bachvarov ethics

8/2/2019 Bachvarov Ethics

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JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL ESEACH

VOL. >, 19

1. THE DEMAND FOR JUSFICAON IN ECS

PANAVOTBUCHARO

The Universit of lowa

ABSTRACT. The ommon belief that the epistemi redentia1sof ethics re quite questionable, and therefore in need of speialjustiation, is an illusion made possible by the 10ca gapbetween reason and belief. This gap manifests itself sometimeseven outside ethis. In ethis its manifestations are ommon,because of the practial nature of ethics. The attempt to cover itup takes the form of exorbitat demands for justication andon leads to espousing nonoitivism.

Ila lar1y in Te Meod of Ethics Henry Sidgwick asked why is ethisommonly taken to inlud disussion of "the nature of the moral faculty," whiletheatics and physics ar not usually tken to includ discussion, respectively, ofthe mathematical faculty and the facu1ty of sense- perception. Part of the explanatione pe w a, une mems y, es as a pa a, nthat while we nnot help believing what we see to be true we can help doing what wese to be right. He a1so suested that it is partly because of this fat that peopleommonly ask, "Why should 1 do what 1 see to be right?", but not "Why should 1

believe what 1 see to be true?" But the main explanation Sidg offered was thatthere is a great diversity of methods and principles inherent in ordinary mora1thugt.

Sidgik went on to desribe the fat needing explanation as "the persistentunstised demand for an ultimate reason," for a demonstration of "te ultimatereasonblnss of condct.2 Decades later, Prichard described it as the demand for apof or at least justifcation that we ought to do what in our nonreectiveconsciusness we have unquestioningly thought, sensed, that we ought to do.3Prihad's answer was, roughly, that suh a proof or justication is not possible, but

his explanation of why nevertheless we look for one was similar to Sidks. Weay not aept his answer, or the partiular ethial theory in which it is embedded,bt 1 believe his eplanation, like Sidgwik's, was generally orret. There is a hint tht eplantion also in Kat However, our understanding of it must go onsiderablybeyond what either Sidgwik or Prihard or Kant sid. 1 shall refer mainly to


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2 PANAYOT BUTCHVARO

Sidgwick, but this is ot a paper about him As o may other topcs, Sidgckprovides us with a especily coveet poit of depture

Of course, phlosophers ask geer epistemolocal questos also aboutmathematcs, to say othig of physics, ut for a differet reaso. They do otordiarily doubt that most mathematical judets they accept eressuquestioable kowledge; ordiarly they are oly curous about the ature of thiskowledge, about how they may accommodate t thei epstemolocal theories, adespecay about whether t ca be give a reaist iterpretatio Ad philosophersoe have this sort of reason aso for raisig the correspodig questios aboutethics. But here shall ot be cocered, except i passing, with such techcalphilosophical reasons, importat though they are, just as Sidgwick was ot shall ecocered with a reaso peculiar to ethcs, which is o less famili ordiary,ophilosopical ethical thought ethics the demad for justicato s madelargely ecause there is a impresso of uertaity ifetg aU ethical judgmets,ad the of course t becomes a rucal questo for ethics whether this impressocorrespods to the fats Why is there this mpressio of ucertaity? believe aaswer roughly like Sidk's s the right oe But to explai t, 1 must make aumber of premiary ad, uavoidably, very sketchy remarks.

1 suest that in general we do not nd ethics to be nherently less rmlygrouded tha mathematics and physics. Jt's just that we ca be so easily led, byothers or by ourselves, to think that it s I aU three (if we uderstad them broadlyas Sidgwik did and as in this paper we also should), we employ perceptio orimmediate awareess (oe called "tuito"), we employ tuitive idutio,ution, Humean inution we appea to systmati onsierations, for xampe, tooerene and elanatory power; and we marsha the sort f arguments that Milltought coud determie the iteet but ot onstitute an actual proof, for example,appeals to analoges.4 aU three, by suh meas, though to widely varyig degreesbeause of te dierenes i subjet atter, we ome to declare ertai propositiosjustied, probable, kow to be true, perhaps even sef-evidet I speak here ot ofwhat epistemoogists, or moral philosophers, or mathematicians, or phycists wouldordiarily say, though many do say it speak of what the ordiary perso would sayto questios such as "s g wog?", "Are three ad two ve?", "Does waterevaporate whe boiled?" Muh of the power of reaism ad cogitivism i ethis isdue to this fat about ordinary thought What eeds to be uderstood, however, iswhy we a be so easily led to question eve some of our immediate so-caed"ntuitions" about the subject matter of ethics, but ot those about the subject matterof mathematics or physis

The fundamental answer,I suest, is the rst one Sdgwik effect gave: wehave a stake i ethis that we do ot have mathematcs or i physis. Ouricliatios,whether egoistic or altruisti or nether, oe oict wth our moralintuitions, with our putative awareess of moral truth, or wth the ocusios of ourreasoning from these intuitions, and sometes even overpower them. Ad sie byature weare truth-respetig beigs, it is atural for us to wat to suppose that thisis so because of some iadequay of moral reaso, that the ituitons coiting thour inclinations are spurous, that they do ot onstitute geuie kowedge. Of


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DEMAND FOR JUSTIFICATON N ETHICS 3

course, there need not be such a conict and some of our incinations (e.g., thoseinvolved in what Moore called persona affection) may have the highest vaue,perhaps, pace Kant, even moral value.

