy and Stephen Darwall offered on the version of the present text that was published in Utilitas, 10(3) (11 1998)Google Scholar.