The Problem with Principles
On Mature Moral Judgments and Actions
Let us call moral judgments and actions that are appropriate to the situations in which
they occur mature moral judgments and actions. Much discussion in normative ethics has
centered on the role that moral principles play in mature moral judgments and actions. Most
principle-based moral theories posit a strong relationship between moral principles and
mature moral agency. Such theories take mature moral agency to consist of moral
judgments and actions that conform to moral principles.1 This conformity is taken to occur in
either one or both of two ways: with regards to moral guidance and/or normative authority.
That is, mature moral judgments and actions conform to moral principles either: 1) insofar as
(and to the extent that) they are guided by such principles or 2) insofar as (and to the extent
that) they are justified by such principles.
My aim in this paper is to show that there is reason to think that moral principles may be
unable to adequately guide or justify the judgments and actions of mature moral agents.
Because of the complexities and subtleties of actual moral life, moral principles may be
unable to either generate or identify the appropriateness of mature moral judgments and
actions. The problems with principles discussed in what follows do not concern issues of
impartiality or alienation, but are more basic than these now-classic objections to principlebased moral theories.2 This is because the problems I discuss lie not in the use of principles,
but, rather, in their very nature.3 Accordingly, if I am right, then conformity to moral principles
will be neither necessary nor sufficient for the achievement of mature moral judgments and
actions, meaning that moral maturity should not be spelled out in terms of conformity to
moral principles.4
~
One of the goals of normative ethical theories is to specify the standard by which moral
judgments and actions can be evaluated as (in)appropriate. For principle-based theories,
this is done by articulating moral principle(s) which identify relations that universally obtain
between moral features and their grounding (either non-moral or other moral) features.5
Now, it seems that moral principles come in three basic forms: what I will call concrete,
qualified, and abstract. For reasons that I shall articulate, each of these forms of principles
appears unable to adequately account for the appropriateness of mature moral judgments
and actions.
Concrete Principles.
We will start with the simplest form of moral principles: concrete principles. Concrete
moral principles provide direct, unambiguous, action-specific moral guidance in the form of
simple, rigid, and context-insensitive rules. Consider two examples of such principles: ‘Do
not lie’ and ‘Do not knowingly end human life’ (perhaps better known as ‘Thou shalt not kill’).
6
The function of such principles is to decompose moral situations into basic moral
feature/response patterns (i.e. certain features require certain responses) that are
recognizable even for those who lack experience. As such, they provide important ‘entrylevel’ information, for they lay out the basic parameters of moral engagement. However,
because of their inability to adapt to context, concrete principles greatly restrict (or
underutilize) moral agents’ capacity to recognize and respond to the situation-specific
characteristics of particular environmental circumstances: they reduce the range of genuine
response options. This may not be problematic for moral agents who are merely “learning
the ropes” of moral interaction, so to speak – for it is understood and expected that they will
make moral blunders and that their judgments and actions will often fall short of being
appropriate. But such a restriction in guidance is unacceptable at the level of mature moral
agency. Being structurally oblivious to the complex details of particular moral situations,
concrete principles fail to provide the guidance necessary to achieve mature moral
judgments and/or actions. Since these details, in the end, play a role in determining the
appropriateness (and, therefore, the justification) of moral agents’ judgments and actions,
concrete principle also seem unable to provide adequate normative authority. 7
To see this, consider the principle: ‘Do not lie’. Now, while it seems uncontroversial to
say that not telling the truth is generally morally reprehensible – and thus, is an action moral
agents generally ought to refrain from – it is clearly not only possible, but likely, that there
are situations in which not telling the truth is morally acceptable, if not praiseworthy. To use
a now-classic (and well-worn) example, consider mature moral agent, Eva, who hides her
Jewish neighbors in her basement during the Nazi occupation of France. What should Eva
do when a group of Nazi soldiers come to her door and ask her if she knows where her
neighbors are? According to our concrete principle, the answer is clear: Eva must tell them
the truth, disclosing the location, and thus sealing the fate, of her Jewish neighbors. If Eva
fails to do this, then she fails to perform a morally mature action. Yet, our intuition is that the
morally mature action consists in sending the Nazis on their way, without a truthful answer.
In effect, it appears that our concrete principle’s solution to this dilemma is simply
preposterous.
