Moral Rules and Moral Maxims - The University of Texas at Austin

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do, that the prima facie onus lies on thesecond party, is to be traced to the factthat the act done or contemplated wouldbe of a kind clearly subject to moral regulation.The act might, e.g., clearly involvethe infliction of pain, or be whatwould cause one to keep a promise. Onemight put the case by reciting or implicitlyappealing to a maxim: "It would be acruel thing to do," "You oughtn't breakyour promise to Henry," etc. We sawthat maxims, while truistic, still do serveto focus attention on a certain kind ofbehavior-inflicting pain, doing as promised,etc. It is just having an act of oneof these kinds in hand which is requiredto get the argument started. That is, webegin by considering an act of a kindwhich it is the general tendency of moralityto abet or frustrate. The maximplants the first fact out of which the argumentwill grow and sets the originalboundaries of relevance, a matter at onceso ephemeral and important.It is rather as in football. A man scoresfor his team if he carries the ball acrossthe goal-that is a logical fact aboutfootball. If we see the man run across thegoal, we assume he has scored, unless wehave positive and specific reason to thinkhe did not, e.g., a man on his team beingoff-side. The argument whether or not hescored will begin with the suppositionthat he did-after all, he did run acrossthe goal with the ball.It is only necessary to note that inmoral argument a prima facie case mightlie on either or both sides, two maximsmay apply. Thus, we may be faced witha choice between inflicting pain and sayingwhat we know to be false.Coming now to the second question,how it is we can argue that two situationsare relevantly dissimilar. The disputantsmay, of course, fail to agree; but also theymay come to agree, and in a rationalMORAL RULES AND MORAL MAXIMS 281way. That they should so agree presumes,of course, that their habits of reasoningand sentiments of disapprovalwere tutored in common community.But since it is the reasoning which ishabitual, it makes sense to inquire inwhat manner the reasoning proceeds.Here we discover a near-reduplication ofthe argument as previously schematized.We shall also discover that maxims, inboth wider and narrower senses, serve tokeep the argument in its course.We just saw that the argument takesits departure from acts whose possiblemoral importance is pointed by amaxim. Such an act is under scrutiny andgenerally, though not inevitably, onlyacts of the same kind can be immediatelyregarded as relevantly similar. We shallbe concerned, say, with cases of the inflictionof pain, whether or not unnecessaryinfliction of pain to be determined.A further step in sounding out themorality of the matter might be to considerwhether this act would or wouldnot be disapproved by most people, or bysuch and such people. "Disapproval" is,we saw, essential to the concept ofmorality.But, most likely, we should begin topoint out differences in the offices andcapacities of the agents (but he was a diplomat,a moron, left-handed); the generaleffects of the acts; the possible furthereffects on moral practices. We should, inshort, argue for dissimilarity by appealingto further maxims, thus importingideas such as "welfare,""impartiality,""universality," and the like, garnishingthe reasoning with a generous sprinklingof words like "involuntary" and epithetsof virtue and vice. We should, that is,be doing just what we were doing before,arguing within the rubrics of morality.What precisely will figure in the argumentwill depend upon ever so manyThis content downloaded on Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:18:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
282 ETHICSdifferent facts: On the state of our knowledge,on our present ability to modify certainmodes of behavior, on changingpractices, etc.It is pretty clear now that we justmust admit the perpetual possibility ofrevision and indecision, in principle, forsome cases, otherwise unspecified. Butwe cannot do that without admitting thepossibility of finality and decision, infact, in other cases. For the whole proceduredepends upon the reiterated establishmentof new precedents.This discussion bears on the questionwhether pronouncements to the effectthat such and such would be right orwrong, uttered as conclusions of argumentswithin contexts of decision andappraisal, are properly construed astrue-or-false statements. There can be nodoubt that we make the decision or appraisalon a factual basis and that theconclusion can be objectively right orwrong. There would, therefore, appear tobe scope for stating that the decision orappraisal is objectively right or wrong.But now we are talking about the decisionor appraisal made at a particulartime in particular circumstances, and notthe act itself, which is in principle subjectto reappraisal. Moreover, it does seem abit suspicious to docket as true-or-falsestatements pronouncements that acts aremorally right or wrong. The reason forthis appears, I think, by once more contrastingthe moral and legal cases.Legal decisions are made on the basisof facts and afterward we may statetruly or falsely that the decision was correct.But also, on the basis of the decision,we may state that the man wasguilty, i.e., declared guilty. We cannot dothat in moral cases, for precisely what welack is the necessary formal apparatusoperated by authorities whose actionbrings proceedings to a close.Here again the doctrine of rules, pro-viding a general formulation of the truthconditionsfor statements that acts areright or wrong, distorts by imposing anunwanted precision and formality.Let us now see how natural are someof those peculiarities of moral reasoningwhich were so badly accommodated bythe doctrine of rules.First, it is now no mystery that moralpractices generally escape capture as explicitlystated rules. We see that rulesare often not even wanted, the reasoningproceeding from particular case to particularcase, guided by maxims.Since almost everyone must be taughtto distinguish right from wrong, andsince each one is taught by others, theabsence of special moral competence andauthority is no surprise. Since there areno experts, there is little room for specificmoral promulgation and enforcement.Therefore there is little room for specificsanctions, although the concept of disapprovalis cardinal.Moreover, since we argue from precedentto precedent along a truistic line ofmaxims, there is room to move in all directions,by creating new precedents andby extending old ones to bear on manyareas of human behavior. Thus, havingonce been given an example of beinghonest, we may later see what it is to behonest in business, in play, in discourse,etc.Also, since the maxim of universalityis fundamental to the idea of moralityand since the same maxim is the normalpath leading from precedents involvingone person to precedents involvingothers, it is natural that we should conceiveof moral practice as governing behaviortoward an unlimited number ofpeople, relevant dissimilarities apart.Most important of all, it is now possibleto see how natural it is for moralpractices to change. In the first place, differentfactors may at different times ruleThis content downloaded on Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:18:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Page 1 and 2: Moral Rules and Moral MaximsAuthor(
Page 3 and 4: 270 ETHICSer this is a blond child;
Page 5 and 6: 272 ETHICSAlterations in the moral
Page 7 and 8: 274 ETHICStion, we are almost bound
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Page 11 and 12: 278 ETHICSwhat we should call moral
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