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Notes
Cf. Bernard Gert, “Impartiality,” in Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte C. Becker, eds., Encyclopedia of Ethics (London: Routledge, 2001); John Cottingham, “Ethics and Impartiality,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1983), p. 87; Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 10; Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 90. “Various expressions of this fundamental moral rule are to be found in the tenets of most religions and creeds through the ages, testifying to its universal applicability. Confucius, for instance, was asked whether the true way could be summed up in a single word, and answered, ‘Reciprocity is such a word’ (Analects XV 23)” (cf. “Golden Rule” in Antony Flew, ed., A Dictionary of Philosophy (London: MacMillan, 2002). See also W. Patrick Cunningham, “The Golden Rule as Universal Ethical Norm,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1998), pp. 105–9.
In this context “generality” includes what Adrian Piper calls “universality” and “generality.” He says: “Most moral theories … consist of a set of propositions that are universal, general, and hence impartial. The propositions that constitute a typical moral theory are (1) universal, in that they apply to all subjects designated as within the scope. They are (2) general, in that they include no proper names or definite descriptions. They are therefore (3) impartial, in that they accord no special privilege to any particular agent’s situation which cannot be justified under (2) and (3).” (In “Moral Theory and Moral Alienation,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 84, No. 2 (1987), p. 102.)
Cottingham, op. cit., p. 83.
This is an ongoing debate. Cf. Brian Feltham and John Cottingham, eds., Partiality and Impartiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Stephen Darwall affirms that this onfall started during the 1970s with Bernard Williams’ influential criticism of the impartial accounts of ethics with regard to motivation, Lawrence Blum’s writings on altruism, and feminist philosophical works on the ethics of love and care, particularly those of Iris Murdoch and Carol Gilligan (Stephen Darwall, “Responsibility within Relations,” in Feltham and Cottingham, op. cit., p. 150).
There are two main strands of criticism. One points to the human impracticability of impartiality because it is cognitively and psychologically overdemanding; and the other claims that it leads to impersonality and dissolves human integrity. Ultimately, the requirement of impartiality would be inconsistent with humanity.
“Partialist critics argue that the requirement of impartiality has led moral theories to neglect or to deny the value of special relationships – relationships which are necessary to personal identity, integrity and fulfillment in life” (Marilyn Friedman, “Partiality,” in Becker and Becker, op. cit.).
Actually, the three fundamental moral insights to which I referred earlier result in fair and unbiased judgments, actions or attitudes.
Cf. Samuel Scheffler, “Morality and Reasonable Partiality,” in Feltham and Cottingham, op. cit.
Feltham, “Introduction: Partiality and Impartiality in Ethics,” in Feltham and Cottingham, op. cit.
NE I,3. On the challenges of overcoming moral disagreement see Christel Fricke, “Overcoming Disagreement – Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl on Strategies of Justifying Descriptive and Evaluative Judgments,” in Christel Fricke and Dagfinn Føllesdal, eds., Intersubjectivity and Objectivity in Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. A Collection of Essays (Hessen: Ontos Verlag, 2012), pp. 171–241.
In “Ethics and Impartiality,” Cottingham criticizes this thesis, saying that an impartial outlook is only appropriate to a special type of ethical situation or context; cases in which self-referential characteristics (e.g. “it is my brother”) are irrelevant. The paradigmatic case is that of public officials exercising their specific duties (p. 96). “[A]ny attempt to make impartiality a necessary feature of all ethical reasoning must lead to repugnant and absurd consequences which ultimately threaten the very basis of our humanity” (p. 83. my emphasis).
Cottingham, op. cit., p. 83.
Cf. Troy Jollimore, “Impartiality,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014); http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/impartiality/. There is also a “moderate or fundamental impartialism,” which I describe in the next section and which admits “partialities” in everyday decisions as long as they can be justified at a higher level (such as rules and principles). This second kind of rule-based impartialism is associated with deontologist theories. However, I will argue that they both suffer from the same flaw: in their attempt to attain impartiality, they replace intersubjective dialogue with rules.
Cottingham, op. cit., p. 86.
Cottingham, op. cit., p. 87.
As Cottingham notes (op. cit., p. 88), the ultimate extension of this understanding is William Godwin’s fire case. Godwin’s thought experiment proposes the following scenario: Fénelon’s palace is in flames. He and his valet are trapped in the fire and only one of them can be saved. His assumption is that few of us, if any, would hesitate to save the “illustrious Archbishop of Cambray.” However, Godwin starts asking, what would happen if I am the valet? Or if the valet is my brother, my father or my benefactor? Finally, he concludes: “The life of Fénelon would still be more valuable than that of the valet … What magic is there in the pronoun “my,” that should justify us in overturning the decision of impartial truth? … Of what consequence is it that they are mine?”
