J Value Inquiry (2012) 46:289–302 DOI 10.1007/s10790-012-9348-7

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory Damian Cox

Published online: 5 October 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

1 Introduction In developing moral theories, philosophers seek to fulfill at least two tasks: to guide moral judgment and to guide moral deliberation. In moral judgment, moral agents assess moral status. In moral deliberation, moral agents decide how to act. It is important to work out how these two things are related. One suggestion is to posit a direct connection between them according to which moral agents are required to deliberate in terms of correct moral judgment. There are various ways of spelling out this requirement. For example, moral agents might be required to rank prospective actions according to a correct moral judgment of them and choose the highest ranked action. Moral agents would thus be required to choose the morally best action available to them. Alternatively, moral agents might be required to separate prospective actions into those that are permissible actions and those that are impermissible and choose, perhaps on non-moral grounds, from the class of morally permissible actions. The idea that there should be a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment seems to make good sense. Moral judgment of a prospective action should constitute our best understanding of its moral status. When we deliberate morally, it seems that we are trying to judge prospective actions in terms of their moral status in order to ensure that our chosen actions have the right moral status. This seems to be what makes deliberation moral deliberation as opposed to, for example, prudential deliberation. In spite of its intuitive appeal, however, certain moral theories entail the rejection of a direct connection between deliberation and moral judgment. Theories that entail this rejection are self-effacing. People who subscribe to a self-effacing theory recommend against adoption of the theory for certain purposes, such as moral deliberation. D. Cox (&) Bond University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

123

290

D. Cox

Derek Parfit introduced the term ‘‘self-effacement’’ to describe the case in which proponents of a moral theory direct moral agents not to believe the theory.1 The term has since been used in a variety of ways. Glen Pettigrove uses the term to refer to moral theories that ‘‘cannot serve as a person’s motive when she acts.’’2 Joel Martinez applies the term to moral theories whose application requires agents to act from considerations other than the considerations that make an action right.3 Whereas Parfit frames self-effacement in terms of the beliefs of moral agents, Pettigrove frames it in terms of motives for action and Martinez in terms of reasons for action. Self-effacement can also be framed in terms of moral deliberation. On this construal, a theory is self-effacing if it entails that it is sometimes wrong to use the theory in moral deliberation. A theory is deliberatively self-effacing if and only if it implies a rejection of any direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment. The phenomenon of deliberative self-effacement is pervasive and highly significant. For example, utilitarian judgment of deliberation performed in directly utilitarian terms tends to be harsh. Working through expected utility calculations is normally a sub-optimal way of morally deliberating, even for individuals who are good at calculating. By utilitarian lights, this makes it a morally wrong way of deliberating. Utilitarians have long recognized this feature of utilitarian deliberation and the most popular response has been to reject any direct connection between moral deliberation and judgment of right action. This is the position that Bentham takes. Writing about deliberation in terms of the hedonic calculus, Bentham says: ‘‘It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment.’’4 By ‘‘moral judgment,’’ Bentham means moral deliberation, so in this passage he is denying a need to apply his theory of right action directly when deciding how to act. Bentham does not do so, but other utilitarians develop indirect forms of utilitarianism in which utilitarian judgment of rightness is carefully separated from processes of moral deliberation.5 According to indirect utilitarians, deliberation in general ought to proceed on grounds that, given the condition and circumstances of deliberators, produce the best outcomes over the 1

See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 24; see also R. M. Hare, ‘‘Comments,’’ in Hare and Critics, eds. Douglas Seanor and N. Fotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Vice and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 246–247; T. M. Scanlon, ‘‘Levels of Moral Thinking’’ in Douglas Seanor and N. Fotion, eds., op. cit; Michael Stocker, ‘‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,’’ Journal of Philosophy, vol. 73, 1976; and Michael Stocker, ‘‘How Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,’’ in How Should One Live?, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

2

Glen Pettigrove, ‘‘Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?,’’ Journal of Ethics, vol. 15, 2011, p. 191; also see Simon Keller, ‘‘Virtue Ethics is Self-Effacing,’’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 85, 2007.

3 See Joel A. Martinez, ‘‘Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?,’’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 89, 2011, pp. 279–280. 4

See Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907), ch. 4, section 4.

5

See R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); see also William Langenfus, ‘‘Implications of a Self-Effacing Consequentialism,’’ Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 27, 1989; Peter Railton, ‘‘Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 13, 1984; and Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907).

