Generalism and Particularism: Are the Folk Particularists?
Jen Wright
Generalism and particularism are seen as competing theoretical approaches to ethics.1
Roughly speaking, generalism holds that the identification of general moral truths that are
capturable in the form of moral principles is fundamental to the development of an adequate
ethical theory. Particularism, on the other hand, is skeptical about the importance (and even the
existence) of such general moral principles.2
Why are particularists skeptical about general moral principles? One driving motivation
for this skepticism is the particularist’s commitment to holism. Holism plays a role in
particularism in two ways: the particularist considers both the favoring relation of moral reasons3
and the right/wrong-making relation between grounding4 and moral features to be “holistic”: that
is, according to particularism, the valence of moral reasons (i.e., counting for, against, or neither)
and the rightness/wrongness of moral features is determined by the presence/absence of a wide
range of other features in the context in which they arise, and thus, is capable of shifting. It is
typically believed that insofar as generalism holds that we can locate favoring and right/wrong
making (what I will call the moral status making) relations that are insensitive to contextual
factors, it cannot accommodate the full force of holism5: to be a generalist, you likewise have to
hold that at some level moral status making relations are atomistic (i.e., you have to hold that, at
1
The generalism/particularism debate is currently raging on many fronts. See, just as examples, Asher & Bonevac
(1997), Audi (2004), Dancy (1993, 2004), Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1991), Hooker and Little (2000), Little (2001),
McDowell (1998), McKeever & Ridge (2005), Shafer Landau (1997), Stratton-Lake (2000), Väyrynen (2004),
Varela (1999).
2
This is admittedly a bit of a gloss on the debate: there are many different versions of particularism and generalism
presented in the literature (see, for example, McKeever & Ridge’s, 2006 discussion of different versions, ch.1).
3
And, indeed, reasons generally.
4
Grounding features can be either non-moral or moral.
5
Most particularists and generalists agree with this point. However, there are some generalists (e.g., McKeever and
Ridge, 2006) that argue that generalism can accommodate holism (so long as it is a codifiable form of holism).
some level, reasons and grounding features “carry their particular valence around from place to
place”6).
Consider the following moral principle: “lying is wrong”.7 Clearly, there are exceptions
to this (for example, when lying saves someone’s life). Generalists typically deal with such
exceptions in one of two ways: they either accommodate the exceptions into the principle itself
by generating qualified principles (e.g., “lying is wrong except when it saves lives”) or they
stipulate that it is a prima-facie (or pro-tanto) principle that simply fails to generate an actual
duty (or an all-things-considered reason against acting) in these sorts of circumstances. Both of
these approaches share the view that the valence (that is, the “wrongness”) of lying is invariant:
it’s just that either the grounding feature that gives rise to the wrongness has been restricted
(“lying-other-than-to-save-lives”) or the wrongness has been overridden by other considerations.
Particularists would say, on the other hand, that in cases such as these, lying is no longer wrong.
In these cases its valence has shifted, thereby making it right, as well as making it a reason for
(rather than a reason against) action.
I. Empirical Studies
There are many thorny philosophical issues surrounding this debate – many of which I
have tried to grapple with elsewhere – but for the purposes of the current project, I will leave
more or less aside. My goal here is actually quite modest: I simply want to explore empirically
whether people’s judgments tend to look more holistic or atomistic (so, really I should have titled
my paper “Are the Folk Holists?” but it didn’t seem as catchy). The studies that I will report here
6
Dancy (2004), p. 7.
As I state elsewhere, I take moral principles to be propositions that (i) are (necessarily) true, (ii) contain both (what
we might call) grounding and moral concepts, (iii) are normative (i.e., they entail certain prescriptive imperatives –
e.g., “tell the truth”) (iv) are (robustly) generalizable, (v) are theory-grounded (i.e., non-arbitrary), and (vi) are
specified (or specifiable) in advance (i.e., not ad hoc).
7
represent very preliminary and exploratory attempts to begin an investigation into this question.
Investigating this question will hopefully be the first step in a much longer project to empirically
explore whether people tend more towards generalism or particularism in their thinking in the
moral domain.
I started my research off by presenting participants (n = 117; 46 males) with the
following set of scenarios (which were counterbalanced in their presentation), all of which
involve the morally relevant grounding feature of lying:
Bob and Joe are roommates. Bob asks Joe if he has seen his new iPod. Joe did recently
see it under a pile of papers on the bookshelf. But Joe lies to Bob, telling him that he
hasn’t seen it. He thinks that if Bob doesn’t find it on his own in a day or two, he can take
it down to the pawn shop and get $50 for it.
Suzy is three years old. On Christmas morning, Suzy is opening her Christmas presents
from “Santa Claus”. Suzy remembers hearing some older children talking at pre-school
earlier in the week, saying that Santa Claus isn’t real. Suzy turns to her parents and asks
them “Did Santa Claus really bring me these presents?”. Her parents lie to her, assuring
her that yes, Santa Claus did bring them to her – from the North Pole on his sleigh.
Hilda hides her Jewish neighbors in her basement during the Nazi occupation of France.
A German soldier comes to her door one afternoon and asks her if she knows where her
neighbors have gone. Hilda lies to the soldier, telling them no, she hasn’t seen them
recently, but she believes that they left the country to visit family.
Participants were asked the following questions on 0 (positive) -8 (negative) Likert scales:

