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Sidgwick and Common–Sense Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Brad Hooker
Brad Hooker*
Affiliation:
University of Reading, [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper begins by celebrating Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics. It then discusses Sidgwick's moral epistemology and in particular the coherentist element introduced by his argument from common-sense morality to utilitarianism. The paper moves on to a discussion of how common-sense morality seems more appealing if its principles are formulated as picking out pro tanto considerations rather than all-things-considered demands. Thefinal section of the paper considers the question of which version of utilitarianism follows from Sidgwick's arguments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2000 , pp. 347 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 In this paper, I will refer to the 7th edn., London, 1907.Google Scholar Page numbers from this edition will appear in my text.

2 Discussions of Sidgwick's moral epistemology that I have found particularly helpful are Brink, David, ‘Common Sense and First Principles in Sidgwick's Methods’ Social Philosophy and Policy, xi (1994)Google Scholar; Crisp, Roger, ‘Griffin's Pessimism’, Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin ed. Crisp, R. and Hooker, B., Oxford, 2000 Google Scholar; and Crisp, , ‘Sidgwick and the Boundaries of Intuitionism’, forthcoming in Moral Intuitionism, ed. Stratton-Lake, P., Oxford, 2001 Google Scholar.

3 For careful discussions of promising, see Sidgwick, pp. 305–11; Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law, Oxford, 1961, pp. 192 f.Google Scholar; Fried, Charles, Contract as Promise, Cambridge, MA, 1981, esp. ch. 7Google Scholar; Thomson, Judith Jarvis, Realm of Rights, combridge, MA, 1990, ch. 12Google Scholar; Scanlon, T. M., What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge, MA, 1998, ch. 7Google Scholar. Donagan, Compare Alan, ‘Sidgwick and Whewellian Intuitionism:Some Enigmas’, Essays on Henry Sidgwick, ed. Schultz, B., New York, 1992 Google Scholar.

4 Donagan, pp. 129–31.

5 Apart from the following relatively small matter. Donagan alleged that, by many accounts including Sidgwick's own, Sidgwick's reasoning about whether to resign his Cambridge fellowship because of his failing the religious tests was not utilitarian, but in fact Whewellian (Donagan, 135–40). Defenders of Sidgwick can make at least the following two replies. First, Sidgwick's version of utilitarianism was innovative precisely in the degree to which it allowed, even encouraged, utilitarians to think in nonutilitarian terms. (I say more about this latter in my text). Secondly, whether or not Sidgwick made the decision on utilitarian grounds, the act he chose to do certainly seems to have been a success in utilitarian terms. (For a fascinating related discussion, see Bart Schultz's review of a new edition of Sidgwick's Practical Ethics, in Ethics, cix (1999), esp. 682–4)Google Scholar.

6 The classic proposal of this sort of view is in Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good, Oxford, 1930, ch. 2Google Scholar.

7 Related atters are taken up in the final section of my ‘Moral Particularism — Wrong and Bad’, Moral Particularism, ed. Hooker, B. and Little, M., Oxford, 2000 Google Scholar.

8 Sidgwick was hardly the first to defend utilitarianism in this way. Buthe developed the line of thought further than any other classical utilitarian did.

9 See, for example, Williams, Bernard, ‘The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics’, repr. in his Making Sense of Humanity and Other Essays, Cambridge, 1995, esp. pp. 167–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 I do discuss related matters in ch. 4 of my Ideal Code, Real World: A Ruleconsequentialist Theory of Morality, Oxford, 2000 Google Scholar, and in my ‘Reflective Equilibrium and Rule Consequentialism’, Morality, Rules and Consequences:A Critical Reader, ed. Hooker, B., Mason, E. and Miller, D. E., Edinburgh, 2000 Google Scholar.

11 Here I draw on terminology from Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, sect. 13Google Scholar.

12 Gray, John, ‘Indirect Utility and Fundamental Rights’, in his Liberalisms:Essays in Political Philosophy, London, 1989, p. 126 Google Scholar.

13 For an excellent discussion, see Crisp, R., Mill on Utilitarianism, London, 1997, pp. 126–33Google Scholar.

14 For discussion, see Singer, Marcus, ‘Generalization in Ethics’, Mind, lxiv (1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Generalization in Ethics, New York, 1961 Google Scholar; Lyons, David, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism, Oxford, 1965 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Regan, Donald, Utilitarianism and Co-operation, Oxford, 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my Ideal Code, Real World, sects. 3.2 and 4.2.

15 As Urmson, James argued in his ‘The Interpretation of the Philosophy of J. S. Mill’, Philosophical Quarterly, iii (1953)Google Scholar.

16 This matter has attracted enormous attention in recent moral philosophy. My own attempt to deal with it can be found in chs. 7–8 of Ideal Code, Real World.

17 For helpful comments on this paper, I am grateful to David Brink, Roger Crisp, Thomas Hurka, Robert Shaver, John Skorupski, Wayne Sumner, and especially Bart Schultz. I am also grateful to Australian National University's Research School for Social Sciences, where I was visiting while I wrote this paper.