J Value Inquiry (2012) 46:303–315 DOI 10.1007/s10790-012-9343-z

When Do We Share Moral Norms? Marcus Agnafors

Published online: 27 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

1 Introduction It is an increasingly popular belief that some moral norms are universally, or nearly universally, accepted. This position is sometimes referred to as descriptive universalism. However, despite its popularity, descriptive universalism is hardly ever argued for in any detail. In particular, what is required in order for two or more moral communities to share a moral standard in the relevant sense has not been thoroughly discussed. Many moral philosophers maintain that there are universally shared moral standards. They argue that underneath contextual considerations and disagreements about facts, there is a set of moral norms which every moral culture share. Brian Orend believes that there is a cross-cultural consensus on human rights, and Jack Donnelly has recently stated that there is an extensive overlapping consensus on human rights.1 Kwame Anthony Appiah claims that there exist thin, universal values, and in a similar fashion Amartya Sen has argued that some Western values are indeed found in Asian cultures as well.2 Brian Barry argues that some values are universally shared, and a similar position is taken by Hans Ku¨ng, who builds a global ethic on the idea of shared basic values, and Sissela Bok, who also argues

1 See Brian Orend, Human Rights: Concepts and Contexts (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 2002), pp. 156–161; see also Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), ch. 3. 2

See Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), ch. 4; see also Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), ch. 10.

M. Agnafors (&) Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Kungshuset, Lundaga˚rd, 222 22 Lund, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

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that there are common values.3 Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in Principles of Biomedical Ethics, express a similar stance, arguing for the existence of a common morality that all persons committed to morality share, and Bernard Gert defends the notion that there is a common morality shared by every rational person.4 Perhaps the most influential theory of a shared morality is provided by Michael Walzer, who suggests that there is a thin morality, a morality reiterated in almost every moral community in the world.5 The morality is thin, in the sense that it only contains a few basic tenets, freed from contextual considerations. According to Walzer, it has content expressible in terms of basic individual rights. He also describes the thin morality as having normative priority over other components in thick, full-fledged social moralities: ‘‘thinness and intensity go together.’’6 This means that the contents of the thin code tend to be accorded greater normative weight than normative components found solely within a thick morality, and hence seen as morally authoritative. However, Walzer has no illusion that the content of the thin morality is explicitly embraced everywhere and by everyone. As he stresses in Interpretation and Social Criticism, the authentic morality of a moral community cannot be read off existing opinions, laws and practices.7 The authentic morality must be excavated by careful interpretation. Furthermore, Walzer describes the thin code as abstracted from actual thick moralities. The thin code is ‘‘embedded’’ in the thick moralities, only to be abstracted in times of ‘‘a personal or social crisis or a political confrontation.’’8 While it is unclear what Walzer means by such abstraction, it is clear that it prevents a direct copy and paste of the content of the thick moralities into the thin morality. The theory of a universally reiterated thin morality presented by Walzer is rivaled by the idea of overlapping consensus, suggested by John Rawls.9 While different in 3 See Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 285; see also Hans Ku¨ng, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (London: SCM Press, 1997), and Sissela Bok, Common Values (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1995). 4

See Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); see also Bernard Gert, Common Morality: Deciding What to Do (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

5

See Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000); see also, Walzer, ‘‘The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 9, no. 3, 1980; Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Walzer, ‘‘Nation and Universe,’’ in Grethe B. Peterson, ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 11 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990); Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); ‘‘Response,’’ in David Miller and Walzer, eds., Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Walzer, ‘‘Beyond Humanitarian Intervention – Human Rights in Global Society,’’ in Walzer, Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, ed. Miller (New Haven. Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007).

6

Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 6. 7

8

See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism. Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 3.

9

See John Rawls, ‘‘Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 14, no. 3, 1985; see also Rawls, ‘‘The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus,’’ New York University Law Review vol. 64, no. 2, 1989; Rawls, ‘‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,’’ Oxford