But whie this may explain why we are tempted to question our ethical judgments,we need to explain also why we sucumb to that temptation so easiy. This may bethought of as the purpose of the sond part of Sidgck's explanation, in which heappealed to the diversity of methods and principles present in ordinary ethicalthought. Though 1 believe that the rst part, namely, his appea to the ractical na-ture of ethics, suices as an expanation of h the temptation and our succumbingto it, to understand it properly we must briey consider the second part rst. But myaccount of it be rather dierent from Sidcs and eventually 1 l disagreewith him on a crucial issue.

There is indeed great diversity in the ethical judgments we make, both insubject matter and in epistemic status, a diversity absent from mathematics andphysics, at least as they are known to ordinary thought. There are abstract singuarjudgments, some of which may deserve to be calJed axioms of ethics, such as, perhaps,"Friendship is a good," "Pain is bad," "Lng is wrong." f we nd ourselves disaeeingabout them, this is almost certainy due to a misunderstanding. It may be a misunderstanding of what is meant by the word "friendship," "pain," and "ying," a misunderstanding that occurs because the notions they express, unlike those of mathematicsand physics, are quite imprecise. (And they remain imprecise party because, unlike

mathematicians and physicists, modern mor al philosophers have generalJy not beendoing their job; they have been talking more about ethics than about the subject mat-ter of ethics, they have been doing more metaethics than ethics.) Or the disagreement may be due to a misunderstanding not of individua words but of thegammar ofhe statements. This sort of misunderstanding typicay takes the form of objectionsuch "Wht if the in was deserved?" or "What if lin is the onl wa to reventdisaster?" But in saying, e.g., that pain is bad, we are saying, of course, that pain assuch, in itself, is bad, not that some particuar instances of it, though as such also badin themselves, may not have other characteristics that are good, or that they may notbe essential elements in more compex states that are good, or that they may not have

good consequences, and therefore that they may not be good on the whole. The distinction is simpe, easy to understand, and once made the misunderstanding is almostcertain to be eliminated. The Platonism implicit in it would still be rejected by mostphiosophers, but it seems quite natural to common sense.

A second cass of ethical judgments concern the rightness or rongness ofparticular actions. And even i we are not consequentialists, we certainly regard theconsequences of an action as very much relevant to the question whether the actionought to be done. But we seldom, if ever, know enough about the consequences ofour actions, and disaeement about them is possibe, indeed oen unavoidable.

This, however, is a fact about the inherent limitations of human knowledge in general,not about any inherent epistemic problems of etics. The qualication it requires inany cognitivist position in ethics is readily acnowledged by common sense. And thisis why, though ordinary ethical thought, or moral common sense, is unqualiedyrealist, it is not unqualiedly cognitivist, in the literal sense of this term suested by


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4 PANAO BUTCHVAROV

ts etymolo. ndeed, realsm and cotvsm, and so rrealsm and noncognitivism,ought not to be dented, as they usualy are. For example, a utltaran s a realstabout rght acton, for he taes for granted that t s a fact about realty that a certanacton would or would not have the best possbe consequences, but e may wel be anoncogntvst n the iteral sense of ths term by denyng, as Sdg came cIose todong, that wec ever know whether t woud or wod not And a mora phlosopher, suc as John Rawls, may be a cogntvist i he acepts a coherence theory of jstcaton but an rreast i he also accepts a oherene theory of truth, wit respect toeth judents.

A thrd class of ethal judents concern praseworthness andblaeworthness, the moraty of actons, of trats of character, and of agents. Heretere are two specal nds of uncertanty, one the unertanty nherent npsychologal jdgments n genera, the other that engendered y legtmate butessentaIly metaphyscal (though qute famlar to common sense) doubts about thenotons of responsblty and freedom of hoce, whch seem to be presupposed by theethcal judgments n ths thrd class. But, one agan, these are nds of uncertantyrooted n facts and consderatons external to ethcs.

A fourth cIass of ethcal judgments, oen overlappng wth the second, tat ofjudgments about the rightness or oness of atons, but ontanng also evaluatons of matters that are not atons, may be descrbed as putatve remote theorems

supposedly derved from the aoms of etcs but n fat only n onjunton wth var-ous nonethca propostons. They consttute what Moore aIled asustry and we aIlappled eths, the mportance of whch phlosophers n reent years have one agancome to reoze. Exampes wo be ta mets abot sxu atttues andmos of bavor, contons suc as rreversle coma, everyday poltal probems,rtan ecal procedures, an so on. They are hghly specc n content, an presuppose a great dal of nowledge of nonetcal facts, ncIudng consequences of ac-tons. We oen dsaee about them, but t s pausble to hold that te dsaeements ether about the relevant nonethcal facts or abot the vadty of the dervatonom te aoms and the nonethca facts to wch we appeal For example, we maynd t sefevident tat lfe, beng alve, s a eat good, but does t foIlow that beng nrreversble coma s a good? Or tat aborton s ong? The estence of such quandares as no tendency to sow that etcs s not a cogntve dsciplne.