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

291

long haul. Direct utilitarian calculation will only occasionally constitute such grounds. Indirect utilitarianism is a deliberatively self-effacing theory and its plausibility depends upon the plausibility of denying a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment. Deliberative self-effacement crops up in unexpected places. For example, Bernard Williams argued that reasoning explicit in the works of Kant would lead a person to entertain one thought too many in cases where motives of love ought to predominate.6 Williams thought that this demonstrated the hollowness of the account that Kant advances. One way to interpret his objection to the account advanced by Kant is as a charge of self-effacement. A proper understanding of obligations of love requires that a person not act on them by explicitly consulting them. To do so would be to have one thought too many. The account advanced by Kant, therefore, is self-effacing. Followers of Kant ought to recommend against a direct deployment of an account of right action in moral deliberation along the lines of what Kant proposes. Followers of Kant have a ready response, however, and this is to embrace the possibility of self-effacement. It is at root the same as the response offered by indirect utilitarians. What makes an action right according to Kant ought to be distinguished from his view of how a person ought to deliberate about what to do. Love brings with it obligations, but these are not always obligations to deliberate about the obligations of love and act accordingly. The problem Williams uncovered is not with accounts of moral judgment along the lines of what Kant proposed, anchored as they are in respect for the rational nature of persons, but with the implicit assumption of a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment. If we assume that the terms of moral deliberation must be the terms of moral judgment, we arrive at an implausible account of moral deliberation in contexts of love. The key to solving the problem Williams introduced, therefore, is to find a coherent and plausible way of denying a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment. More recently, a number of authors have argued that virtue ethics is selfeffacing.7 Virtue ethicists define right action in terms of virtuous action. Michael Slote and Rosalind Hursthouse offer the two most prominent examples of this. Slote likens right action to virtuous action.8 Hursthouse defines right action as action that would be performed in the circumstances by a virtuous agent acting in character.9 The formulation advanced by Hursthouse is best interpreted as an appeal to the hypothetical actions of a fully or perfectly virtuous person. Even though she denies that virtuous agents need be morally perfect, what it means for virtuous agents to act in character on particular occasions is for them to fully exemplify all virtues relevant to the occasion. A right action, therefore, is an action through the 6

See Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 17–19.

7 See Damian Cox, ‘‘Agent-Based Theories of Right Action,’’ Ethical Theory and Moral Practice vol. 9, 2006; see also Hurka, op. cit., pp. 246–247; Simon Keller, ‘‘Virtue Ethics is Self-Effacing’’; and William Ransome, ‘‘Is Agent-Based Virtue Ethics Self-Undermining?’’, Ethical Perspectives, vol. 17, 2010. 8

See Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001).

9

See Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

123

292

D. Cox

performance of which a virtuous agent would fully exemplify relevant virtues.10 Whichever of these two definitions of right action are adopted, acting virtuously will sometimes require not acting from an understanding of what it is to act virtuously. Thus virtue ethicists recommend that, in certain circumstances, people not morally deliberate according to their best understanding of what makes actions right. Indeed, virtue ethicists recognize that to do so can be vicious. Let us consider the following case. Eloise decides to help her sister out of a fix, not because she is drawn to help her by spontaneous feelings of care and not because she simply sees that her sister is in need and responds to that need, but because she means to be practical and decent and realizes that being practical and decent in the circumstances means helping her sister. A virtue ethicist might be tempted to criticize Eloise for not exemplifying true virtue in these circumstances. People do not become virtuous by acting as if they were virtuous or by studying the virtuous and mimicking them. At its worst, a concern to act according to virtue indicates self-concern that, taken to an extreme, grows into a vicious form of moral narcissism. Eloise might well reply that she is hardly being narcissistic. She is only being conscientious. She is doing what she thinks is right because she sees that it is right and why it is right. According to virtue ethicists, however, deliberative strategies like the strategy that Eloise employs break down if pursued consistently. When rightness is framed in terms of the moral status of the agent, as it is in virtue ethics, deliberation explicitly framed in its terms will lead agents to concentrate on the wrong sorts of things, a concentration that is inimical to their being fully virtuous. As in the utilitarian and Kantian cases, the deliberative self-effacement of virtue ethics requires that we replace the idea of a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment with another way of understanding the relationship between them. Different moral theorists are likely to conceive of the relation between moral judgment and moral deliberation in their own way. Nonetheless, there are general claims that we can make about what constitutes an adequate relation between moral deliberation and moral judgment. Accounts of the relation are subject to four constraints: coherence, effectiveness, endorsement, and integrity. By showing that a particular moral theory satisfies these four constraints, we will have gone a long way towards disarming objections to the theory based on the fact that it is self-effacing.

