Smith, Malcom - Does Humanity Share a Common Moral Faculty?

02/05/2010

Journal of Moral Philosophy Vol 7 (2010)

This paper seeks to establish the plausibility of the view that humanity shares a deep common moral reasoning faculty. The first observation is that philosophers often utilize moral intuitions about hypothetical examples to come up with consensus around a moral precept. Author argues that claiming this is moral knowledge also presumes there is moral truth, and that most thinkers want these settled intuitions to be relevant in creating a normative theory. (pg38) The differences in what ability or attribute constitutes this faculty (Reason, or Sentiment) is irrelevant to the discussion here: what author is trying to argue for is its reasonableness. One stop along the way is an illustration of the differences of distribution that theorists have. Some, the 'Platonic elitists' might hold the faculty to be only well-developed in the philosopher class. But author instead seeks to establish the reasonableness of 'commonalism', (pg44) the idea that 'nonphilosophers' moral beliefs are no less authoritative than philosopers' (pg41).

Commonalism is taken to be the idea that we all share a largely similar (metaphorical) mentalistic "black box" where non-moral facts can be fed into it and through some causal-inferential process a similar 'converging' moral conclusion will be output about what is appropriate. This is the convergence hypothesis. (The moral conclusion supervenes on the factual one.) (pg41-2) The objection is that we experience moral disagreement. Author tries to distinguish between so-called 'surface' disagreement and 'deep' disagreement. Of surface moral belief, author ties to explain them away as differences in the non-moral beliefs that go into the moral judgment. E.g. a racist believes (falsely) that one race is inherently inferior. Another influence for disagreement is bias: personal interest, race, gender, etc. Of deep belief, author makes sure to point out indeterminacy due to competition between two valid moral standards, like e.g. failing to keep a promise but helping someone in need. (pg44-5) Competition indeterminacy does not necessarily go against commonalism, since it reveals no profound difference between those who choose to keep the promise, or those who help the victim, author claims.

Author's major argument in favor of commonalism and the convergence hypothesis is that we fruitfully engage in moral discourse, and that we understand and engage with people across particular societies and cultures. (pg45-6) Probably the biggest possible blow to commonalism is the abortion debate, which author admits may be intractable at the deep level. However author argues that much of this may be competition indeterminacy, bias, and non-moral differences in belief. (pg47) He then defends the charge that he has an a priori answer for every objection (pg47-8). (However, there is a 'deep difficulty' with criticizing commonalism in favor of some sort of elitist model: how do you find moral judgments that are convergent yet simultaneously deny that the common-man has access to them? (pg50-1))

Author then considers the upshot of adopting commonalism: it will do away with moral nihilism and reduce the strength of moral relativism, since relativism is partially motivated by nihilism. (pg49) It also can be a backbone for natural rights theories, which many societies' laws reference. (pg52) It could also further moral understanding, since it may council patient attitudes toward moral disagreement. (pg53)