Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (40 page)

Many writings on ethics introduce the subject rather differently.
They introduce a dualism. On the one hand there is the seething
mass of desire. On the other hand, above it and separate, there are
the lordly principles of ethics, which exist to control it. I believe
nothing but confusion comes from this picture. It makes the lordly
principles of ethics seem utterly mysterious: things that perhaps
require a divine origin or some kind of Platonic ability to resonate
in harmony with the Nature of Things. I substitute for this a model
in which there is just a plurality of concerns. But among these concerns are ones that have the kind of status that leads us to talk of
virtue and vice, duty and obligation. These are the concerns we expect of each other, so that if we do not share them, or weigh them
properly, we are regarded as having fallen short. We can usually say
that these are the concerns that we regard people as owing to each
other. If someone does me a great kindness, then I owe him a sentiment of gratitude: it is his due and it is my duty to feel it or express
it. If I am callous or careless, I have fallen short. I will forfeit admiration in the eyes of others, and in so far as I have a voice within
myself echoing the voice of others, I will feel bad about myself.
If I do not, that itself can become a cause of censure, and sometimes a more important one than the original failing. If someone overlooks a debt of gratitude, that can be had. But if when it is
pointed out, he shrugs it off or doesn't see what the fuss is about,
that can be more shocking than the original fault. Hence the importance we attach to contrition and, in serious cases, repentance.
These bad feelings are good.

Here we might return to the complaint above against the contemporary obsession with `therapy'. In our example, Annie's concern was her career, and that concern was not met nor shared by
Bertie, who took the concern itself as the problem. Moral cases are
similar. Feeling had about ourselves or our conduct is indeed
unpleasant. We might wish such feelings away. But in cases in
which they are justified, wishing the feelings away involves a selfalienation, and is not the right response. Suppose Annie knows she
has hurt or insulted Bertie. She might be grateful to a therapist,
who tells her that some neat process can dissolve away her selfreproach. But it is not clear that she ought to be grateful. In the first
place, her concern is to put things right with Bertie; to apologize or
make amends, or assure him how much it matters, and so on. Or
her concern might be with the depravity of her own character or
conduct, which she wishes were better. But her concern is not with
those concerns themselves. And if a therapist could give her a pill
that took them away, she is not necessarily helping Annie. She is
not putting things right with Bertie, nor for that matter improving
Annie's character. In fact, she is making Annie the kind of person
who attracted the extra degree of censure, not only for behaving
badly, but also for failing to have within herself the awareness that
she has. She is alienating Annie from her awareness of what she has
done, and her wish not to have done it.

Of course, in time or with bad luck there can indeed come cases
in which the self-reproach is festering. It is doing no good, it is an
obsession, and Annie could well wish herself to be without it. But
the point is that this is not the typical or straightforward case. It is
a case when things have got out of hand. When things are in hand,
it is not guilt or shame that is the problem, but the actions that invited them.

Our concerns weigh with us (that is a tautology; that is what
makes them concerns). But their weights are susceptible to change,
and one of the things that can sometimes change them are discussions, arguments, and an awareness of the direction of pull of other
concerns. Hence we have practical argument, taking the form of
wondering what is to be done, or what principles to endorse, or
what features of character to admire or reject. How are we to think
about that?

PRACTICAL REASONING

At the beginning of the chapter we mentioned technological reasonings, in which an aim is given and the problem is one of finding
means to it. But of course much practical reasoning is concerned to
alter people's aims. We seek to put the situation in a different light,
so that they come to share aims we approve of, or abandon aims of
which we disapprove.

A great deal of such reasoning is, of course, sheer persuasion. Its
arts are those of the salesman and the advertising agency. We deploy rhetoric to excite people's emotions and direct them in the desired channels. The preacher painting the horrors of hell or the
politician painting the virtues of his party and the vices of the
other are not really seeking to improve anyone's understanding of
anything. We might say that the concern here is to manipulate
rather than to instruct. Their aim to attach emotional weights to
various courses of action, so leading people in a desired direction.
At its lowest level this night be a matter of attaching penalties and
threats to courses of conduct, rather than other less overt kinds of
persuasive pressures.

When we take up this kind of stance to each other, we are in effect treating others as means to our own ends. For some reason, we
want them to have an aim. We want them to buy our product or
vote forour party orconic to ourchurch. if weare prepared to pursue any course we can think of to get them to do this, we are treating them as what Kant called `mere means' to our own ends. By
manipulating them-which might include deception as well as
other persuasive arts-we hope to divert their course, just as we
might hope to divert any other obstacle to our own goals.

