Introduction
We don't really know what to expect when we first encounter the study of ethics. Many wonder if it has anything to teach beyond clarifying our personal moral views. But those who hope to benefit from studying ethics naturally expect that it can guide action. They would be disappointed if ultimately ethics can provide no action-guidance at all.
Looking past the ongoing particularism-generalism debate, the last major debate on the action-guiding capabilities of ethics occurred some time ago.Footnote 1 Less than a decade after the rebirth of normative ethics in the early nineteen seventies, a group of challengers to the mainstream enterprise emerged.Footnote 2 Mainstream normative ethicists have been called ‘moral theorists’; their challengers, ‘anti-theorists’. This debate has cooled down since the nineteen eighties, the matter left undecided.
What I think is needed is a single, comprehensive, constructive proposal for advancing normative ethics on action-guidance. Neither moral theory nor anti-theory has been able to do this. Moral theory, I argue, cannot advance because it is fixated on morality, which ethics need not be.Footnote 3 Anti-theory can't move us forward because it is an inherently critical position. So any advance must move outside these old frameworks. One indispensable requirement of an action-guiding normative ethics is it must actually be able to guide action.Footnote 4 Needless to say, for a new normative ethics proposal to have any worth, it must move us beyond the standstill left by the old action-guidance debate.
My proposal involves two elements – one familiar, one new. Intuitionism covers the moral portion of my proposal, and is familiar to ethicists today. The new element, which shall have most of our attention, comes into sight by looking beyond morality and inquiring into action-guiding capabilities of prudent action. The two elements are tied together thus: intuitionism is the normative ethical theory that is best fitted to interlock with prudence in a systematic action-guiding way, and it is the best theory for seeing how prudence in real life actually does practically interlock with morality. I argue that to make progress on what we ought to do we must first determine how we actually decide in moral situations.
1. Moral Theory
In the late twentieth century, ‘moral theory’ was often a term of distinction, but perhaps just as often a term of abuse. Moral theories have been thought by their proponents necessary to really know right from wrong. What a moral theory must have is a decision procedure – a principle-based means of determining what one ought to do. More specifically, the output of a moral decision procedure is a determination that an act is right or wrong. Such a procedure has been thought to have a justificatory or explanatory function in relation to actions, or to subordinate moral rules, as well as the practical function of guiding action.
The quest for a moral decision procedure is a modern one. What has been commonly sought is a supreme principle of morality. Kant clearly believed his Categorical Imperative to be the principle by which we could decide without error what our duty is in every case. In defending it, he states that, ‘Those who know what a formula means to a mathematician, in determining what is to be done in solving a problem without letting him go astray, will not regard a formula which will do this for all duties as something insignificant and unnecessary’.Footnote 5 Utilitarians followed suit with their very own supreme principle, although it quickly was seen not to be precise in the way Kant thought his algorithmic principle was.Footnote 6
Not all moral decision procedures rely on a single supreme principle. In the twentieth century, several attempts were made to devise a decision procedure upon thought experiments alone. Roderick Firth's Ideal Observer Theory provides one example.Footnote 7 But the most famous procedure of this variety is obviously Rawls's. In an article entitled ‘Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics’, Rawls says about his procedure and its dual role in justifying moral beliefs and guiding action: ‘the objectivity or the subjectivity of moral knowledge turns... simply on the question: does there exist a reasonable method for validating and invalidating given or proposed moral rules and those decisions made on the basis of them?’Footnote 8 Moral theorists, in short, thought finding a decision procedure necessary for knowing and doing what's right.
2. Anti-Theory in Ethics
What is anti-theory in ethics? ‘Anti-theorists take the bold stance of being against any sort of normative theory which guides our behaviour by systematizing and extending our moral judgments’.Footnote 9 So quite simply, anti-theorists are anti-moral theory. The main target of their attacks is moral theory's action-guiding aim. The charges vary. Some anti-theorists argue that moral theory cannot guide action. Others claim that it should not guide action. Still others insist that being guided by a moral theory would itself be bad.Footnote 10
I'll focus on a different line of critique, one most pertinent to our desire to know how we decide in moral situations: Moral theory is not needed for action guidance. This might seem to be the weakest among the charges against moral theory. But since decision procedures are brought in with the express purpose of improving our moral decision making, showing that they are practically unnecessary would show that moral theory is utterly superfluous in its chief supposed practical capacity.
