The Foundations of Morality
19. Intuition and Common Sense
1. When Intuitions Conflict
The ethical doctrine known as Intuitionism is perhaps the oldest known to man. It existed as a tacit assumption long before it made any appearance as an explicit philosophical tenet. It is the theory that we know immediately, without consideration of their consequences, what acts are “right” and what acts are “wrong.”
I need not go further into the differences and conflicts between the moral “intuitions” that have been regarded as “self-evident” in different times and places. Overwhelming documentation of these can be found in the works of John Locke, Herbert Spencer, W. E. H. Lecky, William Graham Sumner, L. T. Hobhouse, Robert Briffault, etc.
When we decide whether or not to act in accordance with any given moral rule, we do in fact give some consideration to the probable consequences of acting on it or failing to act on it. This is especially true when two established moral rules conflict—e.g., the rule that we should always tell the truth with the rule that we should not cause avoidable humiliation, distress, or pain to others. There is still no “self-evident” answer to the question whether a doctor should tell his patient that she is dying of cancer.
2. Morals Built into Language
But if there are no moral “intuitions,” how have so many philosophers, and so many other intelligent persons, come to think that there are? The reason is that most of our moral judgments seem immediate, seem to be instantaneous and made without consideration of the probable consequences of an act. But this is so because these judgments have been, as it were, built into us by the social traditions and conventions, and from our earliest infancy. They are built into the language. From its earliest days an infant hears the words “good baby” or “bad baby,” “good doggie” or “bad doggie.” Moral judgment is embodied in description, and confused with it. We absorb our moral judgments with our language. They are both parts of our social inheritance. The reason we know that lying is wicked and being mistaken is not necessarily so; that theft is wrong but transfer not necessarily so; that murder is monstrous but killing in self defense is justified, is that these judgments are embodied in the words themselves, by the judgments of our fellows and the generations that have gone before us.
Now the ethical tradition in which we have grown up, and the ethical valuations and judgments that go with it, impregnate and color all our thought. We pick them up in the same way as we do our language. Like our language, they condition our thought. They do not do so to quite the same extent as our language (for without the social inheritance of language it is doubtful that the individual could think, in any civilized sense of the term, at all); but our social ethical conventions and valuations condition our individual thought and attitudes to an enormous extent. It is because they are so habitual, immediate, and instantaneous that they are so often mistaken for “intuitions.”
As a Benthamite (i.e., a direct and ad hoc) Utilitarian, Sidgwick sometimes criticizes “common sense” morality too hastily and cavalierly; but he is for the most part far more cautious and respectful in doing so than Bentham was. At one point, indeed, he pays eloquent tribute to it:
If, then, we are to regard the morality of Common Sense as a machinery of rules, habits, and sentiments, roughly and generally but not precisely or completely adapted to the production of the greatest possible happiness for sentient beings generally; and if, on the other hand, we have to accept it as the actually established machinery for attaining this end, which we cannot replace at once by any other, but can only gradually modify; it remains to consider the practical effects of the complex and balanced relation in which a scientific Utilitarian thus seems to stand to the Positive Morality of his age and country.
It is of cardinal importance that we recognize why we must treat the existing positive moral code not only with as much respect as we do our country’s laws but with a great deal more—with something very close to reverence and awe. This moral code grew up spontaneously, like language, religion, manners, law. It is the product of the experience of immemorial generations, of the interrelations of millions of people and the interplay of millions of minds. The morality of common sense is a sort of common law, with an indefinitely wider jurisdiction than ordinary common law, and based on a practically infinite number of particular cases. We are not required to perform the optimum act—the specific act that would do most to increase the sum of human happiness—because we can never know precisely what that act is. But we do know what the traditional moral rules prescribe. These rules crystallize the experience and moral wisdom of the race.