Whether lying in each situation was “good, bad, or neither good nor bad”.

Whether lying in each situation was “the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, or
neither right nor wrong”.

Whether the person who lied in each situation was “praiseworthy, blameworthy, or
neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy” for lying.
Even though it is reasonable to expect participants’ all-things-considered answer to the
question “Should x lie?” to differ between the scenarios regardless of whether they are atomists
or holists, nonetheless atomism and holism would suggest different sorts of answers to the above
questions. Specifically, as atomists we should expect the valence of lying for each of the answers
to be consistent across the different scenarios. As holists, we should expect quite the opposite:
we should see a clear valence shift (from negative to neutral to positive) across the scenarios.
What I found was as follows:
JOE
lying
good/
bad
JOE
lying
right/
wrong
JOE
praise/
blame
for lying
SUZY
PARENTS
lying
good/ bad
SUZY
PARENTS
lying right/
wrong
7.49
7.53
7.40
3.39
3.45
Table 1. Means for each question in LYING scenarios.
SUZY
PARENTS
praise/
blame for
lying
3.74
HILDA
lying
good/
bad
0.66
HILDA
lying
right/
wrong
0.63
HILDA
praise/
blame
for lying
0.78
Participants’ answers clearly differed with respect to the reported valence of lying’s
badness and wrongness, as well as on the blameworthiness of the person who lied across the
different scenarios. Joe’s lying was viewed as very bad, very much the wrong thing to do, and
Joe was judged to be very blameworthy for doing so; Hilda’s lying was viewed as very good,
very much the right thing to do, and Hilda was judged to be very praiseworthy for doing so; the
lying of Suzy’s parents was viewed as more or less neutral (neither good/bad, nor right/wrong)
and Suzy’s parents were judged to be neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy for doing so.
This difference in judgments between scenarios was quite strong – indeed, the changes in
judgment based on changes in the vignettes explained 91% of the variance in participants’
answers. When the means were compared with paired-sample t-tests, the analyses showed
significant differences for each question across the scenarios. In other words, the means for the
Joe case were significantly higher than the means for the Suzy case and the means for the Suzy
case were significantly higher than the means for the Hilda case.
Paired sample comparisons
JOE lying G/B - SUZY lying G/B
SUZY lying G/B - HILDA lying G/B
JOE lying R/W - SUZY lying R/W
SUZY lying R/W - HILDA R/lying W
JOE P/B for lying - SUZY P/B for lying
SUZY P/B for lying - HILDA P/B for lying
Table 2. Paired sample t-tests for LYING scenarios.
t value
(df 116)
23.11
13.71
23.33
14.13
23.89
17.42
p value
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
In summary, there is a significant shift in the reported valence of the grounding feature
(lying) between the Joe case, in which it was reported to be bad, wrong, and the liar found
blameworthy, the Suzy case, in which it was reported to be morally neutral, and the Hilda case,
in which it was reported to be morally good, right, and the liar found praiseworthy.
Of course, it could be that this particular morally relevant grounding feature (lying) was
not the best feature to test: perhaps lying is not the sort of feature we should consider to be
invariant. To look at this, I employed a much more classic example of an invariant grounding
feature: namely, promise keeping. Promise keeping is considered to be a perfect duty by Kant
and a primary prima facie duty by Ross, so one would think that it should not be subject to any
valence shifting.
To examine this, I gave participants (n = 71; 24 male) the following scenarios (which,
once again, were counterbalanced in their presentation):
Stan promises his girlfriend that he will meet her for lunch at 12pm on Wednesday at their
favorite café. Wednesday at 11:45am, on his way to the café, Stan runs into his friend, who is
on his way to a baseball game. He has an extra ticket, and invites Stan to join him. Stan
decides to go with his friend to the game, even though he knows that doing so means that he
will be breaking his promise to have lunch with his girlfriend.
Pam promises her son that she will be back in 5 minutes: she is just going into the grocery
store to buy a gallon of milk. Pam enters the store and heads for the milk aisle. After
grabbing a gallon, she walks to the register. The lines are much longer than she expected. She
guesses that she will probably have to wait in line for about 10 minutes. Pam decides to wait
in line to purchase the milk, even though he knows that doing so means that she will be
breaking her promise to be back in 5 minutes.
Fred promises his girlfriend that he will meet her for lunch at 12pm on Wednesday at their
favorite café. Wednesday at 11:45am, on his way to the café, Fred runs into his grandfather,
who is out for a stroll. They exchange hellos, and then suddenly Fred’s grandfather clutches
his chest and falls to the ground unconscious. An ambulance arrives minutes later to take
Fred’s grandfather to the hospital. Fred accompanies his grandfather to the hospital, even
though he knows that doing so means that he will be breaking his promise to have lunch with
his girlfriend.
Participants were asked the following questions on 0 (negative) -8 (positive) Likert scales:
:
 Whether the breaking of a promise in each situation was “good, bad, or neither good nor
bad”.

