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Show Chapter V. A Refutation of Anscombe's Thesis 220 relation in order to be normatively viable.34 These considerations taken together suggest that if structural equivalence between consequentialist and deontological value theories is in fact lacking, some further, nonshared property needs to be adduced to demonstrate this. And of course it must also be demonstrated that this property is not itself particular to the content of some one such theory. 4. Two Metaethical Attitudes All along, the focus has been on the structure and content of normative theories, independent of the metaethical attitudes and pronouncements ethicists make about those theories. If my treatment of Anscombe's thesis has been correct so far, the basis for the consequentialist/ deontological distinction is not to be found in any property of normative theories themselves, but rather in those metaethical attitudes expressed by Anscombeans. So I now want to consider those attitudes. I show that they are based on mistaken beliefs about the applicability of this distinction to normative theory, and on psychological attitudes that would be better expressed in a very different distinction. Anscombeans often seek support in the self-evident fact that there is, after all, a disagreement between someone who thinks it is always wrong to Some think the telling difference between consequentialist and deontological value theories consists in the status they accord to moral injunctions, whether causal or constitutive. They think a consequentialist theory treats them as disposable rules of thumb, whereas a deontological theory regards them as universally binding laws. Peter Railton expressed this view. But it applies only to dummy consequentialist and deontological theories respectively, not to any real ones; and even then only to their practical, not their value-theoretic parts. We have already seen that the value-theoretic part of a normative theory supplies no action-guiding directives on how we should promote or realize that which has moral worth, much less on how often we should do so. On the other hand, the practical part of any viable consequentialist theory must recognize that certain actions are in fact always morally obligatory, not only because in fact they might always best promote the value-theoretic good; but also because they are most reliable in cases where we cannot know what act would do so - which, as we have already seen, is itself a permanent feature of practical consequentialist injunctions. So practical consequentialist prescriptions are frequently universal in character (Sidgwick and Moore are particularly explicit about this). Similarly, practically viable deontological prescriptions recognize that value-theoretically prescribed duties cannot always be successfully fulfilled. As we have already seen, they may conflict or they may fail to be completed successfully. In these cases a practicing deontologist is prepared to perform that action which on the whole best conforms to the theory's value-theoretic prescriptions, and also to revise her conduct in case it turns out not to serve this purposes. So practical deontological prescriptions frequently have the character of rules of thumb (cf. Ross, The Right and the Good, pp. 30-32). That both consequentialist and deontological practical prescriptions must include both universal laws and rules of thumb follows directly from the prescriptive indeterminacy thesis. 34 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