We must not be mislead by the clear absurdity of the above example, for the same sort
of serious moral dilemma arises for other concrete moral principles as well (e.g. ‘Always
keep your promises’, ‘Don’t knowingly end human life’, ‘Don’t steal from others’, and so
forth).8 It seems that our only legitimate principle-based responses to this are to either deny
that such solutions are, in fact, preposterous9 or attempt to somehow qualify the principles. I
will consider this second strategy momentarily. But before doing so, it is important to push
the problem with concrete principles one step further. For, not only do they fail to tell moral
agents when to conform (and when not to conform) to their requirements, but they also fail
to provide guidance as to how they ought to so conform. The principle ‘Do not lie’, for
example, is silent on the question of how one ought to tell the truth. And yet, there are many
ways to tell the truth, only a very few of which, given any particular situation at hand, would
be morally mature. Take, for example, mature moral agent, Joe. Joe’s best friend, Bob, has
been dating their mutual friend, Katie, very seriously for several years now and is deeply in
love with her. One evening, Joe sees Katie out at a restaurant, behaving fairly intimately with
another guy. Suppose that soon after this event, Bob expresses concern over his
relationship with Katie to Joe, asking him for his thoughts on the matter. Now, Joe knows
something about Katie that bears importantly on this issue. Should he tell Bob what he
knows? According to our moral principle, the answer is clear: Joe must tell Bob the truth.
But, that is as far as the principle takes Joe. And thus, it fails him with regards to the
most morally important issue: namely, how he should tell Bob. For, not only does the
principle not tell him how much information he must divulge in order to be “truthful”; more
importantly, it does not tell him how that information must be conveyed in order for his action
to be morally mature. It does not tell Joe, for example, which of the following truths he
should tell: “Crazy thing, Bob: I saw Katie out with another guy at a restaurant—and boy,
was she all over him! I guess things aren’t looking so good for your relationship!” or “Look,
Bob, I saw Katie at the restaurant, and she was with someone, a guy— I don’t know what
was going on, but I think that you should talk with her about it”; and so on.
Now, since Joe is a mature moral agent, there is a good chance that his discussion with
Bob will reveal what he knows about Katie in a morally appropriate fashion. Importantly,
however, concrete moral principles will no more guide him to his morally appropriate
judgment and action than they will justify them. This point is worth emphasizing: according to
our moral principle, any truthful response is morally on par with any other truthful response,
no matter how callous or inappropriate it might be. This might strike many as
counterintuitive. Thus, it seems that the moral appropriateness of Joe’s response to Bob’s
question cannot simply be assessed according to its conformity with the concrete moral
principle ‘Do not lie’. In other words, conformity to the principle isn’t enough to get us mature
moral judgments and actions (nor is it enough for us to justify them as mature), because just
as it seems clear that lying isn’t always (and equally) wrong, it seems clear that telling the
truth isn’t always (and equally) right: the rightness and wrongness of such actions depends
on both context and the manner in which they are performed.
One could argue that we handle this problem by introducing other concrete principles.
We can tell Joe, for instance, that as a mature moral agent he must not only comply with ‘Do
not lie’, but with ‘Be considerate towards others’ as well. This move would not only allow us
to understand Joe’s response to Bob as morally mature because it complied with both
principles, but it would also allow us to account for why his response was superior to other
potential truthful responses that would not have been morally mature: while they might have
complied with the ‘Do not lie’ principle, they would have failed to comply with the ‘Be
considerate towards others’ principle.
But does this really solve the problem? Consider Eva and the Nazis. Can we understand
her situation by introducing another principle, such as ‘Never knowingly endanger human
life’? This would allow us to say that Eva’s lying to the Nazi soldiers successfully complied
with our new principle (knowing full well the Nazi’s intentions for her Jewish neighbors), but
not with the ‘Do not lie’ principle.10 But, this would mean (interestingly enough) that her
response to the Nazis was morally inferior to an action that would have managed to comply
with both principles – a fact that seems counterintuitive because, in fact, it seems that her
action was morally superior for the very reason that she didn’t comply with the latter
principle.