2 The Coherence Constraint The first constraint is coherence. It seems that the account of moral judgment adopted by moral agents ought to cohere with the practices of moral deliberation that they take up. It is not an entirely uncontroversial task to describe the relevant sort of coherence. There are nonetheless fairly clear-cut cases of both coherence and incoherence. A deontological theory of deliberation, for example, makes a somewhat awkward partner for a utilitarian theory of moral judgment. If falling 10 See ibid., ch. 7; see also Daniel Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 48–49.

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

293

under a correct moral principle is a right-making feature of deliberation, it seems that it should be a right-making feature of other sorts of actions. If maximal production of general welfare is a right-making feature of actions in general, it seems that it should also be a right-making feature of deliberation. Deliberation is, after all, one kind of action. Absent a convincing justification of its contrasting bases of judgment, this kind of mixed deontological and utilitarian theory does not appear to be fully coherent. Versions of indirect utilitarianism satisfy the coherence constraint. Indirect welfare utilitarians, for example, evaluate moral deliberation along utilitarian lines. According to them, the right way of deliberating is the way that, given the circumstances and capacities of the deliberator, is maximally productive of general welfare. Patterns, methods or propensities of deliberation will similarly be right if they are maximally productive of general welfare, for the sorts of agents involved, in the sorts of circumstances they face, in the long term. From an indirect utilitarian point of view, there is nothing unique about the moral status of moral deliberation. The terms in which indirect utilitarians judge moral deliberation are the very terms on which they judge other sorts of action. Virtue-ethical judgment of moral deliberation is slightly more complicated than this. Moral deliberation is judged to be good on virtue-ethical grounds if it constitutes a form of virtuous action. But a characteristic of deliberation is not a virtue just because it leads agents to act virtuously. For example, a person may be led to act virtuously by consulting moral experts whenever things get tricky. Even if this is the most effective form of deliberation for them it is not for this reason a virtuous way of deliberating. Virtuous deliberation is excellent deliberation and excellence of deliberation is not reducible to effectiveness of deliberation. The virtues of moral deliberation are not mere means of generating virtuous action, but neither are they ordinary virtues of action. They are, in many cases, a special kind of virtue. Generosity in moral deliberation, for example, is special kind of virtue. In pondering her responsibilities to her sister in the way that she does, Eloise is being generous to a degree. As it takes time and effort to think about such things, it might be something of a generous act to ponder the matter. But it would not constitute the sort of generosity on display when people actually help each other. There is a connection between generous deliberation and generous action. In deliberating generously, a person takes seriously the needs of others and takes seriously the possibility of helping them. But there is more to generosity of deliberation than this. Generosity of deliberation requires adoption of a sympathetic stance toward others. Eloise would adopt a sympathetic stance toward her sister by avoiding the rush to mean-spirited thoughts such as that her sister has brought her problems on herself or that her sister deserves to suffer the consequences of her bad decisions. Avoiding thoughts like this may be a way of being generous, but it is distinct from generosity of action. It is directed at modes of thought of another person, not modes of acting toward another person. Moral deliberation has its own way with the virtues. It either evokes special virtues such as phronesis or it evokes familiar virtues such as generosity in a special guise. The coherence constraint must in this case be framed in terms of an overarching picture of the virtues and how they work together. Coherence between

123

294

D. Cox

accounts of the virtues of deliberation and accounts of action is best thought of in explanatory terms. If the virtues of deliberation differ from other virtues, there ought to be a compelling account of why this is so. What the coherence constraint rules out is an unmotivated division of labor between virtue-ethical judgment of deliberation and virtue-ethical judgment of action. There must be an account showing how the division of labor forms a coherent pattern of judgment.

