Abstract
Kantian moral theories must explain how their most basic moral values of dignity and autonomy should be interpreted and applied to human conditions. One place Kantians should look for inspiration is, surprisingly, the utilitarian tradition and its emphasis on generally accepted, informally enforced, publicly known moral rules of the sort that help us give assurances, coordinate our behavior, and overcome weak wills. Kantians have tended to ignore utilitarian discussions of such rules mostly because they regard basic moral principles as a priori requirements that cannot be tailored to human foibles and limitations. I argue that Kantian moral theories should incorporate public moral rules as mid-level moral requirements for embodied and socially embedded human agents. I explain how certain specific moral judgments about how we ought to act are justified by public moral rules, which are themselves justified by more fundamental moral requirements.
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Notes
The title is a variation on the title of a paper of Barbara Herman’s (2007a) called “Making room for character.”
The sense of “rule” I am concerned with is very broad and not limited to practices, such as games, rituals, and promising, which are forms of activity “specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure” (Rawls 1999b, p. 20). Public moral rules, in my sense, can include what Dworkin (1977) calls “principles” and “rules.”
On some interpretations, Kant divides The Metaphysics of Morals (1996), which is his most sustained attempt at interpreting and applying the moral law to human conditions, into “right” (or “justice”), which is concerned with legally enforceable rules and rights that regulate and protect our freedom, and “ethics” (narrowly conceived), which is constrained by “right” and within its limits gives unenforceable principles for personal motivation, deliberation and character development. Interpretations differ, but it is reasonably clear that this division is supposed to run deep and seems to make no room for social moral rules, which fall between these two extremes.
Miss Manners, for example, attempted to express and codify informal public rules of etiquette that we generally accept, but her pronouncements are not authoritative as such, although she may have also helped to shift public opinion on certain points.
An association may have an informal dress code, which is maintained and enforced through informal social mechanisms, as well as a formal dress code, which is enacted in its bylaws.
Fashion ‘experts’ or trend-setters, for example, may settle on a set of fashion norms that they think should be widely accepted even if relatively few people actually regard them as binding. Those rules may be said to exist among the ‘in-crowd’, who generally accept them, but they do not seem to exist in the wider public until most all of them accept the rules as well. Socially-enforcing the rules on unsuspecting people who do not yet know or accept them may be one way to bring more people on board.
See those people listed in the footnote 10.
Kant et al. (2002 G 4, p. 397) The content of a rule, however, can include implicit exceptions and qualifying conditions that make allowances for self-interest—I may accept a rule that says, for example, ‘keep to my diet as long as it is healthy for me to do so,’ or ‘do not snitch on my friends so long as my life is in danger,’ although if I accepted the latter rule I may not necessarily accept one that simply says ‘do not snitch on my friends.’ See Herman (2007c).
Hill (2006).
Rawls (1999a, pp. 112–115).
Rawls (1999a, pp. 8–9).
Rawls (1999a, pp. 97, 107, 303, 407–409). Rawls says: “There is no reason to suppose ahead of time that the principles satisfactory for the basic structure hold for all cases. These principles may not work for the rules and practices of private associations or for those of less comprehensive social groups. They may be irrelevant for the various informal conventions and customs of everyday life; they may not elucidate the justice, or perhaps better, the fairness of voluntary cooperative arrangements or procedures for making contractual agreements. The conditions for the law of nations may require different principles arrived at in a somewhat different way. I shall be satisfied if it is possible to formulate a reasonable conception of justice for the basic structure of society conceived for the time being as a closed system isolated from other societies. The significance of this special case is obvious and needs no explanation” (1999a, p. 7).
Rawls (1999a, p. 207).
There is also a nice discussion of rule-utilitarianism in Parfit (2009).
The history of rule-utilitarianism is, of course, more complicated. It was initially seen as a way of avoiding counter-examples to Kant and act-utilitarianism as well as the indeterminacy of Ross. Then worries arose about whether rule-utilitarianism collapses into act-utilitarianism, and Brandt and others attempted to respond. Rawls’ ‘Two concepts of rules’ was initially seen as a promising alternative, but it raised problems of its own (e.g. it only seemed to help in cases involving formal and complex social practices and may still face the charge of rule-fetishism).
Other variations on rule-utilitarianism are possible besides Hooker’s; for example, they might assume that rules are assessed by those who are omniscient.
See Ross and Stratton-Lake (2002).
See Brandt (1963, p. 169).
See Brandt (1963, pp. 166–167).
Hooker (2000, pp. 23–29). Hooker’s response to Smart’s objection is to introduce a non-consequentialist value, which he calls impartiality, and claim that we always have most reason to follow the best moral rules because sticking to the them manifests our fundamental moral concern to do what is impartially defensible, even when we can produce more good by doing otherwise. More explanation would be needed, however, to justify this conception of impartiality as compared to those that that do not appeal to public moral rules at all, or ones that select such rules on the basis of other values besides overall wellbeing and priority for the worst off. Further explanation would also be needed to explain why impartiality, in the sense Hooker defines, overrides other values that might be served by breaking the rules. Although Hooker does not do so, if one were to interpret impartiality as a teleological value then appealing to that value does not resolve the worry about internal inconsistency, because it seems that there could be cases in which breaking a rule would produce more good overall (including more instances of impartiality) then following the generally useful rules.
Hooker (2000, pp. 98–99) argues that an ideal moral code would include a disaster clause that forbids us from bringing about a disaster. There could be situations, however, in which following the perfect rules in an imperfect world would cause something very close to a disaster, or at least be disastrous for individual people, although no explicit exceptions in the ideal moral code would likely be made for such cases. Brandt (1963, pp. 171–172) modifies his formulation of rule-utilitarianism to make allowances for well-established moral convictions that already exist in a society, but this stipulation appears ad hoc and Brandt himself does not attempt to justify it except to claim that “it is not obviously a mistake.”
Perhaps including exceptions of this sort would make the rule too complicated or liable to abuse.
Hooker makes this somewhat Kantian suggestion in Hooker (2014).
See for example De Lazari-Radek and Singer (2010).
De Lazari-Radek and Singer (2010, p. 43).
Margaret Little reportedly raised an objection of this kind at a talk given at St. Andrews.
Hooker (2000, p. 32).
All moral rules, of course, are universal in a thin sense that anyone who is in the precise position described by the rule must follow it, but there can be moral rules with a more limited scope, such as those for teachers, police officers, and judges.
Those who are skeptical of abstract moral principles that apply to all rational agents as such may be content with the third stage, which assesses moral principles for socially embedded human agents in our world.
See Cureton (forthcoming) as well as Kant (2006).
I elaborate on this argument in Cureton (2013).
Strawson (2008).
I discuss this idea in Cureton (2013).
I argue for and elaborate on this point in Cureton (2013).
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Cureton, A. Making room for rules. Philos Stud 172, 737–759 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0331-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0331-y