## 1. Morality




When philosophers engage in moral theorizing, what is it that they are
doing? Very broadly, they are attempting to provide a systematic
account of morality. Thus, the object of moral theorizing is morality,
and, further, morality as a normative system.



At the most minimal, morality is a set of norms and principles that
govern our actions with respect to each other and which are taken to
have a special kind of weight or authority (Strawson 1961). More
fundamentally, we can also think of morality as consisting of moral
reasons, either grounded in some more basic value, or, the other way
around, grounding value (Raz 1999).



It is common, also, to hold that moral norms are *universal*
in the sense that they apply to and bind everyone in similar
circumstances. The principles expressing these norms are also
thought to be *general*, rather than specific, in that they are
formulable "without the use of what would be intuitively
recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions"
(Rawls 1979, 131). They are also commonly held to be
*impartial*, in holding everyone to count equally.


### 1.1 Common-sense Morality



> 
> ... Common-sense is... an exercise of the judgment unaided
> by any Art or system of rules : such an exercise as we must
> necessarily employ in numberless cases of daily occurrence ; in which,
> having no established principles to guide us ... we must needs
> act on the best extemporaneous conjectures we can form. He who is
> eminently skillful in doing this, is said to possess a superior degree
> of Common-Sense. (Richard Whatley, *Elements of Logic*, 1851,
> xi-xii)



"Common-Sense Morality", as the term is used here, refers
to our *pre-theoretic* set of moral judgments or intuitions
or
 principles.[1] 
When we
engage in theory construction (see below) it is these common-sense
intuitions that provide a touchstone to theory
evaluation. Henry Sidgwick believed that the
principles of Common-Sense Morality were important in helping us
understand the "first" principle or principles
of
 morality.[2] 
Indeed, some theory construction explicitly appeals to puzzles in
common-sense morality that need resolution - and hence, need to
be addressed theoretically. 



Features of commons sense morality are determined by our normal
reactions to cases which in turn suggest certain normative principles
or insights. For example, one feature of common-sense morality
that is often remarked upon is the self/other asymmetry in morality,
which manifests itself in a variety of ways in our intuitive
reactions. For example, many intuitively differentiate morality
from prudence in holding that morality concerns our interactions with
others, whereas prudence is concerned with the well-being of the
individual, from that individual's point of view.



Also, according to our common-sense intuitions we are allowed to
pursue our own important projects even if such pursuit is not
"optimific" from the impartial point of view (Slote
1985). It is also considered permissible, and even admirable, for
an agent to sacrifice her own good for the sake of another even though
that is not optimific. However, it is impermissible, and outrageous,
for an agent to similarly sacrifice the well-being of another under the
same circumstances. Samuel Scheffler argued for a view in which
consequentialism is altered to include agent-centered prerogatives,
that is, prerogatives to not act so as to maximize the good (Scheffler
1982).



Our reactions to certain cases also seem to indicate a common-sense
commitment to the moral significance of the distinction between
intention and foresight, doing versus allowing, as well as the view
that distance between agent and patient is morally relevant (Kamm
2007).



Philosophers writing in empirical moral psychology have been working
to identify other features of common-sense morality, such as how prior
moral evaluations influence how we attribute moral responsibility for
actions (Alicke et. al. 2011; Knobe 2003).



What many ethicists agree upon is that common-sense is a bit of a
mess. It is fairly easy to set up inconsistencies and tensions
between common-sense commitments. The famous Trolley Problem
thought experiments illustrate how situations which are structurally
similar can elicit very different intuitions about what the morally
right course of action would be (Foot 1975). We intuitively
believe that it is worse to kill someone than to simply let the person
die. And, indeed, we believe it is wrong to kill one person to
save five others in the following scenario:



> 
> David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need new
> parts--one needs a heart, the others need, respectively, liver,
> stomach, spleen, and spinal cord--but all are of the same,
> relatively rare, blood-type. By chance, David learns of a healthy
> specimen with that very blood-type. David can take the healthy
> specimen's parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, saving
> them. Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts,
> letting his patients die. (Thomson 1976, 206)




And yet, in the following scenario we intuitively view it entirely
permissible, and possibly even obligatory, to kill one to save
five:



> 
> 
> Edward is the driver of a trolley, whose brakes have just failed. On
> the track ahead of him are five people; the banks are so steep that
> they will not be able to get off the track in time. The track has a
> spur leading off to the right, and Edward can turn the trolley onto it.
> Unfortunately there is one person on the right-hand track. Edward can
> turn the trolley, killing the one; or he can refrain from turning the
> trolley, killing the five. (Thomson 1976, 206).



*Theorizing* is supposed to help resolve those tensions in a
principled way. *Theory construction* attempts to provide
guidance in how to resolve such tensions and how to understand
them.


