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Hare, Universalizability, and The Problem of Relevant Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Kenneth Alan Milkman
Kenneth Alan Milkman*
Affiliation:
Dawson College, Montreal
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Extract

Many significant moral theories, ones to which a large number of philosophers pledge themselves, employ in a fundamental way the criterion of universalizability. This is true not only of Kant and his more illustrious successors, but also utilitarians of many sorts. But concomitant with adherence to universalizability as a moral criterion is adherence to the belief that certain features (properties) of putatively moral (right) acts and immoral (wrong) acts are relevant and others irrelevant to the determination to the rightness or wrongness of those acts. Despite the fact that this belief is problematic, few moral philosophers have openly struggled with the problem of relevant descriptions (or ‘relevance’ for short). It is as if investigation of this problem would invite unsettlable doubts about universalizability itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 19 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 See Nell, Onora Acting on Principle: An Essay on Kantian Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press 1975).Google Scholar

2 For an argument on this point, see Kenneth Alan Milkman, ‘The Problem of Relevant Descriptions’ (Ph. D. dissertation, C.U.N.Y., 1979) Chapters 2 and 4.

3 Hare, R.M. ‘Relevance,’ in Goldman, A.l. and Kim, J. eds., Values and Morals (Dordecht Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co. 1978) 73–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For a discussion which shows that not only moral terms and Judgments are supervenient, see Kovesi, Julius Moral Notions (New York: Humanities Press 1971)Google Scholar Chapter 1.

5 Hare, R.M. The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964) 81Google Scholar

6 As in the conversation between the Kantian and the Existentialist in Hare, R.M. 'Universalizability,’ Proceding of the Aristotelian Society, 55 (1954-55) 304-5.Google Scholar

7 Nell, 21

8 Ibid., 18

9 On interest, imagination, and facts see Hare, R.M. Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1963) 90–111,Google Scholar and the discussion in section 3 of this paper.

10 Nell, 22. There have been other criticisms of Hare's views, as he sets them forth in The Language of Morals and Freedom and Reason, which are similar to Nell's critique in that they are based on the problem of relevance. See, for example, David L. Norton, ‘On an Internal Disparity in Universalizability - Criterion formulations,' The Review of Metaphysics 33 (1979-80) 519-26.

11 Hare, ‘Relevance,’ 73

12 Ibid., 74-5

13 Ibid., 73, for a discussion of why, for example, ‘I am I’ cannot be a morally relevant feature of a situation.

14 Ibid., 75

15 Ibid. See also, on the question of the relationship between criteria of relevance and substantive normative principles, Lyons, David Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1965) Chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Hare, ‘Relevance,’ 77-8

17 Ibid., 78

18 Ibid., 79

19 Hare takes the relative strength of A's desire to torture (m) and B's desire not to be tortured (n) to be an important consideration for universal prescriptivism. He assumes in the present case that m<n, and this assumption plays a key role in showing that A cannot universally prescribe torture. (See ‘Relevance,’ 88-9.) Although cases in which n and m are ordered differently are not taken up, the following question arises: If torture is wrong, do we think, in general, that this has anything to do with the relative intensities n and m? For example, suppose n = m. Is torture any less wrong in this situation? If Hare cannot show that universal prescriptivism condemns torture in this case, it seems to me that this would show a conflict between universal prescriptivism and an entrenched moral view.

20 Hare, ‘Relevance,’ 83-4

21 Strictly speaking, it is not x, a principle, which is morally relevant or irrelevant for Hare, but the descriptive characteristic (e.g. skin colour) upon which x is based.

22 This kind of counter-example has been used by many writers to show that Kant's universality test functions as a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral right. See, for example, Frankena, William K. Ethics, 2nd. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. 1973) 32-3.Google Scholar

23 These considerations bring out the possibility that relevance may be one of our basic concepts which, as Quine puts it, has ‘something logically repugnant' about it. See W.V. Quine's discussion of similarity in his ‘Natural Kinds’ in Nicholas Rescher, ed., Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, reprinted in Schwartz, Stephen P. ed., Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1977), 155-75.Google Scholar

24 Hare, ‘Relevance,’ 86, 87, 89

25 See, for example, Chapter 10 of Freedom and Reason, ‘Ideals,’ where Hare states that; ‘One reason why it is wrong to confine the term ‘moral question’ … to questions concerning the effect of our actions on other people's interests, is that such a restriction would truncate moral philosophy by preventing it saying anything about ideals’ (pp. 147-8).

26 See, for example, Hare, R.M. What Makes Choices Rational?', The Review of Methaphysics, 32 (1978-9) 623-37.Google Scholar [See especially p. 631 where Hare says, ‘In recent years there has been a discernible shift among utilitarians (of whom I count myself one)…’]

27 Lyons, 57.

28 See Chapter 3 of Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism for an argument which tries to show that, despite their seeming differences, act and general utilitarianism are extensionally equivalent.

29 For an argument which shows that universality based systems which do not make use of a ‘tacit relevance criterion’ are impotent, see Milkman, The Problem of Relevant Descriptions, Chapter 5.

30 I would like to thank Professors Bernard H. Baumrin and Charles Landesman of the City University of New York for reading and commenting upon earlier drafts of this paper.