One way to show moral theory is unneeded for practical purposes is to point out that we already know how to decide in moral situations.Footnote 11 So how we decide in moral situations is used against the moral theoretic proposals for decision procedures. And how do we decide? We employ numerous means and ask several questions, some of which are represented by a moral theory, others not. To use Stuart Hampshire's example: If someone tries to dissuade a friend from committing suicide, a number of considerations are likely to be employed. The two friends might consider whether there is life after death, what their religion says about the matter, the social effects of suicide, and the likely impact on those left behind.Footnote 12 As Hampshire states, ‘What we want to know ...is – What makes me (in the logical, not the causal sense) decide that this is the right action? There is no reason to expect a simple answer in terms of a single formula, e.g. “it is likely to increase happiness”’.Footnote 13
As this case illustrates, however, questions of utility can be factored in, and can even helpfully assist us in making a decision. So the problem with a moral theory is not that there is no connection between how we actually decide in moral situations and the theory. Rather, ‘systematising moral theory, like fundamentalism, typically tells us to take just one of these questions, and treat it as the Master Question – the question that in every case identifies the Master Factor, the one thing that truly matters in ethics and which can settle every possible question that comes up for practical deliberation’.Footnote 14 In every practical enterprise outside ethics we assume that having more rather than less practical resources to draw from is preferable. By narrowing its action-guiding tools down to one, moral theories leave agents less practically equipped after committing to a moral theory than they were before.
What was the outcome of the moral theory-anti-theory dispute? It's debatable. Moral theory is currently thriving, with even the arch decision theorist himself, Kant, finding contemporary proponents. And one ethics school that was formerly wholly against moral theory, virtue ethics, currently has prominent members describing their work as moral theory.Footnote 15 But I would say that, on balance, the decision goes to anti-theory. Ethicists rarely talk about, or expect much from, decision procedures anymore. Moral theorists have adjusted their work in response to anti-theory critiques.Footnote 16 Prominent New Kantians have taken the extraordinary step of claiming that Kant himself did not consider the Categorical Imperative to be algorithmic.Footnote 17 These points indicate the power of the anti-theoretical critique.
Yet perhaps the best evidence for an overall moral theory fallback is given by the current particularist-generalist debate.Footnote 18 This action-guidance debate is focused on whether there is any moral principle that is of any practical use at all. And to go from arguing for a decision procedure to having to make the case that just one moral principle is useful cannot but be depicted as moral theory in retreat. However, it may merely be the case that, although many moral theorists do not state that they have a decision procedure, they ‘presuppose that there is a decision procedure that provides a unique correct solution to every moral problem’.Footnote 19
3. Intuitionism
Intuitionism may be characterized as the theory that claims that (i) we intuitively know (ii) several distinct fundamental moral principles, (iii) each having a distinct ground. It is on the basis of such principles as ‘Keeping promises is required’ and ‘Lying is wrong’, I claim, that you know what's right, or as it is put in common vernacular, ‘You know right from wrong’. The root of this knowledge is that these and other principles are self-evidently true.
On which side was intuitionism in the old action-guidance debate? Well, intuitionism was sidelined when it was underway. Mainly for metaethical reasons, intuitionism was thought untenable when normative ethics was revived. It's reliance on self-evident truths, acceptance of nonnatural properties, and the fact that, despite its claim that we know what's right, moral disagreement is common all secured its outcast status in ethics. A series of intuitionist works, starting in the nineteen nineties, have brought it back to prominence.Footnote 20 Most ground reclaimed, however, is in metaethical territory, the location of most old objections. Here I focus on intuitionism's normative ethical aspect, especially on its action-guiding capacity.
Even though intuitionism was sidelined, moral theory opposed it, and for a simple reason. Intuitionism has no decision procedure. Although agents might use its plural intuitive principles, it offers no special principle to adjudicate between them should they conflict. This, according to Rawls, is a defect. Intuitionists, he states, ‘include no explicit method, no priority rules, for weighing... principles against one another: we are simply to strike a balance by intuition, by what seems to us most nearly right’.Footnote 21
In reply, I say this. That it has no decision procedure is actually a virtue of intuitionism, not a vice. Intuitionism recognizes a number of crucial points about deciding what to do that the moral theorist overlooks. It is aware that knowing what's prima facie right is not sufficient for determining what's actually right, that every action involves moral risk, and that deliberation is a multifaceted practical matter that quickly overtakes the boundaries of what has been considered moral theory. For these reasons it is a deliberatively open theory – a theory that does not claim to have a decision procedure the correct use of which is necessary and sufficient for knowing what to do in a moral situation. Deliberatively closed theories like Kantianism have as a central claim that they do have such a procedure.