### 1.2 Contrasts Between Morality and Other Normative Domains


#### 1.2.1 Morality and Ethics



Ethics is generally understood to be the study of "living well
as a human being". This is the topic of works such as
Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*, in which the aim of
human beings is to exemplify human excellence of character. The sense
in which we understand it here is that ethics is broader than morality,
and includes considerations of personal development of oneself and
loved ones. This personal development is important to a life well
lived, intuitively, since our very identities are centered on projects
that we find important. Bernard Williams and others refer to
these projects as "ground projects". These are the
sources of many of our reasons for acting. For Williams, if
an agent seeks to adopt *moral* considerations, or be guided by
them, then important *ethical* considerations are neglected,
such as personal integrity and authenticity (Williams 1977; Wolf
1982). However, Williams has a very narrow view of what he
famously termed "the morality system" (Williams 1985).



Williams lists a variety of objectionable features of the morality
system, including the *inescapability* of moral obligations, the
*overridingness* of moral obligation, *impartiality*, and
the fact that in the morality system there is a push towards
*generalization*.



There has been considerable discussion of each of these features of
the morality system, and since Williams, a great deal of work on the
part of standard moral theorists on how each theory addresses the
considerations he raised. Williams' critique of the
morality system was part of a general criticism of moral theory in the
1980s on the grounds of its uselessness, harmfulness, and even its
impossibility (Clarke 1987). This anti-theory trend was prompted
by the same dissatisfaction with consequentialism and deontology that
led to the resurgence of Virtue Ethics.



A major criticism of this view is that it has a very narrow view of
what counts as a moral theory. Thus, some of these approaches
simply rejected some features of William's characterization of
the morality system, such as impartiality. Others, however,
Williams' included, attacked the very project of moral
theory. This is the 'anti-theory' attack on moral
theorizing. For example, Annette Baier argued that
morality cannot be captured in a system of rules, and this was a very
popular theme amongst early virtue ethicists. On this view, moral
theory which systematizes and states the moral principles that ought to
guide actions is simply impossible: "Norms in the form of
virtues may be essentially imprecise in some crucial ways, may be
mutually referential, but not hierarchically orderable, may be
essentially self-referential" (Baier 220). 



Robert Louden even argued that the best construal of virtue ethics
is not as an ethical theory, but as anti-theory that should not be
evaluated as attempting to theorize morality at all. (Louden
1990). According to Louden, moral theories are formulated
to a variety of reasons, including to provide solutions to problems,
formulas for action, universal principles, etc. Louden notes that this
characterization is very narrow and many would object to it, but he
views anti-theory not so much as a position against *any* kind
of moral theorizing, but simply the kind that he viewed as predominant
prior to the advent of Virtue Ethics. This is a much less severe
version of anti-theory as it, for example, doesn't seem to regard
weightiness or importance of moral reasons as a problem.



Some of the problems that Williams and other anti-theorists have
posed for morality, based on the above characteristics, are:


1. Morality is too demanding and pervasive: that is, the view that
moral reasons are weighty indicates that we should be giving them
priority over other sorts of reasons. Further, they leach into
all aspects of our lives, leaving very little morally neutral.
2. Morality is alienating. There are a variety of ways in which
morality can be alienating. As Adrian Piper notes, morality might
alienate the agent from herself or might alienate the agent from others
- impartiality and universality might lead to this, for example
(Piper 1987; Stocker 1976). Another way we can understand
alienation is that the agent is alienated from the true justifications
of her own actions - this is one way to hold that theories which
opt for indirection can lead to alienation (see section 4 below).
3. Morality, because it is impartial, makes no room for special
obligations. That is, if the right action is the one that is impartial
between persons, then it does not favor the near and dear. On this
picture it is difficult to account for the moral requirements that
parents have towards their own children, and friends have towards each
other. These requirements are, by their nature, not
impartial.
4. Morality is committed to providing guides for action that can
be captured in a set of rules or general principles. That is, morality
is codifiable and the rules of morality are general.



Morality requires too much. The basic worry is that the morality
system is voracious and is creeping into all aspects of our lives, to
the detriment of other important values. The worry expressed by 4 takes
a variety of forms. For example, some take issue with a
presupposition of 4, arguing that there are no moral principles at all if we
think of these principles as *guiding action*. Some argue
that there are no moral principles that are complete, because morality
is not something that is *codifiable*. And, even if
morality was codifiable, the 'principles' would be
extremely *specific*, and not qualify as principles at all.



Since Williams' work, philosophers have tried to respond to
the alienation worry by, for example, providing accounts of the ways in
which a person's reasons can guide without forming an explicit
part of practical deliberation. Peter Railton, for example,
argues in favor of a form of objective consequentialism,
*Sophisticated Consequentialism*, in which the rightness of an
action is a function of its actual consequences (Railton 1984). 
On Railton's view, one can be a good consequentialist without
being alienated from loved ones. Though not attempting to defend moral
theory *per se*, other writers have also provided accounts of
how agents can act on the basis of reasons - and thus perform
morally worthy actions, even though these reasons are not explicitly
articulated in their practical deliberations (Arpaly 2002; Markovits
2014). Deontologists have argued that autonomous action needn't
involve explicit invocation of, for example, the Categorical Imperative
(Herman 1985). Generally, what characterizes these moves is the
idea that the justifying reasons are present in some form in the
agent's psychology - they are recoverable from the
agent's psychology - but need not be explicitly articulated
or invoked by the agent in acting rightly. 