These remars are ntended to suest that te dversty of methos andprncples n ordnary ethca thougt s qte ben, qute compatble wthunqaled realsm and wth a sutably quaed cogntvsm. Te uncertantes andquandares present i t cast doubt on ts realsm and qualed cogntvism no moretan the uncertantes and quandares present n sopstcated branches ofengneerng, e.g, those used i the space proam, cast doubt on physcs. 1 belevethat ts realsm and quaed cogntvsm are generay correct The usualposophca arguments to the ontrry are hardly compellng. They are not myconcern here, but to mae what is my oncern cear 1 must brey refer to them .

One is Hume's , essentiaIly phenomenologal caim that, to use his example,he ould not nd the vice i a case of mrder. But a more sophisticated


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DEMAND FOR JUTIFICAION IN THICS 5

phenomenoo, such as that of Husse, Schee, and Hatmann, would not beimpessed by tha c1am, which ested on an exaodinay impoveished conceptionof consciousness.

Anothe, eaed argument is tha ethica popeties, such as goodness andbadness, ae vey mysterous; indeed, homas Nage descibes the badness of painth just that wod, d so he is unwiing to aow hat thee is such a popety as thebadness of pain, pefeng instead to speak of "the fac that thee is eason foanyone capabe of viewing the wold objectively to wan it [the pain] to stop, a facthe pesumaby ds cysta c\ea. But an adequate metaphyscs woud inc\ude a moesophisticated theoy of popeties, o i you wish of univesas, both geneic andspecic, and wi hod that if thee is such a popety as oodness o badness, it woudamost ceainly be a eneic popey, not a specic popey ike a shade of yeow

hen the mystey some d in it woud b dispeed when i is pointed out that f, foexampe, a peson is good because she s knd, he oodness s not a popey meeyadditiona to he kndness, even if supevenient upon it (whateve, if anything, thismay amount to beyond its puey foma chaacteization)6, bu athe is a genus ofhich indness is a spcies f so, goodness would be no moe mysteious a popetythan, say, colo and shape as such, as geneic popeties, ae mysteious.

A thid agument is that science does no and need not appea to ethicapopeties, o that ethical popeties seve no expanatoy oe of the sot famiia inscience. But only a cude, sti unagued, commitment to "the scientic image of the

wod" could foce us to infe fom this fact, if indeed t is a fact, that hee ae noehica popeties Notoiousy, in his espect even mathematics seems to be atheike ethics, as the woies of causa theoists of knowedge about it show, thoughecently thee have been attempts to dispe these woies. Of couse, in the boade,deepe, and moe pope sense of "expain, namey, o ende plain, to maeineigie ethia oeties o have an exanator roe. The rener intelliibleou moa consciousness, in paticua its intentiona caacte, an us te moafabic of ou fe. In this sense they ae fa moe expanaoy than te enttiespostuated by even he best conmed physica heoies.

A fouth agument is that disageement about ehical mates is widespeadan unesolvabe. Bu, if what I have aeady said about whee and why suhdisageement ous is coect, its estence, such as it s, is hadly a eason foabandonng cognitivism. And the est of what 1 sha say may be though of as afuthe expanation of t, one that aso is entiey compatibe wih coivism.

Howeve, my pupose hee is no to evaluate these aguments o to defendeaism and cogntivism have tied to do so in deta e1sewhee. 7 hey ae technicaphosophica aguments, and whateve thei meits, they ae hady the eason fo thepecuia fact about ethics with whch 1 am concened. My pupose hee s to

undestand why Sidgwick's queston, with whh 1 began, aises even in odinayethica thought, despie ts unquaed ealism and its qualied cognitivism We aein a position now to conside the st pat of Sdgwicks answe to that question


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6 PANAYOT BUTCHVAROV

Being often ton between what we know we ougt to do and what we want todo, we natually tend to demand easons fo doing te fome. But i we do knowwhat we ought to do, then we ave sufcient easons, peaps al te easons thatthee could be, fo believing tat we ougt to do it, and so Sidgck's question "Whyshoud 1 do what 1 see to be ight?" seems to contain its own answe, namely,"Because 1 it to be ight," though fo easons sha11 note late he ignoes tis factAnd et us suppose we have also taken stock of a11 of ou incinations fo not doingwhat we see to be igt The esolution of the conict then cals not fo additionaeasons o consideations, since e thee aen't any, even if we exploit theambiguity of the pomiscuous wod "eason" between what Hutcheson caled justiingand exciting easons. Rathe, as Pichad pointed out,8 the esolution of the conictca1s simply fo . Yet, being by natue tuth-especting ceatues, we want oudecisions to be based, as we say, on the facts, and feeling the powe of ou containcinations we ae tempted to question whethe afte alwe do eay know what weought to do nd, iwe geneaize the question, which as tuth-especting ceatues wemay also do, to suppose that thee is a special epistemological pobem about ethicsAnd then we eithe poceed to ty to esove it o cut the knot by adopting somenoncognitivist o ieaist position Kant wote "Man fees in himsef a powefucounteweight to a11 the commands of duty pesented to him by eason as so wothy ofesteem--the counteweiht of his needs and inclinations . . . Fom this thee aises a