A lot of life may be like that, but not its best parts. For we can take
up a more cooperative and respectful stance towards each other. If
I am convinced that your life is setting out down the wrong path, I
may not want to manipulate you into a different course just by any
old means. If I had a magic injection that would change you in the
direction I desire, then unlike the salesman or the preacher, I would
not give it you. Doing so would be failing to respect your point of
view, or failing to respect you as a person. I want you to cone to
share my understanding of your situation in the right way, not by means of manipulation or subterfuge or threats or brute force. So
what is this right way?

Roughly, it is going to be one which addresses and takes account
of your point of view. There are clearly things this rules out: deception and manipulation. And there are clearly things it rules in: improved understanding of the situation, for example. If I know how
things stand and you do not, I cooperate with you while seeking to
change you if I share that understanding with you.

We might think that this is all, so that reason as opposed to
rhetoric must be entirely confined to pointing out the facts of the
situation. An argument to that conclusion would be something
like this. Suppose we each understand the situation as it is, and in
the same way. Then suppose I have a set of concerns that eventually
resolve themselves in my having one aim. How can you seek to
change me except by some process of persuasion or manipulation?
However much you profess a cooperative stance, aren't we really in
conflict, since my concerns define my take on the situation, and
you are wishing one of them away. You can't get me to change by
addressingthose concerns, since the assumption was that they issue
in the direction you dislike.

Fortunately, there are two gaps in this argument. The first arises
because our concerns are not always evident to ourselves. So your
take on the situation may not adequately reflect everything that in
fact matters to you. When we `turn things over' in our own minds,
we are as it were prowling round to see if there are aspects of things
that we haven't brought to mind, which engage our motivations.
And we are the same time exploring whether there are unrecognized forces at work: whether we care more or less about one thing or another than we admit to ourselves. We can be blind to our own
natures, as well as to aspects of the world around us. A conversation
seeking to uncover motivations that we may have suppressed or
discounted is cooperative, not manipulative.

Second, even when you understand your situation properly, and
your concerns are sufficiently transparent to yourself, I need not be
manipulating you or merely trying to persuade you of something
if I lay out my own take on things for you to consider. Consider the
case in which there is a moral dimension. You are bent on a course
of action, say, which in my view does not adequately reflect the
duty of gratitude or loyalty that you have to some third party. I tell
you this. I am putting my cards on the table: there is no manipulation or deception going on. I may change you, for if you respect me
sufficiently my good opinion matters, and if you are likely to forfeit
that opinion by maintaining your course, this becomes a factor for
you to know.

This second mechanism is in a sense a way of presenting to you
another factor in your situation: that your course of action attracts
my disapproval. But of course it is not intended to stop there. If it
did, then my disapproval would be functioning as an `object': a
mere obstacle to your preferred course, to be factored into a costbenefit analysis. But this is not what is intended. In cooperative
moral discussion, it is intended that we come to common ground,
where that includes common approval and disapproval. My disapproval is put on the table as something for you to share or undermine, but in either event as something that you are to engage on its
own terms. Otherwise it is being objectified, like Annie's concern
for her career, in the example above.

So discussion turns to whether my insistence on the duty of
gratitude or loyalty should he respected, or whether it represents
something else: perhaps a fetish to be ignored or brushed aside. To
answer this question we turn over yet other things that weigh with
us. We might try to bring to bear, for example, considerations of
how well or badly the world would go without people having that
concern. Or we might try to relate it to other things that matter to
us, such as friendship or honesty.

Underlying the method here will be another fundamental concern: that our practical stances should be coherent. And perhaps
they should be other things as well, such as imaginative and objective.

COHERENCE, OBJECTIVITY,
IMAGINATION

A lot of practical reasoning proceeds by looking for the general features that matter to us. When we advance a reason or justification
to one another, we are trying to show the favourable light in which
the action or attitude appeared. Some writers are suspicious of any
requirement that this process should be systematic or ordered.
They want to deny that practical life is a matter of `rules' or 'principles' It may be more like aesthetics. We can look at a painting and
pronounce upon it without any articulated, general principles that
we could cite to defend our verdicts. We might also remember the
example, from Chapter 1, of our ability to recognize things and our
ability to certify a sentence as grammatical, both of which seem to go on with our using any general principles or rules, at least consciously.

But practical reasoning is not in general like that. This is because
we need to know where we stand. The constraint is here the same as
with a system of law. It would he no good having a system of law
that refused to articulate general principles and rules, but insisted
on `treating each case on its merits: If it were not predictable in advance what would actually count as the merits then we could not
regulate our lives by such a 'system' It would he no law at all. Similarly in ethics. We need to know where we stand, which means
being able to discern features of a choice situation or a scenario
that count in favour or against practical decisions and attitudes.
This means that while our desires and wishes can presumably he as
fickle as we please, the concerns we exact from each other cannot
be. They need to fall into some kind of defensible system.