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presentation and terminology, a case can be made for the thin morality advanced by Walzer being an instance of overlapping consensus. Rawls argues that while ‘‘in a well-ordered society all citizens affirm the same political conception of justice, we do not assume that they do so for all the same reasons, all the way down.’’10 In a liberal democracy the citizens adhere to different and sometime incompatible worldviews or reasonable comprehensive doctrines, as Rawls labels them. Nevertheless a unity around the basic precepts of justice is needed to ensure stability. The solution, Rawls suggests, is an overlapping consensus where the adherents of different reasonable comprehensive doctrines accept the same political conception of justice, concerning constitutional essentials, but for different reasons based on their own reasonable comprehensive doctrine. We then have a political conception of justice that is endorsed through an overlapping consensus and hence stable. This is an idea that can be applied to the global scene as well, which suggests that there is a moral standard subject to an overlapping consensus between the various moral cultures around the world. While Rawls never applies the notion of overlapping consensus to universal morality, it seems like the natural next step.11 Common as it is, the frequent and persistent idea of a universally shared moral standard is seldom subjected to any closer scrutiny. Terms such as ‘‘thin’’ and ‘‘minimal’’ seem to be defensively used to fend off any accusations claiming a theory to be utopian or unrealistic, rather than doing real work. Symptomatically, none of the philosophers subscribing to the idea of a shared moral standard go to any lengths trying to establish its plausibility. Instead, it seems to operate either on the level of pious hope or shallow empirics.

2 Inclusion People share a lot of things: houses, tools, books, cars, and workplaces. Intuitively, when two persons, communities, cultures, or families share something, both must somehow have what is shared, whether it is the same physical object or instances of the same phenomenon. In order for two communities to share a moral standard, each of the two communities must, in their respective morality, somehow include the shared moral norms. This requirement is not as straightforward as it might seem, as it remains unclear when a community actually embraces a particular morality. For instance, it seems undecided if the embrace of a moral standard is equivalent to the embrace of a moral standard by the majority of the population or the intellectuals within the community. Moreover, the matter of whether actual practice weighs heavier than theoretical commitment remains unresolved. It is still unclear whether we need to dig deep into the minds and hearts of the members in the community to Footnote 9 continued Journal of Legal Studies vol. 7, no. 1, 1987; Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); and Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 10

Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 32.

11

See Jack Donnelly, ‘‘The Relative Universality of Human Rights,’’ Human Rights Quarterly vol. 29, no. 2, 2007.

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discover a true morality; it is debatable to what extent we should expect the morality of a particular community to exhibit the right kind of causal history, such as not being the result of the most flagrant spoilers of rationality and value formation; any cognitive shortcomings must be detected; the homogeneity or the heterogeneity of the community must be taken into account; meta-ethical assumptions and implicit theories must be made explicit. These are important and difficult tasks.12 However, while certainly important, they have to do with the nature of the relation between an individual or a collective and a specific morality, not with the sharing of a moral standard. We will focus instead on the triad of a specific moral standard and the moralities of the two entities assumed to share it. On a requirement of inclusion, the content in the shared moral standard must be found in both moralities sharing that standard. For instance, two moralities can be said to share the same moral norm if one of them includes a prohibition against drinking red wine with shellfish and the other does so as well. What counts as being included is not clear however. Inclusion can be actual or deductive, or a mixture of both. If the shared moral standard is actually included, then it is an acknowledged part of the morality, in the sense that the overwhelming majority of the competent adults adhering to the morality recognize, after due reflection, the shared moral standard as a part of their morality. If the shared moral standard is deductively included, we have no such recognition to rely on. Instead, we have to infer the inclusion of the moral standard, in part or in full, through deductive logic. An inclusion of the moral standard into a morality is then deductive if the moral standard, or the parts of the moral standard not being recognized in the actual sense, is entailed by the other contents in the morality. This expresses the intuition that deductive logic can force us to commit ourselves, ceteris paribus, to the consequences of our acknowledged moral principles, values and norms. For instance, if individuals have never heard of a prohibition against eating shellfish, simply because they are not acquainted with shellfish, but given that they have prohibitions against eating animals and against drinking alcoholic beverages and agree that shellfish is indeed an animal species, it seems reasonable to infer that they would not, on pain of contradiction, look kindly on having shellfish for dinner, enjoyed with a glass of red wine. This does not amount to a denial of the fact that many social moralities tend to harbor inconsistencies. However, inconsistencies are less than ideal and usually associated with shallow morality. Upon reflection, inconsistencies are avoided. Actual, post-reflection inclusion and deductive inclusion work in tandem. Actual inclusion functions as a hygiene condition, ensuring the quality of what we have, so to speak; deductive inclusion functions as a condition of what we should have, in addition to what we already have. There are other standards of inclusion that might be considered. If there is no actual inclusion of the moral standard into the morality, and no deductive inference can be relied upon, then there is still the possibility of a weaker inclusion in cases where there is nothing in the morality that contradicts the moral standard, the standard being logically consistent with the morality. The people adhering to the 12

See Neil Levy, ‘‘Descriptive Relativism: Assessing the Evidence,’’ Journal of Value Inquiry vol. 37, no. 2, 2003.