3 The Effectiveness Constraint Coherence is not enough, however. There is a material constraint on the proper relationship between moral judgment and moral deliberation. Morally best processes of deliberation must be effective in leading agents to act well. This should not be taken to mean that processes of deliberation should lead moral agents to act well if and when they do as instructed. Construing effectiveness in this way accommodates impractical and ineffectual policies of deliberation, including policies that would only succeed if moral agents always acted with pure motives and perfect efficiency. The constraint should not be taken to mean that practices of deliberation should lead agents merely to decide to act well. Construing the constraint in this way also lets in unrealistic and ineffectual deliberative practices. It validates deliberations that yield impractical decisions beyond the capabilities of agents. The best interpretation of what it is for a process of deliberation to lead agents to act well is causal. On this interpretation, a practice of deliberation is effective if it causes reasonably well-sorted agents to act well, other things being equal. What counts as a satisfactory standard of effectiveness varies from theory to theory, given the different conceptions of moral life represented in them. The effectiveness constraint on moral theorizing is underspecified, but this is how it must be. The constraint is merely intended to rule out accounts of moral deliberation that fail from a practical point of view and there is no theory-independent account of such failure to be had. Arguably, direct utilitarianism, with its presupposition of a direct connection between moral deliberation and moral judgment, fails the effectiveness constraint. Morally deliberating in a direct utilitarian fashion tends to prevent agents acting well by utilitarian lights. The effectiveness constraint is framed in terms of agents acting well rather than their acting rightly. This is important for two reasons. Although moral theories are often framed in terms of a specification of right action, they need not be. All plausible moral theories nonetheless furnish resources with which to draw a distinction between acting well and acting badly. A philosopher may identify acting well with acting rightly, but there are often good reasons for resisting this. Indirect utilitarians have good reasons to resist it. Indirect utilitarians have the resources to develop an account of acting well that is less stringent than their account of acting rightly. For example, utilitarian agents might be said to act rightly on any particular occasion if they manage to advance general welfare to the maximum extent available on that occasion. By contrast, they might be said to act well on an occasion if they manage to advance general welfare by substantially more than a basic

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

295

standard. This is a satisficing account of acting well and utilitarians can set it out without committing themselves to a satisficing account of acting rightly.11 Satisficing accounts of right action are controversial, but satisficing accounts of acting well need not be controversial. Satisficing accounts of acting well can be used to specify moral achievements that are less than the achievements of right-acting persons in the same circumstances but are moral achievements nonetheless. Since the effectiveness constraint covers all moral theories, including theories not framed in terms of right action and theories that are used to accommodate limitations of moral agency, it should be framed in terms of the broader and sometimes less stringent category of acting well. The second reason to frame the effectiveness constraint in terms of acting well turns on an interesting result within indirect utilitarian theory. Indirect utilitarians do not always prescribe acting rightly. Given the gap between what is possible for an agent to achieve on any particular occasion and what people can expect to sustain over the longer term, it may be that indirect utilitarians often recommend that agents act without maximizing goodness and thus not rightly. This recommendation is efficacious, in utilitarian terms, if it leads agents to achieve more than rival deliberative practices would have led them to achieve. Just how much human frailty and selfishness ought to be accommodated in a theory of deliberation is a delicate matter for utilitarians. Let us consider the case of a person who judges himself to be very selfish and deliberates on this basis. Even if his diagnosis is correct, deliberating on its basis seems to be bad deliberation from an indirect utilitarian point of view. By deliberating this way, the person lets himself off too easily. He helps to ensure that he achieves much less than he might have achieved under a different deliberative policy. On the other hand, someone who over-estimates his capacity for sacrifice and thus over-commits himself has probably also deliberated badly from an indirect utilitarian point of view. The right way for an indirect utilitarian to accommodate predictable limitations of moral agency depends, in part, on the consequences of forming intentions and plans. Selfish deliberators can help themselves become less selfish by forming intentions to act with moderate unselfishness, and they can become more unselfish by doing things that increase their propensity to carry out unselfish actions. Something framed in such terms is perhaps the most effective form of moral deliberation available to selfish agents. Deliberation more ambitious than this might well be counter-productive. It may seem odd that utilitarians sometimes recommend relatively unambitious kinds of deliberation or that they recommend different forms of deliberation for different agents, but indirect utilitarians are in the business of getting the best results out of agents as they are, not setting up standards of perfect utilitarian agency. We thus have no guarantee that indirect utilitarians will recommend agents act rightly by strict utilitarian standards. However, they will recommend that agents act well by utilitarian lights. Thus the effectiveness constraint is best set out in terms of the tendency of a deliberative practice to lead agents to act well. Indirect utilitarians will seek practices of moral deliberation that lead agents to act at least as well as any 11 See M. Byron ed., Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