Anti-theorists hold that intuitionism is not a moral theory. Immediately this sounds strange, for intuitionism is a theory, and one about morality. But with the definition given of moral theory, it makes sense. Anti-theorists and intuitionists, interestingly, have many commonalities. First, anti-theorists agree with intuitionists that there is no Master Factor,Footnote 22 although intuitionists are generally open to the possibility of discovering one.Footnote 23 Next, ‘antitheorists agree with intuitionism that rational deliberation doesn't always provide reasons explaining why, in some hard cases where moral requirements conflict, a particular action is morally right and the alternatives are not’.Footnote 24 Apparently the points of agreement are so numerous that one anti-theorist sees intuitionism as claiming, in my view mistakenly, that ‘the demand for normative ethical theory is misguided’.Footnote 25
Today many moral theorists insist their principle or their procedure merely does the work of explaining what is right. This signals a massive retreat, which puts the old moral theoretical action-guiding critiques of intuitionism into fresh light. The work of anti-theorists, in effect, vindicated the intuitionisms of H.A. Prichard and W.D. Ross on the matter of action-guidance. Anti-theorists were the unwitting allies of the intuitionists, when intuitionism was more or less defunct. Now that intuitionism is more secure in its metaethical bearings, we can show what role it plays in guiding action.
4. What is Moral Theory's Error?
Returning to the shortcomings of moral theory, the next question to ask is, what assumptions or presuppositions are responsible for them? Identifying the misstep responsible for moral theory's shortcomings will enable us to chart a more constructive action-guiding course for normative ethics. The anti-theory critique most pertinent to this end is, once again, roughly this: How we deliberate is adequate as it is. So no kind of theory is needed to guide action.
One diagnosis of the error is that modern moral theory is simply too narrow.Footnote 26 What we need is an ethics that brings into view a wider range of considerations. We cannot focus exclusively on a narrow class of moral quandaries. There is much else to consider – actually, the whole of life. Virtue, friendships, love relationships, and so on should be considered so that our theories can reflect all that we find important. There is much to this criticism, and thanks to the anti-theorists and virtue ethicists many of the topics just mentioned are under discussion today, though they were not under the reign of moral theory. But expanding our focus only solves the action-guidance problem if there was no fundamental lack in moral theory, and I think there was and is such a fundamental lack.
Regarding the matter of action-guidance the cardinal error of moral theory was given in an inexplicably overlooked 1949 article by Stuart Hampshire, ‘Fallacies in Moral Philosophy’. He states that, ‘Aristotle is almost entirely concerned to analyse the problems of the moral agent, while most contemporary moral philosophers seem to be primarily concerned to analyse the problems of the moral judge or critic’.Footnote 27 Hampshire claims that modern moral theory is coming at things from the fundamentally wrong perspective. It sees them from the judge's perspective, with the aim of coming to the correct moral judgment. Aristotle, in contrast, came at moral problems from the agent's perspective, with the intention of tackling her practical moral problems.
Although these perspectives are related, in that the agent would like to know what judgment is correct in a moral situation, the agent is more concerned with practically solving his moral problems. Since ethicists have generally neglected Hampshire's insight, despite virtue ethicists and anti-theorists improving the overall direction of ethics, we're still working from the judge's perspective. Just think about how we describe the right decision nowadays: the right verdict.Footnote 28 This term is odd, since agents make decisions and others, the judge or the jury, give their verdict of it, and do so only after the agent has acted. Hampshire, I think, correctly identifies the root of moral theory's errors. If we turn our attention from the judge's perspective toward the agent's perspective, then we might put normative ethics on better footing.
5. Fundamental Ethics Questions
Bernard Williams, one of the most prominent anti-theorists, evaluated ethical theories based on what fundamental question they posed. Moral theory, according to Williams, fundamentally asks, ‘What is our duty?’ He thought that ancient philosophers were more on track with their fundamental question, ‘How should one live?’Footnote 29
But to effectually deal with action-guidance, to describe how we decide in moral situations, it seems the prime question to be answered is, ‘What should I do?’Footnote 30 Asking how one ought to live opens up issues of the longest-term. ‘What is our duty?’ is often a question of immediate moral urgency. But it is crucial to note that answering ‘What is our duty?’ does not answer ‘What should I do?’, for several reasons. Suppose the duty one has is to not lie. First, not lying is not a particular kind of action. Rather, doing the right thing is covered by considering the action-complement of lying, that is, the entire range of morally permissible actions that are not a lie. Telling the truth is a clear way not to lie. But so are changing the subject, asking a question, and walking away from the discussion. Second, knowing what's right – in this case not lying – does not give us a course of action, something we can do so as not to lie. Lastly, given how different Jones and Smith are as people, what Jones must do in order not to lie is not necessarily what Smith must do to not lie. So by asking ‘What is our duty?’ the answer is the same for Jones as for Smith. However, asking, ‘What should I do?’ given that Jones and Smith are different people, the answers might differ.