--that is, a disposition to quibble with these stict laws of duty, tothow doubt on thei vaidity o at least on thei puity and stictness . . .,9

What makes this "natual diaectic" possible is that while a valid agument isnecessaiy -peseving, it is not necessaiy -peseng, that thee is aogica gap between agument and beief, nd in genea (thus inluding udgmentsmade not on gounds of argument but on gounds of sef-evidence) between easonand beief Howeve, contay to what Sidgwick impies, this is not a fact imited toethics. t is a fat about human natue that thee is a duaity of eason and beief, butthis duaity asts no egitimate doubt on the ponouncements of eason. The mostfamiia and east contovesia exampe of this fact is the eative inecac ofaguet o poitial and eious beiefs. Some consevatives eventua11y becomeibeas, and some libeas eventuay become onseatives, but hady as a result ofagument. And some sopomoes can nd nothing wong with te pemises andvaidity of a simpe vesion of the cosmological ament fo the estence of God andyet esoutey efuse to beieve that its conclusion is tue, pesumaby because theyconside themselves too enightened to do so, thou tey cheefu11y accept a causalagument fo the existence of te extenal wold whic has simila local stuctuebut vitua11y uninte11ige pemises about ou "sensations."

Fa ess common, yet hady unfamiia, exampes concen pecisely whatSidgwic aed physis ad mathematics. n a ecent atice, a psychiatist te11s us ofa eson who is "unabe to sto washing," because he is "haunted by the notion that hewas dty--in spite of the contary evidence of is senses," and of anothe peson whoonstantly cecks the doo to make sue tat it is locked. The psychiatist 1 amquoting ca11s such a peson "an ultimate skeptic who cannot cedit his sense data ohis attempts to efute the obsession by means of loc The suffee cannot accepteassuing infomation," he is unabe to beieve.'O EIsewhee, ou psychiatist wites:


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DEMAND FOR JUSTFCATION IN THCS 7

"Ths is a disease tha may be tought of as skepticism gone wild. (Te Frechapty ca itfoe de doute). A exmple invovng matemti is described as foUows by a ptiet: 1 ave stayed tiU midnigt at my lboratoy compeUed to chec my

omputer's implet calculations by and. he work s unpublihed because I cannever be certan tat te numbers were averaged correcty. ,2 An exampe of filureto believe te concusion of a simple deducive argment even afte accepting itspremises and acnowledng its vaidiy miht be te oen cied cse of a parent whorefuses to believe that er son s dea but not bese of any doubts abot theevidce or about its ogcal sfciency.

We do't need to go o psychiat for such examples. It is the trenchcy ofthe descripions of some of hem tat ed me to incle the above quotations. Succass ar ardy unkown to s and what they exempi may be familiar to us I hope

in a very mil form from our own experience--especally if we ae epistemolosts.Nevertheless thoug n mathematical and empiricl ordina tought sh cases dooccur tey ae relatively rare and we ae iclined to regad tem as ses of madnssor if you imagie this to be more iminating foUow te American Psyciatric Association's iaostic and Statistica Manua of Menta Disorde (DSM I1I) and ca itObsessivCompulsiv Disorder (OCD). mora ordina thought however teyar commo and we regard pople who tend to ignore the dictates of rason nt asmad or even s unusua but js as immora

erhaps t most discssed cas in ethics s tat of te egost. It occuped mch of

Sidgck's attention and prhaps was part of wat he had in mind when pointng outhe specia epstmic demnds we mae on ethi and ten explaiing them by appeang to te divesity of metod a principes present n odinay ethia toght.1 tink moral piosopers ake it more seriously han it eserves to be aken but t is

very famiar and provies s wih a particulary sitabe exampl. Sdgick assrtdtat te prpl o bevone roghly tat one oght to promot t nrlgoodwhich for m was unvrsl appnss is on of the thre mams o ts fond sfevdnt compable i sefevidce to matematia propstions (pp 383,507). Yt h aso wrote t obvios aeement tat evn if e does admit te sfvdnce of ths principe one "may stil od tat is o happiness is an end whch it

s rtona or im to sacrice for any otr" (p. 498) even thogh earr adhed ta to dscrib n action as ratiol or reasonabe is to say tat t ought to bedone (p 23; se aso t ntry fr sction of chapter I in t anatic table ofcontets p. iv) tat is he hd expicatd he notion of a rationa ction n terms ofthe notion of an ction tat oug to be done te exact oppsite of current fasionSo Sidgick fond it sefevidn tht one ougt to omote te genera hapinessie that ts is te rational hing to do and yet caimed tat th egoist migt justably od t his is irrationa e inconsistency seems obvios. Wy dd Sdgkf into it?3