The morality of common sense cannot be put beyond criticism, of course, for then there would be no ethical progress. But this criticism should never be made impatiently, arrogantly, condescendingly, or frivolously (after the fashion of so many philosophers, from Thrasymachus to Bentham, and from Nietzsche to Bertrand Russell and other Logical Positivists), but with great care and caution, and only after every effort has been made to see the possible utility or need of some traditional moral rule whenever such utility or need is not immediately obvious.
3. The Importance of Precedent
Another consideration that these critics commonly overlook is the importance of precedent. Precedent is at least as important in ethics as in law. Rules should be changed slowly, individually, after careful thought. An attempt at any sudden “transvaluation of all values” can merely create confusion and chaos.
Precedent is of the first importance in law for the protection of individual rights. The law must be certain—i.e., not only must the law be reasonably precise but decisions of the courts, must be reasonably predictable, so that people may know when they are acting within their rights, and may embark on a course of action with reasonable assurance that the rules will not be changed in the middle of the game. This is no less true of ethical laws. The standards of right and wrong, of praise and blame, should change only gradually, slowly, piecemeal, so that people can become accustomed to the new rules. This gradualness assures the maximum of social cooperation and even of progress. This is the element of truth in conservatism, in so far as this reflects a philosophy of gradualism. New rules and standards must be tested by a minority before they are adopted by or enforced on everyone.
Let us put this in still another form. Why is devotion to duty important? Because it means following a recognized and established rule. Why is following an established rule important? Because these rules are the product of millions of individual decisions in millions of situations and embody the accumulated experience and wisdom of the race. Because following these established rules has been found to have the consequence in the long run of maximizing human harmony, cooperation, and well-being (or of minimizing human discord and strife). And finally, because it is necessary that we should be able to depend on each other’s reactions and responses. If we stopped before each act or decision to make a fresh calculation of the probable consequences of action A, B, C, or N, if we decided to “judge each case on its merits” without regard to any established rule or principle of action, others could not depend on our actions or responses. The primary basis of human cooperation, which is mutual dependence on each of us playing his expected role, would be undermined or destroyed.
In a symphony, every player and instrument has his or its assigned role in carrying the theme or producing the harmony. Any false or untimely note from any instrument, any failure in tempo or synchronization, would spoil the cooperative result. So with the symphony of life.
This brings us to a still further corollary. Even a rather poor ethical rule is better than no rule at all. This is again because we need to know in our daily actions what to expect of each other, because we are obliged to rely on each other’s conduct, and must be reasonably able to count in advance on what the action of others is going to be.
Perhaps an analogy with traffic laws will make this clearer. A rule that permits you to turn right at a red light may be better or worse than a rule that forbids you to turn right at a red light. A rule that one must drive on the right side of the road may be better or worse than a rule that one must drive on the left side. But it is much more important that we adopt and abide by even the inferior rule (whichever it is) than that we adopt no rule at all. For in the former case each driver knows what to expect of the other drivers; in the latter case he does not know what to expect, and the number of arguments, snarls, and accidents is bound to increase.
Let us summarize the conclusions at which we have arrived. The existing Common Law and the existing Moral Tradition deserve tremendous respect from each of us because of the process by which they have come into being. The Common Law is the product of the hundreds of thousands of decisions by thousands of judges passing on specific cases, trying not only to settle each of them but to settle it on the basis of established precedents and principles acceptable to both sides. (Scientists and “advanced thinkers” often ridicule the law and lawyers for their “blind” deference to precedents. But this is what gives certainty to the law. This is what allows people to know that they have certain rights that others are bound to respect; to know what it is that they have a right to expect from others and can reasonably depend on from others when they make their own plans.) And what applies to the Common Law applies to the Moral Tradition (or “common-sense” morality, or the moral consensus) multiplied a hundredfold. From the beginning of time, all of us have experienced daily conflicts, disputes, problems of division, precedence, priority, and “fairness,” and in seeking to resolve these have sought to do so on the basis of consistent or accepted principles that would also appeal to others. Our “common-sense” morality is the composite product of these immemorial millions of judgments and decisions.