One way to elaborate on this strategy is to argue that the morally
good agent is one who responds to the right sorts of reasons, even
though the agent can't articulate the nature of the response
(Arpaly 2002). This strategy makes no appeal to codifiable principles,
and is compatible with a wide variety of approaches to developing a
moral theory. It relies heavily on the concept, of course, of
"reason" and "moral reason," which many writers
on moral issues take to be fundamental or basic in any case.



There has also been debate concerning the proper scope of morality,
and how moral theories can address problems relating to
impartiality. Kant and the classical utilitarians believed that moral
reasons are impartial, what others have termed agent-neutral. Indeed,
this is one point of criticism that virtue ethics has made of these
two theories. One might argue that moral reasons are impartial, but
that there are other reasons that successfully compete with them
- reasons relating to the near and dear, for example, or
one's own ground projects. Or, one could hold that morality
includes special reasons, arising from special obligations, that also
morally justify our actions.



The first strategy has been pursued by Bernard Williams and other
"anti-theorists". Again, Williams argues that
morality is a special system that we would be better off without
(Williams 1985). In the morality system we see a special sense of
"obligation" - moral obligation - which
possesses certain features. For example, moral obligation is
*inescapable* according to the morality system. A theory
such as Kant's, for example, holds that we *must* act in
accordance with the Categorical Imperative. It is not
optional. This is because morality is represented as having
authority over us in ways that even demand sacrifice of our personal
projects, of the very things that make our lives go well for us. 
This seems especially clear for Utilitarianism, which holds that we
must *maximize* the good, and falling short of maximization is
*wrong*. A Kantian will try to avoid this problem by
appealing to obligations that are less demanding, the imperfect ones.
But, as Williams points out, these are still *obligations*, and
as such can only be overridden by other obligations. Thus, the
theories also tend to present morality as *pervasive* in that
morality creeps into every aspect of our lives, making no room for
neutral decisions. For example, even decisions about what shoes
to wear to work becomes a moral one:



> 
> Once the journey into more general obligations has started, we may
> begin to get into trouble - not just philosophical trouble, but
> the conscience trouble - with finding room for morally
> indifferent actions. I have already mentioned the possible moral
> conclusion that one may take some particular course of action. 
> That means that there is nothing else I am obliged to do. But if we have
> accepted general and indeterminate obligations to further various moral
> objectives...they will be waiting to provide work for idle
> hands... (Williams 1985, 181)



He goes on to write that in order to get out of this problem,
"...I shall need one of those fraudulent items, a duty to
myself" (Williams 1985, 182). Kantian Ethics does supply
this. Many find this counterintuitive, since the self/other
asymmetry seems to capture the prudence/morality distinction, but
Kantians such as Tom Hill, jr. have made strong cases for at least
*some* moral duties to the self. In any case, for writers such
as Williams, so much the worse for *morality*.



Other writers, also concerned about the problems that Williams has
raised argue, instead, that morality does make room for our partial
concerns and projects, such as the norms governing our relationships,
and our meaningful projects. Virtue ethicists, for example, are
often comfortable pointing out that morality is not thoroughly
impartial because there are virtues of partiality. Being a good
mother involves having a preference for the well-being of one's
own children. The mother who really is impartial would be a very
bad mother, lacking in the appropriate virtues. 



Another option is to hold that there are partial norms, but those
partial norms are themselves justified on impartial grounds. This
can be spelled out in a variety of different ways. Consider
Marcia Baron's defense of impartiality, where she notes that
critics of impartiality are mistaken because they confuse
*levels* of justification: "Critics suppose that
impartialists insisting on impartiality at the level of rules or
principles are committed to insisting on impartiality at the level of
deciding what to do in one's day-to-day activities" (Baron
1991). This is a mistake because impartialists can justify
partial norms by appealing to impartial rules or principles. She
is correct about this. Even Jeremy Bentham believed, for example,
that the principle of utility ought not be applied in every case,
though he mainly appealed to efficiency costs of using the principle
all the time. But one can appeal to other considerations. 
Frank Jackson uses an analogy with predators to argue that partial
norms are strategies for maximizing the good, they offer the best
chance of actually doing so given our limitations (Jackson 1991). 
Similarly, a Kantian such as Tom Hill, jr., as Baron notes, can argue
that impartiality is part of an ideal, and ought not govern our
day-to-day lives (Hill 1987). Does this alienate people from
others? The typical mother shows the right amount of preference
for her child, let's say, but doesn't herself think that
this is justified on the basis of promoting the good, for
example. A friend visits another in the hospital and also does
not view the partiality as justified by any further principles. 
But this is no more alienating than someone being able to make good
arguments and criticize bad ones without a knowledge of inference
rules. Maybe it is better to have an awareness of the underlying
justification, but for some theories even that is debatable. For
an objective theorist (see below) it may be that knowing the underlying
justification can interfere with doing the right thing, in which case
it is better not to know. For some theorists, however, such as
neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists, a person is not truly virtuous
without such knowledge and understanding, though Rosalind Hursthouse
(1999) does *not* make this a requirement of right action.