Examining a specific case will help us to see all this. Consider that Jones, a young mother, is interviewing for a job. At some point during the interview, she is asked, ‘Do you have any children?’ Immediately Jones thinks that if she tells the truth, she might not get the job, since some employers avoid hiring women with children. What is Jones's duty here? When asked a question our duty is not to lie. But since Jones has two children, telling the truth might cost her the job. If the interviewer is discriminating against Jones it is unjust. That is why it is currently illegal in the U.S. to ask about one's children in a job interview setting. But obviously, it's not likely that Jones will get the job if she points out that the interviewer's question is illegal. So although not lying is Jones's duty, it is not obvious what she should do.
This scenario brings out two crucial points. First, even if moral theory found the correct decision procedure, which determined Jones should not lie, it is not even close to telling Jones what to do. Second, on the matter of how we decide in moral situations, if we ask anything in a moral situation it is, ‘What should I do?’
6. Moral Situations
Learning how we decide in moral situations requires going to the root of the matter. It requires analyzing moral situations. It is not words or sentences about such situations that we must analyze, nor any principle that we may apply to them, but the situations themselves. And it is not merely analysis of moral situations with an eye to resolving them that interests me. Such analyses are already ubiquitous. I think, instead, that it's of paramount importance that we analyze the metaphysics of moral situations.
Ethics currently treats moral situations like old time movies treated romantic scenes. You've seen the old movies. A couple embraces, then kisses. The scene fades to black. The next thing you know, they are canoeing together on a beautiful lake in the morning. Everyone in the theater wants to know what happened. Ethics, on the other hand, prescribes how the agent should make a moral decision in a situation. The agent complies, making the decision, we imagine, as instructed. The scene fades to black. But that's where the similarities end. Ethicists show little interest in whether the agent succeeds in doing what they've decided is right. They seem uninterested in the most crucial, the most suspenseful scene: will the agent – nay, how will the agent actually do right? Consequently, there is no ‘morning after’ scene with the agent morally triumphant. But ethicists are nonetheless satisfied.
At an ‘Ethics Premiere’ a novel moral theory, moral principle or moral decision procedure is introduced and the imagined agent makes a decision on the basis of it. The ethicists stand and cheer! That most ethicists join in applause shows that no matter what school an ethicist belongs to, the roots of moral theory are so deeply entrenched in the discipline that they still hamper our thinking regarding what's most important in moral situations.Footnote 31 Here I register my dissent and say that succeeding in doing right is most important, that ethics should guide agents to succeed in doing right. Since moral theory's job is done when the agent decides based on its principle or principles, some other kind of theory or principle must pick up the job of guiding the agent to successfully do right, if any can. This means going outside what is our duty and exploring normative factors other than morality.
7. Moral Relations and Moral Kinds
Perhaps without intending to moral theorists impose a procedural ought in addition to the moral ought agents already face. They say, in effect, you ought to use method X to find out what you morally ought to do. Anti-theorists correctly removed the added ought and insisted that there are various ways we do, and ought to, decide what is right. Intuitionism, in my view, agrees with anti-theorists on this point.
What is the metaphysical landscape of moral situations? The moral element, I'd say, has the following profile, picking up the Jones case where we left it, to illustrate it. When Jones is in a moral situation she is in a moral relation to at least one other person.Footnote 32 In the interview situation she bears the do-not-lie relation to the interviewer, even before he asks his inappropriate question. How she comes to recognize that she is in this relation to him is that she considers how she should respond to his question. As she does she clearly recognizes that one option, call it option A, is of the moral kind ‘lie’. Although there is a general assumption that intuitionism has it that agents consider principles in moral situations, this is not necessarily so.Footnote 33 In The Right and the Good, Ross himself never says we weigh, or should weigh, principles in moral situations.
What is most fundamental is that agents in moral situations consider moral kinds in the options they weigh. If one chooses option A that action will constitute a lie. And that is something we recognize as prima facie wrong. Since people can, do, and should consider whatever informs them of the moral permissibility of their various options, moral kinds serve as the fundamental moral constant through all kinds of considerations. Ethicists of all stripes employ moral kind language – ‘lying’, ‘murder’, ‘harming’ – throughout their work, indicating ethics cannot do without it.
