Moral Particularism

332 Pages·2001·4.388 MB·English

by  Brad Hooker, Margaret Olivia Little

Moral Particularism
Edited by
BRAD HOOKER and
MARGARET OLIVIA LITTLE
CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD
MORAL PARTICULARISM

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ISBN 0-19-823883-5
CONTENTS
Introduction Vll
List of Contributors Xll
1. Moral Particularism: Wrong and Bad
BRAD HOOKER
2. Particularizing Particularism 23
RoGER CRISP
3. The Truth in Particularism 48
]OSEPH RAZ
4. Ethical Particularism and Patterns 79
FRANK ]ACKSON, PHILIP PETTIT, AND MICHAEL SMITH
5. Ethics as an Inexact Science: Aristotle's Ambitions for Moral
Theory 100
T. H. IRWIN
6. The Particularist's Progress 130
JoNATHAN DANCY
7. Ethical Particularism in Context 157
DAVID BAKHURST
8. Particularity and Principle: The Structure of Moral Knowledge 178
]AY GARFIELD
9. Against Deriving Particularity 205
LAWRENCE BLUM
10. Why Practice Needs Ethical Theory: Particularism, Principle, and Bad
Behaviour 227
MARTHA NussBAUM
11. Unprincipled Ethics 256
DAVID McNAuGHTON AND PIERS RAWLING
12. Moral Generalities Revisited 276
MARGARET OLIVIA LITTLE
Vl Contents
Bibliography 305
Index 313
INTRODUCTION
Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little
Moral particularism is currently one of the most widely discussed-and
hotly contested-issues in ethical theory. Spurred in large part by reactions
to the writings of John McDowell and Jonathan Dancy, philosophers con
tinue to divide between those who find particularism's claims insightful
and those who find them exaggerated or wrong-headed. Indeed, philoso
phers continue to divide over how best to interpret what claims 'moral par
ticularism' is meant to represent in the first place. In this collection, we
present a dozen new essays by theorists who take up the controversy.'
The collection begins with those who are sceptical of moral particularism.
In Chapter 1, Brad Hooker argues that adherents of the doctrine are overly
impressed with the dangers of moral principles. He contends that, while the
search for such generalizations has at times led to crudeness in theory, the
particularist's response of jettisoning such principles introduces dangers that
are far deeper. Starting from the premise that certain 'non-trivial general
rules seem overwhelmingly sensible', Hooker argues that, once we isolate
what particularism must claim in order to count as a distinctive thesis, we will
see that the arguments proffered in its favour are unpersuasive. Indeed, faith
ful followers of particularism would precisely fail to display the reliability we
seek to develop in-and hope to rely on in-moral agents.
Next, Roger Crisp in Chapter 2 distinguishes amongst various forms of
particularism and argues that the true forms are uncontroversial and the
controversial ones false. After arguing that self-described generalists can
accommodate important insights about the incommensurability of values
and the ineliminable need for judgement, Crisp criticizes the idea that
underlies Jonathan Dancy's radical particularism, namely, the idea that a
full specification of the reason for acting in some way can, in another con
text, fail to constitute a reason or even constitute a reason for acting other
wise. Crisp argues that such variance means that the reason cannot then be
complete. Just as we do not in science take an explanation as complete if the
1 Two of the pieces, Joseph Raz's and (an expanded version of) Martha Nussbaum's, are
also appearing in other fora.
Introduction
Vlll
factors cited could in another case lead to the opposite result, we should
not do so in ethics. Since Dancy himself demands that a difference in con
siderations be cited when comparing two cases, Crisp urges, there is no
good reason for stopping there.
Joseph Raz continues to press on the particularist's model of explana
tion. A sensible 'intelligibility principle' requires that there must be an
explanation for the difference between a good and a bad action. If we agree
that we must be able to cite a difference in pair-wise comparisons, we
should agree that such a difference must be found more generally, and we
recover pressure towards exceptionless principles. More specifically, on
Dancy's view, a complete specification of an agent's reason for acting as he
does can cite considerations that, in a different context, count as reasons
against so acting. This means, Raz points out, that what determines the
moral status of an action must extend beyond what the agent's reason for
acting is. But this claim, Raz urges, 'drives a wedge' between the evaluative
and the guiding functions of reasons, distorting what it is for an agent to be
guided by reason in the first place.
Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Michael Smith continue the sceptical
press on particularism's notion of explanation, this time with a semantic
argument. While particularism is compatible with the doctrine of moral
supervenience (the doctrine, roughly, that any moral difference must be
accompanied by some nonmoral difference), it must reject the idea that
there are patterned nonmoral differences underlying attributions of moral
properties. Yet this second claim, they urge, is essential to making sense of
semantic competence with ethical concepts. The explanation of the consis
tency in our use of our evaluative concepts has to find pattern in the nat
ural. By abandoning the commitment to pattern at the natural level, the
particularist renders mysterious how we could learn or justify our use of
moral concepts and terms.
In 'Ethics as an Inexact Science', T. H. Irwin argues that a close examina
tion of Aristotle's texts indicates that he cannot, as it is often thought, be
pressed into service as an ally to particularists. For Aristotle, some moral
generalizations are, in certain respects, normatively prior to particulars in
explanation, justification, and knowledge. Looking closely at Aristotle's
acknowledgement that morality includes 'usual' generalizations, Irwin
argues that Aristotle takes some moral principles with exceptions to be nat