Whether the breaking of a promise in each situation was “the right thing to do, the wrong
thing to do, or neither right nor wrong”.

Whether the person who broke the promise in each situation was “praiseworthy,
blameworthy, or neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy” for breaking a promise.
The results were as follows:
STAN
break
promise
good/
bad
STAN
break
promise
right/
wrong
STAN
praise/
blame
for break
promise
PAM
break
promise
good/
bad
PAM
break
promise
right/
wrong
PAM
praise/
blame
for break
promise
6.99
7.23
6.94
3.75
3.58
3.99
Table 3. Means for each question in PROMISE KEEPING scenarios.
FRED
break
promise
good/
bad
FRED
break
promise
right/
wrong
FRED
praise/
blame
for break
promise
1.04
0.65
1.08
Once again, participants’ answers clearly differed with respect to the valence of the
promise breaking’s badness, wrongness, as well as the blameworthiness of the person who broke
his/her promise across these different scenarios. Stan’s promise breaking was viewed as bad, the
wrong thing to do, and Stan was judged to be blameworthy for breaking his promise; Fred’s
promise breaking was viewed as good, the right thing to do, and Fred was judged to be
praiseworthy for breaking his promise; Pam’s promise breaking was viewed as morally neutral
and Pam was viewed as neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy for breaking her promise.
The difference in judgments was again quite strong – this time the change in judgments
based on changes in the vignettes explained 82% of the variance in participants’ answers. And
paired sample t-tests revealed, once again, that the means were significantly different for each
question across scenarios. In other words, the means for the Fred case were significantly higher
than the means for the Pam case and the means for the Pam case were significantly higher than
the means for the Stan case.
Paired sample comparison
STAN break prom G/B - PAM break prom G/B
PAM break prom G/B - FRED break prom G/B
STAN break prom R/W - PAM break prom R/W
PAM break prom R/W - FRED break prom R/W
STAN P/B for break prom - PAM P/B for break prom
PAM P/B for break prom - FRED P/B for break prom
Table 4. Paired sample t-tests for PROMISE KEEPING scenarios.
t value (df 70)
19.38
15.42
17.33
13.48
16.44
14.83
p value
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
So, once again, there was a significant shift in the reported valence of the morally
relevant grounding feature (this time, promise keeping) between the Stan case, in which it was
reported to be bad, wrong, and the promise breaker found blameworthy, the Pam case, in which
it was reported to be morally neutral, and the Fred case, in which it was reported to be morally
good, right, and the promise breaker found praiseworthy.
The purpose of these studies was to explore not whether people’s all-things-considered
judgments vary from scenario to scenario, but rather whether people judge the valence of a
particular morally relevant grounding feature involved in the all-things-considered moral status
to be variant or invariant – that is, whether or not people judge the valence of one morally
relevant grounding feature to shift depending on the other sorts of features that are present. One
worry for these studies that might therefore arise is that since participants were not given an
opportunity to express their all-things-considered judgment, what looks like valence-shifting
may really be just a reflection of just such a judgment.
One way to address this worry would be to give participants the chance to answer
questions not only about the grounding feature of interest, but also about the moral status of the
action as a whole. Therefore, another group of participants were given both the LYING and
PROMISE KEEPING scenarios, but were asked a new set of questions before being asked the
questions for each scenario already considered above.
For example, participants (n = 61; gender not collected) were asked (on 1-7 Likert scales)
whether Joe’s plan to sell Bob’s iPod:

was good, bad, or neither good nor bad

was the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, or neither right nor wrong
As well as whether, for planning to sell Bob’s iPod, Joe:

was praiseworthy, blameworthy, or neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy

should feel good, bad, or neither good nor bad (new question added)
In addition, participants were asked the same set of questions about:

Suzy’s parents telling Suzy that Santa brought the presents

Hilda’s protecting her neighbors

Stan’s going to a game with a friend

Pam’s taking 10 minutes to purchase the milk

Fred’s accompanying his grandfather to the hospital
Not only should we expect participants’ answers to reflect some all-things-considered
differences, but insofar as participants are being given the opportunity to judge that Hilda did the
right thing in protecting her neighbors even if they believe her lying to be invariantly wrong, we
should expect the presence of these additional questions to help free participants up express their
atomism about the grounding features of interest (should they have any).
The results showed the following:
JOE
plan
good/
bad
6.30
STAN
game
good/
bad
5.71
SUZY
PARENTS
praise/
blame for
story
SUZY
PARENTS
feel good/
bad for
story
6.43
6.16
6.23
4.23
4.23
4.07
Table 5a. Means for “all-things-considered” questions for LYING scenarios.
5.71
JOE
plan
right/
wrong
JOE
praise/
blame
for plan
JOE feel
good/
bad for
plan
SUZY
PARENTS
story
good/ bad
SUZY
PARENTS
story right/
wrong
HILDA
protect
good/
bad
STAN
PAM
STAN
STAN
feel
PAM
PAM
PAM
feel
game
praise/
good/
milk
milk
praise/
good/
FRED
right/
blame
bad for
good/
right/
blame
bad for
ambulance
wrong
for game game
bad
wrong
for milk
milk
good/ bad
5.75
5.71
5.77
4.08
3.73
3.98
4.15
2.54
Table 5b. Means for “all-things-considered” questions for PROMISE KEEPING scenarios.
HILDA
praise/
blame
for
protect
HILDA
protect
right/
wrong
1.93
1.80
FRED
ambulance
right/
wrong
1.67
2.02
FRED
praise/
blame for
ambulance
2.37
What we find, not surprisingly, is that participants’ all-things-considered judgments in
the LYING scenarios were context sensitive. Joe’s plan to sell Bob’s iPod was very bad, very
much the wrong thing to do, Joe was very blameworthy and should feel very bad for doing it;
Suzy’s parents telling her a story about Santa was generally morally neutral (with the exception
that participants judged that Suzy’s parents should feel bad about telling her the story); Hilda’s
protecting of her neighbors was considered good, the right thing to do, and Hilda was
praiseworthy and should feel good for doing it. And we find the same general trend for the
PROMISE BREAKING scenarios: Stan’s going to the game with a friend was very bad, very
much the wrong thing to do, and Stan was very blameworthy and should feel very bad for doing
so; Pam’s standing in line for 10 minutes to buy milk was judged to be morally neutral; Fred’s
riding in the ambulance with his grandfather was considered good, the right thing to do, and Fred
was praiseworthy and should feel good about doing so. Paired sample t-tests revealed the means
for each same questions across scenarios to be significantly different: ts(55) between 7.6 and
13.0, ps < .001.
HILDA
feel
good/
bad for
protect
2.29
FRED feel
good/ bad
for
ambulance
2.63
Given the opportunity to express their all-things-considered judgments about the
scenarios, the question of interest is: did participants express a more atomistic view with respect
to the moral valence of lying and promise keeping? It appears that they did not:
JOE
feel
JOE
JOE
JOE
good/
SUZY
SUZY
lying
lying
praise/ bad
PARENTS PARENTS
good/
right/
blame
about
lying
lying right/
bad
wrong
for lying lying
good/ bad
wrong
6.38
6.41
6.04
6.23
4.32
4.09
Table 6a. Means for questions in LYING scenarios.
SUZY
PARENTS
praise/
blame for
lying
4.02
STAN
STAN
STAN
STAN
feel
PAM
PAM
PAM
break
break
praise/
good/
break
break
praise/
promise promise