Recently consequentialists have been approaching this issue through
the theory of value itself, arguing that there are agent-relative forms
of value. This approach is able to explain the intuitions that
support partial moral norms while retaining the general structure of
consequentialism (Sen 2000). Douglas Portmore, for example,
argues for a form of consequentialism that he terms "commonsense
consequentialism" as it is able to accommodate many of our
everyday moral intuitions (Portmore 2011). He does so by arguing
that (1) the deontic status of an act, whether it is right or wrong, is
determined by what reasons the agent has for performing it - if
an agent has a decisive reason to perform the act in question, then it
is morally required. Combined with (2) a teleological view of
practical reasons in which our reasons for performing an action are a
function of what we have reason to prefer or desire we are led to a
form of act-consequentialism but one which is open to accepting that we
have reason to prefer or desire the well-being of the near and dear
over others.



Though much of this is controversial, there is general agreement
that moral reasons are *weighty*, are *not* egoistic
- that is, to be contrasted with prudential reasons, and are
concerned with issues of value [duty, fittingness].


#### 1.2.2. Morality and Aesthetics



Moral modes of evaluation are distinct from the aesthetic in terms
of their content, but also in terms of their authority. So, for
example, works of art are evaluated as "beautiful" or
"ugly", and those evaluations are not generally considered
as universal or as objective as moral evaluations. These
distinctions between moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation have
been challenged, and are the subject of some interesting debates in
metaethics on the nature of both moral and aesthetic norms and the
truth-conditions of moral and aesthetic claims. But, considered
intuitively, aesthetics seems at least *less* objective than
morality.



A number of writers have noted that we need to be cognizant of the
distinction between moral norms and the norms specific to other
normative areas in order to avoid fallacies of evaluation, and much
discussion has centered on a problem in aesthetics termed the
"Moralistic Fallacy" (D'Arms and Jacobson 2000).



One challenge that the anti-theorists have raised for morality was
to note that in a person's life there will be certain norm
clashes - including clashes between *types* of norms such
as the moral and the aesthetic. It is giving too much prominence
to the moral that judges a person's life as going well relative
to the fulfillment or respect of *those* norms. Can't a
human life go well, even when that life sacrifices morality for
aesthetics?



This sort of debate has a long history in moral theory. For
example, it arose as a form of criticism of G. E. Moore's Ideal
Utilitarianism, which treated beauty as an intrinsic good, and
rendering trade-offs between behaving well towards others and creating
beauty at least in principle justified *morally* (Moore
1903). But the anti-theorists do not pursue this method of
accommodating the aesthetic, instead arguing that it is a separate
normative realm which has its own weight and significance in human
flourishing.


## 2. Theory and Theoretical Virtues




There is agreement that theories play some kind
of *systematizing* role, and that one function is to examine
important concepts relevant to morality and moral practice and the
connections, if any, between them. For example, one very common view
in the middle of the 20th century, attributed to John
Rawls, was to view moral theory as primarily interested in
understanding the 'right' and the 'good' and
connections between the two (Rawls). Priority claims are often a
central feature in the systematizing role of moral theory. Related to
this is the issue of explanatory, or theoretical, *depth*. That
is, the deeper the explanation goes, the better.



Theories also strive for *simplicity*, *coherence*,
and *accuracy*. The fewer epicycles the theory has to postulate
the better, the parts of the theory should fit well together. For
example, the theory should not contain inconsistent principles, or have
inconsistent implications. The theory should cover the phenomena
in question. In the case of moral theories, the phenomena in
question are thought to be our considered moral intuitions or
judgements. Another coherence condition involves the theory cohering
with a person's set of considered judgments, as well.



One last feature that needs stressing, particularly for moral
theories, is *applicability*. One criticism of some normative
ethical theories is that they are not applicable. For example,
Virtue Ethics has been criticized for not providing an account of what
our moral *obligations* are - appealing to what the
virtuous person would do in the circumstances would seem to set a very
high bar or doesn't answer the relevant question about how we
should structure laws guiding people on what their social obligations
are. Similarly, objective consequentialists, who understand
"right action" in terms of actual consequences have been
criticized for rendering what counts as a right action in a given
circumstance unknowable, and thus useless as a guide to action. 
Both approaches provide responses to this worry, but this supports the
claim that a desideratum of a moral theory is that it be
applicable.