Te answer 1 sest can e fond in Sidgwick's writing of one' specalconce or one's o appiness of ts ing impoant to one of te agd fact that"t s cotrary to Commo Sens to dy ha the distinction betwe any oinivda and ay ther s utimate and fdamenta and that cosequenty 'l' amconcerned with the quaity of my existence as an individual n a sense fndamentay


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8 PANAOT BUTCHVAROV

mportant, n wc I am not concerned wt te qalty of te estence of oterndvdals" (p 498). As Moore was to exclam later, Wat does aU ts mean?14Srely not tat te mere fact tat one has special concern for someting, tat the

hng is mportant to one, s eo ipso relevant to te qeston wether te ting can beratonally desred and prsed (Ts may be Bernard Wlliams's vew, bt t was notSidgck's) And ow does the mere numercal dirence between oneself andanoter generate a qaltatve difference between one's moral relation to oneself andone's moral relaton to te oter? Egosm may be togt of as te ltmate pocy ofscrmnation, namely, dscrmnation aganst everyone ese, nntely rratonal wencompred t poltcal dscrmination on gronds of race or sex for race and sex atleast are qaltatve dfferences, rrelevant tog they are Te egoist does notappeal even to rrelevant dfferences, since it s no part ofh vew tat e as specalqaltes justng hs policy of dscrmnaton rely wat n be letimately meant

by Sgwic in ts passage s only tat the self-evdence of te prncple of benevolence may, ndeed sally does, fail to eings sels inclnaton wen iconct wt t, and tat sc nclinaton s common, ndeed natral We do not havehere a parado or a dalism, of practal reason, wic col be ven only ateological resoltion, as idgwic seemed to beieve, but just an especiaUy vvd and

very familar example of te logcal gap between reason and belef Df corse, one'sncnations need not be in conflict t reason; tey cold be directed toward greatgoods, ncldng one's own appiness, te prst of wch may be qute compatble

wth te dctates of reason

Te cief attraction of etcal egosm, I sest, s psycolocal, not local,or metapyscal, or epstemologcal, or dalectcal, except n te case of plosopherso een t or systematc reasons, eg, becase tey accept psycooca egosm,or some evolutonary ypotesis, or some Fredan teory, or possbly metapyscalsolpssm olpssm seems to provde by far te most nterestng reason; t s a logcally mpeccable (toug trvaly so) bass for egosm, and s certainly tself qte defensbe on epstemoocal onds Bt, for obvos reasons, actal defenses of tare even arder to nd tan stragtforward defenses of egosm At any rate, I saUnot be concerned wt sc plosopers in ts paper Te truth s tat al of s areto a great etent sels, myself and hosewo may aee wt at I say n ts paperno ess (possbly more) so tan those wo wold not, and so we ave a motve forfallng into bad fat by belevng tat or sesness is stied by reason Dr, dscoverng tat no sch stcaton is possble, we faU deeper nto bad fat by askngte nonegost to jst his poston and by nsstng tat e do so n ways tat clerlyare impossble, eg., to show s a property of gooness or badness, of rgtness orwrongness, tat is visble to us as colors are, or to on s position n, of all thngs,pyscs! And when ths demand is, ofcorse, not met, we may snk even deeper ntobad fath. We may conclde that ethcal jdgents cannot be jstied at aU becausethey lack cogntve content and merey express personal atttudes or nterests. Dfcourse, e need not go that far Instead of fallng nto bad fath, we sometmes re-

solve the conct by making excses, n the ordnary sense of ths term. ("1 coln'thelp it. The money was too much to pass up"). But ethics affects us much too deeplyand broadly for mere excses to be very effectve


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DEMAN D FOR JUSTIFICATION IN THICS 9

What happens, suest, would not be unlike an investor's beoming anonotvst regardng mathematcs because of the dsastros, life-shatterng resutsof his calculation of his assets ater a stock market crash. t's just that we wou

regard suc a case as one of maness, though proaly temporry, presuma beause t wold be so eraordnary. And t woud e exrordnary becase matheatc concuson one strony dskes woud e n soate se even n one'sown e; one has many other uses or mathemat that involve no cont betweenreason an incination. There is a cler sense n whch mathematc does not drectlyhave a practical a, as ethics does Had t been otherwse, we mght hve madeunreasonae demands for justcation on mathematcs as well.