The moral relations agents bear to one another and the prospects of instantiating one or another moral kind constitute the moral element of moral situations. Note, however, that we are considering here moral situations only prior to action. When someone completes a moral action, they instantiate a given moral kind, and thereby instantiate additional properties, such as right or wrong. But when an option is contemplated before action, and an evaluation has been made, we have only the agent's end, the end of their action, say not lying. From this perspective, it seems one thing missing is the means of realizing their end. A minute's reflection should reveal we've not yet begun in ethics to think of what's necessary to guide agents in moral situations – only providing the end of agents' actions, never the means.
In deliberation, the moral action exists only in prospect. That is, the moral act doesn't exist. What the agent will do is in the future. So there is necessarily a temporal gap between the agent's intending their moral end and their realizing it. After recognizing that taking option A will be a lie, Jones thinks of what to do, and mere thinking doesn't realize her end. Narrowing our focus even more, we can see that there is a temporal gap between our thought of what to do and our doing it. So not only is there a gap between our thought of what to do and our realizing our moral end, there is also a gap between our thought of what to do and our action toward that end.
Just this initial analysis of a moral situation is highly instructive. The existence of the moral element is really quite thin. The right action has actual existence, before deciding, only in the agent's mind. So a moral situation, at least as the agent is deciding, is neither right nor wrong – at least not yet. I've said nothing yet about the means by which the agent might realize her end. Reviewing all points just discussed reveals that the moral ought underdetermines the practical ought which agents face in moral situations. This fact alone shows that deliberatively closed moral theories are practically impossible, for if the moral ought underdetermines the practical ought, no moral principle can be sufficient for an agent to know how to do right. So once again, knowing our duty does not imply that we know what we should do. But here we've learned that how we decide in moral situations, if we wish to do right, necessarily involves identifying the moral kind or kinds involved.
8. Courses of Action
Introducing courses of action necessarily complicates matters. Action, as always in ethics, is important where courses of action are concerned. But that a course of action is a connected and purposeful sequence of actions one must undertake over time is nearly totally ignored. As for complexity, once we have opened practical considerations beyond the narrow end of doing what's morally right, a great number and variety of considerations are likely to flood our minds.
Take the case of Jones. It is natural that we think of all the courses of action she might take and remain committed to the end of doing right. When teaching ethics we see how practical minds proliferate courses of action. For instance, students introduced to Kant's murderer case will have no shortage of proposals for resolving the situation, often ignoring Kant's insistence that there are only two options.Footnote 34 Many moral theorists would say such students misunderstand the problem. On this point I side with the students. The problem the students are thinking of is a practical moral problem. Moral theorists are more interested in which decision procedure is sound, and don't wish to be distracted by what's most practical.Footnote 35
Moral theory's exclusive focus on the moral end to be realized has blinded it from seeing that practical problems require courses of action. Because of its exclusive focus on morality it is not equipped to provide them. However, if we can identify a normative source besides morality that can systematically guide action to serve the end of morality, then we'll have within our grasp the tools to solve practical problems like the one Jones faces.Footnote 36
9. Personal duties
Among contemporary ethical theories intuitionism is best equipped to deal with agent problems. This may partly be seen in the fact that intuitionism already thinks of moral action in means-end terms. It is the deliberatively open structure of intuitionism that allows the correct insights to occur. Contrariwise, other normative theories, because they seek all the moral answers with a single procedure, miss these points. Moral theory has in the past been blind to many considerations important to agents, such as virtues and interpersonal relationships. Here I'm showing that moral theory's narrowness of practical vision has been grossly underestimated.
Every action in a moral situation incurs a moral risk, says Ross.Footnote 37 One reason why is that, unlike when we think about a self-evident moral principle, the epistemic situation in the arena of moral decisions is not one of certainty. We have no supreme principle which will unerringly inform us of what's right. Moral theories aim to cut out moral risk by making the supreme principle risk-proof.Footnote 38 By not putting boundless trust in a single principle, intuitionism suggests that lowering moral risk is a matter of having moral discernment and of lowering risks generally. And the principles for how to lower risks are not moral.
Additionally, in the practical matter of doing what's right, Ross directly thinks of it as an end, and considers the means to achieve that end. He calls the moral end an agent might have a primary duty. In the case of Jones, her primary duty is to not lie. The means an agent should take in order to satisfy their primary duty is what he calls their consequential duty.Footnote 39 Ross holds that what is one's consequential duty depends one's psychology. And since we have different inclinations to surmount, what I must do to do what's right may not be what you must do.