So, on the pluralist picture there would have to be some situations in which moral
principles worked together in order to make judgments and actions morally mature and other
situations in which they worked against each other. Yet, how are we to know, in any given
situation, which is the case? It seems that we would need to introduce some sort of higherorder, regulatory principles that invariantly determined both which principles to apply in
particular situations and how to apply them: i.e. whether to treat them as ‘additive’ (i.e.
working together) or ‘subtractive’ (i.e. working against each other).11
The problem with such higher-order regulatory principles will be discussed momentarily,
when we consider qualified principles. Whether or not such principles are possible, however,
we are still left with the original problem of insensitivity, for just as ‘Do not lie’ leaves us
unclear just exactly how to go about telling the truth maturely, so ‘Be considerate towards
others’ leaves us unclear as to what ‘being considerate towards others maturely’ amounts
to: a problem that cannot be solved by merely introducing more concrete principles.12
Importantly, it seems reasonable to assume that this will be the case for any concrete
principle that is introduced: regardless of their content, their rigidity and insensitivity will
preclude them from providing adequate guidance and justification for morally appropriate
judgments and actions. Accordingly, concrete principles seem unable to provide the
guidance or normative authority required for mature moral judgments and actions. 13
Abstract Principles
In order to deal with these difficulties with concrete principles, principle-based theorists
might seek to capture the rightness/wrongness of judgments and/or actions in the form of
abstract moral principles.14 Examples of abstract principles are: ‘Uphold justice’, ‘Maximize
utility’, or ‘Treat others as ends’. Such principles appear to escape the problems of concrete
principles insofar as their grounding features are themselves moral concepts, making it
harder to imagine a situation in which the moral/grounding relation wouldn’t hold (for
example, wouldn’t it always be the case that because something is just would be a reason to
do it?).
In addition, abstract principles are useful for identifying morally relevant grounding
features (e.g. justice, autonomy, equality, etc.) at a very abstract level. As such, they orient
moral agents by pointing them in a general direction, providing a perspective from which the
situations moral agents face should be considered. As an example, the “maximize utility”
perspective makes maximizing utility the primary orienting objective, organizing evaluation
so that only the issue of maximizing utility is salient, thereby eliminating other issues from
consideration and making moral evaluation more manageable.
The problem is that, while this may be helpful early in an agent’s moral development,
when general orientation is what is needed in order to get one into the right moral ballpark,
so to speak, mature moral agents need more than general orientation: they need to
determine what actually would, in a given situation, be appropriate (i.e. what would uphold
justice or maximize utility). But, abstract principles are unable to provide this kind of moral
guidance. Something else is going to be needed to get from the abstract principle to the
morally appropriate judgment and/or action. One option, of course, is for moral agents to fall
back on concrete moral principles at this point, since they are designed to provide actionspecific guidance. But, as we have seen, this is problematic.
In addition, it is actually not clear that the moral/grounding feature relations in abstract
principles do hold invariantly. That is, as was the case with concrete principles, it seems
possible that adherence to abstract principles could result in problematic moral dilemmas.
Take, as a classic example, the problems that arise with the abstract principle ‘maximize
utility’: e.g. the now classic cases of harvesting the organs of one healthy (though prima
facie “expendable”) person to save the lives of ten socially “important” people who are in
need of organ transplants or of the society that enslaves 5% of its population (who, we can
suppose, have been picked by lottery and genetically altered so as to be happy with their
station in life) for the betterment of the remaining 95%. These situations certainly do not
seem morally justified. Yet, the abstract principle stands silent with regards to this issue.15
And, while it is harder to see how ‘Uphold justice’ could lead to such moral dilemmas, it is at
least possible to think of situations in which upholding justice would not be the morally
appropriate thing to do (perhaps, instead, we should be demonstrating beneficence, or
something along those lines).16
And so, abstract principles face not only the serious challenge of ambiguity (i.e. the
difficulty of how such principles could either generate or identify morally mature judgments
and/or actions), but it is also an open question whether they actual succeed in identifying
invariant moral/grounding features relations. As such it is questionable whether abstract
principles can provide the moral guidance and/or normative authority necessary for mature
moral judgments and actions.
Qualified Principles.
But, perhaps all of these problems can be mitigated if we turn to qualification – that is, to
try and make moral principles more flexible and sophisticated. Such principles come in a
number of forms, of which I will discuss two: 1) prima facie17 principles and 2) specified
principles.
