Search Results

The problems caused by the US‐led response to terrorism addressed in Ch. 13 are looked at in more detail in the last two chapters, with the author offering here a novel reformulation of ‘justice’ as ‘coercively enforceable morality’, by arguing that ideas about international justice, and particularly about the rightness of the use of force in pursuit of the supposedly common interests of international society are intrinsically linked to common ideas about what is right or wrong. This suggests a need to rethink the order versus justice debate, as justice becomes the pursuit of those things that are legitimate to pursue, and rather than seeing order and justice as polar opposites, the author argues that the very concept of international justice implies a basic level of agreement about the legitimacy of particular types of order. He responds to the key question of how international society manages competing ideas about justice by outlining a case for the recognition of a ‘common morality’ that should guide action in international society and has three primary properties: first, unlike other ethical codes it is binding on all individuals; second, it rests on the human capacity for reasoned argument rather than ‘custom, contract, or legislation’; and third, its precepts are obligatory restraints on choice, not mere recommendations. He then moves on to discuss how common morality is applicable in international society: in sum, the creation of a common morality implies a shift to a solidarist international society that binds all its actors to a common moral code of action and shares moral responsibilities between them. The key tension within international society, the author concludes, is not one between order and justice, but one between just and unjust coercive orders.

This chapter compares an account of common morality with the account of morality presented by Beauchamp and Childress in their book, The Principles of Biomedical Ethics. It offers a general critique of principlism, as well as of the first three of their four principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. It shows the superiority of the account of morality as an informal public system over their account, which uses four freestanding principles not embedded in any system.

This chapter discusses the four features of paternalism: (1) benefits the patient, (2) needs moral justification, (3) does not have patient’s consent, and (4) the patient believes he can make his own decision, showing why accounts that leave out any of these features is inadequate. It then contrasts the accounts of the justification of paternalism offered by act consequentialism and strict deontology with the justification procedure offered by common morality, and discusses several cases of paternalism.

This chapter explores the relations between ethics and common sense. It argues that (1) common sense is essential to ethics, but not sufficient for it; (2) ethics is also essential to common sense, which is an inherently practical capacity; (3) common sense is basically conservative, not innovative, and can be oppressive, and consequently on its own terms requires supplementation and correction by ethical thinking; and (4) developments — improvements — in ethics that lead to improvements in morality lead to improvements in common sense by leading to improvements in common-sense morality.

Common sense morality is in a better epistemic position than Egoism, for those who accept common sense morality can modestly vindicate it – they can defend it to their own satisfaction – whereas most Egoists cannot defend Egoism, even modestly. The key to this defence of morality is the importance of moral understanding. What are the implications of recognizing that the focus of moral epistemology should be moral understanding rather than moral knowledge? Moral philosophers already act as if they are aiming for moral understanding, but there are many unanswered questions about moral understanding that need to be addressed in the future.

By attaching significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent and by recognizing special obligations to family members and others, common‐sense morality limits the size of an agent's moral world. Consequentialism, by contrast, upholds a more expansive notion of normative responsibility that neither assigns intrinsic moral significance to the distinction between doing and failing to prevent nor recognizes special obligations as a fundamental moral category. The conflict between restrictive and expansive notions of normative responsibility has a parallel in modern political life, in the opposition between nationalism and other varieties of particularism, on the one hand, and globalism or universalism, on the other. The opposing pulls of global integration and ethnic fragmentation pose a political problem that, Scheffler argues, we are unlikely to resolve without attaining greater stability in our thinking about normative responsibility more generally.

Scheffler's main aim in this essay is to explore the nature of ‘associative duties’—the special duties that participants in close personal relationships and members of significant social groups are thought to have to one another. These duties occupy a central position in common‐sense moral thinking, even though their precise content is often unclear. Scheffler considers two objections to associative duties: the voluntarist objection, rooted in an ideal of freedom and autonomy; and the distributive objection, rooted in a principle of equality. Like associative duties themselves, the values of freedom and equality exert genuine authority within common‐sense moral thought, and so there are deep internal conflicts in our thinking about the extent of our responsibilities to different individuals and groups.

Sidgwick argues that common sense morality is not a repository of intuitively evident moral principles, as some of his contemporaries thought. Common sense rules cannot provide conclusive reasons for actions, because they all have exceptions and leave some issues unresolved. A first principle is needed to supplement them. It must be more than intuitively evident. It must, first, give deductively warranted assurance that a particular judgment is valid. So common sense judgements depend for their own validity on some exceptionless and completely universal principle. Second, the principle or principles providing this assurance must enable us to systematize and complete our moral beliefs. The dependence and systematization arguments, Sidgwick holds, taken together, lead to a utilitarian principle. Unfortunately they also warrant egoism. Practical reason thus seems to be at odds with itself.