123

296

D. Cox

rival deliberative practice. Understood in this way, it seems that indirect utilitarianism is well-placed to satisfy the effectiveness constraint. Virtue ethicists are also seeking effective deliberative practices. Since acting well is acting virtuously according to virtue ethicists, they ought to equate effective deliberative practices with practices that lead agents to act virtuously. Virtuous deliberation may be an essential feature of the virtuousness of some acts, but it is not a sufficient condition of virtuous action. A person who deliberates virtuously about how to act deliberates wisely, intelligently, thoughtfully, justly and with generosity, kindness, and sympathetic attention. It does not follow that an action performed in light of such deliberation will itself be virtuous. An imperfect moral agent may well find her sympathies exhausted by the process of virtuous deliberation and consequently act in an offhand manner. For example, someone may expend so much effort working out what another person needs that she runs out of generous feeling when it comes time to act. Even if she does what she had decided to do, she may end up doing it huffily or half-heartedly or in other ways not well. Only perfectly virtuous agents may be confident of a match between virtuous deliberation and virtuous action. For imperfect agents, it is not plausible to assume that virtuous deliberation will be fully and universally effective. Virtuous deliberation is nonetheless effective to a degree, and it is so because it tends to lead agents to act in ways that are indeed virtuous. Virtuous deliberation is rarely explicit deliberation about what virtuous agents would do. It is deliberation that possesses a range of excellent features, and the features are excellent in part because their exercise tends to lead agents to act in ways that exemplify virtue. The virtues of deliberation are not virtues merely because they lead agents to accurately determine what counts as right action. There is more to virtuous deliberation than the accurate identification of prospective virtuousness. For example, a person might deliberate sympathetically about how to respond to a friend in crisis, and this is a virtuous aspect of her deliberation. But it is not the same thing as working out what the sympathetic thing to do would be. In most cases, sympathetic deliberation enhances the likelihood that a person will decide well and act well, but this is not the only good thing about it. Sympathetic deliberation is virtuous in part because sympathy is a virtuous way of thinking about others. It is therefore a real task for virtue ethicists to uncover the practical effectiveness of their ideals of moral deliberation. Virtuous deliberation must be effective, but it is not the same thing as effective deliberation.

4 The Endorsement Constraint The third constraint on the proper relationship between moral judgment and moral deliberation is primarily a matter of fairness. A danger in separating accounts of moral judgment from accounts of moral deliberation is that the terms in which the deliberation of a person is judged are not exactly the terms in which her acts are judged, and this leads to the possibility of unfairness. Let us imagine a world in which the best moral deliberation involves looking up what to do in a book of morals. In this world, consulting the book of morals is the right thing to do for

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

297

ordinary people. The book, let us say, is a gift of the gods, and it would be villainous not to heed it in all morally significant matters. This book of morals is used to give advice about what to do, but actions are not made right in this world by such advice. They are made right, let us say, by their satisfying an especially recondite version of the categorical imperative, something of which ordinary people have no substantial knowledge. In this world, judgment of deliberation and judgment of action are separate matters, but they might nonetheless form a coherent package. The very thing that makes consulting the book of morals the right way to deliberate might be consistent with the sort of thing that makes actions in general right. Let us suppose that consulting the book of morals occasionally leads people into moral error. The book is mostly a reliable source of moral advice, but not always. When consulting the book results in moral error, a person deliberates rightly, rightly acts on the basis of her deliberation, and yet acts wrongly. There is no formal contradiction here, but there is the potential for unfair moral criticism. This is a possible case in which someone is open to justified criticism even though no critic could point to a way in which she could have rightly behaved so as to evade criticism. The grounds on which the person rightly decided to act are not the grounds on which she finds herself open to justified criticism. If she had deliberated in terms she was ultimately to be judged upon, she would have been judged more harshly still. She would have been guilty of showing disrespect for the book of morals. Even if showing disrespect for the book of morals were to lead her to do the right thing, she still would have deliberated villainously. On the face of it, this is seems to be an absurd and unfair situation. We need a way of dealing with cases like this. We might try to rule them out by somehow ensuring that right deliberation never leads deliberators astray, but that is an unrealistic condition. We might try to rule it out by equating right action with the translation of right deliberation into practice. This is not an option for deliberatively self-effacing moral theories, however. If our deliberations are guided by selfeffacing moral theories, it is unlikely that we can avoid the possibility that right deliberation sometimes leads to wrong action. The most troubling feature of such cases is that the grounds of moral judgment of action are inaccessible to moral agents. Moral agents are open to criticism on grounds they could not have fully known about and thus could not have properly endorsed. We need a way to rule this situation out. Both the grounds of moral judgment of actions and the grounds of moral judgment of deliberation should be endorsed by competent moral agents even when they differ. Although the endorsement constraint does not remove the possibility of people deliberating rightly and acting wrongly, it does eliminate the possibility of their doing so in a way that is ultimately mysterious to them. Esoteric moral theories are likely to fail the endorsement condition. The form of utilitarianism defended by Henry Sidgwick and called by Bernard Williams ‘‘government house utilitarianism’’ is such a theory.12 Divine command theory is

12 See Henry Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 490. See also Bernard Williams Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 139, and Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985), p. 109.