### 2.1 The Tasks of Moral Theory



One task (though this is somewhat controversial) of a moral theory
is to give an account of right actions. Often, this will involve
an explication of what counts as good - some theories then get
spelled out in terms of how they approach the good, by maximizing it,
producing enough of it, honoring it, etc. In addition, some
theories explicate the right in terms of acting in accordance with
one's duties, or acting as a virtuous person would act. In
these cases the notions of 'duty' and 'virtue'
become important to the overall analysis, and one function of moral
theory is to explore the systematic connections between duty or virtue
and the right and the good.



Moral theories also have both substantive and formal aims. 
Moral theories try to provide criteria for judging actions. It
might be that the criterion is simple, such as right actions maximize
the good, or it may be complex, such as the right action is the one
that gives adequate weight to each competing duty. 
Sometimes, in recognition that there is not always "the"
right action, the theory simply provides an account of wrongness, or
permissibility and impermissibility, which allows that a range of
actions might count as "right". 



In addition to simply providing criteria for right or virtuous
action, or for being a virtuous person, a given moral theory, for
example, will attempt to explain *why* something, like an action
or character trait, has a particular moral quality, such as rightness
or virtuousness. Some theories view rightness as grounded in or
explained by *value*. Some view rightness as a matter of
*reasons* that are prior to value. In each case, to
provide an explanation of the property of 'rightness' or
'virtuousness' will be to provide an account of what the
grounding value is, or an account of reasons for action.



In addition, moral theories may also provide
*decision-procedures* to employ in determining how to act
rightly or virtuously, conditions on being good or virtuous, or
conditions on morally appropriate practical deliberation. Thus,
the theory provides substance to evaluation and reasons. However,
moral theories, in virtue of providing an explanatory framework, help
us see connections between criteria and decision-procedures, as well as
provide other forms of systemization. Thus, moral theories will
be themselves evaluated according to their theoretical virtues:
simplicity, explanatory power, elegance, etc. To evaluate moral
theories *as theories*, each needs to be evaluated in terms of
how well it succeeds in achieving these theoretical goals.



There are many more specialized elements to moral theories as
well. For example, a moral theory often concerns itself with
features of moral psychology relevant to action and character, such as
motives, intentions, emotions, and reasons responsiveness. A
moral theory that incorporates consideration of consequences into the
determination of moral quality, will also be concerned with issues
surrounding the proper *aggregation* of those consequences, and
the *scope* of the consequences to be considered.


### 2.2 Theory Construction



There's been a long history of comparing moral theories to
other sorts of theories, such as scientific ones. For example, in
meta-ethics one issue has to do with the nature of moral
"evidence" on analogy with scientific evidence. 
 On what Ronald Dworkin terms the "natural model" the
truths of morality are discovered, just as the truths of science are
(Dworkin 1977, 160). It is our considered intuitions that provide the
clues to discover these moral truths, just as what is observable to us
provides the evidence to discover scientific truths. He compared
this model with the "constructive model" in which the
intuitions themselves are features of the theory being constructed and
are not analogous to observations of the external world.



Yet, even if we decide that morality lacks the same type of
phenomena to be accounted for as science, morality clearly figures into
our normative judgments and reactions. One might view these
- our intuitions about moral cases, for example - to
provide the basic data that needs to be accounted for by a theory on
either model.



One way to "account for" our considered intuitions would
be to debunk them. There is a long tradition of this in moral
philosophy as well. When scholars provided *genealogies* of
morality that explained our considered intuitions in terms of social
or evolutionary forces that are not sensitive the truth, for example,
they were debunking morality by undercutting the authority of our
intuitions to provide insight into it (Nietzsche 1887 [1998], Joyce
2001, Street 2006). In this entry, however, we consider the ways in
which moral theorists have constructed their accounts by taking the
intuitions seriously as something to be systematized, explained, and
as something that can be applied to generate the correct moral
decisions or outcomes.



Along these lines, one method used in theory construction would
involve the use of reflective equilibrium and inference to the best
explanation. For example, one might notice an apparent inconsistency
in moral judgements regarding two structurally similar cases and then
try to figure out what principle or set of principles would achieve
consistency between them. In this case, the theorist is trying to
figure out what best explains both of those intuitions. But one also
might, after thinking about principles one already accepts, or finds
plausible, reject one of those intuitions on the basis of it not
cohering with the rest of one's considered views. But full
theory construction will go beyond this because of the fully
theoretical virtues discussed earlier. We want a systematic account
that coheres well not only with itself, but with other things that we
believe on the basis of good evidence.


## 3. Criteria



Consider the following:



> 
> Malory has promised to take Chris grocery shopping. Unfortunately, as
> Malory is leaving the apartment, Sam calls with an urgent request:
> please come over to my house right now, my pipes have broken and I
> need help! Torn, Malory decides to help Sam, and thus breaks a promise
> to Chris.