Sdgwick tred to explan why people commony ask, Why should do what see to be rght?," even though, as have sad, the question seems to contan ts own answer

("Because see it to be rght",) a fat he gnored presumay ecause of s concernoer eoism, his belief tht egosm is not rratonal15 ut what have done nstead isto try to explain the apparenty very ierent fact tht people oen question, indeedeny, what they see to e rght. As 1 sha pont out shorty, Sdck's question wasst on the right track, but ony i t is not cheapened by beng confused with te question o weakness of the wi (to whch, strctly speakng, it s rrelevant), or wt thequeston supposey asked y the eost, whether dong what one sees to e rhtwou e n one's self-interest (whch has an obvios answer, acnowledged y Sdgck: sometmes t wold, sometimes it would not, an nswer even Pato's philosophers acnowedged when they chose to return to the cave and serve as ns). Se

ducton may sueed because passion literay overpowers mora convction, yet ithout shaking it in te est. But it ay succeed aso ecause moral convtion sshaken, egins to wave, ecomes corroed y "rationalizaton," perhaps is entirelyestroye. The former case is true weaness of the l, whch s made possible by theoica gap etween belief an acton which oten is also a ap beween belief andeeg sie atio oe involves eeling. e latter cae e ver ere enomenon wit which this paper s concerned; it s made possible by the logica gap

etween reason and belief.16 (Incidentally, the gap between bee and action, oreeling, accounts, at leas in part, for the undoubted fact hat the coitvst s in general not more lely to be mora than the nonotvst the former's mora faures

are generally explained by weaness o the wll, though sometimes y the fasty of hsmoral eliefs, the atter's mora successes are sufcienty explained y the inability ofbeief to destroy or even weaken eepy ingraned ways of acting and feeing).

An the question beore us shold not be confused wth that supposedyse y the egoist, for besides the obvousness of the nswer to it mentionedearlier, eoists should not ask it at all snce they see nothn to be rght ness t s inther se-nterest Moreover, it s not ony wth selsh ncinaton that reason mayconict. Atristc behavor (e.g., a foosh sefsacrce prompted y sexua passion)and behavor not directed toward peope at al e.g. devoton to an uworthy artstc

oal are also sometmes contrry to reason, perhas y voatng Sdc's prncleof puence and ocasion se-ecevn questionin o ts ictates

To elon in the conte where t occurs the benning o Te Metod ofEhcs), to have the generality evidenty attributed to it by him, and to be essentially


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1 0 PANAYOT BUTCHAROV

epistemologica, as it obviously was take by him to be, Sidgick's questio must beuderstood rather as askig, at least i part, "Why should 1 beeve what 1 see to beght?" Ad this s merey a special case of the questo "Why should I believe what 1see to be true," just the questio Sidgc claimed people ever ask. Whether they door do ot is beside the pot, though we have see reaso to thik that sometimesthey may, at east by impliaton whe they say that they do ot, a ot, beieve whatthey see to be true. What is to the poit is that the question, though it too seems tocota its own answer, maes sese by in effect akowledging the gap betweenreaso ad belief and thus drawi attetion to the deeper ssue before us

This is why my explanato rested on poitg out that there is a neral gap betwee reaso ad belief, that there are cases eve outsde ethics i which this gap seviet. It's just that suh cases, for example, refusig to accept the result o f a alculatio or the death of your child, are rare. ethcs, 0 the other had, preisely beause its aim is essential practical, that is, oered th coduct, whle the aims ofmathematics ad physics are oly icdentay or occasioally practical i this sese,suh ases are commo. Ad this is why we make special epistemic demads oethcs. For it is ot at all obvious why we geerally, though ot always, believe whatwe see to be true eve outside ethics. Or, if you thk that seeig something to betrue etals beieving it, I ca put the poit as follows it is not obvious why we generally believe the coclusio of a argumet the validity and premises of whih we haveacepted, or why we generally believe a propositio we d selfevidet. There s 0otraditio saying that someoe acepts a erta argument as valid ad itspremses as true but does not acept its coclusio, or ds a ertain propositio selfevident i the sense that he ds hmself uable to mae or oeive of bei mstake about it, but does ot elieve it. Ideed, as Hume poited out regardi ourbelef an eernal world, sometimes the opposte ours: belief is ushaeabe eveif we thik reaso is uequivocally opposed to t. That usualy, outsde ethics, we be-eve, to use Sdgick's termiolo, what we see to be true is a deep fat about human nature, whatever its explaato, the fat that we respect truth. But it is also adeep fact about huma ature that oe we do not beleve, ot jus do ot do, whatwe see to be true i ethics. And, 1 suest, we do have a explaatio of ths latterfat, amey, that in ethis we oen do not wat what we see to be true to be true. So

we look for ways of deyig that it realy is true ad make eravagat epistemolocaldemads 0 ethics to show us that it really is true, demads we would ot ordiarymake 0 mathematics or physics.

