Sarah Sawyer on concepts and the objectivity of moral reasons

Sawyer, Sarah

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Thinking about MoralitySarah Sawyer on concepts and the objectivity of moral reasonsBeliefs involve, and hence depend on, concepts. The belief that stars are exploding balls of hotgas involves the empirical concept star. The belief that nine is a square number involves themathematical concept square number. The belief that equality is a fundamental value involves themoral concept equality. But what exactly is a concept? Concepts are the building-blocks ofthoughts, just as words and expressions are the building-blocks of sentences. Crucially, conceptsare acquired in the context of a shared world, and hence anchor our individual thoughts to thatshared world. The concept star, for example, is acquired initially, perhaps as a child, in the contextof someone pointing to stars in the night sky. A more theoretical understanding of stars maydevelop later, but of course a theoretical understanding will develop in different ways depending oncontingent factors such as how interested one is in the subject matter, how well informed orcompetent one’s teachers are, what theory is accepted at the time, and so on. A child, an ancientGreek astronomer and a modern-day astronomer will have very different beliefs about stars, butthis doesn’t prevent them from having the very same concept. Indeed, it is because the child, theancient Greek and the modern-day astronomer all have the concept star that their different beliefsall count as beliefs about stars. One implication of this view is that the grasp of a concept comes indegrees; the more one knows about the subject matter, the better one grasps the relevantconcept.These claims about concepts apply not only to empirical concepts, but to all concepts. Takemathematical concepts, for example. These are acquired, in the ﬁrst instance, by learning to countordinary empirical objects, such as apples and pencils. In this context, mathematical conceptsapply in a relatively straightforward way to objects and events in the empirical world. More abstractmathematical concepts—such as the concepts irrational number, √−1, pi, and so on—are acquiredby sophisticated extrapolation from the basic cases, and the relatively straightforward applicationto objects and events in the empirical world is soon lost. Again, a more abstract mathematicalunderstanding will develop in different ways depending on contingent factors such as howinterested one is in the subject matter, the competence of one’s teachers, the mathematicalknowledge of the time, and so on. But mathematical concepts are anchored to objectivemathematical properties and remain thus anchored even through variations in beliefs.Mathematical concepts will naturally be grasped more fully by some than by others.The same is true of moral concepts, which are also acquired in the ﬁrst instance by application toexamples. As a child, you acquire moral concepts by being told that you’ve acted in a kind orselﬁsh way, that you’ve been fair or mean, that you’ve been honest or dishonest, and so on. In thiscontext, many of the examples are relatively clear, and the application of moral concepts toparticular cases is relatively straightforward. More abstract moral concepts—such as justice,equality, treachery, loyalty—in contrast, are acquired by consideration of more complex situationsin which the application of moral concepts is not always clear. A more abstract moralunderstanding, then, will develop in different ways depending on contingent factors such as one’sability to empathize, the time one is willing to spend fact-ﬁnding, the time one is willing to devote toreﬂecting on the issues, when and where one happens to live, and the moral beliefs of those inone’s community. But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that moral concepts are notdetermined by one’s moral beliefs. A child, a campaigner for equal rights, and a member of theanti-suffrage movement have different beliefs about equality, but the fact that they count asdisagreeing about equality depends on them all having the same concept—the concept of equality.Moral concepts, just like empirical concepts and mathematical concepts, are acquired, at the mostfundamental level, in the context of a shared world; moral concepts concern objective moralproperties.The objectivity of moral properties is related to the objectivity of moral reasons. Moral reasons foracting are not contingent on our desires; they are reasons for us no matter what we happen towant. The objectivity of moral reasons is supported by the natural thought that recognition of areason to act is recognition of a consideration in favour of acting—that is, recognition of someobjective value that exists independently of one’s motives. Thus in certain contexts, a child has areason to own up to breaking the vase, a reason not to cheat at snakes and ladders, a reason tohand in the toy she found in the playground, a reason to share her sweets and so on, even if shehas no desire to do any of them and is not in the least bit motivated to do so. After all, owning up,playing fairly, handing in lost property, and sharing are all, at least in certain circumstances, theright things to do, and this provides, in those circumstances, a reason to do them.Of course, an objective moral reason won’t by itself lead one to action; unless you recognize theobjective moral reason as a reason, you will remain unmoved. There needs to be some way inwhich objective moral reasons can be understood by individual people—some way in whichpeople’s actions can be guided by objective moral reasons. This is why moral beliefs areimportant. In contrast to empirical beliefs and mathematical beliefs, moral beliefs have motivationalforce; they are essentially motivating. Thus, part of what it is to believe that one ought to recycle isto be motivated to separate your cardboard, newspapers, tin cans, and so on from the rest of therubbish; part of what it is to believe that one should keep a promise is to be motivated to keep thepromises one makes; and part of what it is to think one ought to be an equal opportunity employeris to be motivated, for example, to change policies that unfairly favour the hiring and promotion ofcertain people on the basis of factors such as gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. There issomething peculiar about a person who claims to have these kinds of moral beliefs and yet showsno inclination whatsoever to act in accordance with them. We are likely to regard theproclamations of such a person as insincere; we are likely to regard such a person as merelypaying lip service to the views they espouse without really believing them at all. In fact, lack ofmotivation in the face of moral judgement can be a form of moral ignorance—a failure to grasp themoral concepts fully. A better understanding of the moral facts would, since moral beliefs areessentially motivating, motivate one to do the right thing. This is because the objective moralreasons that count as reasons in favour of doing the right thing would be ones of which, having abetter grasp of the moral concepts, you were aware.Monday, 6 February 2017Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!Related PostsThe view I have been articulating is a view I call ‘moral externalism’. Moral externalism embodies arobust form of moral realism, since it presupposes that moral concepts refer to objective moralproperties. This means that if the unequal treatment of women is wrong, it is wrong independentlyof what anyone believes, and independently of whether anyone either recognizes or is motivatedby its moral force. Just as in the empirical and mathematical realms, agreement does not make fortruth, and disagreement does not undermine objectivity. It’s a mistake to think, however, that theexistence of objective moral truths implies that there are exceptionless general moral principlesthat can be applied blindly, without thought, in any context. The objectivity of morality is consistentwith there being no list of moral truths that one can learn ﬁrst and apply later; it is consistent withthere being no systematic procedure for determining in a given context the correct answer to amoral question. Moral truths are difﬁcult to discern precisely because the right course of actiondepends essentially on the speciﬁc details of the case. The existence of objective moral truths isalso consistent with there not being a determinate answer, one way or another, on every moralquestion. Objectivity merely requires that when there is a determinate answer to a moral question,the answer is determinate independently of our beliefs and motives.Moral externalism explains how moral beliefs are essentially motivating; it provides a way in whichmoral reasons can be both objective and action-guiding; and it is consistent with there being amiddle ground between dogmatism and relativism. The view depends, at root, on the claims Imake about concepts.Sarah Sawyer is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. This post is based onher article ‘Minds and Morals’, published in Philosophical Issues. Her research interests includethe nature of thought and language, thought and talk about abstract and non-existent objects, andknowledge of one’s own mind. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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