1. Prima Facie Principles. Classically, prima facie principles were introduced by W. D.
Ross as a way of dealing with the problem of ‘plurality’: namely, that, if moral pluralism is
true and there are many moral principles that it is our moral duty to conform to, then we
must have a way of making sense of how they interact – and potentially conflict – with one
another that doesn’t lead to irresolvable moral conflict. Prima facie principles accomplish this
in a very simple way. Though they continue to identify invariant relations between moral and
grounding features (i.e. if lying is wrong, it is always wrong; if keeping promises is right, it is
always right), it is now claimed that these relations only presumptively hold. That is, if lying is
wrong, then we always have a presumptive duty to refrain from doing it, but it may be the
case that other principle(s) turn out to be more important in a particular situation, thereby
effectively over-riding our duty to so refrain. Nonetheless, the wrongness of our lying (even
though our duty to refrain from it has been over-ridden) remains. So, if we consider the Eva
case for a moment, the story might go something like this: for Eva to have lied to the Nazi
soldiers was still wrong, but it was not as wrong as knowingly endangering the lives of her
Jewish neighbors – therefore, it was morally appropriate, all things considered, for her to lie.
What does conformity to prima facie moral principles involve? Well, first, with respect to
moral guidance, there needs to be some way to make sense of prima facie principles’
presumptive quality, and presumably this would require locating the principles in some sort
of hierarchy. As a result, we find ourselves in need of principles that tell us under what
circumstances, and by which other (prima facie) principles, prima facie principles can be
overridden. We would also need a set of principles to tell us under what circumstances there
are exceptions to this first set of principles. For example, the principle that in cases like
Eva’s the moral wrongness of lying is overridden by the moral rightness of not endangering
human life might itself be overridden by the principle that the moral rightness of not
endangering human life is overridden by the wrongness of harboring criminals (for, as it
turns out, Eva’s neighbors had blown up a school-house being used to educate the children
of local Nazis, killing all of the children inside) – and so on, potentially ad infinitum. In short,
we end up with the “Giant Book of Moral Rules”. Thus, it seems – at least on the face of it –
that this account is beset with problems similar to those faced straightforward pluralistic
concrete principles.
As for justification, things are a bit more complicated. Do prima facie principles justify
mature moral judgments and actions? In other words, can we make sense of the maturity of
Eva’s judgment that telling the Nazi soldiers where her neighbors were hiding would be
wrong (and her subsequent action of lying to the soldiers) by reference to prima facie
principles? According to our prima facie principles, Eva had a presumptive duty to tell the
truth that was over-ridden (but still present) by her presumptive duty to not endanger human
life. So, overall, she did the right thing: she succeeded (through a great act of personal risk
on her part) in not endangering her neighbor’s lives. Yet – and we mustn’t forget this –
according to the prima facie account, there was nonetheless some wrongness present in her
act.
Now, it seems mistaken to say that her action, insofar as it involved lying, necessarily
instantiated wrongness. For one, when we reflect upon Eva’s action, we find it to be highly
praiseworthy. And by this, I do not mean merely that we find her keeping her neighbors out
of harm’s way praiseworthy – indeed, we find her lying to do so praiseworthy. To get at this
point from a slightly different angle, let us suppose (going back to the original example), that
when the Nazis arrived at Eva’s home they lied to her, assuring her that they only wanted to
ask her neighbors a few questions, nothing more. Now, I dare say that it would seem
strange to say that the wrongness of Eva’s lying to the Nazis is the same wrongness as that
of the Nazis’ lying to Eva. Yet, according to prima facie principles, it would have to be,
because lying always carries the same presumptive moral weight. Accordingly, the fact that
we don’t hold Eva to blame in the same way we hold the Nazis to blame can (only) have to
do with the presence of other moral principles: nonetheless, these other principles are silent
with respect to the fact that both Eva and the Nazis committed the very same wrong of lying.
2. Specified Principles. Counterintuitive as it seems to say that Eva’s act of lying was
wrong, principle-based theorists might be forced to accept that conclusion if there were no
viable alternatives to the prima facie account of principles. But, there appears to be another
approach they can take. If lying is not invariantly wrong, they could argue, then we simply
need to specify conditional principles in which only certain kinds of lying (and/or lying under
certain conditions) is invariantly wrong. Such specification comes in two forms: ‘narrow’ and
‘wide’. Narrowly specified principles restrict the grounding features (e.g. they narrow them
down from lying simpliciter – or, in other words, lying generally speaking – to those specific
kinds of lying that are invariantly wrong). Widely specified principles, on the other hand,
enumerate all of the various over-riding and mitigating exceptions that arise in which the
grounding/moral relations would no longer hold (e.g. they specify the conditions under which
lying is invariantly wrong). Let us consider both types of specified principles in turn:
(a) Narrowly specified principles. According to this approach, one important way around
the objections so far raised is to simply concede the point. In other words: lying,
generally speaking, isn’t always wrong. But, nonetheless, there are certain kinds of
lying that are. So, for example, ‘Do not lie1 to cover up another wrong you’ve
committed’, ‘Do not lie2 when doing so might harm another person’, etc. are principles
that specify the kinds of lying that are invariantly wrong.
