Further Views on Argument

Further Views on Argument

A Moralist’s View: Ways of Thinking Ethically

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

—ernesthemingway

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truth between virtue and vice.

—henry davidthoreau

Elsewhere in this book we explain deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and legal reasoning. More familiar and probably more important is moral reasoning. If truth be told, virtually every essay reprinted in this book is an example of more or less self-conscious moral reasoning. (In passing, at the outset we note that we do not draw any distinction between morals and ethics or between moral reasoning and ethical reasoning. Apart from insignificant connotations, the terms moral and ethical differ mainly in their origins, ethical deriving from the Greek ethos, meaning "custom" or "manners," and moral deriving from the Latin moralis, meaning "moral" or "ethical.")

Moral reasoning has various purposes, particularly guidance for conduct—for what someone actually does or fails to do. In this light, consider the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37). On a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, a man is robbed by thieves, beaten, and left nearly dead. First a priest came along, "looked on him, and passed by on the other side." Then a Levite (an assistant to a temple priest) does the same thing. (Implied in the story is that both the priest and the Levite are fellow countrymen of the victim and so might well be expected to come to the man's aid.) "But a certain Samaritan…came where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion on him." The Samaritan bound up his wounds, took him to an inn, and paid for his lodging.

Jesus tells this story to answer the question, Who is my neighbor? In context, this amounts to the question, Which of the three passersby acts toward the beaten man in a truly neighborly manner? The answer, of course, is that only the Samaritan—a person from a different culture—does.

Most of the moral reasoning in this parable is left implicit by the Gospel writer. To understand the indifference of the priest and Levite to the plight of the victim, we might imagine them thinking as follows: "Nothing I have done or failed to do caused the victim to be robbed and assaulted, so I have no responsibility to interrupt my travels to care for him. Nothing binds him to me as kinship would; he and I are not neighbors in the ordinary sense of that term (persons who live nearby, in the same neighborhood), so I do not owe him assistance as I would to my kin and my immediate neighbors. His need gives him no claim on my attention. Finally, why put myself at uncertain risk in trying to help him? Perhaps the thieves are still in the vicinity, just waiting to pounce on anyone foolish enough to stop and give aid."

Clearly, Jesus implies that none of these reasons is adequate. His parable is intended in part to stretch our ordinary notion of what it means to be someone's neighbor. Jesus is in effect telling us that the beaten stranger ought to elicit the same concern and care that we would give to an assaulted family member, close friend, or immediate neighbor.

What makes Jesus' parable a story told from the moral point of view is that his implicit evaluation of the conduct of the three passersby depends on an unspoken moral principle that he believes but that he knows is not widely shared: We ought to help the needy even at some cost or risk to ourselves.

As a next step in the effort to deepen our grasp of moral reasoning, it is useful to be clear about what it isn't. To do that we need to think about two kinds of reasoning sharply contrasted to moral reasoning: amoral reasoning and immoral reasoning.

AMORAL REASONING

Amorality consists of conduct of no moral significance—that is, conduct not to be evaluated by reference to moral considerations. For example, suppose you are in the market for a used car. You want a two-door car and have narrowed your choices to three: a 2005 Honda, a 2006 Subaru, and a 2007 Toyota. No moral consideration enters your deliberation over which car to choose; morality is silent on your choice. Daily life is filled with examples of this sort, situations in which nothing of moral relevance seems to be involved, and so our decisions and choices can be made without worry over their morality or immorality. In short, for most of us, morality just does not control or pervade everything we do in life. And when we judge moral considerations to be irrelevant, we are dealing with what we regard as amoral matters.

Let us examine another example in greater detail. You are about to dine with a friend at a nice restaurant. The waiter brings you the menu, and you look it over, pondering whether to have an appetizer, order a bottle of white or red wine, choose fish or poultry for the main dish, and top it all off with dessert and coffee. Since the restaurant is noted for its cuisine, you are trying to design a meal for yourself worthy of the occasion. There is nothing particularly moral or immoral in your deliberations as you study the menu and make your choices. By eating in this restaurant, you are not depriving anyone else of their dinner, much less depriving them unfairly. You are not coercing others to turn over their food to you. You have not stolen the money to pay for your food. You are not breaking a promise to anyone to avoid this restaurant or to avoid rich and expensive restaurant food. You have no intention of leaving without paying the bill. Thus, various standard and familiar ways of acting immorally can be seen to play no role in your dinner deliberations.