4. “Always Follow the Rule—Unless”
The practical course to which all this leads is clear. We should abide by the morality of common sense, we should abide by the conventional rules of conduct of our time and place, whatever they happen to be, unless in some particular case we have strong reasons for departing from the rule. We should never refuse to abide by an established moral rule merely because we cannot understand the purpose of it. No single person can be in a position to know all the experiences, decisions, and considerations that have caused a moral rule to take some particular form.
This is the great element of practical truth (though not of “self-evidence”) in the injunction of Sir David Ross that we should always abide by what he calls our “prima facie duties” even when we cannot see in some particular case precisely how this will promote our own individual well-being or even the well-being of our community in the long run. Our general maxim should be this: Always follow the established moral rule, always abide by our prima facie duty, unless there is a clear reason for not doing so.
This is little more than the general form of Mark Twain’s sarcastic admonition: “When in doubt, tell the truth.” When in doubt, follow the established moral rule.
This, however, overstates the matter. Unless a few had the courage to depart from the prevailing moral code of their country or time in this or that particular, for some carefully considered reason, there would be no moral progress. We must never allow the existing moral code to become petrified and immutable, for then even the reasons behind it would be forgotten, and it would tend to become meaningless. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” Each of us may and must cooperate in its continuous improvement and perfection.
Meanwhile, however, the existing morality seems quite adequate, and is certainly indispensable, for practical guidance for most people in most circumstances. Without a profound general respect for and deference to the traditional moral code, there would be no morality at all, but moral chaos. And in our age this is a far greater danger than that of an imperfect and inflexible code held in superstitious awe.
5. The Moral Contract
Before we leave this consideration of the traditional moral code, a word should be said about one significant element in its nature. The chief function that the common morality serves is to reduce social conflict and to promote social cooperation. And it is important to notice in this morality the role played by tacit agreement. Since the days of Rousseau, a great deal has been said in political theorizing about the “Social Contract.” Now there is no evidence that there ever was an explicit historical social contract. Nevertheless, men have acted, from time immemorial, politically and morally, as if there were a social contract. This has been a tacit, unformulated, unexplicit, but none the less real agreement, an agreement reflected in our actions and in our rules of action. It takes the general form: I will do this if you do that; I will refrain from this if you refrain from that. I will not attack you if you do not attack me. I will respect your person and family and property and other established rights if you respect mine. I will keep my word if you keep yours. I will tell the truth if you do. I will take my place on line and wait my turn if you will do the same. Those who violate these tacitly-agreed-upon rules not only do direct and immediate harm, but also imperil general adherence to the rules. Individual respect for law and general respect for law, individual morality and general social morality, are interdependent. They are, in fact, two names for the same thing.
6. Are Maxims “Self-Evident”?
We come now to a final question. Granted that there are no such things as moral “intuitions”—or granted, at least, that the word should not be used because of its misleading mystical connotations—do we have “direct moral cognitions”? Are there any moral “axioms” that are “self-evident”?
Euclidian geometry, and all deductive reasoning, rest on “axioms” or postulates, the truth of which is assumed to be self-evident, or is at least taken for granted. Let us see how this applies to ethical reasoning.
Ethical reasoning, as we have seen in Chapter 15, deals with ends and means. This reasoning may be hypothetical or factual. It may take the hypothetical form: If you want to maximize your own happiness in the long run, then you ought to adopt the rules of conduct that will tend to maximize your happiness in the long run; and those rules are these. . . . Or it may take the factual form: You want to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory state. You want to maximize your happiness in the long run; therefore you should adopt the rules of action that will tend to maximize your happiness in the long run. Or: We want to achieve the maximum happiness for each of us. Therefore we should adopt for ourselves, and impose (by censure or praise) on each other, the rules of action most likely to achieve the maximum happiness for each of us.
We may say, therefore, that moral rules tend to become self-evident when they tend to become tautologous, or when our goal is self-evident for the reason that we see it to be in fact our goal.