(b) Widely specified principles. Another approach would be to append all of the
necessary qualifications to the original principles. So, for example, ‘Do not lie: except
in circumstances C1, C2, C3,…Cn’ specifies the conditions under which lying is
invariantly wrong.
While specification (of either form) seems the most plausible principle-based alternative
so far discussed, I see two potential problems with it:
First, it seems likely that the endeavor to generate specified principles will get caught
between being general enough to function as a universal principle, yet always being subject
to potential exceptions and being specific enough to not be subject to exceptions, yet always
bordering on triviality. In either of these situations, they would fail to satisfy the requirements
of universality18: in the former situation because the relations identified would not be
invariant, in the latter situation because the relations identified would not be generalizable.
In other words, if we take seriously the problem of context – i.e. the fact that contextual
factors have an influence on the grounding/moral feature(s) relation(s), so that the kinds of
moral features that grounding features instantiate depends (at least to some extent) upon
the context and therefore, at least potentially upon all of the morally relevant grounding
features that are present – then the likelihood of any two situations, much less enough
situations for meaningful generalization to be possible, being enough alike for their
grounding features to instantiate the exact same moral features (in the same way, for the
same reasons) seems rather small. And, given that it seems at least reasonable to suppose
that, in any particular situation, part of what instantiates its moral features (features that
must be responded to appropriately in order for a moral judgment or action to be mature) are
the grounding features present in the specific individuals themselves. As such, the likelihood
of a complete duplication of grounding features (and thus, of moral features) between
situations becomes remote indeed.19
Second, we’ve now exponentially expanded upon our “Giant Book of Moral Rules”,
ending up with a potentially infinite smorgasbord of principles, because for every one
concrete or abstract principle we either get a potentially infinite multitude of narrowly
specified principles or one widely specified principle with a potentially infinite set of
exceptional clauses – in addition to the host of higher-order, regulatory principles needed in
order to identify how and when certain narrowly specified principles apply and/or how and
when various exception clauses within our widely specified principles kick in. This is in
addition, of course, to the higher-order, regulatory principles that would need to be in place
to identify how all of the narrowly and widely specified principles themselves are supposed
to relate to and interact with each other within a coherent system of principles (as well as the
higher-higher-order principles that keep track of the higher-order principles and so on…ad
infinitum). In short, in order to map adequately onto the appropriateness of mature moral
judgments and actions, we not only end up with a potentially infinite set of moral principles,
but we run the risk of having situation-specific principles that are no longer be principles at
all.
Now, of course, the principle-based theorist might argue that even if all we end up with is
these situation-specific principles, then, while it would be hard to say that such principles
could provide any moral guidance, they would nonetheless provide justification for those
specific judgments and actions they map down onto. After all, it is at least conceivable that
we could generate a complete description of the moral/grounding feature(s) relations which
mature moral agent K’s judgment and/or action φ was an appropriate judgment and/or
action in response to, such that we could rightfully say that, given these features, φ was
what moral agent K ought to have done.
I think that there are two responses that can (and should) be made to this: First, it is not
clear that such complete descriptions are actually possible. After all, even if we could, in
principle, be aware of (and responsive towards) all of the moral/grounding feature(s)
relations present in a given situation, this does not mean that they can be articulated into
propositional form. There is certainly reason to believe, as some have argued,20 that much
of our knowledge exists in the form of non-propositional know-how, so even if we were able
to “see” what mature moral agents see and, thus, to recognize the ‘rightness’ of their moral
judgments and/or actions, it remains an open question how much of (and to what extent)
that knowledge could be articulated into a situation specific moral principle.