Has Malory done the right thing? The virtuous thing? 
Malory has broken a promise, which is *pro tanto* wrong, but Sam
is in an emergency and needs help right away. Even if it is clear
that what Malory did was right in the circumstances, it is an
interesting question as to why it is right. What can we appeal to in
making these sorts of judgments? This brings to light the issue
of how one *morally* justifies one's actions. This
is the task of understanding what the justifying reasons are for our
actions. What makes an action *the thing to do* in the
circumstances? This is the criterion of rightness (or
wrongness). We will focus on the criterion of rightness, though
the criterion issue comes up with other modes of moral evaluation, such
as judging an action to be virtuous, or judging it to be good in some
respect, even if not right. Indeed, some writers have argued that
'morally right' should be jettisoned from modern secular
ethics, as it presupposes a conceptual framework left over from
religiously based accounts which assume there is a God (Anscombe
1958). We will leave these worries aside for now, however, and
focus on standard accounts of criteria.



The following are some toy examples that exhibit differing
structural features for moral theories and set out different
criteria: 



> 
> 
> *Consequentialism*.  
>  The right action is the action that
> *produces* good amongst the options open to the agent at the
> time of action (Singer). The most well-known version of this
> theory is Classical Utilitarianism, which holds that the right action
> promotes pleasure (Mill).
> 
> 
> 
> *Kantian Deontology*.  
>  The morally worthy action is in
> accordance with the Categorical Imperative, which requires an agent
> refrain from acting in a way that fails to respect the rational nature
> of other persons (Kant).
> 
> 
> 
> *Rossian Deontology*.  
>  The right action is the action that best
> accords with the fulfillment and/or non-violation of one's
> *prima facie* duties (Ross).
> 
> 
> 
> *Contractualism*.  
> An action is morally wrong if it is an act that
> would be forbidden by principles that rational persons could not
> reasonably reject (Scanlon).
> 
> 
> 
> *Virtue Ethics*.  
> The right action is the action that a virtuous
> person would characteristically perform in the circumstances
> (Hursthouse 1999).
> 
> 
> 



These principles set out the *criterion* or *standard*
for evaluation of actions. They do not necessarily tell us
*how* to perform right actions, and are not, in themselves,
decision-procedures, though they can easily be turned into decision
procedures, such as: you ought to try to perform the action that
maximizes the good amongst the options available to you at the time of
action. This might not be, and in ordinary circumstance probably
isn't, a very good decision-procedure, and would itself need to
be evaluated according to the criterion set out by the theory.



These theories can be divided, roughly, into the deontological,
consequentialist, and virtue ethical categories. There has been a
lively debate about how, exactly, to delineate these categories. 
Some have held that deontological theories were just those theories
that were not consequentialist. A popular conception of
consequentialist theories is that they are reductionist in a particular
way - that is, in virtue of reducing deontic features of actions
(e.g. rightness, obligatoriness) to facts about an agent's
options and the consequences of those options (Smith 2009). If
that is the case, then it seems that deontological approaches are just
the ones that are not reductive in this manner. However, this
fails to capture the distinctive features of many forms of virtue
ethics, which are neither consequentialist nor necessarily concerned
with what we *ought to do*, our *duties* as opposed to
what sorts of persons we should be.



One way to distinguish consequentialist from deontological theories
is in terms of how each approaches value. Philip Pettit has
suggested that while consequentialist theories required
*promotion* of value, deontological theories recommend that
value be *honored* or *respected.* On each of
these views, value is an important component of the theory, and
theories will be partially delineated according to their theory of
value. A utilitarian such as Jeremey Bentham believes that hedonism is
the correct theory of value, whereas someone such as G. E. Moore, a
utilitarian but a pluralist regarding value, believes that hedonism is
much too narrow an account. A Kantian, on the other hand, views
value as grounded in rational nature, in a will conforming to the
Categorical Imperative.



Because of the systematizing function of moral theory discussed
earlier, the simplest account is to be preferred and thus there is a
move away from endorsing value pluralism. Of course, as intuitive
pressure is put on each of the simpler alternatives, a pluralistic
account of criteria for rightness and wrongness has the advantage of
according best with moral intuitions.



Reasons-first philosophers will delineate the theories somewhat
differently. For example, one might understand goodness as a
matter of what we have reason to desire, in which case what we have
reason to desire is prior to goodness rather than the other way
around. Value is still an important component of the theories, it
is simply that the value is grounded in reasons.



Another distinction between normative theories is that between
subjective and objective versions of a type of theory. This
distinction cuts across other categories. For example, there are
subjective forms of all the major moral theories, and objective
versions of many. An objective standard of right holds that the agent
must actually meet the standard - and meeting the standard is
something 'objective', not dependent on the agent's
psychological states - in order to count as right or
virtuous. Subjective standards come in two broad forms:


1. *Psychology sensitive*: are the justifying reasons part of
the agent's deliberative processes? Or, more weakly, are they
"recoverable" from the agent's psychology [perhaps,
for example, the agent has a commitment to the values that provide the
reasons].
2. *Evidence sensitive*: the right action isn't the one
that actually meets the standard, but instead, is the action that the
agent could foresee would meet that standard. [there are many
different ways to spell this out, depending on the degree of evidence
that is relevant: in terms of what the agent actually foresees, what
is foreseeable by the agent given what the agent knows, is foreseeable
by someone in possession of a reasonable amount of evidence, etc.]