Hare argues that good utilitarian reasons can be given for not thinking like utilitarians in most normal situations, where several different kinds of rules should be adhered to. This chapter focuses on this “intuitive level thinking,” emphasizing the complications that it introduces into a utilitarian analysis of a situation, and how the resulting subtleties bring a utilitarian analysis closer to common sense. There are four categories of such rules: the common morality of a society, which are not formally stated but which are widely embraced and understood as binding on all members; codes of professional ethics, which are explicitly stated but understood to be binding only on members of particular professions; laws, which are both explicitly stated and binding on all; and personal morality, which is binding only on the individual and may or may not be formally stated.

This chapter reviews relevant aspects of human psychology and common-sense morality. The fact that it is easier for us to harm than to benefit is reflected in so-called loss aversion; that our aversion of losing something is greater than our desire to acquire something similar. It is also reflected in that common-sense morality imposes strict duties not to commit harmful acts of killing etc. — and thereby gives us corresponding negative rights to life etc. — but provides only weaker reasons to benefit. Together with a conception of responsibility as based on causation this makes up the act-omission doctrine. Relevant aspects of our psychology are a bias towards the near future and an altruism that is limited to individuals who are near to us and that is not proportionate to larger numbers. We have a sense of justice or fairness, which primarily manifests in acts of reciprocity, tit-for-tat.

Distinguishes between cosmopolitanism about justice and cosmopolitanism about culture, identifying moderate and extreme forms of each of the two views. The extreme versions of cosmopolitanism, Scheffler argues, are implausible because they conflict with a notion of special responsibility that is deeply embedded in common‐sense moral thought. In arguing that a commitment to the equality of persons is neither substantively or conceptually incompatible with the recognition of special responsibilities, Scheffler seeks to undermine the case for these extreme forms of cosmopolitanism and to build the case for the moderate forms. But he notes that the moderate forms of cosmopolitanism, despite being much more plausible than the extreme versions, still face a number of philosophical and practical challenges, among them that of devising institutions and practices that take seriously both equality and special responsibilities.

This conclusive chapter summarises the content of each chapter. It argues that helping people with eating disorders means questioning ordinary moral values and beliefs. The focus should shift from the person with eating disorders, from her eating habits, and from what happens in her mind to shared moral assumptions about what is good and right, and their repercussions. Eating (normal or abnormal) is not important per se. Eating is important as an expression of people’s moral beliefs, and it is these beliefs that need to be unmasked and discussed.

This paper argues that theorists who want to respect common sense morality must respect not just verdicts but also grounds for verdicts. Just as theories that baldly deny that there is any value in personal commitments or who say that personal commitments do not generate duties are problematically reversionary, so are theories that say that there is value in personal commitments but it is something foreign to common sense morality. Indirect consequentialism is in fact committed to a massive error theory about ordinary moral thought. Thus it loses the advantage it was supposed to have in comparison with direct consequentialism. In one case the massive error is over verdicts, in the other over grounds for verdicts. Neither form of consequentialism can respect matters of the heart. 

This chapter is an exposition and assessment of Bernard Gert’s arguments for a conception of common morality as the keystone of ethics. It begins by outlining the moral rules, ideals, and decision procedures that Gert defines as constitutive of the content of common morality. It explains how Gert’s appeal to common morality differs from the role that it plays in the work of Beauchamp and Childress. The chapter then canvasses two objections to Gert’s position. The first raises doubts about whether his description of the content of common morality is accurate, particularly given that it is not supported by any rigorous empirical evidence, and the second challenges his claim that common morality does not change over time.

The Introduction surveys the argument of the book which is an exercise in moral revisionism. Common-sense morality features the act-omission doctrine which is analyzed as consisting in a theory of negative rights and a conception of responsibility as being based on causality. It is argued that these be replaced by reasons of beneficence and a conception of responsibility as based on what is under the influence of practical reasons. Since reasons of beneficence are weaker than reasons of rights, the revised morality will be less authoritative. It will also be less authoritative because practical reasons are desire-dependent and, thus, cannot be universally binding. The question is whether this revised morality will be authoritative enough to command our compliance which seems necessary for us to cope with the greatest moral problems of our time, such as aid to developing countries and anthropogenic climate change.

If it is in one way in people's interest that there be constraints on killing (because it gives them a more sublime and elevated status), is it still possible for them to agree ex ante to alienate those rights for the sake of other interests they have? Can we do away with constraints protecting an individual not because it is for the greater good of others, but because ex ante it is in his own interest for there to be no constraints? This is the question that prompts Ch. 11. Both agent‐focussed objections and victim‐focussed objections to agreements to use oneself at one time for one's own good at another time are addressed, although the emphasis is on victim‐focussed reasons against such agreements, and on the limits to a strategy of founding morality on agreements and allowing duties to be overridden by agreements. The outline is plotted of the types of agreements permitted by ‘common‐sense morality.’