Por example, we ask for a dervato of oughtstatemets from isstatemetsi ethis, but in mathematcs ad physics it would ot even our to us to ask for adervatio of isstatemets from oughtstatemets. (An exepto is Joh Lsie, in hismportat book Va/ue and Estence.)18 Or we thi that the reality of ethia propertes must rst be demostrated if ethcs is to be a geuiely ogitve disciplie, butwe seldom thik, with several philosophers now beig exeptios, that the reality ofumbers must rst be demonstrated if arithmetic is to be a geuinely ogitve disci-plie. Or we thk that we must have a clear accout of the ature of our kowledgeof a ethical proposito such as "Friedship is a good" if we are to accept t as ge-uie kowledge, but we do ot thnk that we must have a clear aout of the atureof our kowledge of the propositon "Three ad wo s ve" if we are to aept it as


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DEMAND FOR JUSTIFICATION IN ETHICS 1 1

genuine knowledge. Or we demand that ethcal facts play an expanatory role,thogh again wth some philosophers being exceptions it wold not even occr to sthat any indirect explanatory role mathematc may be spposed to play s what pro

id it th its loy cognitve stats. My seston has been that there s nothng nethics tat explas sc discrimnatory treatment. Wat explans it s in us, te speca stake we aU ave i ehics. We are trt-respectin creatres n the sense tatwe want to believe wat we see to be tre, for ts o sae not jst becase belevnit wold be sefl. Bt we also ave oter desres wc may conct wt or desrefor trt. !t's st tat otsde etcs sc a conct s ot peasve or systematc. Sootsde ethics we do not sally as wy we sold believe wat we see to be tre ordemand proofs tat t really is tre

Bt or explanation s not yet complete . We need also an explanation of why

we tae ethical trth as relevant. Why don't we st set t aside when t conicts wthor inclinations, even thoh still respectin t still acnowledgin it and not makinnreasonable demands for stcation of or acnowledment of it? What needs tobe added to or explanation is that n addton to ben by natre creatres worespect trt, we are by natre also creatres wo love te ood (and te rght, if thss not redcible to the ood) n the sense tat we want to do t presee t, prse t,and promote t. Logically, the ltmate qestion tat enerates te exorbtant demandfor stication in ethics is "Wy shold we do or promote the od of whosegoodness we are aware?," and so Sdwc's statement of it was on the rht trac.t its special mportance becomes evdent oly f it s seen to presppose the

signicance of te qeston "Why sold we beleve wat we see to be te?" Indeed,we ask t becase or doin or promotin the ood s so very freqently n conictwith or inclinations t what is interestin and mportant is that very oen we try toresolve the conict by qestonin the epstemic credentals of or belief that what wesee as ood is really ood. For or respect for tr does not allow s to simplygnore or awareness of the good, and or love of the gd does not allow s tosimly ignore te ood So, nwllin to beleve and do wat we see to be ood, weface three otons One is to scorn trth, bt tis wold volate te sbstance of orlife as trthrsecting, as rational bengs, t wold be ncompatible wth or selfrespect . Another is to scorn oodness bt this wold volate the meanin of or life

as lovers of the ood, t wold be ncompatble wt or nterity. The hird opton sthe one 1 have discssed in this paper: to qeston, peraps even deny, the trth abotthe ood we see and hs to seem to orselves to avoid scornn trth as well as toavoid scornin odness and ths to enjoy wth what seems to s clear conscience thecomfort of doin wat we feel lie don.

Of corse many qestons may and ot to be ased now. 1 ave appeaedo man nare. How do we now wa man nae s and wt noles?Clearly, no lexcal or stiplatve denition or biolocal crteron or psycologicalstatistical enealization s what we want. 1 shall conne myself here o man te

somewat cryptc, bt radcal n its mplcatons seston tat one's nowlede ofman natre s lie one's nowede of te core of one's natve lanae StaleyCavell wrtes: "[wen a pilosoper appeas to ordnary lanae e] s not claminsomethn as tre of the world, for whc e s prepared to offer a bassscstatements are not synthetc; e s clamn somethng as tre of hmself (of hs


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1 2 PANAYOT BUTCHVAROV

'world, 1 keep wantg to say) for which he is offering himself, the detais of hisfeelg ad conduct, as author."19 (My emphasis).

1 have also used the Sartrean term "bad faith, though not exacty in hs sensebut i the broader sense of "sef-deceptio, which c be take to invove not justbelieng and not believig (or even disbelieng) one and the same proposition at thesame time but aso the manifestations of the gap between reason and belief withwhich 1 have been concerned. Ad it may now be asked, "How is self-deceptionpossible?" There has been vauable work i recent years o this question,20 but itsauthors probably would (and many explicitly do) aee that any aswer proposedmust be defended by swerig the obvious next two questions. The t is, "What isthe nature of belie" We would hardly understand what self-deception is if we don'thave an adequate underanding of belie. And we don't seem to have such anuderstanding. For example, it is most doubtful that there are occurrent states,conscious or unconscious, that can reasonably be called beiefs ("beliegs"), and thenotion of dispositiona belief is even more obscure than the general notion ofdisposition, since to be beief a dispositiona beief must have propositional cotent,ad how can a disposition have that? (A dispositiona belief can be manifested i theassertions of many very different propositions, just as bad temper can be manifestedin many very dierent actios.) My sueston, again radical but this time hardycryptic, is that recent phiosophy has for too ong been leaing on the crutch of theconcept of belief, ad that the "way of beliefs" is due for retirement, just as "the newway of ideas" of the seventeenth and the eighteeth centuries was due for, and forcedinto, retirement.