blame
bad
promise promise
blame
good/
right/
for break about
good/
right/
for break
bad
wrong
promise promise
bad
wrong
promise
5.65
5.77
5.69
5.67
4.04
3.71
3.92
Table 6b. Means for questions in PROMISE KEEPING scenarios.
SUZY
PARENTS
feel good/
bad about
lying
4.07
PAM
feel
good/
bad
about
promise
4.17
HILDA
lying
good/
bad
2.02
FRED
break
promise
good/
bad
2.50
HILDA
lying
right/
wrong
1.64
FRED
break
promise
right/
wrong
1.92
HILDA
praise/
blame
for lying
1.96
HILDA
feel
good/
bad
about
lying
2.36
FRED
praise/
blame
for break
promise
2.46
FRED
feel
good/
bad
about
promise
2.83
Again, lying and promise keeping were judged to change valence in several different
respects across the scenarios – this time with an additional question about how the person who
lied or broke a promise should feel about doing so. There was no difference between the valenceshifting of the all-things-considered questions and the moral feature questions (p = .88). 80% of
the change in participants’ judgments was explained by the change in vignettes and paired
sample t-tests revealed that the means for each question across the scenarios were once again
significantly different: ts(55) between 6.1 and 13.7, ps < .001. (Note: Though the means may
look a bit lower than those presented above, this is largely because the Likert scale used here was
1-7 instead of 0-8).
The changes in the means seen above appear to support a sort of holism in the moralstatus-making relation of moral features. To get more directly at the holism of the favoring
relation of reasons, participants in this group were also asked one final question at the end of
each of the scenarios: they were asked whether or not the fact that the action in the scenario (e.g.,
planning to sell an iPod, protecting one’s neighbors, going to a game with a friend, etc.) involved
lying or promise breaking counted as a reason for, against, or neither for nor against engaging in
the action (1-7 Likert scale with 1 = strongly for; 7 = strongly against). The results were:
BOB
SUZY
HILDA
STAN
REASON
REASON
REASON
REASON
4.90
4.14
3.55
5.52
Table 7. Means for reasons question.
PAM
REASON
4.21
FRED
REASON
3.83
Participants reported that the fact that it involved lying counted significantly more
against Bob’s planning to sell iPod and significantly more for Hilda’s protecting her neighbors
than Suzy parents’ telling Suzy that Santa brought the presents (which was reported as neutral).
Likewise, participants reported that the fact that it involved promise breaking counted
significantly more against Stan’s going to the game with his friend and significantly more for
Fred’s going to the hospital with his grandfather than Pam’s standing in line for 10 minutes to
buy milk. So, even here, when directly asked about the valence of reasons, participants’ answers
suggest a holistic view.
t value
Paired sample comparison
(df 55)
p value
JOEREAS – SUZYREAS
3.84
0.00
SUZYREAS – HILDREAS
3.35
0.00
STANREAS – PAMREAS
6.39
0.00
PAMREAS – FREDREAS
2.93
0.01
Table 8. Paired sample t-tests for reasons question.
II. Generalist Response
What sort of response to these data might the generalist have? If their objective is to
come to the defense of atomism, then it seems to me there are two main potential responses:
First, the generalist could maintain a pro-tanto principles position (namely, that the wrongness of
the moral feature remains, but is overridden) and try to explain away the fact the findings
reported here are in definite tension with this view. Second, and more interestingly, the generalist
could reply that the reason that we get different sorts of judgments about lying and promise
breaking across the different scenarios is because people are actually applying different invariant
qualified principles. In the LYING cases, these would be something like “lying-to-profit-oneself
is wrong”, “lying-in-socially-acceptable-circumstances is morally neutral”, and “lying-to-savelives is right”. The principles, then, identify three distinct grounding features (that is, three