Of course, these two can overlap. For theorists who are
*evaluational internalists*, evidence-sensitivity doesn't
seem like a plausible way of spelling out the standard, except,
perhaps, indirectly. The distinction frequently comes up in
Consequentialism, where the Objective standard is taken to be something
like: the right action is the action that actually promotes the
good and the Subjective standard is something like: the right
action is the action that promotes the good by the agent's own
lights (psychology sensitive) or the right action is the action that
promotes the foreseeable good, given evidence available at the time of
action (evidence sensitive standard). It is certainly possible
for other moral standards to be objective. For example, the right
action is the action that the virtuous person would perform, even
though the agent does not realize it is what the virtuous agent would
do in the circumstances, and even if the person with the best available
evidence couldn't realize it is what the virtuous person would do
in the circumstances.



We certainly utter locutions that support both subjective and
objective uses of what we 'ought' to do, or what is
'right'. Frank Jackson notes this when he writes:



> 
> ...we have no alternative but to recognize a whole range of
> oughts - what she ought to do by the light of her beliefs at the
> time of action, ...what she ought to do by the lights of one or
> another onlooker who has different information on the subject, and,
> what is more, what she ought to do by God's lights...that
> is, by the lights of one who *knows* what will and would happen
> for each and every course of action. (Jackson 1991, 471).



For Jackson, the primary ought, the primary sense of
'rightness' for an action, is the one that is "most
immediately relevant to action" since, otherwise, we have a
problem of understanding how the action is the agent's. 
Thus, the subjective 'ought' is primary in the sense that
this is the one that ethical theory should be concerned with (Jackson
1991). Each type of theorist makes use of our ordinary language
intuitions to make their case. But one desideratum of a theory is that
it not simply reflect those intuitions, but also provides the tools to
critically analyze them. Given that our language allows for
both sorts of 'ought,' the interesting issue becomes which,
if either, has primacy in terms of actually providing the standard by
which other things are evaluated? Moral theory needn't only
be concerned with what the right action is from the agent's point
of view.



There are three possibilities:


1. neither has primacy
2. the subjective has primacy
3. the objective has primacy



First off we need to understand what we mean by
"primacy". Again, for Frank Jackson, the primary
sense of 'right' or 'ought' is subjective,
since what we care about is the 'right' that refers to an
inward story, the story of our agency, so to speak. On this view,
the objective and subjective senses may have no relationship to each
other at all, and which counts as primary simply depends upon our
interests. However, the issue that concerns us here is whether or
not one sense can be *accounted for* in terms of the
other. Option 1 holds that there is no explanatory
connection. That is not as theoretically satisfying. Option 2
holds either there really is no meaningful objective sense, just the
subjective sense, or the objective sense is understood in terms of the
subjective. 



Let's look at the objective locution again "He did the
right thing, but he didn't know it at the time (or he had no way
of knowing it at the time)". Perhaps all this means is "He
did what someone with all the facts and correct set of values would
have judged right by their own lights" - this would be
extensionally the same as "He performed the action with the best
actual consequences". This is certainly a possible account of
what objective right means which makes use of a subjective
standard. But it violates the spirit of the subjective standard, since
it ties rightness neither to the psychology of the agent, or the
evidence that is actually available to the agent. For that reason, it
seems more natural to opt for 3. An advantage of this option is that
gives us a nice, unified account regarding the connection between the
objective and the subjective. Subjective standards, then, are
standards of praise and blame, which are themselves evaluable
according to the objective standard. Over time, people are in a
position to tell whether or not a standard actually works in a given
type of context. Or, perhaps it turns out that there are several
standards of blame that differ in terms of severity. For example,
if someone acts negligently a sensible case can be made that the person
is blameworthy but not as blameworthy as if they had acted
intentionally.



As to the worry that the objective standard doesn't provide
action guidance, the objective theorist can hold that action guidance
is provided by the subjective standards of
praise/blameworthiness. Further, the standard itself can provide
what we need for action guidance through normative review (Driver
2012). Normative review is a retrospective look at what does in fact
meet the standard, and under what circumstances.



Now, consider a virtue ethical example. The right action is
the action that is the actual action that a virtuous person would
perform characteristically, in the circumstances, rather than the
action that the agent believes is the one the virtuous person would
perform. Then we evaluate an agent's "v-rules"
in terms of how close they meet the virtuous ideal.