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morality can then be described as being agnostics in respect to the moral standard, as they lack formal reasons to reject it. But inclusion through consistency seems absurd. Sharing implies having something to share, and therefore mere consistency does not suffice in order for the moral standard to be included in the morality. For instance, if a morality consists of a single injunction against drinking red wine with shellfish, and another morality consists of another single injunction, ‘‘Do not walk on wet grass,’’ it seems absurd to say that they share the same moral standard consisting of one of the two injunctions, or both. Moreover, it would be equally absurd to say that both moralities share a moral standard that only contains one single prohibition or permission, when that prohibition or permission is not found in either morality, even though being compatible with both. Thus, consistency is not a very plausible interpretation of inclusion. Another possibility would be inclusion through coherence. A moral standard is then included in a morality if it coheres well with the rest of that morality. Disregarding its conceptual difficulties, using coherence as a criterion would allow us to extend current principles, values, and norms in a morality to cases which are not actually or deductively covered by its other contents. This is a tempting route, but as well as the fact that it is likely to make the inclusion of a principle, value, or norm in a morality somewhat arbitrary, it conflicts with the basic intuition that in order for something to be shared, it must be had by the parties sharing it. For instance, if a person is utterly uninterested in politics, it does not matter whether or not a certain political view coheres with her interests, her social position, and her personal moral views; coherence does not make the political view her political view, however well it would fit her. This leaves us with the initial characterization of a shared moral standard as being either actually or deductively included in two or more moralities, a view of inclusion shared by Rawls.13 We can then formulate the requirement of inclusion by saying that in order for a moral standard to be shared by two or more moralities, the content of the moral standard must be included, actually or deductively, in the moralities sharing the standard.

3 Identical Internal Structure While the requirement of inclusion is straightforward and fairly non-controversial, it does not take us far. 14 Mere inclusion fails to provide us with much-needed depth, leaving us with superficial similarities and points of references, but with no real action-guiding content. No social morality consists solely of a single principle, value, or norm. A morality embedded in the life of a particular community functioning to guide conduct in the community is complex. It will consist of a plurality of principles, values, and norms related to each other in different ways, relations which determine the character of the morality. A principle, value, or norm 13

See Rawls, Political Liberalism, op. cit., p. 171.

14

See Sen, op. cit., pp. 231–238; see also James Griffin, On Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 139; Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, pp. 94–98; and Barry, op. cit., p. 285.

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cannot simply be extracted from the host morality, with less than losing in determinateness. This will also be the case with a shared moral standard. In order for a shared moral standard to do some real work, it will consist of more than one principle, value, or norm. It will harbor other contents that will help to specify its character, even though the end product might still be thin, compared to full-blown social moralities. Every social moral standard is complex in the sense that it is structured in a certain way. Every principle, value, or norm within it stands in a certain relation to the other principles, values, and norms in the moral standard. Each has a certain position within the moral standard. This leads to a requirement that the contents shared by two moralities must also exhibit the same ordering in both moralities. Let us suppose that for one morality allowing innocent people to die is morally wrong and that chocolate cookies must never be left to bake longer than fifteen minutes and that another morality shares the same injunctions. With respect to the first morality, if we can prevent innocent people from dying at the cost of leaving the chocolate cookies to bake for, say, twenty minutes, we ought to do so. The second injunction is then described as outweighed, overridden, annulled, or having less importance. With respect to the other morality, the ordering of the two injunctions is reversed. If we must let an innocent person die in order to tend to our cookies, so be it. The absurdity of the example aside, it is reasonable to say that the two moralities, despite having the same components, are indeed very different. Hence, a moral standard need not be shared by the two moralities, even if they contain the same components. It is therefore suggested, as a second requirement, that in order for two moralities to share a moral standard, the contents abstracted from one morality must also exhibit the same internal structure as the identical contents abstracted from the other morality. If a moral standard consisting only of the two injunctions is shared by two moralities, then the two injunctions must be ordered in the same way in both moralities. The requirement that the contents shared by two moralities must also exhibit the same ordering in both moralities is not surprising. Specifying, ranking, and weighing are important to any moral system. The point is not that the second requirement is novel, but that it is often downplayed by philosophers who believe that specifying, weighing, and ranking can somehow be left to the particular moral communities to be locally performed. Commonly, proponents of a de facto shared universal moral standard leave room for local self-determination within the moral sphere. The most common strategy is to emphasize that a shared moral standard needs to be locally interpreted before being put to use. The moral principles are the same, it is argued, but the weights attributed and the specifications required must be contextually decided. Such local interpretation or specification can be inherent in the contents of a shared moral standard, meaning that full specification already exists with the moralities sharing the standard. In such a case, the only problem is that of drastically limiting the shared area, as the norms compared have already decided positions and much sharper edges than they would short of local interpretation or specification. Problems arise however, if interpretation is seen as subsequent to the formation of an authoritative collection of shared principles, norms, and values. In such a case,

