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Rationality and Affectivity: The Metaphysics of the Moral Self*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Laurence Thomas
Laurence Thomas
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Oberlin College
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Extract

There is a way of doing moral philosophy which goes something like this: If it can be shown that it is rational for perfectly selfish people to accept the constraints of morality, then it will follow, a fortiori, that it is rational for people capable of affective bonds, and thus less selfish, to do so. On this way of proceeding the real argument – that is, the argument for the actual constraints (theory or principles) to be adopted – proceeds with only fully rational individuals who have no other concern than to maximize their nontuistic (selfish) preferences. Then it is noted that the affective capacities of human beings actually make quite palatable the constraints that the fully rational persons with wholly nontuistic preferences have agreed upon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 154 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1988

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References

1 Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Further references to this work are indicated parenthetically in the text by MA followed by a page number.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Paton, H.J. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).Google Scholar

3 See Gauthier, David, “Morality and Advantage,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 76 (1967),CrossRefGoogle Scholar where he criticizes the central argument of Baier's, KurtThe Moral Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958),Google Scholar who attempts to make the argument at the level of each individual choice.

4 The argument which I shall develop echoes themes found in Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1981);Google Scholar see chapters 3–5, especially 3. The argument of this essay is somewhat anticipated by M.S., Adrian Piper in her “Instrumentalism, Objectivity, and Moral Justification,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 23 (1985).Google Scholar She makes a sweeping argument to the effect that no instrumentalist moral theory, which she takes Gauthier's to be, can yield an objective justification of morality.

5 The account of coercive rationality offered here owes its inspiration to Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 1110a; Eudemian Ethics 1225a). My thinking about this matter owes much to Irwin, T.H., “Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle”, Rorty, Amelie, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), esp. pp.133–137.Google Scholar I have also profited from Nozick, Robert, “Coercion”, Laslett, Peter, et al. , eds., Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 4th series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972),Google Scholar and Frankfurt, Harry G., “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Cf. Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Strachey, James (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1961).Google Scholar The idea that a person need not always act in accordance with his deepest desire is powerfully developed by Frankfurt in “Freedom of the Will and die Concept of a Person.”

7 Thus, contra Bernard Williams, there is a clear sense in which a person can be said tohave an external reason for doing A, though that is not her reason for doing A. Cf. Williams, Bernard, “Internal and External Reasons”, Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 This example was inspired by Robert Nozick, “Coercion”, p.103; and Frankfurt, Harry G., “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 For this way of thinking about avowals, I am indebted to Abelson, Raziel, Persons: A Study in Philosophical Psychology (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 I came across the term “social death” in Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political as Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 14 (1985).Google Scholar Rawls borrows the term from Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).Google Scholar Patterson writes: “Everything has a past, including sticks and stones. Slaves differed from other human beings in that they were not allowed freely to integrate the experience of their ancestors into their lives, to inform their understanding of social reality with the inherited meaning of their natural forebears, or to anchor the living present in any conscious community of memory” (p.5). One cannot do this without routinely treating a person as if his avowed reasons for doing something are other than he claims them to be.

11 I have developed this point at length in my “Love and Morality: The Possibility of Altruism”, Fetzer, James, ed., Epistemology and Sociobiology (Norwall, MA: D. Reidel, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Perhaps support for this view can be found in the idea of an evolutionary stable strategy: “a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy.” Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Fairlawn, NJ: Oxford University Press, 1976), p.74.Google Scholar Dawkins argues that a population of hawks, who fight without restraint until seriously injured, is not an evolutionary stable strategy, since this strategy would favor the spread of dove genes should a mutant dove, who is understood never to fight, arise in the population. For although doves would win no fights, they would also sustain no injuries (pp.75–77). A mixture of doves and hawks is shown to yield an evolutionary stable strategy as well. For a population consisting only of doves would favor the spread of hawk genes should a mutant hawk arise, since a hawk would win every fight in such a population. The suggestion here is that a population of nontuistic persons would not yield an evolutionary stable strategy from the standpoint of social interaction, since up to a point at least, it would favor the spread of altruistic genes should a mutant altruist arise in the population. Gauthier is not altogether unaware of considerations of this sort; see chapter 6, section 2.3.

12 Cf. Strawson, P.F., “Freedom and Resentment”, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (New York: Methuen, 1974).Google Scholar

13 To my mind, this is one of the deep, deep insights of A. Baier's essay “Trust and Anti-— Trust.” See especially the section entitled the “Male Fixation on Contract.”

14 Surely, this is the force of Williams's now famous “one thought too many” critique of impartialist moral theories in his “Persons, Character, and Morality”, Moral Luck. It is simply unreasonable to expect someone to adopt the impartial perspective about saving her spouse. See also Blum, Lawrence, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar

15 See Dworkin's, Ronald masterful development of this point in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), chapter 6, “Justice and Rights.”Google Scholar

16 Gauthier, “Morality and Advantage.”

17 My thinking here owes much to McCord, Geoffrey Sayre, “Deception and Reasons to be Moral”, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 25 (1988).Google Scholar

18 I have developed the substance of this line of thought in my “Ethical Egoism and Psychological Dispositions,” American Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 17 (1980), where I talk about polar dispositions (e.g., honesty and dishonesty) and dispositional fits (e.g., honesty and integrity).Google Scholar

19 Cf. Frankfurt, , “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.”Google Scholar

20 This, I have argued in “Beliefs and the Motivation to be Just,” American PhilosophicalQuarterly, Vol. 22 (1985), is indeed die case for morally virtuous people.Google Scholar

21 In “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, Frankfurt writes: “When a person identifies himself decisively with one of his first-order desires, this commitment 'resounds' throughout the potentially endless array of higher orders” (p. 16, emphasis in original).

22 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar I shall not here be concerned with developments in John Rawls's thinking since the publication of this work.

In writing this appendix, I am indebted to conversations with David Copp and, especially, Norman Care.

23 Indeed, in The Liberal Theory of Justice (Fairlawn, NJ: Oxford University Press, 1973),Google Scholar Brian Barry writes: “Unfortunately, this argument is so powerful that it seems to be in imminent danger of short—circuiting the whole elaborate argument in favour of the 'two principles'. For if (as Rawls sometimes appears to imply) they are the only principles capable of satisfying the demands of stability, that would seem to end the matter then and there” (pp. 14–15).

24 See also Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p.138 and section 29, “The Main Grounds for the Two Principles of Justice”, where Rawls writes: “A second consideration invokes the condition of publicity as well as that of the constraints on agreements. I shall present the argument in terms of die question of psychological stability. … A strong point in favor of a conception of justice is that it generates its own supports.”