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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 405 range of final ends to those to which a preferred action or set of social arrangements is instrumental means abdicating the aspiration to the objective validity of the theory that prescribes it. 4.4. The Problem of Moral Justification The contingence and dispensability of a shrinking means is a liability for an objective justification of it. But for a purportedly objective moral justification of it, its contingence and dispensability is a quite fatal liability. For an objective moral justification of an action or set of social arrangements is supposed to persuade us that we ought to observe its implied prescriptions whatever else we do. That is, an objectively valid moral theory is supposed to demonstrate its prescriptions to be absolute constraints on action, and not mere rules of thumb contingent on the particular antecedent ends some of us happen to have. Indeed, if the theory is to provide absolute constraints, even a shrinking means sufficiently comprehensive to promote everyone's de facto antecedent ends will not do the trick. For even here, its promoting everyone's ends supplies me with a reason to act on it that is independent of any of my antecedent end thus promoted only because of the particular antecedent ends it does promote, namely everyone else's. This means that, at best, the Instrumentalist strategy can justify an action or set of social arrangements independently of any particular antecedent end it promotes. Instrumentalism cannot justify an action or set of social arrangements as objectively valid independently of all antecedent ends, i.e. absolutely. So Instrumentalism can approximate but cannot achieve objective moral justification, because any action or set of social arrangements it attempts to justify must function as a relatively shrinking means, however inflated it may seem. But an absolute moral justification is needed, so that we can make the kinds of moral judgments a moral theory should enable us to make. A normative moral theory does not direct us to respect others, to behave responsibly, to help the needy, and to be honest in our dealings only when it is convenient and not otherwise. The whole point of a normative theory is to guide behavior correctly in those cases where self-interest obscures the morally right thing to do. Similarly, a normative moral theory is supposed to enable us to make negative moral judgments about actions or sets of social arrangements that violate the prescriptions implied by our theory. But in order to be moral judgments, these judgments cannot find the action or set of social arrangements defective simply because it does not best promote, say, the beneficent ends we are presumed to share. Such a judgment would not be a moral judgment but rather a judgment of practical irrationality. In order to be a moral judgment, it must evaluate the action or set of social arrangements as right or wrong independently of our particular antecedent ends. It must be able to make judgments about the actions of agents who do not share our beneficent ends and values - for example, that an agent does right to © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