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specifics are added to the content of the shared moral standard either arbitrarily or through the guidance of normative considerations. If arbitrarily, then the stability of the shared moral standard becomes threatened, as well as its status as being shared. If guided by normative considerations, then either these considerations are objective, implying that we have then accepted an objectivist position in metaethics or that the shared nature of the standard is jeopardized, since there is particularistic content which determines the function of the shared moral standard when it comes to guiding behavior. This dilemma is often hidden beneath appeals to coherence or deliberative processes.15 However, when used to determine weight or to add specificity, notions like coherence and deliberative processes are not themselves devoid of normative content. We may see why this is problematic by considering a shared moral standard that contains two injunctions. Following the lead of philosophers who advocate local or contextual specification or weighing, the ordering of the two injunctions vis-a`-vis each other is then provided in each morality sharing the moral standard. The actual action-guiding is thus clearly not provided by the shared moral standard in itself, containing both injunctions and coupled with relevant empirical input, but by the two injunctions as parts of a morality sharing the moral standard. But this seems strange. The contents of the shared moral standard began as contents belonging to each morality, being fully action-guiding, before being abstracted to the shared moral standard. Arguing that the shared moral standard needs to be specified or put through a weighing process thus amounts to taking a step back. While nothing is lost in terms of action-guidance when reverting back to the original moralities, there will be considerable costs to the status of the shared moral standard, as it appears to be rendered useless.

4 Identical External Structure Let us consider again two moralities, both containing the prohibitions against letting an innocent person die and against leaving cookies to bake for longer than fifteen minutes. We may suppose that the injunctions are identically structured in both moralities, with the first injunction having priority over the second, but this is not enough. In addition we must add a requirement that the components of a shared moral standard must also be found, in every sharing morality, in the same place visa`-vis other norms that are not part of the shared moral standard. The two injunctions may be found in a morality in an uninterrupted sequence, where in the hierarchy of principles, values, and norms in the morality, the injunction against letting an innocent person die is immediately prior to the injunction against leaving cookies to bake longer than fifteen minutes, even as the two injunctions are not found in an uninterrupted sequence in another morality. While the first injunction has greater normative weight than the other, there is at least one other principle, value, or norm interrupting the hierarchy in such a way that it is placed between the two injunctions. The third component thus has greater normative weight than the injunction against leaving the cookies to bake for more than fifteen minutes, but less 15

See Beauchamp and Childress, op. cit., pp. 16–19 & 388.

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weight than the injunction against letting an innocent person die. For instance, let us suppose that a morality contains a right not to be harmed, which trumps the right to use a gun as the right-holder pleases, and that another morality includes the right to freely use a gun, a right which is trumped both by the right not to be harmed and, say, by the right not to be disturbed by gunfire. We would not say that a moral standard, constituted by the first two rights, is shared by two moralities, if the right to freely use a gun can be legitimately overridden in one morality by the right to a reasonable silence, but not in another, where the right to peace and quiet is regarded either as inferior to the right to freely use a gun or as lacking any normative weight whatsoever. This has additional consequences. It implies that the components making up the shared moral standard must always be found at the top of the normative hierarchy in the sharing moralities. If the hypothetical components are not found at the top of the normative hierarchy in both moralities, it implies that at least in one of the moralities, there is a third component that trumps the two injunctions. If such a component trumps the two injunctions and is found in only one of the moralities, then from the perspective of the other morality, the injunctions are trumped for no good reason. At the same time, if the other morality has yet another component which trumps both injunctions, then the additional components must be identical. If that is not the case, the normative component is considered to have illegitimate authority from the perspective of the other morality, itself harboring another normative component that is considered illegitimate from the perspective of the first morality. If the intervening components are identical, then that component should also be included in the shared moral standard. A third requirement can be formulated by saying that if a moral standard is shared by two moralities, the contents of the standard must be structured in such a way that they, as an ordered sequence, outweigh every other principle, value or norm also found in the two moralities.

