Table Of ContentTHE CONCEPTS OF ETHICS
THE CONCEPTS
OF ETHICS
BY
SIDNEY ZINK
PalgraveMacmillan
1962
ISBN 978-1-349-81654-5 ISBN 978-1-349-81652-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-81652-1
Copyright©Sidney Zink 1962
Softcoverreprintofthehardcoveristedition1962978-0-333-08350-5
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED
London Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne
THEMACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
Toronto
ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC
New York
CONTENTS
PAGB
INTRODuCflON . ix-xv
CHAP.
I. VALUE 1-60
I. Terminology
2. Occasions and Uses of Value judgment 2
3· Can Ethics be a Science? 6
4· Are Ethical Sentences Declarative? 10
5· Are Values Simple? 15
6. Are Values Observable? 20
7· Is Value Relative? 23
8. Are there Mistakes about Values? 26
9· Is there Contradiction in EthicalJudgments? 37
10. Is there a Test for Values? 40
11. Is Value Intrinsic? 41
12. The Situational Relativityof Value 50
13· A Universal Condition of Value 56
11. DESIRE 61-85
I. The InterestTheory 62
2. The Concepts of Interest and Desire 64
3. Desire and Action 68
4. Does Value Existin a Relation? 74
5. Whatis the Relation of •Interest' to its Object? 77
6. Knowledge of Value and Interest 81
7. Final Objections to the InterestTheory 84
111. PLEASURE 86-123
I. Pleasure and Feeling 86
2. Pleasure and Desire 93
3· •Good' and •Bad' Pleasures 97
4· The Factors in the Value of Pleasure 99
5· Pleasure and Happiness 104
6. Criticisms of Hedonism 108
7· Pleasure and Virtue 113
8. The Appeal of Hedonism 122
v
vi THE CONCEPTS OF ETHICS
CHAP. PAGE
IV. OBLIGATION 124-189
1. Terminology 125
2> Judgments of Responsibility and Moral
Judgments of Praise and Blame 129
3. Judgments of Obligation 134
4. Subjective Obligation 136
5. Subjective Obligation and Punishment 143
6. Obligation and Good 153
7. Can an Action be Both Right and Good? 154
8. Is the Good Somethingthat Oughtto Be? 157
9. Are Particular Obligations, Obligations to
Realize Good? 162
10. Obligations to Oneselfand Moral Decisions 168
11. Rules of Obligation 17°
12. Rights 182
V. DECISION 190-206
1. The Elements of Practical Reasoning 190
2. The Best Reason 192
3· Practical Decisions and Technical Decisions 198
4· The General Objects of Choice cannot be
Hierarchically Graded 201
5· Rules ofPrudence 2°5
VI. RESPONSIBILITY 207-225
1. TheVoluntary 2°7
2. Are All Conditions of Responsibility'Negative'? 2°9
3. TheTwo Positive Conditions ofResponsibility 210
4. The Ability to Act 212
5. The DeterministThesis 215
6. Can We Do Away with the Conceptof
Responsibility? 216
7· The Determinist's Error 217
8. The Source of the Determinist's Error 223
VII. WILL. 226-242
1. The Special Featureof 'FreeWill' 226
2. 'Free', 'Able', and 'Free to Will' and 'Able
to Will'
227
3. Willing and Trying
229
4. Willing and Desiring 232
5· The Capacityto Tryas a Universal Condition
ofResponsibility
239
CONTENTS vii
CHAP. PAGE
VIII. CHOICE
I. Actingand Choosing
2. Responsibility and the Abilityto Choose
IX. INTENTION 256-291
I. We are Responsible only for Present Intentions 257
2. Acting IntentionallyisActing Knowingly 260
3. Objectionsto the PrecedingAccount 264
4. Intention and Prediction 268
5. TheEvidencefor Intentions 271
6. Intending and Trying 277
7. Is Intending a PersonalAbility? 280
8. Varieties of Non-intentional Acts 285
9. Intention as a Condition of Responsibility 288
INDEX 293
INTRODUCTION
THE ethical theorist tries to understand the concepts we
use in oureverydayethical decisions and judgments. Some
of these concepts are perfectly fundamental: such are
value, obligation and responsibility. It is the explicit or
implicit presence of one of these concepts in a judgment
whichenablesus to identifythejudgmentasethical. These
concepts involve others. In understanding value we are
driven to determine its relations to desire and to pleasure;
and in understanding responsibility we must analyze will,
choice and intention. I propose, then, to investigate these
concepts and their interrelations.