The secod question about selfdeception is, of course, "What is the nature ofthat sef-deceiving self?" Contempora alytic phiosophers have discussed at eatength the question of personal identity, but not eough the logicaly prior question ofthe nature of that which may or may not remain identical through time, of the entityHume (and Wittgesten in the ) coud not "d. Sartre did devote muchattention to it, precisely i order to explai the possibility of bad faith. We may otaccept his radical theory of seood, but 1 suest that any adequate theory woudhave to be radica.

Needless to say, this is ot the place to embark o a discussion of any ofthese questons. Yet it would be either false sophistcation or ntellectua cowardiceto sst that unti they are aswered we should not attempt to understad why exorbitant demads for justicaton are made on ethics.21 O

ENDNOTES

e Metods of ics, 7th ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1962), pp. 4-6 .

2 Iid


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DEMAND FOR JUSIFCATO I EHICS 1 3

3 See hs "Does oral Philosophy Rest on a istake," included in Mora/Obgation and Du and Interest Oord, London, New York: Oord UiversityPress, 1968) pp. 1-2. 16-17.4 If we think that mathematics is an eeption, le us reall Spinozas view tat,y using what i On e Improvement of the Undetanding) he alls "the seond modeof pereption," "radesme" aquire knowledge of universal mathematial propositions"from theirexperiene with simple numbers;" the propositios are lerned inductively ad ontinue to be accepted partly beause they explain some of he tradesmas successes.

5 Thomas Nagel, Te Vew m Nowhere New York, Oord: OordUniversity Press, 19), p. 1.

6 For various formal characteriations of the alleged relatio of superenience,see Jaegwon K, "Concepts of Supervenience," Philosophy and Phenomen% gca/Research, 1984), pp. 257-70.

7 Skepticism in Ethics Bloomingto and Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress, 1989)

8

2.

See "Duty ad Ineres, in Mora/ Ob/igation and Du and Inrest pp. 225-

9 Gundwork of the Metaphysics of Mora/s New York: Harper and Row,1964), p. 73, tras. H. . Paton.

10 Judih L Rapoport, "The Biology of Obsessions and Compulsions," ScienticAec, vo. 2 n. 3 Ma 1989), pp. 82-89. Evan ales dew my attention tohis artice.

1 1 udith L . Rapoport, T e Boy o Cou/dn't Stop Washing: Te peence andreatment of Obsessve-Compu/sive Disorder New York: Dutto, 1989), p. 18.

12 id., p. 2.

13 1 should ote that the principle of prudence, which is one of the three principes Sidgwck found self-evdet, merely enjois impartial concern for all temporalparts of ones conscious l p. 381), and thus, contrary to what Sidgwck says muchlater (p.48), is ompaible wh the priciple of benevolence Sidck's third selfedet pple is ha of jusie: "if a kind of conduct that is right or wrog) or meis not right (or wrong) for some one else, it must be on the ound of some differencebetween the wo ases, othe than the fat that 1 and he are dierent persons" p.

379) This priniple does not exactly cotradict egoism, sce the egoist may be lligto niersalize his view, but i is oviously incompatie with the spirit of egoism.

14 Pnipia Ethia Cambridge: Cambridge Uniersity Press, 13), p . 9.


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1 4 PANAY BUTCHVAROV

5 Whether the question really contans is on nser ould depend, ofcourse, on ho e nerpret e crucial ords "shoud" and "righ." If he questionere "Wy oug 1 o do hat 1 see 1 ought o do, hen of course does contan s

own anser. To be nerestng, it mus be understood as presupposing a gap beeeneither (a) duy and sel-nerest, or (b) duty and acon, or (e) reason and belef, andthen as asking for a brdge beeen em. Te ord soud" is vague enough toserve in all tree cases, as ell as in the paradiac case in hich i s a synonym of"ought."

16 Ts does no resolve e Greek puzze oer akrasa, usually translaed as incontinence or eakness of he ll, for he gap beteen beief and acon may st l bepuzzing, bu the inroduction of the dsinct noion of he gap beeen reason andbelief seems to me to render te puzze more manageable, at leas by reducing o

o, ough inmately related, puzzes.

7 Se e above, note 3.

8 Totoa, N.J.: Rowman and Litleeld, 979

19 Te Claim of Reason (Oord: Clarendon Press, 979), p. 79

2 For exampe (and ese are only exampes from a vas leraure), HerberFngarette, Se-Deception (Atlantc Hglands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 9); Mke

W. Martin, Self-Deception and Mora (Larence, Kansas: Unversity Press ofKansas 986) the essays by various authors in Mke W Martn, Se-Deception andSel-Understanding (Larence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 985)

2 Versions of tis paper ere read a meetngs of te Metaphysca Sociey ofAmerca, Te Centra States Philosopical Associaton, and he Deparment of Philosophy of The University of Ioa. 1 am indebted to many pilosophers ho commened on i at hose meetings. 1 ave aso beneted from generous and very vauable comments by the Editor.

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