## 4. Decision Procedures and Practical Deliberation




Another function of moral theory is to provide a decision procedure
for people to follow so as to best insure they perform right
actions. Indeed, some writers, such as R. M. Hare hold action guidance
to be the function of the moral principles of the theory (Hare
1965). This raises the question of what considerations are relevant to
the content of such principles - for example, should the
principles be formulated taking into account the epistemic limitations
of most human beings? The requirement that moral principles be action
guiding is what Holly Smith terms the "Useability Demand":
"...an acceptable moral principle must be useable for
guiding moral decisions..." (Smith 2020, 11). Smith
enumerates different forms satisfaction of this demand can take, and
notes that how one spells out a principle in order to meet the demand
will depend upon how the moral theorist views moral success. For
example, whether or not success is achieved in virtue of simply making
the right decision or if, in addition to making the right decision,
the agent must also have successful follow-through on that
decision.



There has been enormous debate on the issue of what is involved in
following a rule or principle, and some skepticism that this is in fact
what we are doing when we *take ourselves* to be following a
rule. (Kripke 1982) Some virtue theorists believe that it is moral
perception that actually does the guiding, and that a virtuous person
is able to perceive what is morally relevant and act accordingly
(McDowell 1979).



As discussed earlier in the section on criteria, however, this is
also controversial in that some theorists believe that decision
procedures themselves are not of fundamental significance. Again,
objective consequentialist who believes that the fundamental task of
theory is to establish a criterion for right argues that decision
procedures will themselves be established and evaluated on the basis of
how well they get us to actually achieving the right. Thus, the
decision-procedures are derivative. Others, such as subjective
consequentialists, will argue that the decision-procedures
*specify* the criterion in the sense that following the
decision-procedure itself is sufficient for meeting the
criterion. For example, an objective consequentialist will hold
that the right action maximizes the good, whereas the subjective
consequentialist might hold that the right action is to *try* to
maximize the good, whether or not one actually achieves it (Mason 2003
and 2019). *Following* the decision-procedure itself,
then, is the criterion. 



The distinction between criterion and decision-procedure has been
acknowledged and discussed at least since Sidgwick, though it was also
mentioned by earlier ethicists. This distinction allows ethical
theories to avoid wildly implausible implications. For example,
if the standard that the theory recommends is 'promote the
good' it would be a mistake to think that 'promote the
good' *needs* to be part of the agent's
deliberation. The consequentialist might say that, instead, it is
an empirical issue as to what the theory is going to recommend as a
decision-procedure, and that recommendation could vary from context to
context. There will surely be circumstances in which it would be
best to think in terms of meeting the standard itself, but again that
is an empirical issue. Likewise, it is open to a Virtue Ethicist
to hold that the right action is the one the virtuous agent would
perform in the circumstances, but also hold that the agent's
deliberative processes need not make reference to the standard. 
Pretty much all theories will want to make some space between the
standard and the decision-procedure in order to avoid a requirement
that agent's must think in terms of the correct standard, in
order to act rightly, or even act with moral worth. There is a
distinction to be made between doing the right thing, and doing the
right thing *for the right reasons*. Doing the right thing for
the right reasons makes the action a morally worthy one, as it exhibits
a good quality of the will. It is possible for a theory to hold
that the 'good will' is one that understands the underlying
justification of an action, but that seems overly demanding. If
consequentialism is the correct theory, then demanding that people must
explicitly act intentionally to maximize the good would result in fewer
morally worthy actions than seems plausible. The 'for the
right reasons' must be understood as allowing for no explicit
invocation of the true justifying standard.



This has led to the development of theories that advocate
indirection. First, we need to distinguish two ways that
indirection figures into moral philosophy. 


1. Indirection in evaluation of right action.
2. Indirection in that the theory does not necessarily advocate the
necessity of aiming for the right action.



To use Utilitarianism as an example again, Rule Utilitarianism is an
example of the first sort of indirection (Hooker 2000),
*Sophisticated Consequentialism* is an example of the second
sort of indirection (Railton 1984). One might hold that some
versions of Aristotelian Virtue ethics, such as Rosalind
Hursthouse's version, also are of the first type, since
right action is understood in terms of virtue. One could imagine
an indirect consequentialist view with a similar structure: the
right action is the action that the virtuous person would perform,
where virtue is understood as a trait conducive to the good, instead of
by appeal to an Aristotelian notion of human flourishing.



The second sort relies on the standard/decision-procedure
distinction. Railton argues that personal relationships are good
for people, and explicitly trying to maximize the good is not a part of
our relationship norms, so it is likely good that we develop
dispositions to focus on and pay special attention to our loved
ones. The account is open to the possibility that people who
don't believe in consequentialism have another way of deciding
how to act that is correlated with promotion of the good. If the
criteria a theory sets out need not be fulfilled by the agent guiding
herself with the reasons set out by the criteria, then it is termed
*self-effacing*. When a theory is self-effacing, it has
the problem of alienating a person from the justification of her own
actions. A middle ground, which is closer to Railton's
view, holds that the correct justification is a kind of
"touchstone" to the morally good person - consulted
periodically for self-regulation, but not taken explicitly into
consideration in our ordinary, day-to-day lives. In this way, the
theory would not be utterly self-effacing and the agent would still
understand the moral basis for her own actions.