123

298

D. Cox

another.13 Divine command theorists identify the right-making features of actions with the commands of God. Divine command theorists are sorely in need of an account of moral deliberation, since the commands of God are not transparently available to all. Let us say that a divine command theorist develops an account of right deliberation in terms of conscience. If the account is correct, moral agents are in much the same position as individuals described in the book of morals example. They may deliberate rightly by consulting their conscience, rightly act on their deliberations, and yet be open to justified moral criticism for their actions. In one sense, they have not behaved wrongly, and yet they have done wrong on grounds they are in no position to properly endorse. An agent whose conscience fails him does not endorse the grounds upon which his consequent actions are judged. He might endorse the authority of God and thus endorse the commands of God in a general way. However, since he has no knowledge of the relevant commands, he has no knowledge of the grounds on which his action is to be judged and thus is in no position to properly endorse such grounds. In a similar way, a victim of government house utilitarianism might endorse the wisdom of government officials who know the ultimate grounds on which to judge actions right or wrong, but fail to endorse the grounds because she has no real knowledge of them. Endorsement is a way of exercising a properly informed will, and explicit knowledge of what is endorsed is necessary for such a thing. Endorsing whatever it is that government officials hold or God mysteriously commands is not an exercise of a properly informed will. Most contemporary indirect utilitarians satisfy the endorsement constraint by recommending that moral agents accept both the grounds of judgment of right action and the nature of right deliberation. In the event, an agent knows and endorses an account of what makes actions right and also knows and endorses an account of how a person ought to morally deliberate. Virtue ethicists also satisfy the endorsement constraint. A virtuous person may believe that right deliberation is virtuous deliberation, believe that right action is virtuous action, and endorse both beliefs. For both indirect utilitarians and virtue ethicists, however, the endorsement constraint is satisfied at the cost of introducing a particular tension into the psychological makeup of agents.

5 The Integrity Constraint A fourth constraint on the deliberative self-effacement of moral theory concerns the good order of moral agency. If the endorsement constraint is satisfied by a moral theory, moral agents who subscribe to the theory will understand and endorse a guide to moral judgment and a guide to moral deliberation. The two guides will not be the same, and this means that moral agents may readily find themselves in a position of knowing very well what it is that makes a prospective action right, but having to set aside the thought in order to deliberate along approved lines. The key question is whether it is possible for agents to do this in a way that preserves their 13 See Robert M. Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), chs. 7 & 9.

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

299

integrity. Moral theories should satisfy an integrity constraint. It should be possible for competent moral agents to employ both their understanding of moral judgment and their understanding of moral deliberation without undermining their integrity. An integrity objection to a moral theory was first explicitly advanced by Bernard Williams.14 Williams argued against direct utilitarianism on the grounds that it undermined the integrity of moral agents. Williams pictured integrity as a matter of staying true to identity-conferring commitments, commitments that are foundational to a sense of living a worthwhile life. He chose identity-conferring commitments antithetical to utilitarianism to advance his argument against utilitarianism and, in the view of a number of his critics, this undermined his argument.15 In spite of this, the idea that it should be possible for moral agents to subscribe to a moral theory without undermining their integrity remains highly plausible. It is important to be as clear as possible about the kind of integrity that is at stake here; however, this has proved difficult. The view of integrity advanced by Williams has not been widely accepted. Indeed, integrity is an elusive concept, and there is no single widely accepted account of it. There is nonetheless widespread agreement that integrity is undermined by certain kinds of systematic self-deception. We should not overstate the requirements of integrity. Integrity does not require a perfect level of selfawareness, and it is not undone by just any sort of self-deception. We use relatively benign self-deceptive strategies when, for example, we knowingly overestimate our chance of success when embarking on a difficult task or determine to think well of an annoying companion or colleague. Nevertheless, if a philosopher recommends that moral agents systematically deceive themselves about vitally important aspects of their lives, they put the integrity of moral agents at risk. They recommend that moral agents behave in ways that are inconsistent with their being fully honest and sincere with themselves about matters that they properly regard as fundamentally important. Theories of right action are used to judge actions in terms of their rightness. Given satisfaction of the endorsement constraint, competent subscribers to a rightaction theory will find themselves in deliberative situations in which they are fully aware of the rightness-ranking of available actions. Self-effacement means that agents are sometimes required to discount this knowledge in their moral deliberation even though it is knowledge of what makes their actions right or wrong. Some kind of double-think is going to be very hard to avoid in these circumstances. There are two main ways in which this kind of double-think plays itself out. One of them is that agents may be required to put aside thought of what makes actions right in order to facilitate acting rightly. The other is that agents may be required to put aside the judgment that they are, strictly speaking, acting wrongly in order to facilitate their acting as well as they can in the circumstances. The first sort of strategy seems, on the face of it, benign. We often employ strategies like this to enhance performance. For example, an account of what makes for efficient 14

