Brian Zamulinski

Chapter Two, Part Two

There’s a natural moral community.  Members have extended foundational attitudes that depend on their being able to desire to avoid significant injury to themselves, their families, and their friends.  They hold that they themselves are of value and either hold or are committed to hold that all other actual and potential holders are of value. 

It is conceptually true that we should not damage or destroy the valuable and that we should try to prevent them from being damaged or destroyed.   It is also conceptually true that if I do something, then I am committed to holding that it is permissible for me to do it. 

Now, consider extended foundational attitudes, the conceptual truths, and descriptions of acts.  Suppose that I hold that you are of value and that I harm you.  Since I hold that you are of value, I am committed to hold that it is not permissible for me to harm you.  If I harm you, I am committed to hold that it is.  Therefore, I am committed to a contradiction. 

I claim that we categorize acts as forbidden if we can derive a contradiction, as permissible if we can’t, and as obligatory if they’re the only available way to avoid a contradiction.  I hypothesize that the fact that an act is wrong is made true by the fact that an agent who committed the act would be logically committed to a contradiction.  I do not argue this; I hypothesize it.  To test the hypothesis, we have to determine whether the way in which the theory would have us categorize acts is plausible.  If it gives us a plausible list of permissions and obligations, then there is confirmation for the hypothesis.  I discuss the normative results in Chapter Four.  I believe that they are good enough to confirm the theory. 

This is another point at which people get confused if they think I am doing what most other ethicists do.  The standard view is that moral reasoning must involve a normative principle, a statement of relevant facts, and deductive inferences.  For example, Killing is wrong, Cain killed Abel, so Cain did wrong.  

The standard view leads people to assume that what I call extended foundational attitudes must be principles of some sort.  If what goes on is a case of reasoning, it is not like that at all. 

Consider this set of propositions:  {All organisms are mortal, Socrates is an organism, Socrates will never die}.  Obviously, we can derive a contradiction.  We thereupon categorize the set as inconsistent.   But the proposition that the set is inconsistent is not derived from the members of the set.  Let us call the set S.  The following is not a valid argument.   All organisms are mortal, Plato is an organism, Plato will never die, Therefore, S is inconsistent.  In the symbols I can create on my keyboard, this can be put as: (x)(Ox à Mx), Op, ~Mp, Therefore, Is.  The predicate I and the subject s come out of nowhere, which wouldn’t happen if the argument were valid.  (Do not worry if you are unfamiliar with symbolic logic.  I am just repeating the same point in a way that will make my contention visually obvious to people who do understand it.) 

Now, consider this set:  {I am of value, You are of value, My wounding you is a case of harming you, Harming someone is incompatible with his being valuable, I harm you}.  Again, obviously, we can derive a contradiction.  We thereupon categorize the act as morally forbidden.  But, again, the proposition that the act is forbidden is not derived from the members of the set.  The following is not a valid argument:  I am of value, You are of value, My wounding you is a case of harming you, Harming someone is incompatible with his being valuable, I harm you, Therefore, my wounding you is morally forbidden.  The conclusion does not follow deductively from the premises.  This can be put as: Va, Vb, Wab à Hab, (x)(y)(Hxy à ~Vy), Therefore, ~P(Wab).  The operator P (for permissible) in the conclusion again comes out of nowhere, which again wouldn’t happen if the argument were valid. 

I do not think that anyone reasons this out.  I think that people just grasp the situations intuitively.  I do not think that it is possible to substitute a principle for the description of how things work and get the same results.  I argue this on pp. 117-119, in a section which includes my response to the claim that people naturally think in terms of principles. 

One last point, it is a fiction that any of us are of value; it is not a fiction that some acts are wrong.  There would be problems with this contention if extended foundational attitudes were moral principles but they are not moral principles.