distinct types of lying), which each have a different invariant moral status. This seems like a
reasonable explanation: thus the generalist can explain what looked like valence-shifting in the
data I have presented while remaining true to (a more nuanced form of) atomism.
Yet, the generalist is not home free. For even with these revised grounding features we
may be able to demonstrate valence shifting. Consider, for example, the following three
scenarios:
Hilda hides her Jewish neighbors in her basement during the Nazi occupation of France. A
German soldier comes to her door one afternoon and asks her if she knows where her
neighbors have gone. Hilda lies to the soldier, telling them no, she hasn’t seen them recently,
but she believes that they fled the country.
Hilda hides her Jewish neighbors in her basement during the Nazi occupation of France. A
German soldier comes to her door one afternoon and asks her if she knows where her
neighbors have gone. They are wanted by the Germans for bombing a German-only schoolyard
and injuring a number of German children. Hilda lies to the soldier, telling them no, she hasn’t
seen them recently, but she believes that they fled the country.
Hilda hides her Jewish neighbors in her basement during the Nazi occupation of France. A
German soldier comes to her door one afternoon and asks her if she knows where her
neighbors have gone. They are wanted by the Germans for bombing a German-only schoolyard
and injuring a number of German children after the Germans had bombed one of the local
synagogues, killing and injuring local men, women, and children. Hilda lies to the soldier,
telling them no, she hasn’t seen them recently, but she believes that they fled the country.
Let’s assume that the grounding feature we are working with now is lying-to-save-lives.
If the generalist explanation given above is correct, then we should expect to see invariance with
respect to this particular grounding feature. Yet, when I gave this series of vignettes to a group of
participants (n = 34; 14 males), along with the same set of question as before (both all-thingsconsidered about Hilda protecting her neighbors and then questions specific to lying), this is
what I found:
Protecting Protecting Feel guilt
Protecting
right/
praise/
for
good/bad
wrong
blame
protecting
HILDA1
6.59
6.81
6.89
7.04
HILDA2
2.96
3.07
3.19
3.33
HILDA3
4.56
4.67
4.63
4.63
Table 9. Means for expanded HILDA LYING scenarios.
Lie
good/bad
5.89
3.00
4.30
Lie right/
wrong
6.37
3.00
4.33
Lie
praise/
blame
6.26
3.22
4.41
Feel guilt
for lying
6.96
3.41
4.52
Lying
reason
for/
against
5.44
2.78
4.00
Participants viewed Hilda’s lying-to-save-lives in the first scenario as good, very right,
and Hilda as very praiseworthy for doing so. They also felt that Hilda should feel not-at-allguilty for having lied. When the neighbors whose lives Hilda is saving are implicated in a
bombing that injured German children, however, suddenly participants judged her lying-to-savelives to be somewhat bad, wrong, and Hilda somewhat blameworthy for doing so. In addition,
they judged that she ought to feel somewhat guilty for doing so. Finally, when the neighbors
whose lives Hilda is saving are implicated in a bombing that injured German children that was in
retaliation for previous bombing that had killed Jewish citizens, participants judged her lying-tosave-lives as somewhat good and right again, as well as Hilda somewhat praiseworthy for doing
so. They also judged that Hilda ought to feel somewhat not guilty for doing so.
Finally, when it came to whether or not the fact that it involved lying-to-save-lives
counted as a reason for, against, or neither Hilda’s protecting her neighbors, in the first scenario
it counted significantly more for her action, in the second scenario it counted more against her
action, and in the third scenario it was considered to be neutral.