See Bernard Williams Utilitarianism: For and Against, pp. 103–104.

15

See Spencer Carr, ‘‘The Integrity of a Utilitarian,’’ Ethics vol. 86, 1976; see also Gregory Trianosky, ‘‘Moral Integrity and Moral Psychology: A Refutation of Two Accounts of the Conflict between Utilitarianism and Integrity,’’ Journal of Value Inquiry vol. 20, 1986, pp. 279–288.

123

300

D. Cox

performance in some activity should include a stipulation that the account not be applied directly and self-consciously. Concentrating on efficiency measures tends to be distracting and therefore inefficient. There is nothing self-deceptive about putting thoughts of efficiency to one side in this way. Doing so requires that we direct our attention, but not that we convince ourselves of something we believe to be false. In the same way, the strategy of directing attention away from an explicit reckoning of the right-making properties of actions in order to act rightly is not a self-deceptive strategy. It is a way of directing attention away from something we believe onto something entirely consistent with it. The second form of double-think does not appear to be benign. Indirect utilitarianism furnishes perhaps the clearest illustration of what is involved. Indirect utilitarians sometimes recommend that moral agents act wrongly. They do this in order to facilitate agents acting as well as possible over the long haul, given intractable aspects of their character and circumstances and given their limited capacities. There may be nothing inimical to integrity in all this. Indeed it seems, on the face of it, to involve moral agents honestly confronting their limitations and working within their limitations in order to live as good a life as possible. However, honesty will not always be the best policy by indirect utilitarian lights. We are probably more effective producers of moral goodness if we somehow disregard or discount perpetual failures to act rightly. The best way to do this may not be to temporarily shunt realization of our failures to the back of our minds. This works some of the time, for some people, but there are surely more effective and productive strategies of self-management to be had. A more promising strategy would be for moral agents to convince themselves that they have not acted wrongly at all and can take full satisfaction from their acting as well as they have. Another promising strategy would be for moral agents to convince themselves that their acting wrongly is not all that important. Moral agents might convince themselves that their actions are only wrong in a technical sense that does not open them up to justified moral criticism. Both strategies of self-management are self-deceptive. The first has moral agents inculcating a belief about themselves that they genuinely believe is false. The second has moral agents inculcating a belief about morality that they genuinely believe is false. Indirect utilitarians sometimes recommend self-deceptive strategies of moral deliberation. However, the self-deceptive strategies may not undermine the integrity of moral agents to such a degree that any theory used to support the strategies is implausible. This is a difficult issue to resolve given the elusive nature of the concept of integrity and uncertainty about its significance in our lives. Nonetheless, selfdeceptive strategies recommended by indirect utilitarians involve self-deception about fundamentally important aspects of our lives. They may sometimes require us to lie to ourselves about things very precious to us. This is enough for a prima facie case against the integrity-preserving character of indirect utilitarian advice. Virtue ethicists also encounter problems satisfying the integrity constraint. They define right action in terms of virtuous action, and there are two main ways of doing this. An action may be virtuous because it is exemplary, exemplifying all virtues relevant to the situation. Alternatively, an action may be virtuous because it is the sort of action that virtuous persons would characteristically perform in the