In my view ethics concerns events or objects which can
be known. But the problem of knowing these things is
not, like the problem of knowing other events and objects
of an empirical science such aschemistry or zoology, one of
obtaining experience of new phenomena. We are weIl
acquainted with the phenomena; the problem is to under
stand their relations. Whether this understanding involves
new 'observations' it isnotnow necessaryto decide. What
is involved is, at any rate, very different from what we
usually think of as 'observation'. It is like what is done
by the theoretical rather than the experimental physicist.
Themethodisnotto gatheranythingnew butto re-examine
what we have.
What we have are thoughts about these things - value,
obligation, responsibility. And the conspicuous and viable
form in which we have these thoughts are as modes of
verbal expression. In elucidating these concepts and their
relations I shall continually refer to the way we talk about
them. However, my objective is to elucidate not just the
way we talk about these things, butthe way we think about
them. There is a distinction; still, to do one is to do the
other. One cannot talk c1earlyon an extended scale while
not thinking c1early. One can, in a confused state of mind,
utterac1earsentence, but, asPlato showed, one cannotwrite
ix
x THE CONCEPTS OF ETHICS
a clear paragraph or engage in a clear dialogue. Further,
one eannot think at all without words or symbols. Thus
the elueidation of thought is the elueidation of words,
phrases and sentenees.
The method of treating philosophieal problems by a
eonjoint analysis of what we think and how we speak is, I
think, the dominant philosophieal method today. The
method, understood quite generally, is as old as Plato, but
in reeent times it has been given a new self-eonseiousness
and rigor by thework ofG.E.Mooreand LudwigWittgen
stein. (Moore's influenee is espeeially prominent in the
pages that follow; he is responsible not only for the mode
of philosophie method so widely praetieed, but also for the
way in whieh many eurrent problems in ethies are posed.)
To what degree their methods are alike is a tempting
question whieh eannot be broaehedhere. Briefly, however,
Moore typically referred to 'eommon sense', to what the
ordinary person must think, while Wittgenstein typieally
referred to ordinary language, to the way the ordinary
person talks. But both have in eommon a stress upon the
partieularease- uponelueidatingandtestingaphilosophie
proposition by eonsidering what this proposition eomes to
when its terms are taken in the way that we ordinarily take
them, and applied to the sorts of partieular eases to whieh
we would ordinarily apply them. Some reeent writers
O. K. Bouwsma eomes first to mind - have eoneentrated
their efforts almost exclusive1y on the detailed analysis of
partieular eases. Others, sueh as Nowell-Smith, have
direeted their attention mainly to the verbal expressions
we use in dealing with a subjeet. Both, I think, are proper
and useful. I think that a referenee to verbal expressions
is most to the point when there is reason to believe that a
philosophie puzzle has been generated through the loose
ness and ambiguity of language, as on the question of
responsibility and 'free will'. Whereas a referenee to
eonerete eases is most to the point when one wants to eon
firm or eritieize a general doetrine, as the 'teleologieal' or
'deontologieal' theories of obligation. However, both
methods are appropriate in both sorts of treatment. In
treating responsibility one will want to eonsider partieular
INTRODUCTION xi
cases in which we do hold persons responsible; as in
treating obligation one will want to ask how we use the
word 'obligation'. And finaHy, one will want to ask how
this word interacts with other words when we are speaking
of obligation generally, as weH as when we are speaking of
some particular case of obligation. One thing which the
method would exclude as profitless, and which I hope I
have excluded, is the formulation of general principles
which are not supported either by the way we talk or by
their capacity to explain what we think about concrete
cases.
Sometimes, then, I shall refer to what people do or
would 'say', and sometimes to what people do or would
'think'. I use the latter when there seems either no
particular problem about the form of verbal expression,
or any light to be gained from analyzing it - when most
light is to be got from directing attention chiefly to the
actual phenomena themselves in the form of either an
unusual or a decisive case.
A principle ofthought and language whichI presuppose
is that members of a language community understand the
basic concepts in the same general way, but that no one
understands them fully. The philosopher has the oppor
tunityand the inclinationto reflect more about themand to
advance their general understanding a little or a lot.
The absence and the need of more understanding of
the basic ethical concepts is seen in the paradoxes and
contradictions about them which sometimes come to the
surface. On any given occasion the ordinary person feels
no strain in his handlingofthese concepts. He can express
what he thinks with fair readiness and point. But if he
comes to compare what he says on different occasions, he
can feel puzzled, for he seems to contradict hirnself. And
it may happen that the puzzlement breaks out in a single
very perplexing moral problem, which has elements that
bring in both of his contradictoryviews. Telling examples
of these discrepancies are on the questions of 'Relativism'
versus 'Objectivism', 'Hedonism' versus 'Stoicism" 'Sub
jective' versus 'Objective' Obligation, 'Free Will' versus
,Determinism'. In an easy-going mood the ordinary man