On the other hand, there is no moral requirement that you dine in this restaurant or that you order this rather than that from the menu. You have no moral duty to have a feast, no obligation to anyone to have an expensive dinner. You have not promised anyone to dine in this restaurant. Your failure to dine there would flout no moral rule or principle.

Situations such as this, which call for reasoning and decision but where no moral principle or rule is involved, are without moral significance whichever way they are decided. To put this another way, in cases such as this, moral reasoning tells us we are permitted (neither prohibited nor required by morality) to go ahead with our restaurant meal as planned, and in this regard we may do whatever we like.

So the first of several questions that capture the idea of moral reasoning can be put this way:

• Is your (or someone else's) conduct prohibited or required by a moral rule or principle? If not, then it is probably not morally wrong: Morality permits you to act as you please.

Two kinds of considerations raised by this example deserve a closer look. First, if you are on a diet that forbids rich food, you are at risk in doing yourself some harm unless you read the menu carefully and order accordingly (no steak or other red meat, for example, and no fatty custards or sauces). The best way to treat yourself, we can probably agree, dictates caution in what you select to eat. But suppose you fail to act cautiously. Well, you are not acting immorally—although your behavior is imprudent, ill advised, and contrary to your best interests. We break no moral rule when we choose not to act in our own rational self-interest. The rule "Act always to promote your own rational self-interest" is not a moral rule.

Unless, of course, one's morality does consist of some form of self–interest, as in, for example, the views of the novelist-turned-philosopher Ayn Rand in her widely read book The Virtue of Selfishness (1965). Her defense of selfishness is exceptional and somewhat misleading—exceptional because very few moralists agree with her, and somewhat misleading because her main thesis—everyone would do better if each of us pursued only our own rational self-interest—is obviously contestable. Most moralists would insist that all of us do not do better if each of us acts without ever taking into account the needs of others except where they impinge on our own welfare. (For another version of a morality of selfishness, see the essay by Garrett Hardin.) Of course, any given moral code or moral principle is subject to criticism on moral grounds. Not all moralities—sets of moral principles that a person or a society holds—are equally reasonable, fair, or free of some other moral defect.

Second, if, for example, you are concerned about animal rights, you may see the choice between a meatless salad and a chef's salad as a moral issue. That is not the only way the choice of a meal may turn out to conceal a moral issue. The more expensive the dinner, the more you may feel uneasy about such self-indulgence when you could eat an adequate dinner elsewhere at one-third the cost and donate the difference to Oxfam or UNESCO. Many moralists would insist that we who are well fed in fact have a responsibility to see to it that the starving are fed. Some influential moral thinkers in recent years have gone even further, arguing that the best moral principles, preeminently the utilitarian principle that one always ought to act so as to maximize the net benefits among the available choices, require those of us in affluent nations to reduce radically our standard of living to improve the standard of living of people in the poorest nations. (See the essay by Peter Singer.) This example nicely illustrates how something as seemingly harmless and amoral as having an expensive meal in a nice restaurant can turn out, after all, to pose a moral choice—because one's moral principles turn out to be applicable to the case in question, even if the moral principles acknowledged by others are not.

IMMORAL REASONING

The most obvious reasoning to be contrasted with moral reasoning is immoral reasoning. Immorality, defined abstractly, is conduct contrary to what morality requires or prohibits. Hence a person is reasoning immorally whenever he or she is contemplating judgment or conduct that violates or disregards some relevant moral rule or principle.

We are acting immorally when we use force or fraud in our dealings with other people and when we treat them unfairly. Typically we act in these ways toward others when our motives are selfish—that is, when we act in ways intended to gain advantage for ourselves without regard to the effects that advantage will have on others. For example,

Suppose you are short of cash and try to borrow some from a friend. You don't expect your friend simply to give you the money, so

You know you will have to promise to repay her as soon as you can, say, in a week.

But you know you really have no intention of keeping your promise to pay her back.

Nonetheless, you make the promise—well, you utter words such as "Sure, you can rely on me; I'll pay you back in a few days"—and she loans you the money. Weeks go by. Eventually your paths cross and she reminds you that you haven't yet paid her back.

What to say? Some of your options:

Laugh in her face for being so naive as to loan you the money in the first place?

Make up some phony excuse, and hope she'll accept it?

Renew your promise to pay her back but without any change in your intention not to do so?

Act tough, and threaten her if she doesn't lay off?