In addition, even if we could develop such situation-specific moral principles, they don’t
seem to give us much in the way of justification. All they tell us is that mature moral agents
are justified in doing what mature moral agents do. But this essentially reduces principlebased moral theories to a form of virtue ethics: moral judgments and actions are now
appropriate, not because they conform to moral principles, but because they were formed
(or preformed) by mature moral agents. The appropriateness of moral judgments and
actions is no longer being measured against the justificatory power of independently
articulated moral principles. Mature moral agents are not employing moral principles to
achieve mature moral judgments and/or actions. Instead, the moral principles being
articulated are entirely dependent upon the appropriateness of mature moral judgments or
actions: what we are generating is descriptive of mature moral agency, not prescriptive upon
it. 21
Thus, in all of these cases – concrete, abstract, and qualified principles – there is what
may be an unbridgeable gap between how far principles can take us and where we need to
be in order achieve moral maturity.
1
Principle-based theories are typically deontological (e.g. Kant/neo-Kantian) or consequentialist (e.g. Mill/neoutilitarian), though ethical intuitionist theories are typically principle-based as well. For arguments for moral principles,
see the classics of Immanuel Kant, J. S. Mill, and W. D. Ross, as well as the neo-Kantian (e.g. Christine Korsgaard,
Barabara Herman), neo-utilitarian (e.g. Peter Singer, J. J. C. Smart), and neo-intuitionist (e.g. Robert Audi) literature.
2
For some arguments against moral principles, see the work of Bernard Williams, Michael Stocker, and most virtue
ethicists.
3
As such, the problems I discuss are in line with various particularist critiques of moral principles. See, for example, Brad
Hooker and Margaret Little (2000). Moral Particularism, Oxford: Clarendon Press and John Dancy (1993). Moral
Reasons, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
4
This does not mean that moral principles should be discounted entirely, for as I will discuss in the second section of the
paper, they may play important heuristic and pedagogical roles.
5
A few points here: First, this definition of moral principles comes largely from Russ Shafer-Landau (1997) “Moral
rules”, Ethics, 107:4, 584-612. Second, in order for a principle to be universal it must identify moral feature(s)/grounding
feature(s) relations that are both invariant (i.e. always hold) and generalizable (i.e. hold across contexts). As such,
universality comes in degrees. For example, the principle ‘killing is wrong’ identifies a much more widely generalizable
(broader-scoped) invariant relationship than the principle ‘killing that isn’t done in self-defense is wrong’.
6
It is important to note that, by discussing concrete principles, I do not mean to suggest that any contemporary principlebased moral theories rely solely on conformity to such unsophisticated concrete moral principles (presumably because of
difficulties such as those I’m articulating). Nonetheless, I do think concrete principles are relied on quite frequently in
various folk-applications of moral theory (take, for example, the huge stone pillar of the Ten Commandments that sits out
in front of one of the local churches in my hometown or advocates of Divine Command Theory).
7
One response to this is that moral principles must be oblivious to the particular details of situations if they are to achieve
impartiality (impartiality being one of the tenets of rationality). Common objections to this response are the “impartiality”
objection (i.e. that impartiality should not be achieved by requiring at the outset that agents ignore what is personally
important to them and the “alienation” objection (i.e. that the impartiality enforced by principled deliberation leads to the
alienation of moral agents from their personal goals, projects, and ties). See Michael Stocker (1976), “The schizophrenia
of modern ethical theories”, Journal of Philosophy, 73, 453-466, Barbara Herman (1996). The Practice of Moral
Judgment, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, and Peter Railton (1984), “Alienation, consequentialism, and the
demands of morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 13:2, 134-171 on these points.
8
Likewise, we can think of less dramatic examples that arise with the ‘Do not lie’ principle: for example, the fact that
most of us quite happily go along with the cultural traditions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, lying
to our children about their existence with good consciences.
9
Interestingly, while it seems unlikely that many people would be willing to defend the claim that Eva’s being morally
required to tell the truth in the Nazi soldier situation is not preposterous, there are several other concrete moral principles
that we may more readily find people defending in all contexts, despite the (at least potential) absurdity of their doing so:
take, for example, the principle “Do not knowingly end human life”. It seems to me that many of our current (admittedly,
largely non-philosophical) debates of such topics as abortion and euthanasia often center around this very principle: i.e.
whether or not it is always wrong to knowingly end human life- no matter what.
10
Of course, I find it an interesting question whether we should be so quick in saying she complied with the ‘do not
knowingly endanger human life’ principle, considering that she certainly endangered her own. This is indicative, I think,
of the deep and troubling subtleties of moral engagement that I am arguing principles do not have the sensitivity to handle.