A contemporary exponent of the impartiality thesis is Peter Singer. He says: “In accepting that moral judgments must be made from a universal point of view, I am accepting that my own interests, simply because they are my interests, count no more than the interests of anybody” (op. cit., p. 12).
Brad Hooker, “When Is Impartiality Morally Appropriate?,” in Feltham and Cottingham, op. cit., p. 34.
Cottingham, for instance, says that “relational characteristics” (“my father,” “my friend”) are not opposed to “intrinsic ones,” and there is nothing irrational in taking them into account when assessing plausible moral judgments.
Marcia Baron, “Impartiality and Friendship,” Ethics, Vol. 101, No. 4 (1991), p. 839; Marilyn Friedman, “The Practice of Partiality,” Ethics, Vol. 101, No. 4 (1991), p. 831.
An example is Marcia Baron’s distinction between impartiality at the level of rules and principles (impartiality at level 2) and impartiality in everyday decisions (level 1). The impartiality thesis requires impartiality on both levels but, according to Baron, that is not necessary. Impartiality at level 2 is perfectly compatible with partiality at level 1 (op. cit., p. 843).
Cf. Sarah Stroud, “Permissible Partiality, Projects and Plural Agency,” in Feltham and Cottingham, op. cit.
Cf. Feltham, op. cit., pp. 23–24.
Alexander Broadie, “Sympathy and the Impartial Spectator,” in Knud Haakonssen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 158–9. For instance, Francis Hutcheson asserts that “The truth … would be best known by the judgments of spectators,” (A. Garrett, ed., An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), p. 94), and David Hume says that the approbation of moral qualities depends on “the esteem of a judicious spectator” (D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, eds., A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3.3.1.14).
“But these, as well as all other passions of human nature, seem proper and are approved of, when the heart of every impartial spectator entirely sympathizes with them, when every indifferent bystander entirely enters into, and goes along with them” (TMS II.i.2.2).
Originally “to take an impartial perspective” was just another way to say “the perspective of an impartial spectator.” However, different theories added new features to the figure of the impartial spectator – such as benevolence, omniscience, etc. – and modified the way it is supposed to assess moral judgments. Nowadays, an impartial perspective is a general reference to the “moral point of view” or that from which we consider everyone counts equally: “If I am to take up this moral point of view, I must surrender all the natural bias I feel towards myself and my personal attachments” (Feltham, op. cit., p. 16).
“Not having particular attachments” means that the moral judge’s personal interests ought not to interfere with her judgment. Communication-based theories do not require a complete isolation of the judge but, on the contrary, they need some kind of relationship between her and those that are being judged. For this reason the term “spectator” may be misleading. Although it captures the idea of the necessary critical distance for judging the situation, it also suggests a lack of communication with the agent that would preclude the advantages of any communication-based strategy.
This is important because in this formulation impartiality is neither associated with superhuman (or extra-human) qualities, as in formulations that characterize the impartial spectator as an “ideal observer,” an “archangel,” etc.; nor with the superior wisdom of a phronimos.
The only rule, if it may be called such, would be “to act according to what an impartial spectator would approve of.” A usual criticism against this perspective is that the “rule” is not, properly speaking, a rule for action. What would an impartial spectator approve of? We cannot know that without first knowing how the impartial spectator judges; and if we say that she does it “according to what is appropriate to the situation,” acting according to her judgment would mean “acting according to what an agent, who judges according to what is appropriate to the situation, approves of.” That is not very useful as a heuristic device. Hence, if moral theories are concerned with action guiding, communication-based theories seem to be extremely vague for this purpose.
This disconnection from the source of moral demands is also the cause of some of the common problems of which these theories are accused, for example, typically, the problem of moral motivation (cf. Bernard Williams).
Thanks to Christel Fricke for pressing me on this particular point.
P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Mathven Strawson, 1974), pp. 6–10.
Strawson, op. cit., p. 6.
Harry Frankfurt, “Equality and Respect,” Social Research, Vol. 64, No. 1 (1997), pp. 12–13.
Indeed, “Feelings are hurt when people act in ways that seem contrary to expected personal regard, which expectations one takes the other reciprocally to have recognized or takes it that he should have recognized” (Darwall, op. cit., pp. 165–6).