Consider the interview case. Jones becomes immediately anxious when someone asks her a question she's uncomfortable answering. She tends to lie when she gets nervous. So she has the consequential duty: ‘Resist your tendency to lie out of anxiety’. Smith is different in this respect. When he is asked what he thinks is an inappropriate question, he becomes extremely indignant. When outraged, he feels justified in lying to the offender. So Smith's consequential duty is: ‘Resist your tendency to lie out of indignance’.
The term ‘consequential duty’ is bound to confuse because it resembles ‘consequentialism’. Ross's term has to do with what logically follows from the primary duty and the personal situation of the individual who has the primary duty. So let's instead use the term ‘personal duty’ for Ross's concept, and widen it to cover all that an individual person must face and overcome to do what's right, and not just their inclination.
Personal duties differ from primary duties in significant ways. First and foremost, what is a primary duty is a primary duty for us all. Everyone in like circumstances has the same primary duty. So Jones and Smith have one primary duty, not lying. But their personal duties are distinct. Jones must combat her anxiety, and Smith must handle his tendency to act out of indignation. So how we decide in moral situations is, if we aim to satisfy a given moral end, we consider what means in our individual case will suffice.
10. Prudence Dependency
We now may show various ways that guiding moral action requires the cooperation of prudence. In order to do what's right, it is not enough to merely determine what's right. First, we need to be able to answer the question, ‘What should I do?’ In a situation, this is clearly a wider practical question than what is moral. Answering it satisfactorily provides a counsel of prudence. Adequately fitting means to a given end is clearly prudential. Prescription of a course of action involves correctly fitting means to a given end, whatever that end may be.
The end currently under consideration is a moral end. So a course of action that would satisfactorily serve that end would be properly describable as morally prudent. It might be objected that since such a course of action aims at doing what's right it is more accurately described as moral. But there's a problem with that. Suppose Robinson is given a course of action A suited to a moral end M, and Robinson changes her mind, and pursues course of action B to the moral end M. We do not say Robinson committed a moral wrong by choosing course of action B over course of action A, unless doing B is itself morally wrong.Footnote 40
Intuitionism has revealed other ways that morality practically depends on prudence. Moral risk is something one is alive to when one has knowledge of one's general duties but recognizes the difficulty of practically deciding what to do. If two distinct, equally weighty moral kinds inhabit options I'm considering, moral considerations alone aren't sufficient to guide me to do what's right. Prudence is necessary as well. Ross, according to Audi, ‘saw practical wisdom as essential for determining final duty in at least difficult cases of conflicting duties’.Footnote 41
Also, when we think of how agents might lessen moral risk, it is clear that moral notions are not alone involved. We must look outside morality to prudence to weigh and lessen our risks, be they moral or not. Lastly, the whole notion of personal duties necessarily bridges moral and prudential considerations. One end of the bridge is firmly planted in what is a duty, and a duty for all: a primary duty. The other end of the bridge is just as clearly outside of morality, and is involved in what is practically necessary for each person, depending on their situation, character and psychology. So two people can have different personal duties to meet the same primary duty. Now prudence is distinct from morality in one pertinent way. What is moral is moral for all. What is prudent for me is not necessarily prudent for you. Since my personal duty is not necessarily yours, personal duties are individual prudential matters that can allow different agents to do right with regard to the same moral end.
All these converging points lead inevitably to this conclusion: Prudence is practically necessary for morality. More explicitly: No moral action an agent intends to perform can succeed without prudent action. Put differently, no moral intention can be realized without prudent action. The prudential means must necessarily suit the moral end. This I call the prudence dependency thesis.Footnote 42 Crucially, we must not confuse it with: No moral action an agent intends to perform can succeed without being based on the most prudent action, period. So all that matters for the thesis is what is prudent for meeting a given moral end.Footnote 43 Since prudence, in general, comes in degrees, agents can be minimally prudent, generally prudent or highly prudent. This is true no matter their end. So they can be minimally financially prudent, generally financially prudent, or highly financially prudent. All that an agent need be in an everyday, unchallenging moral situation is minimally morally prudent, and they will likely do right. Of course being highly morally prudent enables an agent to be optimally moral.
For those currently devising counterexamples, an alternative formulation of the prudence dependency thesis is available: No moral action an agent intends to perform can succeed without finding and following the instrumentally rational means to the intended moral end. For basic moral cases it doesn't take a great deal of practical intelligence to do right. But it takes some. If you say that Wilson must be instrumentally rational to intentionally do right, and I say he must be minimally prudent, then our disagreement is merely a verbal one. It is toward the other extreme of instrumentally rationality, however, that the prudence dependency thesis takes on great significance for the matter of action-guidance. Being highly prudent enables one to deal with problems just like the one Jones faces in the interview situation.