5 Social Importance In order for two moralities to share a moral standard, they must themselves be regarded, as moralities and by their respective adherents, as having at least roughly the same degree of social importance or urgency. This might not be easy to see. Let us consider a case where the three requirements we have considered are fulfilled: the content of a moral standard is part of two moralities, and it can be described as structured, internally and externally, in identical ways in both moralities. If all three requirements hold, it can nevertheless be the case that the contents of the moral standard are considered almost as sacred in the social context of one morality, while considered only slightly more important than rules of etiquette in the social context of another morality. A social context where morality is regarded as almost sacred might be found among moral Puritans, who treat moral principles, values, and norms as having infinite importance. In a more lax social context, moral principles, values, and norms, although acknowledged as action-guiding and character-guiding, might lack any substantial authority. If such different importance is attributed to the

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entire sets of moral principles, values, and norms of the two moralities, then we cannot say that they share a moral standard, as the social importance of the different moralities differs radically. Someone might object that as moralities, the two moralities simply must have a considerable significance and authority, or even be the strongest determining factor when deciding on actions, all things considered. This possibility should not be denied, but doubts must be expressed if this really causes the requirement to miss its mark, since even attributing such importance to morality allows for variation in social importance. It seems clear that we can imagine societies where morality is taken lightly, and systematically so. In such a society, there would not be any social sanctions of any kind for individuals who violate the moral norms of the society. Instead, moral action and moral responsibility are diffused by an emphasis on genetics and situational factors. An opposite case of a Puritan society where moral rules are said to stem directly from God is perhaps easier to imagine. It is not unreasonable to deem two such moralities to be different, while being moralities nonetheless.

6 Stability A fifth requirement is that the moralities sharing a moral standard must be stable over time. If changes in a morality occur, this will clearly affect the character of the shared moral standard. This is, strictly speaking, not a requirement necessary for something to be shared, but a requirement stemming from an assumption that insofar we want a moral standard to be of any use, it must be reliable over time. Certain perseverance is needed, as a decent moral system must be experienced, by individuals and collectives, as stable enough to make it worthwhile to build their lives within its framework. This is part of what is meant by a moral standard being shared in a relevant sense. It might also be argued that the very idea of a social morality, in contrast to a mere theoretical ethical system, presupposes certain stability of its contents. It might be held that on the view that Rawls advances, the requirement is fulfilled by the idea of overlapping consensus, an idea introduced as a conceptual tool for explaining how stability can be maintained in the midst of pluralism. The requirement seems to be found in the conceptual framework, as reasonable comprehensive doctrines are doctrines that ‘‘endure over time from one generation to the next.’’16 Hence, if we describe the shared moral standard in the terms that Rawls sets out, the requirement will be superfluous. However, Rawls does not explain why he thinks that reasonable comprehensive doctrines must also be persistent. He relies heavily on moral psychology to ensure a non-utopian character for the idea of overlapping consensus. According to Rawls, most people have only vague conceptions of justice and tend to hold only partially comprehensive views.17 This allows a certain amount of slippage. There is enough room for the political conception to cohere with the various partial comprehensive doctrines of the 16

Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 32.

17

See Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 13.

