I. Moral Arguments and Moral Premises

 

[Note: the presentation of this material in class on 11/9 may not have been as clear as it should have been. I hope that these notes are clearer.]

 

A common style of argument goes something like this:

 

If the social security system is not reformed soon, then there will be massive deficits in 40 years. But we don't want massive deficits in 40 years. So, we should reform the social security system soon.

 

Reconstruction:

 

1. If the social security system is not reformed soon, then there will be massive deficits in 50 years.
2. We don't want there to be massive deficits in 50 years.
3. We should reform the social security system soon. (1), (2).

 

This is ill-formed. Pattern:

 

1. If P then Q
2. We don't want Q.
3. We shouldn't allow P.

 

Here’s another way to think of the pattern. The first premise says that not reforming the social security system soon will lead to massive deficits. The second premise says that we do not want that result. And the conclusion says that we should prevent that cause. Thus,

 

1. NR (not reforming Soc. Sec. now) will cause D (massive deficits in 50 years).

2. We don’t want D.

3. We should prevent NR.

 

But this is also ill-formed. 'Should' in conclusion. but not premises. We need a principle linking what we don’t want to what we should (not) do. Here’s one valid pattern of argument that will bring this out. This adds, in (3), a general principle

 

1. NR will bring about D.
2. We don't want D.
3. If the occurrence of event X will bring about event Y, and we don't want Y to happen then we should prevent X from happening.
4. We should prevent NR. (1)-(3)

 

The idea behind (3): we should prevent things that will bring about consequences we don’t want.

But (3) is wrong. Here’s a counterexample: We don’t not want slippery roads, and snow storms will bring them about. But it’s not true that we should prevent snow storms. This is because we can’t. There’s an “ought implies can” principle assumed here. So, we might consider a revised principle that says, in effect: if something we can prevent will bring about something we don’t want, then we should prevent that thing.

 

1. NR will bring about D.
2. We don't want D.
3. We can prevent NR.
4. If the occurrence of event X will bring about event Y, and we don't want Y to happen and we can prevent X from happening, then we should prevent X from happening.
5. We should prevent NR. (1)-(4)

 

C.E. to (4): X: giving tests; Y: anxiety among students. I don’t want Y. And I can prevent X (by not giving any tests). But this is not by itself a good reason not give tests. So (4) is false. Anxiety is an undesirable consequence of an overall valuable thing (tests).

 

We could add a much stronger additional premise:

 

1. NR will bring about D
2. We should prevent D
3. If the occurrence of event X will bring about event Y, and we should prevent Y from happening, then we should prevent X from happening.
4. We should prevent NR from happening. (1) - (3)

 

This is valid. Principle (3) looks better (though there may be problems with it as well). If it's really true that we should prevent something, then we should prevent those things that will lead to it. The specific moral claim, (2), is also plausible. It says that as a country we should prevent massive deficits. Hard to think of any reason why, in our current circumstances, we shouldn't.

Premise (1) depends upon economic facts. We must go on expert testimony here. Looks reasonable to me, but it is a complicated economic issue.

 

Some general comments on what we've just done:

 

a) Again, we showed that we use our general method to analyze the argument. We don't do something special just because the conclusion has a "should" in it.

 

b) We had to add moral premises to the argument to make it valid. That will almost always be the case. There are some odd special cases (e.g., using the logical rule known as "addition") where you can get moral conclusions w/out moral premises. But such arguments are of no practical concern. [This is a key point: Moral arguments (almost) always have at least one moral premise.]

 

c) With some work we were able to make the moral premise - (2) - of the argument reasonable. The remaining hard issue was a factual (economic) one. This is not uncommon - the seemingly hard moral issues end up depending up factual matters, sometimes hard and controversial ones. The relevant arguments for these claims will be statistical and casual ones similar to those we've seen. E.g., arguments about social security and about deficits. It may be difficult to decide, since there aren't lots of good comparisons. But this nicely illustrates the way moral arguments often depend crucially on non-moral issues.

 

d) The end result of this analysis is that it focuses discussion on just what it should be focused on: what are the consequences of failing to reform social security (premise 1) and is this such a bad consequence that we should prevent it (premise 2). The method thus brings to the forefront the key issues. It does not by itself resolve them, but it makes it clear what matters in the effort to resolve them.

 

II. Simple Moral Arguments

A common sort of moral argument identifies a morally relevant feature of an action and concludes from its presence that a thing should, or should not, be done. I call these “simple moral arguments” in the text. See p. 346-7 for patterns. These arguments are valid. The question is, are they ever strong? See exercise 2, p. 354 for discussion.

 

Common sense thinking about morality may say there are unoverridable moral factors, such as: breaking promises, telling lies, causing the death of another person. But surely these aren't unoverridable. Common sense moral rules are "rules of thumb". Useful guides, at best.

There's an argument that almost nothing is unoverridable: take any two on the list. They could conflict in a given case. That is, you can't avoid doing one and you can't do both. You should do one of the two. So, one or the other is overridden. (This can go in two ways - two good things, two bad things.)

 

None of this is to say that certain things aren't almost always wrong, wrong in virtually any circumstance, or that certain features aren't always negative (or positive) factors in the evaluation of actions that have them. But simple moral arguments are rarely strong. So, maybe there are strong cogent versions of simple moral arguments. Or maybe arguments of the following form are deductively strong:

 

1. All actions of kind A are wrong unless there are compelling special circumstances.
2. S’s doing x is an action of kind K.
3. There are no compelling special circumstances associated with S’s doing x.
4. S’s doing x is wrong.

 

Note that this argument is valid. Of course, there’s some obscurity in what counts as “compelling special circumstances”.

 

In general, simple moral arguments will not be very strong when applied to controversial or hard cases. This is because those cases involve competing factors. This leads us to our next topic.