Each of these is an immoral tactic, and deliberating among them to choose the most effective is immoral reasoning. Why? Because each of them violates a familiar moral principle (albeit rarely formulated expressly in words). First, promises are fraudulent if they are made with no intention to keep them. (Underlying that principle is another one: Fraud is morally wrong.) Second, promises ought to be kept. Whatever else morality is, it is a constraint on acting purely out of self-interest and in a manner heedless of the consequences for others. Making fraudulent promises and unfairly breaking genuine promises are actions usually done out of selfish intentions and are likely to cause harm to others.

The discussion so far yields this important generalization:

• If the reasons for your proposed judgment and conduct are purely selfish, they are not moral reasons.

Of course, there are exceptions to the two principles mentioned in the previous paragraph. Neither principle is a rigid moral rule. Why? Because on some occasions making a fraudulent promise or breaking a sincere promise can be excused, and on other occasions such conduct can be justified. (Or so most of us in our society think when we reflect on the matter.) Both invoking a legitimate excuse or justification for breaking a moral rule and rejecting illegitimate excuses or justifications, are crucial features of everyday moral reasoning. For example, you ought to be excused for breaking a sincere promise—say, a promise to meet a friend for lunch at a certain time and place—if your car gets a flat tire on the way. On the other hand, you would be justified in breaking your promise if, for example, while driving on the way to your lunch date you are late because you stopped to help a stranded motorist change his flat tire. In general,

• We excuse violating a moral rule when we argue that we know breaking it was wrong but it couldn't be helped, whereas
• We justify violating a moral rule when we argue that doing so was the right or the best thing to do in the circumstances.

We have now identified two more questions to keep in mind as you try to assess the morality of your own or someone else's reasoning. The first is this:

• Are the reasons you offer an attempt to excuse wrongful conduct? If so, is the excuse a legitimate one?

Typical excuses include these: "It was an accident; he couldn't help it; she didn't know it was wrong; they did it by mistake; we were forced to do it; I was provoked." The legitimacy of an excuse in any given case depends on the facts of the matter. Claiming that the harm you caused, for example, was an accident doesn't make it an accident. (Children are quick to learn these excuses and can be quite adept at misusing them to their own advantage.)

The second question to ask is this:

• Are the reasons you offer an attempt to justify breaking a moral rule knowingly? If so, is the proposed justification really convincing?

Typical justifications include these: "It was the best thing to do in the circumstances; the sacrifice was necessary to protect something else of greater value; little or no harm to others will be done if the rule is ignored; superior orders required me to do what I did." A justification is convincing in a given case just to the extent that it invokes a moral rule or principle of greater weight or scope than the rule or principle being violated.

MORAL REASONING: A CLOSER LOOK

What does this brief excursion into amoral and immoral reasoning teach us about moral reasoning? Just this: Moral reasoning involves (1) reasoning from moral rules, principles, or standards and (2) resolving conflicts among them, thereby placing limits on what one may do with a clear conscience.

This point can be restated as follows:

• Do the reasons you propose for your conduct violate any of the relevant moral rules you accept? If not, then your morality raises no objection to your conduct.

Morality and moral reasoning can be conveniently subdivided into several narrower areas. We are sexual beings, and our pursuit of sexual experience will inevitably raise questions about the morality of our conduct. Hence we often have occasion to think about sexual morality—our own and that of others. Sexual morality can be defined as the moral rules, principles, and standards relevant to judgment and conduct in which someone's sexual behavior is at issue. Similarly, political morality concerns the moral rules, principles, and standards with which people ought to conduct and evaluate political activities, practices, and institutions. Professional ethics all involve special rules, norms, and principles relevant to judgment and conduct, and these rules are often stated in the form of a code of ethics suitable to the judgments and conduct more or less unique to each profession (such as business, medicine, journalism, law). What is common to all such codes are prohibitions against coercion and misrepresentation, unfair advantage, and the failure to obtain informed voluntary consent from one's clients, patients, witnesses, and employees.

Second, the rules, principles, and standards that constitute a morality differ in different religions and cultures, just as they differ historically. The morality of ancient Greece was not the morality of feudal Europe or contemporary America; the morality of the Trobriand Islanders is not the same as the morality of the Kwakiutl Indians. This does not imply moral relativism—that is, the view that there is no rational ground on which to choose among alternative moralities. (The purely descriptive thesis that different cultures endorse different moral codes does not imply the evaluative thesis that one moral code is as good as another.) The fact that different cultures endorse different moral codes does, however, imply that there may be a need for tolerance of moral standards other than one's own.