11
Of course, to make matters worse, there is reason to believe that interaction of principles would not be nearly this
straightforward: for they could have ‘multiplicative’ or ‘exponential’ functions, and so forth, as well. For a discussion of
this, see Shelly Kagan (1988). “The Additive Fallacy”, Ethics, 99:1, 5-31.
12
Of course, someone could respond that what we need is an adequate analysis of the moral terms involved in our
principles (e.g. ‘to be considerate’) in order to know what ‘being considerate to others’ amounts to. The problem is, again,
that this analysis will have to be general enough to capture all instances of being considerate – and thus, there will still
always be the question of how the general definition can inform particular acts of consideration, which must be situation
specific in order to be appropriate (that is, mature).
13
The important ‘take-home’ message here is that how Joe gets to the morally mature moral judgment and/or action is
something that goes beyond his conformance with moral principles. While some people would look to a sort of ‘moral
discernment’ or ‘sensitivity’ to explain this achievement, I don’t think this is an option for the principle-based theories – at
least not to the extent that they define moral mature moral agency in terms of conformance to moral principles. Certainly,
some sort of hybrid theory (one including both principles and sensitivity) could be proposed. And, in fact, this is what I
think most principle-based theorists do advocate (either explicitly or implicitly) – but I think this runs into a serious (and it
seems to me, completely unaddressed) challenge: once discernment is introduced as an explanation for a moral agent’s
understanding of when, where, and how to conform to moral principles appropriately, why couldn’t such discernment just
take the place of the principles altogether? That is, if it seems right to say that I know, through discernment, when and
how it is appropriate to conform to the principle ‘Do not lie’, why wouldn’t it be just as plausible to say that I know,
through discernment, when and how it is appropriate to tell the truth? I’ll discuss this point more towards the end of the
paper.
14
Abstract principles come in (at least) two varieties: those that have a specific end in mind (substantive principles) or
those that do not (formal principles). The principle of utility is conceived of as an example of the former (since the
greatest happiness for the greatest number specifies an end); the first formulation of the CI is an example of the latter.
15
Now, arguably, someone might try to head off such counterintuitive conclusions by trying to “refine” the principle in
such a way as to preclude these counterintuitive consequences. For example, one might say that the concept of utility that
the ‘maximize utility’ principle employs precludes the enslavement of others (or something like this). But, this solution
has its own problems, as I will get to in my discussion of qualified principles below.
16
This is exactly the kind of point made by “care theorists” such as Carol Gilligan and the like.
17
‘Prima facie’ principles have been formulated as either ‘pro-tanto’ (i.e. insofar as this goes) or ‘ceteris paribus’ (i.e. all
things being equal) principles. While there are important differences between these two types, I do not have room to go
into them here.
18
See footnote 4 for a brief discussion of these requirements.
19
And by this, I mean grounding features that are present in such a way as to not necessarily be generalizable – features
that are true of the specific individuals themselves (as opposed to being true of all human beings or something like that).
Of course, this is a view that I will need to argue for independently (though not in this paper). But, it seems to at least be
plausible that there may be a constellation of potentially morally relevant grounding features that each of us, as
individuals, possess that are not generalizable to the population at large.
20
See Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus (1991). “Towards a Phenomenology of Moral Expertise”, Human Studies, 14,
229-250; Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus (1986). Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise
in the Era of the Computer. New York: The Free Press; Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (2000).
The Embodied Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press, and Francisco Varela (1999). Ethical Know-How, Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
21
This is very similar to objections given by particularists (e.g. Dancy, 1993). As has been discussed, moral principles are
supposed to identify those features that have moral significance (i.e. being ‘right’ or being ‘wrong’), moral significance
they are supposed to possess irrespective of the particular situations in which they are found. Thus, the fact that something
is a lie would be a reason (of either an absolute or presumptive sort) not to do it – no matter what situation it is found in.
But, the particularist argues that features can only possess their moral significance (that is, be reasons either for or against
a judgment/action) holistically, from within the context that they are found. As such, they could easily (and nonproblematically) be a reason for a judgment/action in one instance and a reason against a judgment/action in another. So,
our situation-specific principles have no justificatory power – they are unable to identify those features that possess (by
virtue of being the features that they are) an invariant moral significance independently from the entirety of the situation
in which they are found.