1.1 The Epistemic Starting Point
âPhilosophy begins in wonder,â it is oft-times said. Plato, in fact, has Socrates say it in the Theaetetus:
Theodorus was not wrong in his estimate of your nature [Theaetetus]. The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other originâŠ.1
And Aristotle says much the same in his Metaphysics: âFor it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophizeâŠ.â2 Personally, I find myself more closely aligned with G. E. Moore in this as in so much else:
I do not think that the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers have said about the world or the sciences.â3
But whatever the origins of inquiry for individual philosophers, I suggest that John Dewey is fundamentally right regarding the general characterization of any type of human intellection: we start with a problem situation, with a feeling of unease at something perplexing or worrying. It may be vividly immediate or a mere musing puzzlement. It may be a matter of recondite and subtle theoretical speculation, involving only the most tenuous of practical implications, or it may be a matter of pressing importance demanding immediate resolution to which dire existential consequences are attached. But in any such situation the fact remains that something needs solving, and we set out to do so in all manner of ways, from snap judgments to application of highly refined scientific techniques.4
The great pragmatistsâDewey among them, but Charles S. Peirce perhaps most forcefullyâalso counsel that in philosophy, as in other forms of inquiry, we must âbegin where we are,â not with some trumped-up Cartesian indubitability , some incorrigible, infallible epistemic Archimedean pointâsome perspective motivated in response to what Peirce derisively refers to as mere âpaper doubt.â5 Indeed, human inquiry begins in perplexity about somethingâfor Moore and for me, very often what some other philosopher has had to sayâand we start to work, sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes with concentrated assiduity, on resolving that perplexity. Often, we canât be sure what the result of this inquiry will be, but in some cases what results is a philosophical theory which answers, in whole or in part, the question with which we began. This is the case, I think, with regard to the subject of this study, the metaphysics of morality: it is only philosophical inquiry that can tell us how properly to conceptualize the metaphysical foundations of morality. Indeed, philosophers have said the most surprising things about morality, some of which are totally at odds with our normal, everyday moral thinking. That, at any rate, is certainly what started me thinking about the nature of morality. I doubt my case is all that unusual.
But before going any further, we need to get a very important distinction before us. Moral inquiry, and moral matters generally, divide broadly into two categories familiar to the philosophical cognoscenti: the first-order moral, and the second-order moral. Examples of the former are inquiries into what one should and shouldnât doâinto what acts, policies, intentions, etc., are morally right or wrong, permissible or impermissible, good or bad, courageous or cowardly. Other examples are questions of, say, which type of normative systemâutilitarian, deontological, aretaic, etc.âis superior to another, and why. We might say, regarding all of these examples, and whether of the former or of the latter sort, that they have to do with matters âwithinâ morality.6 We might further say that, assuming morality is possible, these examples are all âmorally relevant.â
Second-order morality, âmetaethics,â deals with issues âaboutâ moralityâits nature, its ontological status, its truth conditions, etc. Examples are inquiries into whether there moral truths regarding the permissibility of a certain type of action; questions about whether there are non-relative first-order moral truths; questions about whether there are first-order moral truths of any sort; and questions of whether first-order moral locutions, such as âTheft is pro tanto wrongâ, are propositional, i.e., propositional in the primary sense such that, when asserted, what is asserted is purported to express a moral truth .
This book is about the second-order moral, about metaethics: more specifically, it is about the nature of morality, its ground and metaphysical status. And although I certainly agree that there are a variety of things that may provoke people to philosophical inquiry, surely for most if not all of us, moral inquiry does not begin at the level of metaethics. On the contrary, it begins in early childhood when we are instructed by our parents to do this and not do that, that we should be good and not naughty, that we should not be mean to our siblings, etc., etc., etc. Initially we think about how to carry out these instructionsâthe âproblem situationâ is, How do I do this?âbut not long into our moral development we begin to be told why we should do some things and not others. âDonât hit your sister, Johnny. Thatâs not nice. How would you like it if someone did that to you?â We are at this point beginning to get not just elementary moral commands, but moral explanationsâexplanations of why we should do thus-and-so.
Thus far in our moral development, moral inquiry is first-order. And here it is likely to remain unless and until there is sufficient sophistication and intellectual maturity to reflect upon, for example, when faced with competing systems of moral belief , whether there is an objective moral standard that may be appealed to in order to adjudicate between competing standards. Now we are entering the realm of the second-order moralâa domain virtually exclusive to adult moral inquiry.7 How far such inquiry will go is of course a matter of great variability. In the main, however, it is philosophers who have taken it the furthest.
I draw attention to these perhaps banal matters to make a point that will have anything but banal implications for this entire study: Inquiry into the most abstract and theoretical of metaethical issues grows out of the moral inquiries of everyday lifeâof what to do here and now, of how you or I should act if someone were to do X or fail to do Y. And this point in turn forms the basis of another animating conviction of this study: A proper metaethics is charged with the prima facie obligation to preserve the contours of our ordinary, tutored moral thinking. Why this charge? Because it is highly desirable that a theory about the nature of morality preserve the fundamental integrity of the practice of morality. But why is the charge only prima facie? The answer is, because it is a fundamental commitment of this project to let the chips fall where they mayâor in terms to be developed in detail later, because of our commitment to truth. If a credible metaethics cannot be constructedâif our efforts come to naught; if our opponents clearly possess a more compelling account of how morality should be construedâthen we are bound by the highest commitment of any philosopher, commitment to the pursuit of truth, to adopt that theory which has the best evidence in favor of itâor to at least refrain from embracing a view that does not. All of this, however, needs more explanation.
1.2 What We Know, Morally Speaking
I have just indicated that our ordinary, tutored moral thinking about first-order moral matters deserves to be taken seriously. But what do I mean by âordinary, tutored moral thinkingâ? Well, it is difficult to point too fine a point on it, and would require a separate study of considerable length to try to do so, but in brief what I have in mind is the broad moral perspective, shared by informed people across many societies and cultures, and shared by such people for many decades if not centuries, that some types of actions, policies, or moral attitudes are simply unacceptable, and others are deserving of moral praise. It is far more easily illustrated by example than abstractly defined: our rejection of killing innocent persons, i.e., murder; our rejection of coercive sexual intercourse, i.e., rape; our admiration of personal sacrifice at great physical peril for the sake of a worthy cause, i.e., heroism; etc. I shall privilege contemporary informed opinion, and I shall privilege perspectives prevalent in western culture, though I emphatically do not rule out the possibility that non-contemporary or non-western perspectives may in important respects be better. Likely my opponents will fix on socioculturally based differences to dispute my viewâI shall address these objections in due courseâbut I here emphasize the pervasiveness of moral agreement, intra and inter-societal/cultural, which are often of remarkable depth, scope, and durability.
Such moral commitments, widely if not universally shared, serve as the very foundation of our moral lives. They bear heavily on how we order societyâon its laws and institutions; on how we conduct affairs with foreign entities; on how we see ourselves and those with whom we are most intimately associated, as ...