Tying everything together now, the key single constructive proposal for advancing action-guidance in normative ethics is to examine moral prudence. Once ethicists turn to moral prudence – studying morality, prudence, and the practical dependence of the former on the latter – a great many problems currently thought to be vexing will be seen to be soluble.
11. Revisiting the Jones Case
Let's look again at the Jones case, equipped as we are with the idea of moral prudence. Previously, from the judge's perspective, working only with morality as a normative source, moral theory would have told her not to lie. So it was of little help. Once we take on the agent's perspective, once the normative source of prudence is included and practically integrated with morality, we begin to get some ideas of how to deal with the situation.
During the interview, when Jones is asked about her children, she immediately gets anxious and considers saying ‘no’. But she holds back, recognizing that action is of the moral kind ‘lie’. That's enough to inform her it is prima facie wrong. She makes a decision, not a verdict, not to lie. Telling the interviewer that she does, indeed, have children would be honest and, if morality were the only normative consideration, morally praiseworthy. However, a wise philosopher would say that decision would be extremely stupid, or highly imprudent. It's none of the interviewer's business, and is, in fact, illegal to ask about in the U.S. But it would be just as imprudent, no matter how righteous, to call the interviewer out on the matter. Look, Jones came to the interview to get a job. So what should she do?
With the end of not lying in mind, here are some moral tactics Jones can employ.Footnote 44 These are prudent, situationally immediate ways she can not lie and simultaneously serve her end of landing the job. Prudential matters may be divided into external prudence and internal prudence. External prudence has to do with actions immediately having an impact on the external world. Internal prudence concerns what we think, what we believe – actions internal to our mind. Let's start with internal moral prudence. Jones, remember, has the personal duty: ‘Resist your tendency to lie out of anxiety’. An excellent way for her to do so is to, one, recognize the inappropriate question makes her anxious; two, to effectively deal with this, she should intentionally interpret the interviewer's question so she can perform at her best. The principle might be worded thus: ‘Interpret seemingly negative events in the best light’. She might say to herself, ‘He might be unaware of the law concerning this’. This tactic of reappraising the situation will enable her to keep her composure and effectively act.Footnote 45
Moving now to matters of external moral prudence. In response to, ‘Do you have any children, Ms. Jones?’ she can say, ‘I am very committed to my career. And I make it a firm rule to not ever let any personal issues get in the way of doing my job’. If the interviewer persists in asking about the children, Jones can prudently put him on the spot, and find out what he really seeks to know. She can say, ‘You know, in all the job interviews I've had, I've never been asked that kind of question. I'm interested, what is the underlying concern you might have about my performance?’ If the interviewer simply asks again, then Jones should consider whether she really wants to work for a company that flouts the federal law and might be involved in discriminatory practices. Being morally prudent brings no guarantees. And what normative ethics could? What it does, however, is raise the chances that one will succeed in doing right.
Let's further analyze Jones's moral tactics in this situation. Even though resisting her tendency to lie out of anxiety requires immediate action, it is itself an end, and it requires suitable means to succeed in doing it. Doing her personal duty here requires internal prudent action. Specifically, in order for Jones to succeed in following ‘Resist your tendency to lie out of anxiety’ she must ‘Interpret seemingly negative present events in the best light’.Footnote 46 So not only does morality depend on prudence, but where external prudent action requires internal prudent action even doing what's morally prudent requires prudence. Thus the prudence dependency thesis is further confirmed. If Jones had not reappraised the situation, she likely would have lied due to her anxiety, or ruined her job chances in some other way.
However, this particular internal moral tactic might not be best for Jones. And two morally prudent advisors might offer different counsels for her case. But does this not make moral prudence subjective? No. Even two highly skilled and experienced doctors might give different diagnoses and prescriptions for the same patient without clinical medicine being a subjective matter.Footnote 47 An ethics that systematically incorporates moral prudence, at least in respect of giving objective counsel, would be similar. Also, with psychologists finding more and more means for improving performance another tactic might suit Jones better. But note, we are only able to turn to psychological research to guide Jones in her action because prudence is considered a relevant normative source here. Turning to Jones's external moral tactics, these counsels are drawn from the work of job placement specialists. So another directly relevant practical field outside ethics has worked out many effective tactics for dealing with such situations.