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citizens. Rawls writes: ‘‘many if not most citizens come to affirm the public political conception without seeing any particular connection, one way or the other, between it and their other views.’’18 He then goes on to claim that living under liberal democratic institutions, citizens will over time ‘‘acquire an allegiance’’ to the political conception of justice, as they discover it to be ‘‘both reasonable and wise to affirm its principles.’’19 As time goes by, the allegiance to the political principles found in the overlapping consensus will grow stronger. Rawls optimistically believes that if an incompatibility were to arise between the political conception and a reasonable comprehensive doctrine, the citizens would then ‘‘adjust or revise’’ their comprehensive doctrines.20 There is no need to question the account of a possible formation of an overlapping consensus that Rawls provides. What is difficult to accept, however, is his description of the mechanisms of moral psychology as one-directional, leading exclusively, or generally, toward an overlapping consensus. ‘‘I assume,’’ he writes, ‘‘this consensus to consist of reasonable comprehensive doctrines likely to persist and gain adherents over time within a just basic structure.’’21 Given the fact of a reasonable pluralism, where different comprehensive doctrines compete for the allegiance of the citizens, psychological and social forces other than the mere attractiveness of the liberal institutions will exercise a considerable pull. Just as liberalism will inevitably lead to pluralism, so it seems reasonable to assume that the same pluralism will create dynamics which are bound to counter, or interact with, the attractiveness of the liberal institutions, thereby unsettle the stability of the overlapping consensus. While Rawls acknowledges that liberalism will lead to a pluralism of comprehensive doctrines, he holds that liberal institutions will be perceived as superior to other possible institutions and regimes. However, it is hard to see why liberal institutions must have monopoly on creating allegiance in a liberal setting, where all kinds of associations are allowed to flourish. Rawls relies solely on the inherent attractiveness of liberal institutions.22 He appears to rely on a privileged position granted to democracy, as a democratic culture constitutes the framework for his argument, but in a pluralist setting such a privilege will be challenged by smaller, more intimate associations that need not be liberal. It might be said in reply that any changes that will occur, will occur either within the realm of what is reasonable, or push the comprehensive doctrine into the realm of what is unreasonable, thus removing the doctrine from a reasonable overlapping consensus. This is a way of keeping the political conception of justice untouched and therefore stable. However, when discussing descriptive universalism, this reply is ineffective, since there can be no a priori norm for deeming a morality to be or not to be eligible for providing elements to the shared moral standard. If there is a conflict between the political conception of justice and other values in the comprehensive doctrine of a citizen or a group of citizens, there is also another 18

Rawls, Justice as Fairness, op. cit., p. 193.

19

Ibid., p. 194.

20

Rawls, ‘‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,’’ p. 19.

21

Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 141.

22

See ibid., p. xviii.

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possible outcome which is never discussed by Rawls but which should be taken into consideration. The slippage Rawls sees as helpful for the creation of an overlapping consensus might be problematic. The vagueness of a comprehensive doctrine and the slippage between it and the political conception of justice might turn into moral fragmentation. Moral fragmentation is the phenomenon where a person or a group harbors a set of moral principles, values, or norms which is incompatible with another set of moral principles, values, or norms also harbored by the same person or group and concerned with some other, but related, area of morality. This is not the same as a case in which an individual decides to delimit her political views to the political sphere and her moral views to a private sphere or finds herself already doing that. Such a case is described by Rawls when he envisions a reasonable but only partially comprehensive doctrine, which can be a part of an overlapping consensus although it is as he put is, ‘‘not systematically unified.’’23 Rawls writes: ‘‘It is a pluralist view, let us say, since each subpart of this family has its own account based on ideas drawn from within it, leaving all values to be balanced against one another.’’24 He adds: ‘‘under reasonable favorable conditions that make democracy possible, political values normally outweigh whatever nonpolitical values conflict with them.’’25 In the case described by Rawls, the competing moral values are ordered through conscious decision-making or by simple acceptance. Moral fragmentation is a compartmentalization of moral views in a citizen, a group of citizens, or a community. In such a case, the individual or group has not resolved the moral disequilibrium, and no weighing, conscious or not, has harmonized the different values by the creation of a coherent structure. If a conception of justice is accepted as a modus vivendi, the response of a citizen to the disequilibrium between the contents in the modus vivendi and the other contents in his or her comprehensive doctrine may not be to gravitate toward the political conception of justice or some other values, but to result in moral fragmentation. It may then appear uncertain whether or not the moral views in a fragmented doctrine would suffice to lend the kind of stability to a political conception of justice in the way that Rawls requires. The doctrine seems to suffer from a condition of instability, created by the dissonance within the doctrine itself. An analysis of the weak points in the overlapping consensus that Rawls proposes clearly pertains to descriptive universalism as well, in so far moral objectivism is rejected. The reasonable comprehensive doctrines are then substituted for the moralities of the various existing moral communities, and the political conception of justice replaced by the shared moral standard. If that is the case, the chance of the shared moral standard gaining allegiance, and hence being perceived as morally authoritative, is even less compared to the chance of the political conception gaining such allegiance. Thus, when the shared moral standard is viewed through the lens of the theory of overlapping consensus, the problems inherent in the theory get more acute, not less.

23

Ibid., p. 145.

24

Ibid.

25

Ibid., p. 146.

