Abstract
A number of moral philosophers have endorsed instances of the following curious argument: it would be better if a certain moral theory were true; therefore, we have reason to believe that the theory is true. In other words, the mere truth of the theory—quite apart from the results of our believing it or acting in accord with it—would make for a better world than the truth of its rivals, and this fact provides evidence of the theory’s truth. This form of argument may seem to be an obvious non-starter. After all, the fact that the truth of some empirical claim, say, the claim that there is an afterlife, would be desirable does not, by itself, give us any reason to believe it. But I argue that, when it is properly understood, this form of argument—which I call the better world argument—is valid in moral philosophy. I develop and defend a version of the argument that rests on the view that the correct moral theory cannot exhibit a certain form of self-defeat—a form that, as far as I know, has not been discussed in the literature. I also identify two promising applications of this form of argument. The first is a defense of permissions to promote one’s own private aims, rather than promote the greater good, and the second, an argument against the possibility of moral dilemmas.
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Notes
Kamm (2007, Chaps. 1, 5, and 8) provides a detailed characterization of this moral status, which she calls “inviolability”, together with an account of its desirability.
See Enoch (2009, p. 223). Others have made this point in conversation.
I noted above that several authors appeal to this form of argument in order to defend some moral principle, but I do not claim that any of these authors understand this form of argument in exactly the way I do here. Most instances of the better world argument in the literature merely gesture at the underlying form of argument—my aim is both to make this underlying form of argument more precise and to show that it is valid in certain limited contexts.
In any case, it seems that any formulation of the better world argument that has any hope of succeeding will assume that morality assigns this aim to us. It would be odd to claim that bringing about a better world is so important that morality tends to include principles whose very content serves this aim, and nevertheless to deny that bringing about a better world is important enough for morality to assign this aim to us. So the assumption that bringing about a better world, in some sense, is among our moral aims is, at the very least, an assumption that any plausible formulation of the better world argument will make.
Other things are not equal if the truth of a rival theory would undermine the aim of bringing about a better world, but nevertheless promote other, comparable moral aims. In that case, the truth of the rival theory might undermine our moral aims in one important respect, but promote our moral aims, all things considered.
I am setting aside the possibility that no moral theory is true. The argument is addressed to those who grant that there is a correct moral theory and who wish to identify it.
Because Slote does not clearly describe the underlying structure of his argument, it is not clear to what extent this adaptation departs from what he has in mind.
Act Consequentialism is the best known theory of this sort, but it is not the only such theory. Kagan (1989, p. 8) and Unger (1996, pp. 149–150) defend versions of the view that we are always required, not to choose the act—whatever it is—that will produce the best available results, but rather, to choose the act—among those acts that are not ruled out by constraints or special obligations—that will produce the best results.
My characterization of moral autonomy draws on Shiffrin’s (1991) illuminating discussion.
Kagan (1989, pp. 336–338) argues that the intuition that moral autonomy is valuable rests on a mistaken assumption that this form of autonomy is analogous to freedom from physical or psychological coercion. But Shiffrin points out that moral autonomy is similar to these other forms of freedom in the following important respect: when someone is deprived of moral autonomy, she is deprived of “her opportunity to exercise her capacity for choice without thereby jeopardizing something else she has a right or reasonable expectation to have or enjoy” (1991, p. 252).
It may be that the type of theory the truth of which would bring about the best outcome, on balance, is one that permits us to devote substantial attention to our deepest commitments, but nevertheless requires us to do far more to promote the greater good than Common-Sense Morality requires. To offer a crude characterization, such a theory might, say, require everyone who has income to spare after she has met her family’s basic needs to donate one third of this income to help the world’s poorest people, but permit her to use the remainder to promote her own aims. If such a theory were true, we would all be better off in one important respect, because we would have a substantial domain of moral autonomy. But the truth of such a theory might make for a better world in another respect as well: it may be that conscientious people would recognize the stringency of their requirement to promote the greater good and would supply the resources needed to eliminate the world’s worst preventable evils.
An anonymous reviewer pointed out that this argument may seem to have implausibly strong implications: The argument rests on the claim that we would be better off if we were often permitted to pursue our own private aims, because we would have a certain valuable form of autonomy. And it moves from this claim to the conclusion that we have reason to believe that we are, in fact, so permitted. But, provided that more autonomy is better than less, the argument may seem to imply that we have an even stronger reason to believe that all things are permitted. But the argument does not have this implication. First, how much moral autonomy people have is not the only factor that determines how well off they are. If all things were permitted, people would presumably tend to believe that all things were permitted, and as a result, social life would be intolerable. This evil would far outweigh the good of having our moral autonomy increased to its upper limit. Second, there may be cases in which the aim that good outcomes occur gets trumped or outweighed by other substantive moral aims, for example, the aim that one respect other people’s rational agency. In such cases, our moral autonomy may be limited by principles that serve these other aims.
Sayre-McCord claims, in the manuscript cited above, that any theory according to which we may face moral dilemmas is itself unfair in the sense that it makes demands that are impossible to carry out, and Hare argues that dilemmas are tragic because someone who faces a dilemma is “like a rat in an insoluble maze” (1981, p. 32).
To be clear, the argument against moral dilemmas that Sayre-McCord develops is importantly different from the argument I just described, though the two arguments are superficially similar. Sayre-McCord does not argue that theories that allow for the possibility of moral dilemmas are self-defeating in any way, or that the truth of such a theory would make for a better world. Rather, he argues that the correct moral theory, whatever that turns out to be, merits our allegiance. Other things equal, a theory that rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas is fairer, and so, more worthy of our allegiance, than a theory that allows for such dilemmas. So we have some reason to believe that the former sort of theory is true. A second difference is that Sayre-McCord does not claim that a world in which dilemmas can occur is more tragic than a world in which they cannot. Rather, his argument focuses entirely on fairness.
Parfit (1984, Chap. 1) explains how this characteristic might arise, assesses its significance, and argues, persuasively, that the fact that a theory has this characteristic does not, by itself, show that the theory fails in its own terms.
Sidgwick claims that “the doctrine that Universal Happiness is the ultimate standard must not be understood to imply that Universal Benevolence is the only right or always best motive of action … [I]t is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim” (1907, p. 413).
To be clear, this is the main general objection to any formulation of the better world argument, whether that formulation rests on the view that the correct moral theory cannot be self-defeating or on the view that moral facts are determined by some kind of procedure.
I am grateful to David Enoch and to an anonymous reviewer for comments that helped me clarify this point.
An anonymous reviewer suggested that we may be able to construct a version of the parody argument that focuses on conceptions of the right. For example, provided that it would be bad if people acted wrongly, and better if they did not, the truth of a theory according to which all of the things that people tend to do are morally permissible would make for a better world than any rival theory, according to which one or more of these things, say, telling lies or littering, is impermissible. But this argument does not pose a problem for the version of the better word argument that I defend. This new parody argument states that we have reason to reject certain moral theories because the truth of these theories would make for a worse world. But the truth of these theories would make for a worse world because people would act wrongly, or in other words, because they would fail to follow the theories’ principles. Such theories need not fail in their own terms. By contrast, the better world argument states that we have reason to reject certain theories because they fail in their own terms. So accepting the better world argument does not commit one to accepting this suggested parody argument.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to David Enoch, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments.
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Preston-Roedder, R. A better world. Philos Stud 168, 629–644 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0154-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0154-2