Robert Audi is a contemporary exponent of intuitionism within the field of moral epistemology. That is, his answer to the question "how do we know what is right" involves an appeal to a quasi-sensory and non-inferential recognition one might call intuition for lack of a better term.
His 2013 book MORAL PERCEPTION is one of those that puts this view forward.
My understanding is that Audi specifically thinks of duties and their breach as the objects of this intuition. We intuit things like "lying is prima facie wrong." We neither infer it nor are we making a statement of subjective preference when we say such a thing. We intuit it and we are sensing something objectively true when we do so.
I think there is something both importantly right and importantly wrong in this. I think that it is appropriate to ground moral judgments in intuitions, but those intuitions are of the goodness of events, not the rightness of actions. Intuitionism, that is, works better with teleology rather than (as Audi would have it) with deontology.
Two questions: (1) Would it change your point to replace "teleology" with "consequentialism"?, and (2) Putting aside epistemology and intuitionism, isn't deontology grounded in teleology or consequentialism? If a deontologist asserts that lying is wrong (prima facie or always, as Kant held), doesn't he do so because of the undesirable consequences of lying? What else could his condemnation of lying be based on, unless it is arbitrary?
ReplyDeleteIf I am right about (2), then would deontology be the same as rule utilitarianism? Since I've never heard anyone assert that, I must be wrong about (2). If so, why?
DeleteAlso, I just substituted "utilitarianism" for "consequentialism," because I've never heard the term "rule consequentialism." Is there a type of consequentialism other than utilitarianism?
Henry. (1) Yes, I use teleology and consequentialism as synonyms. (2) Kant's argument as I understand it was that the telling of lies AS A UNIVERSAL LAW would be a disastrous one, because of course the species would lose the benefit of the ability to communicate. Thus, that can NOT become a universal law, whereas telling the truth can be. Since he had other (quite abstract) arguments for the proposition that right actions must be based upon universal law, this led him to the conclusion that a lie must always be wrong.
ReplyDeleteThat is different from rule utilitarianism, and both are different from Audi's intuitionism. Putting aside the latter: a rule utilitarian might argue that lies usually have more bad than good consequences, and that although there are exceptions they are rare. On that basis, he might argue that we're better off following the rule "never lie," or developing a habit of truth telling, even if this means that sometimes we will lose the benefit of an exception. We might also avoid the costs of a "false positive," of the situation in which we erroneously believe we're acting in an exceptional case.
An intuitionist could argue that we have the intuitive sense that lying is wrong (as least prima facie) because natural selection has hard wired us for it, because inveterate liars would be weeded out by an environment in which other humans stop cooperating with them.
Christopher, from what you say, Kant and a rule utilitarian, although they would take different routes to arrive at the conclusion that one should never lie, would both arrive at that same conclusion. In practice, a rule utilitarian could incorporate exceptions in the rule; the rule might be, for example, never lie unless severe bodily harm or death would likely result. This would allow one to lie in the situation in which Kant said one should not lie: where a would-be murderer asks you where his potential victim is hiding. But couldn't Kant have formulated his universal law to incorporate that exception?
ReplyDeleteHenry,
ReplyDeleteProbably. That is one of the classic counter-arguments to Kant, that he is gerrymandering the notion of universality, and that without selective gerrymandering the demand for universality becomes unhelpful. It sounds at best like a Teutonically pedantic restatement of the golden rule. It is appropriate to remind me that I should not lie to others because I don't like being lied to, but of course that hardly helps in the sort of extreme situation to which you allude.
And as to a question you asked me earlier in this threat and I left unanswered: yes, there is a consequentialism other than utilitarianism. The classic example is called "perfectionism." I might believe in Nietzschean fashion that human ethics should be all about producing the Over-Man, someone or some state of things more perfect than us flawed humans. In such a case, though, rule consequentialism doesn't work. What are the "rules" that have shown themselves helpful in producing superior species'?
There are other sorts of consequentialist. G.E. Moore called himself an "ideal utilitarian." The adjective was mean to cover a considerable deviation from the non-ideal sorts, and I believe Moore's self-labeling was not apt, that his "utilitarianism" was outside of the fold of that term as usually understood, and that it makes more sense to think of him as a pluralist consequentialist. And I consider myself a pluralist consequentialist as well.
As to rule consequentialism, that is a label adopted by a prominent contemporary philosopher in the UK, Brad Hooker, of the University of Reading.
Discount for the usual typos above. The most amusing one is "threat" for "thread." That's why God made editors.
ReplyDelete