The effect that the different vignettes had on participants’ judgments was once again
quite robust, accounting for 65% of the variance in their judgments. Paired-sample t-tests show
that the means for each of the questions were significantly different across scenarios.
t value (df
Paired Sample Comparison
33)
p value
H1ProtectG/B - H3ProtectG/B
6.19
0.00
H2ProtectG/B - H3ProtectG/B
-3.91
0.00
H1ProtectR/W - H3ProtectR/W
6.29
0.00
H2ProtectR/W - H3ProtectR/W
-3.92
0.00
H1ProtectP/B - H3ProtectP/B
8.24
0.00
H2ProtectP/B - H3ProtectP/B
-3.05
0.00
H1ProtGUILT - H3ProtGUILT
6.19
0.00
H2ProtGUILT - H3ProtGUILT
-2.92
0.01
H1LieG/B - H3LieG/B
4.32
0.00
H2LieG/B - H3LieG/B
-3.45
0.00
H1LieR/W - H3LieR/W
6.62
0.00
H2LieR/W - H3LieR/W
-3.16
0.00
H1LieP/B - H3LieP/B
6.12
0.00
H2LieP/B - H3LieP/B
-2.54
0.02
H1LieGUILT - H3LieGUILT
6.09
0.00
H2LieGUILT - H3LieGUILT
-2.33
0.03
H1Reason - H3Reason
3.89
0.00
H2Reason - H3Reason
-4.16
0.00
Table 10. Paired sample t-tests for expanding HILDA LYING scenarios.
(Note: I also did a variation on the Joe “lying-to-profit-oneself” question that showed
some interesting variance, but I don’t have time to go over that here.)
So, it seems that the generalist would have to accommodate yet additional variance in
order to get to their invariant moral principles (such as “lying-to-save-lives-implicated-inharming-innocents is wrong” and “lying-to-save-lives--been-implicated-in-harming-innocentsin-retaliation-for-the-harming-of-other-innocents is right”…or something along those lines”).
And this strikes me as an undesirable approach – it seems a high cost to pay for moral principles.
In addition, it strikes me as problematic for another reason: namely, that in order to take this
route the generalist would have to provide justification for why the grounding feature of lying
can be legitimately broken down into these distinct grounding features in the first place. That is,
the generalist would have to identify what the relevant differences between each of the instances
of lying are that warrants them being treated as distinct grounding features, each with their own
invariant moral valence, rather than as just one grounding feature with variable moral valence.
My suspicion is that the only real difference between them is going to be that of their moral
relevance. But then, if this is the case, then I fail to see what reason the generalist has given us to
adopt the former, rather than the latter view.
One other response that may be open to the generalist is to embrace holism, but to argue
that morality is still context-insensitive enough to make general moral principles possible.8
Whether or not this approach can be made to work in the end is hard to say – but even if it did,
I’d say the generalist would be giving up a lot of ground in doing so. And I worry about exactly
what sort of explanatory role such principles would ultimately be able to play.
IV. Conclusion
What sort of conclusion can we draw from the findings reported above? I’d say at this
juncture, any conclusions we draw must be extremely modest. Nonetheless, the data presented
here do suggest that a case could be made for valence shifting in people’s moral judgments about
certain grounding features (lying and promise breaking). Importantly, people are not only not
reporting the valence for these grounding features to be fixed and/or overridden, they are, more
strongly, reporting that the same grounding features are both morally good and right in some
contexts while morally bad and wrong in others.
Does this count as definitive evidence for holism in the folk? No, not really. Alternative
explanations are clearly possible and need to be considered. In addition, more experimental
research exploring the various issues needs to be conducted. But, nonetheless, I think the studies
I’ve reported represent a humble start in the right direction.
8
This is the approach taken by McKeever & Ridge (2005).