Pragmatism, Interests, and Morality

Abstract

The conclusion of Chapter 3 is that morality is justified directly by instrumental rationality, and that it is rational to be moral. Questions of whether it is rational to be moral have often been cast in terms of the relation between morality and prudence, where ‘prudence’ is taken to be synonymous with ‘self-interest’. But we have many interests, and not all of them are self-directed. Some of our interests are other-directed (i.e., altruistic). Thus, if rationality consists of promoting our interests, then a strategy to promote all of our interests—self-directed and otherdirected—will be rational. As noted in Chapter 2, we can continue to say that morality is prudentially rational, as long as we always keep firmly in mind that we are not using ‘prudential’ in an egoistic sense, but instead to refer to the satisfaction of all of our interests—both self- and otherregarding; indeed I will use the word ‘prudential’ in this way throughout this chapter. And, of course, when we speak of morality as being rational, we must keep in mind the notion of strategic cooperative rationality defended in Chapter 3. Pragmatism is not rational egoism.