Rachels, Ch. 3, Subjectivism
- General (vague) subjectivism
- No facts or objectives truths in morality
- No (unique?) right answers to moral questions
- Morality is
- Mere matter of personal opinion
- Mere expression or statement of feelings
- Matter of sentiment/emotion/feeling, not truth, fact, or reason
- Example:
- When someone says "Homosexuality is wrong"
- Facts are that some people are homosexual and others
heterosexual, and that some people have feelings of approval and
others of disapproval about homosexuality
- No facts about homosexuality being right or wrong
- When we perceive a gay couple holding hands, we don't perceive any
wrongness (or rightness)
- The wrongness or rightness is something we (the perceiver) add
- It's subjective (from the subject)
- Not objective (from the object)
- It's our own feeling or emotion toward the behavior and
is not a property of the behavior
- So when we think an act is objectively right or wrong, we confuse
something in us with something in the object
- Rightness or wrongness is a mere feeling or attitude we have and not
an objective fact about the act we evaluate
- Two specific versions of subjectivism: Simple subjectivism and
emotivism
Simple subjectivism (SS)
- X is morally right (or wrong) means I (the speaker) approve of (or
disapprove of) X
- Contrast this account with the one Rachels gives:
- X is morally right/wrong means X has the weight of
reason on its side (it has the strongest arguments for it)
- According to SS, moral language states facts about a speaker's
attitudes and feelings
- This is strange: When you say some act is wrong, it turns out
(according to SS) that you are talking about yourself and your
attitudes and not about the act
- Two problems with simple subjectivism
- (1) Entails infallibility: Makes (sincerely stated) moral statements
infallible--since we are only talking about our own attitudes.
- But we
obviously aren't infallible about our moral claims, we do make
mistakes
- (2) Makes disagreement impossible:
- Because (according to SS) we are
talking about our own feelings toward actions and not the actions
themselves, when one person says "X is right" and another says "No
X is wrong" they are not disagreeing (for the are not talking about the same thing)
- One is saying "I approve of X"
and the other is saying "I disapprove of X" and they both can agree
that these are their attitudes.
- Since moral disagreement obviously exists, SS must be
mistaken as it makes such disagreement impossible
- Emotivism (=E)
- X is morally right/wrong means either
- "Do X" (a command)
- "Yuck on X" or "Boo X" or "X stinks" (expressing an emotion)
- For emotivism, moral language is not a fact stating use of language
- A moral utterance is not an attempt to say something true or false
- Moral utterances are either
- Commands (which aren't T or F), or
- Expressions of emotions (which aren't T or F), as opposed to stating or reporting or
emotions as SS claims (which can be T or F)
- The point of moral utterances are to influences people's
behavior or attitudes
- How emotivism avoids the two problems SS has
- Moral utterances are not infallible (always correct) as they aren't
attempts to say true or false things
- Disagreements exist in attitudes (while there is no disagreement about
truth) ("Yeah Cougars") ("Down with the Cougars")
- Problem for emotivism:
- Mistaken view of role of reason giving in ethics
- If purpose of moral language is to influence behavior or attitude, then
what is the purpose of reason giving in morality?
- Answer: To influence attitudes
- So a good reason (according to E) is any consideration that has this
desired affect (influences the attitude in the right way)
- For example,
- I say "Goldbloom is a bad man"
- According to E this amounts to me trying to get you to take a
negative attitude toward him (and perhaps not associate with
him)
- If a good reason is one that produces this attitude, then when I
appeal to your anti-Semiticism and say "Goldbloom is a Jew" and this leads you to dislike Goldbloom, it follows that I gave a
good reason for why he is a bad man
- But this is a totally skewed view of that good reasons are and
of the point of reason giving
- Good reasons are not simply the ones that have the desired
psychological effect
- At the very least they must be logically relevant
- Rachels concludes that E is mistaken because its view of moral
reason giving is unacceptable.
- Are there moral facts?
- Subjectivism is appealing because it suggests there are not any moral facts that apply to everybody
- Subjectivism is appealing because it presents a false dilemma
- If falsely assumes there are only two possibilities
- Either:
- (1) Moral truths/facts/values exist in same way as stars/planets exist
- That is, they are physical objects that we can perceive with out
senses
- (2) Or moral truths/facts/values are mere personal feelings or
emotions or attitudes (that we take toward behavior)
- The subjectivist argues that since (1) is obviously false, (2) must be true; Hence subjectivism is true
- This is a false dilemma because there is a third option
- (3) Moral truths are truths of reasons (they exist as truths of
reason)
- A moral judgment is true if it is backed by better reasons than
its alternatives
- The correct answer to moral questions is the answer that has
the weight of reason on its side.
- So Rachels accepts the notion of "moral facts" in the sense that there are moral truths of reason
- Moral truths are objective in the sense that
- They are true independent of what we want to think
- We can't make the weight of reason lie on one side of an issue
by wanting it to lie on that side of the issue
- Reason says what it says regardless of our desires about what it
says
- We can be mistaken in ethics; we can be wrong about what reason
commends (about where the weight of reason lies).
- Are there proofs in ethics?
- Many say no
- Science is our paradigm of objectivity and proof and ethics lacks that
sort of objectivity or proof
- Rachels provide examples of what he considers proof in ethics
- One is this:
- Teacher gives a test that a student judges to be unfair.
- The test covered in details matters that were quite trivial, while
ignoring matters the teacher had stressed as important.
- It also covered material not in class readings or discussions.
- Test was so long not even best students could complete it in the time
allowed (and it was graded on the assumption it should be completed)
- All these things are true and the teacher has no response when
confronted with them
- Would seem like this is a proof that the test was unfair.
- People think moral judgments are unprovable
- Because they use the wrong standard of proof (scientific, empirical
standard)
- Focus on hard cases
- Falsely believe that proving something means convincing everyone