ural norms, not mere statistical frequencies. Irwin goes on to argue that, as
in science, these moral principles are 'usual' not because the exceptions
cannot be specified, but because an exhaustive specification of them would
be irrelevant to the normative function of the principles.
Introduction
IX
Next, in Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 comes a series of essays by theorists iden
tified as broadly sympathetic to the particularist enterprise. Jonathan
Dancy continues to advance the radical thesis that every consideration is
capable of varied moral salience; his main concern, though, is not to defend
this claim against possible exceptions but 'to break the stranglehold' of the
generalist conceptions of how moral reasons must function. Emphasizing
that particularism is an outcrop of holism, he argues that the latter allows
us to understand why explanations of an action's moral status can be com
plete without guaranteeing the same result in another context. Here he
defends and expands the scope of his project to defend holism in the realm
of epistemic and practical reasons, and in the realm of values and choice.
He argues, intriguingly, that the availability of another alternative may
change not just an agent's bottom-line decision, but a prior ranking of
other alternatives. Dancy also argues that such a view is still compatible
with the possibility offull ordering of values.
In Chapter 7, David Bakhurst argues that the contextualism set forth in
Alasdair Macintyre's After Virtue can be adjoined to Dancy's particularism
to yield a more satisfying picture of the moral domain. A moral person
must, as it were, have certain lingering commitments or concerns-she
must set herself in favour of certain sorts of things and against others.
Unless we can make sense of this, we can have no account of the structure
of moral personality. To cash out these enduring concerns in terms of prin
ciples conceived as rules of thumb, as particularists sometimes try to, is,
Bakhurst thinks, implausible. So he tries to show how a particularist can
think of such concerns as being directed to certain morally significant fea
tures, and yet to do so in a way that does not contradict Dancy's idea that,
in any particular case, the features in question may not be morally relevant
per se (that is, they do not there contribute to the overall value of the case).
Jay Garfield argues that if we take seriously certain broadly Aristotelian
and Wittgensteinian lessons alluded to by John McDowell, we will see that
particularism is not merely defensible, but superior as an account of moral
epistemology and moral psychology. Exploring the issues through a sus
tained examination of Ono ra O'Neill's writing, he distinguishes two kinds
of rules. Some rules are capable of relatively mechanical application. But
other rules, like moral principles, require experience to learn, judgement
to apply, and admit of ever increasing expertise. Garfield defends a
Wittgensteinian account of why consistency need not be found at the nat
ural level, and argues that, far from straining our understanding of the
moral life, such a view provides a better explanation of moral motivation
and competency.
X Introduction
Lawrence Blum explores in detail one of the most important threads
related to the debate over particularity and generality, namely, the role of
partiality in the moral life. He applauds the renewed appreciation of par
tiality in moral literature, but finds that claims to accommodate partiality's
importance often, on closer examination, still turn out to judge the moral
life by impartiality's lights. In this chapter, Blum distinguishes amongst,
and argues against, different versions of this move, discussing in detail one
such prominent attempt by certain consequentialists.
The final three chapters are by theorists who, identified in their writ
ings as sympathetic to particularism's lessons, seek here to refine or relo
cate those lessons by reconsidering the proper roles of generality. Martha
Nussbaum responds to the charge, common in some circles, that moral
theory, especially in its Enlightenment versions, is needless and danger
ous. She argues that such charges are misdirected. Invoking the Stoics' tri
partite distinction amongst theories, rules, and concrete judgements, she
argues that objections to moral theory are at best objections to the idea
that such theory could reduce to a system of rules (a reduction, she adds,
that no major historical figure has advanced). Rules of action, while use
ful, do have limitations; they admit, for instance, of exceptions, and they
set aside concern over the psychology of those who act. But theory, with
its explicitness, abstraction, and generality, is precisely the arena that sup
plements these limitations: for instance, by making perspicuous the 'point
and purpose' of a given rule, it allows one to see where exceptions to it
are warranted. Indeed, she argues, the real danger is presented by those
who advocate the overthrow of theory; without abstraction and general
ity, we could not have made the strides we have in the battle against injus
tice.
In 'Unprincipled Ethics: Piers Rawling joins with David McNaughton,
one of the ground -breaking authors on particularism, to defend a brand of
moderate particularism. They distinguish amongst different versions of
'intuitionism' by the types of properties to which one might deny invariant
moral import. They agree that nonmoral features carry variant moral rel
evance, since such features can enter moral principles only if they are
understood as carrying evaluative riders (conditions that cannot be spelled
out in purely nonmoral terms); but the same is not true of thick moral
properties such as justice, which should be seen as carrying invariant moral
valence. A more thoroughgoing particularism, according to which even
thick moral properties are accorded variant moral valence, cannot happily
explain the role that such concepts play in learning moral competency and
justifying subsequent beliefs.