For ethics to be most usefully action-guiding it must turn to knowledge outside the moral range. And only when we see that morality practically and systematically depends on prudence does this become possible for ethics. Prudent counsels from special fields outside ethics can be studied, systematically integrated, then be more fully understood in their relations to morality by ethics. Lastly, clearly someone like Jones will have to have prepared for a situation like this. A single supreme principle of morality obviously wouldn't have served her in the process. So Jones must become more prudent in the areas of life in which she wishes to succeed. If one of her goals is to be moral, she should carefully consider the action-guiding prudence dependency principle: Be prudent in order to succeed in doing right.
Unfortunately, since ethics is now fixated on morality, it is unable to even point her in the direction to successfully do what's right. But a phronetic ethics – derived from the Greek word for prudence, ‘phronesis’ – one that systematically works out moral matters with the understanding that morality depends on prudence, can do so.
12. Intuitionism and Moral Theory
Anti-theorists performed a valuable service by critiquing moral theory. They have shown that there isn't much that is workable among proposals for moral decision procedures. This has opened the door for intuitionism to return to normative theorizing, and for introducing considerations outside morality, such as prudence. But ultimately, intuitionists and anti-theorists must part ways where action-guidance is concerned. Here's why. A contemporary anti-theorist states, ‘the goal of ethical inquiry is to improve moral practices, but this is not achieved by giving a systematic account of an underlying normative structure’.Footnote 48 I would say this is half right. Not much in the way of improving moral practices will result by turning to moral theory's old decision procedures. But if we instead turn to the normative structure of prudence in order to serve moral ends, then, as we've seen, moral practices are definitely susceptible of improvement.
I've taken some care in categorizing intuitionism in this paper. Many have declared that intuitionism is not a moral theory because it lacks a decision procedure. But there are ways in which intuitionism has more in common with moral theory than with anti-theory. Intuitionism, despite much press to the contrary, and despite Prichard's attempt to delegitimize moral explanations, is capable of justification and explanation of morality. It is simply not focused on devising a single principle that guides action, explains what makes right acts right, and justifies moral decisions in one stroke. Now few are for that. Since all the totalizing projects of moral theory have fallen apart, intuitionism suddenly appears more attractive.
But to move normative ethics forward, there is one more moral theoretical vestige which must be expunged. It is The Moral Theory Explanation Assumption: It is widely assumed that for a theory or principle to explain a given moral explanandum it must be capable of explaining every other moral explanandum. Intuitionism is a pluralistic theory. Explanations are available but there must be distinct explanations for different moral kinds.Footnote 49 For most of the twentieth century moral theorists have relied on external explanations of morality, assuming that something outside of morality, such as how much pleasure people might receive, will somehow explain what is moral.Footnote 50 Instead, on my view, each moral kind receives its own inquiry as to what about the nature of acts of that kind makes them wrong. So intuitionism favors plural internal moral explanations, and such may be provided.
13. Conclusion
How we decide in moral situations, we've found, has at least four components:
1. If we ask anything in a moral situation, we ask ‘what should I do?’
2. If we think of morality at all, we identify the moral kind or kinds involved in the situation.
3. If we aim to satisfy a moral end, we consider what means in our particular case will satisfy that end.
4. If we wish to succeed in meeting a moral end, we must act prudently.
There are all kinds of helps to moral deliberation. Intuitionism, as I see it, agrees with anti-theorists that any number of considerations can lead one to do what's right. There is no single necessary and uniquely correct way to make a moral choice. So there is no decision procedure. However, recognizing the moral kind or kinds in a moral situation is necessary to get anything right about the situation. This is so whether we consult our conscience, our traditions, or ask what the Categorical Imperative, the principle of utility, or the Ideal Observer has to say about the situation.
To successfully do what's right, however, agents must necessarily identify and follow suitable means to the moral end. That is, they must be minimally morally prudent. Only a normative ethics that acknowledges that morality depends on prudence is capable of fully dealing with moral problems from the agent's perspective, and can go beyond the narrow perspective of the moral judge. And the sketch of phronetic intuitionism that I've given in this paper is what I believe is the most promising practically complete normative ethics.Footnote 51
Once ethicists acknowledge the need of prudence in guiding agents, a whole new and varied world of practical possibilities opens up. Prudent principles then can be found to guide agents so they do what's right. Disciplines such as psychology, decision theory, tactics, and all the practical disciplines related to different areas of life can be consulted in order to inform minimally prudent agents what they must do in order to act as the highly prudent do.
How we decide in moral situations is we try to be morally prudent. Once ethical inquiry more fully understands this, we'll have a basis for learning how we ought to decide.Footnote 52