123

Judgment, Deliberation, and the Self-effacement of Moral Theory

301

circumstances. This is the sort of action that fully or perfectly virtuous persons would perform or that imperfect agents would perform were they to exemplify all the virtues relevant to the situation. Both sorts of account tend to specify very demanding standards of right action. If they specify unrealistic standards of rightness, they confront a problem very similar to that which confronts indirect utilitarians. Ordinary people fail comprehensively to be perfectly virtuous or to act at all times as the perfectly virtuous would act. A mercilessly candid appreciation of this fact may undermine the likelihood of moral agents being as good as they can be. It may lead to disenchantment with the business of virtue. The most effective deliberative strategies for morally imperfect agents may therefore involve them in a kind of double-think. The resulting double-think may well be problematic. In order to deliberate as well as they can, given their limited moral capacities, imperfect moral agents may have to adopt ways of deliberating that lead them to act wrongly by the elevated standards in play. But the thought that our approach to important moral questions leads us away from acting rightly tends to be debilitating, and if our deliberations are to be effective, we need a way of defusing it. Thus the best available way of deliberating for morally imperfect agents might require self-deceptive support. Let us consider the following example. On hearing that her neighbor is ill, Charlotte fails to respond with deep sympathy and compassion. She finds that the requisite feelings are not there and cannot be conjured up. But instead of berating herself for her lack of virtue, Charlotte thinks of what her neighbor might reasonably want from her and then thinks about how she might best provide it. This simple deliberative strategy probably works best for Charlotte if she thinks of it as an unexceptional and satisfactory way to proceed. It works best if she does not think of it as leading her to a comprehensive failure to act rightly. Charlotte realizes that a fully virtuous person would visit her ill neighbor, make comforting small-talk with her neighbor and revive her spirits with displays of natural warmth and good humor. Charlotte knows that, by contrast, her visit to her neighbor will be awkward and somewhat unrewarding for both of them, warmth, humor and amiable chatting not being among her strong suits. She nonetheless tries to work out what her neighbor might reasonably want from her and how she might provide it. Charlotte decides on a short visit and decides to do her best to help in a practical way. Her decision is the best decision available to her, given her character. Her way of making the decision is also the best way available to her. Neither is helped by knowledge of what fully virtuous individuals would do. On the contrary, they are diminished by it. Charlotte is likely to respond badly to knowledge that her best efforts at deliberation have led to a comprehensive failure to act rightly. It is hard to see the point of her adopting a theory that regularly justifies criticism of her for doing the best she can. Her way of deliberating probably works best, therefore, if she deceives herself about the significance of fully virtuous action and convinces herself that her own moral performance is fully in order. Our moral lives go best if we do not measure them against perfectly virtuous individuals, but it is difficult to see how we are to avoid measuring ourselves against perfectly virtuous individuals if we define right action in terms of how perfectly virtuous individuals act. The integrity constraint causes a problem for both indirect utilitarianism and virtue ethics. The problem derives from the fact that both indirect utilitarians and

123

302

D. Cox

virtue ethicists advance accounts of right action so ambitious that ordinary moral agents are required to deny and not merely ignore right action judgment in order to preserve the effectiveness of their moral deliberations and the robustness of their moral agency. To advance an understanding of rightness and then deny it in this way is a self-deceptive process that prima facie is inimical to integrity. There are two main ways of attempting to rectify this situation. One way is to adopt relatively modest standards of rightness such as satisficing utilitarian standards of rightness or identification of right action with the actions of morally decent individuals rather than fully virtuous individuals. The other way of attempting to rectify the situation is to abandon the category of right action altogether, framing moral theory in thick ethical language and rejecting the primacy of thin overarching moral judgment. Non-reductive virtue theory has this character. It requires that moral judgment be framed in thick-ethical terms, spelling out the various good and bad aspects of action and often excluding an overall judgment. We are, after all, entirely capable of acting well and acting badly at the same time, and on non-reductive virtue theory there is no guarantee that these ways of acting can always be summed up in a single overarching verdict. Both strategies avoid requiring moral agents to deny the rightmaking properties of actions, but both still allow for the possibility of a gap between moral deliberation and moral judgment. They introduce the possibility that selfeffacing moral theories satisfy the integrity constraint. Advancing a deliberatively self-effacing moral theory involves separating theories of moral judgment and theories of moral deliberation. There are four constraints on this process, and they are not easily satisfied. In particular, the endorsement and integrity constraints are not easy to satisfy jointly. Nonetheless, we have reason to think that all four constraints can be jointly satisfied. Deliberative self-effacement is not always a flaw in a moral theory. It is often a sign of the complexity of our moral lives. It is a significant challenge to moral theorists, but a challenge we have reason to think can be met.16

16 I would like to thank three anonymous referees and Thomas Magnell, the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Value Inquiry, for their comments and suggestions.

123