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It is tempting to suggest that a universally shared moral standard would show a greater resistance, as the moralities involved are anchored in wider and presumably more inert social contexts than comprehensive doctrines. However, such conclusion might be premature. In fact, it seems reasonable to assume that moral systems covering large social units would be less stable, due to exposure to internal pluralism. In a globalized world, avoiding influences from the outside is nearly impossible. Furthermore, moral fragmentation may lead to another problem given the assumption that the moralities that are supposed to share in the shared moral standard include any deductively inferred consequences, an assumption that Rawls appears to make. If the fragmentation amounts to inconsistencies, then anything can be inferred. The morality would contain everything, causing the shared moral standard to become unstable. It would also imply that a fragmented morality would share any moral standard. The need for stability is thus not satisfied through the idea of overlapping consensus. The requirement amounts to saying that any morality sharing in a moral standard must be stable over time, in the sense that the morality must maintain its identity in all areas relevant for the sharing, for a period of time long enough to ensure the reliability of the morality in the community embracing it. What amounts to a time being long enough, and according to which criteria the community founds the morality reliable, are to be contextually decided.

7 Translatability A sixth requirement has to do with translatability between moralities that are said to share the moral standard. In order to be able to pass meaningful judgment on any possible sharing of a moral standard, the moralities that share the standard must be, in some way, translatable into each other. Generally, this is often assumed without much discussion.26 Two moralities are translatable if and only if the contents of each morality can also be expressed in the vocabulary available to the other morality in such a way that the contents retain the same action-guiding capacity. It might be objected that the requirement of translatability is beside the point. Whether or not we are able to translate a specific morality into the vocabulary of another morality, the moralities will, beneath their conceptual surfaces, be similar or not. But such objection is relevant only if we understand the requirement as a requirement for sharing. However, the requirement of translatability is not a criterion or precondition for sharing. Instead, it is a requirement for ensuring that the shared moral standard is shared in a relevant way. The purpose of a normative standard is to serve as a guide to action broadly understood, but also to constitute a base for cross-cultural criticism and praise. In order to serve such purpose, it must be acknowledged as inter-culturally authoritative. Merely stopping at the theoretical possibility of a universally shared moral standard will not suffice. If the requirement of translatability is rejected, we will be stuck with a shared moral standard only accessible from the point of nowhere.

26

See Walzer, Thick and Thin, pp. 9–10.

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The requirement of translatability is not self-evident. Due to the influence of Donald Davidson, it is commonly assumed that there can be no meaningful assertions of radical untranslatability, as such assertions require the assumption of at least some shared understandings. When considering descriptive universalism, the requirement of translatability must be regarded as fulfilled a priori and therefore unnecessary for the set of requirements at issue.27 The argument advanced by Davidson is not applicable, since the contents of a shared moral standard constitute a limited part of the moralities actually being shared. However, the principle of charity that Davidson also puts forward, which would have us assume an overlap between the language to be translated and the language of the translator, can be employed with respect to the contents of the moralities, other than the contents found in the shared moral standard. Assuming that there is an overlap between the moralities, the translation can proceed without the assumption that all of their respective contents are translatable. Hence, a proponent of descriptive universalism need not, when requiring translations, assume the necessary existence of a shared moral standard. What is required is that the entire content in the moralities is in fact translatable. Complete translations are required. Given the five other requirements, which rely on the idea that weighing and ranking are integrated components of the character of a morality, complete translations are required. Rankings otherwise would be incomplete, leaving inaccessible blind spots when assessing whether or not two moralities share a moral standard. Merely partial translatability will effectively prevent us from making a reliable judgment on whether or not the morality shares a moral standard with some other morality. Moralities sharing a moral standard must be completely mutually translatable in order to make an assessment of any potential sharing. Together, the six requirements need to be satisfied in order for descriptive universalism to be acceptable. While the requirement of stability and the requirement of translatability are not requirements of a shared moral standard per se, they add relevance to the assumption of a shared moral standard. Without them, there would be little point in discussing a shared morality in the context of moral or political philosophy. Taken together, the requirements give us at least a rudimentary understanding of what is needed in order for a moral standard to be shared in a relevant way.28

27

Donald Davidson, ‘‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,’’ Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 47, 1973–1974. 28 I would like to thank Bo Petersson and Lena Halldenius for constructive comments on an early draft of this article. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees and Thomas Magnell, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Value Inquiry, for helpful comments and suggestions.

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