Cf. Darwall, op. cit., p. 155.
Darwall, op. cit., p. 162.
Darwall, op. cit., p. 157. This is what Darwall calls “second person authority” or “our standing to make claims and demands and have expectations of each other and hold each other accountable.”
This justification is not yet (at least not necessarily) the moral justification. My anger towards the person who broke my window may be disproportionate to the damage she caused, and my reaction may thus be unfair. But the material basis for the moral justification is already there. Communication-based theories promote a dialogue in which I ought to justify the appropriateness of my reaction to others. This exchange tempers my feelings up to a point where they have a “reasonable basis,” or are morally justified.
Applied to the feeling of guilt, Darwall explains: “Guilt feels like the appropriate … response to blame: an acknowledgement of one blameworthiness that recognizes both the grounds of blame as well as the authority to level it” (op. cit., p. 162). In this quote Darwall points to the two elements that justify moral disapprobation: the “grounds of blame” stands for the material basis for blaming or the situation that prompts resentment in the victim; and the “authority to level it” is the recognition of her moral standing.
Cf. Marilyn Friedman, “The Impracticability of Impartiality,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 11 (1989), p. 652.
Cf. Christel Fricke, “Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience,” in Christopher Berry, Maria Pia Paganelli, and Craig Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 177–200, here in particular pp. 191–6.
Valuing comprises a complex syndrome of dispositions and attitudes, which include the consideration of certain particular types of motives, beliefs and susceptibility to a wide range of emotions (cf. Scheffler, op. cit., p. 100). In the realm of morality it is essential to understand the role of emotions, both for the perception of values and the reactions these perceptions provoke.
Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 126. “I believe that the general form of moral reasoning is to put yourself in other people’s shoes. This leads to an impersonal concern for them corresponding to the impersonal concern for yourself that is needed to avoid a radical incongruity between your attitudes from the personal and impersonal standpoints, i.e. from inside and outside your life.”
Empathy is an inborn disposition that plays a constitutive role in moral development. There are different kinds of empathic responses, ranging from simple mimicry to others that are cognitively more complex; ones that depend on the observer putting herself into the position of the agent and imagining either how the agent feels, or how she would feel in the position of the agent. These cognitively mediated empathic responses are the important ones for moral judgments. For an account of the function of empathy in moral development, and the scientific data that support this thesis, see Christel Fricke, “Empathy and Sympathy,” presentation at the 8th MWP Classics Revisited Conference, 2014.
Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 62–3.
Nagel, Mortal Questions, p. 141: “But for most of the questions that need deciding, ethical considerations are multiple, complex, often cloudy, and mixed up with many others. They need to be considered in a systematic way, but in most cases a reasonable decision can be reached only by sound judgment, informed as well as possible by the best arguments that any relevant disciplines have to offer.”
Frankfurt, op. cit., p. 8.
Frankfurt, op. cit., p. 6.
Frankfurt, op. cit., p. 6.
See endnote 1.
Friedman, “The Impracticability of Impartiality,” p. 655. She affirms that a plausible account of impartiality cannot start from an abstract ideal of impartiality because the methods proposed for achieving an unbiased standpoint provide no independent criteria for recognizing whether or not impartiality has really been achieved; therefore there is no way to confirm in practice that moral thought is genuinely impartial. As an alternative, Friedman proposes a procedural account of justification of impartial judgments that starts “by identifying and eliminating recognized biases” (p. 654). Cf. also Christel Fricke, “Adam Smith and ‘the most sacred rules of justice’,” The Adam Smith Review, Vol. 6 (2011), p. 52.
This mediation of a “third instance” (the eyes of the spectators), that is phenomenologically situated in the empathic movement of the agent, is the moment when the “generality” that morality requires is introduced into moral justification.
Nagel, Mortal Questions, p. 146.
There are many cases when impartiality and “equal treatment,” such as the one promoted by the impartiality thesis, converge because the people involved share the same relevant characteristics that must be considered for the situation at hand. For instance, those situations in which the relevant characteristics to consider are precisely “those that each shares with everybody else by virtue of their humanity” (Frankfurt, op. cit., p. 105). Negative justice is a paradigmatic case: there will never be a reasonable basis for killing or harming an innocent human being.
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Particular thanks to Christel Fricke for her extensive feedback and discussion of the topic. All remaining errors are, of course, mine. The research for this work was supported by Project FONDECYT n. 1141208.
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Carrasco, M.A. Morality, Impartiality and Due Partialities. J Value Inquiry 49, 667–689 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9523-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9523-8