Abstract
In his recent book The Dimensions of Consequentialism (2013), Martin Peterson defends, amongst other things, the claim that moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees and that, therefore, the standard view that an act’s being morally right or wrong is a one-off matter ought to be rejected. An ethical theory not built around a gradualist conception of moral rightness and wrongness is, according to Peterson, unable to account adequately for the phenomenon of moral conflicts. I argue in this paper that Peterson’s defence of this claim is not convincing. Over and above this negative result, a careful assessment of Peterson’s case for degrees of rightness reveals that the theoretical corridor for accounting for moral conflicts without a gradualist conception of rightness and wrongness is relatively narrow. As I show, the only way of avoiding the conclusion of Peterson’s argument is to reject his conception of the ‘final analysis’ that an ethical theory provides, i.e. of what the theory ultimately has to say about individual acts and their normative properties. According to Peterson, such a final analysis should be seen as comprising the all-things-considered judgements yielded by the theory, and nothing else. As it turns out, the only alternative to this account that is compatible with the standard view about moral rightness and wrongness is to conceive of the final analysis as also containing judgements about morally relevant factors, or aspects, and the way in which they are normatively relevant.
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Notes
To be sure, less unorthodox versions of consequentialism have room for conflicts between values. As opposed to conflicts within the evaluative domain, however, Peterson aims accounting for deontic conflicts.
Peterson does not explicitly state the views expressed in premises (4) and (6) of my proposal as to how his argument should be reconstructed. Even so, what I present arguably is the most charitable interpretation of his argument.
Moreover, the reconstruction avoids terminology that is, as far as the relevant literature is concerned, rather controversial. This is, in particular, true of Foot’s distinction between ‘evidential’ and ‘verdictive moral considerations’ (Foot 1978, p. 182) that Peterson, in his critical remarks on Ross (Peterson 2013, pp. 27–31), invokes in order to elucidate Ross’s distinction between prima facie duties and actual duties. In doing so, he takes up an earlier suggestion by Stratton-Lake (1997, p. 753) that, however, Stratton-Lake has chosen to abandon in his more recent work on the topic (Stratton-Lake 2002). For a helpful discussion and critique of Foot’s distinction, see also Dancy (2004, p. 16).
This is how Peterson phrases the second premise of this argument: “[a]n act is right to some non-extreme degree if and only if the agent has a verdictive reason to perform it and a verdictive reason to refrain from performing it” (Peterson 2013, p. 33). In commenting on it, Peterson explains that it “is a claim about how certain concepts are interrelated” (ibid.). It is, however, not meant to be backed up by “semantic observations of how people actually use very complex and abstract terms”, but rather as a view about “how these terms ought to be used” (ibid.). Whether or not moral rightness should be understood (and, consequently, talked about) as coming in degrees, however, is precisely what is at issue here. This is why Peterson’s official argument presupposes, and falls short of establishing, a gradualist conception of moral rightness and wrongness.
This, of course, would be compatible with the fact that all aspects are of relevance for determining what ought to be done, even if some might be outweighed.
References
Dancy J (2004) Ethics without principles. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Foot P (1978) Are moral considerations overriding? In: Foot P: Virtues and vices. University of California Press, Oxford, pp. 181–188
Kagan S (1998) Normative ethics. Westview Press, Boulder (CO)
Peterson M (2013) The dimensions of consequentialism. Ethics, equality and risk. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Portmore DW (2011) Commonsense consequentialism. Wherein morality meets rationality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ross D (1930) The right and the good. Stratton-Lake P (ed). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002
Stratton-Lake P (1997) Can Hooker’s rule-consequentialist principle justify Ross’s prima facie duties? Mind 106:751–758
Stratton-Lake P (2002) Introduction. In: Ross D.: The right and the good. Stratton-Lake P (ed). Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. ix–l
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop on Martin Peterson’s The Dimensions of Consequentialism at the University of Konstanz in November 2013. Helpful discussions with the participants of the workshop are gratefully acknowledged. In preparing the final version, I have benefitted from detailed comments and suggestions by Jan Gertken, Attila Tanyi, Martin van Hees and an anonymous referee.
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Schmidt, T. Accounting for Moral Conflicts. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 19, 9–19 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9663-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9663-8