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Show Chapter X. The Criterion of Inclusiveness 382 even begin to exhaust the desiderata for a moral theory that is adequate to the complexities of the non-ideal human community. The requirement of vertical consistency - Chapter II's (VC) - implies a criterion of inclusiveness that any practically adequate theory aspires to meet. The higher the order a concept or principle has in an agent's perspective, the wider the range and variety of lower-order concepts or principles and concrete particulars that instantiate it. So the broader or more inclusive the scope of the higher-order concept or principle, the larger the range and variety of actual objects, events and states of affairs that can be recognized in its terms; and the smaller the range and variety of conceptual anomaly that conflicts with it. Then the broader or more inclusive the scope of the concept or principle, the greater the range and variety of objects, events and states of affairs it makes rationally intelligible within an agent's perspective. For any explanatory theory, maximizing rational intelligibility and correspondingly minimizing conceptual anomaly has obvious benefits. But for a normative moral theory, inclusiveness is not merely a benefit. It is a requirement. In a scientific theory, third-person anomaly merely threatens the coherence of the theory. But we have already seen in Chapters VIII and IX that in a normative moral theory, first- or third-person anomaly not only threatens the coherence of the self and of the agent's self-conception. It also harms the moral outcast, by either reinforcing the vicious behavior the theory condemns; or else obfuscating or excluding the anomalous agent or action from moral judgment, and so from the moral system of reward and punishment by which that judgment is outwardly expressed. So although the extension of Rawls's analogy between moral and scientific theories can be carried through to a considerable degree, moral theories are unlike scientific ones in this respect: Moral theories are subject to a criterion of adequacy - inclusiveness - that itself has moral import. This chapter proposes a criterion of inclusiveness that a normative, practically adequate moral theory must satisfy, and that redresses the outcast status of first- and third-person moral anomaly. It argues, furthermore, that among the familiar candidates, only a Kantian-type moral theory is sufficiently well equipped to satisfy it. This means that only a Kantian-type moral theory meets all the requirements of moral justification. Section 1 offers a rough formulation of the criterion of inclusiveness that applies to both nonmoral and moral theories. Section 2 sharpens the formulation through application to moral theories in particular. Section 3 narrows the focus of discussion still further, to the familiar conflict over whether an act, event, or state of affairs is morally significant at all; and if so, which moral terms most appropriately interpret it. Section 4 offers a hypothetical, non-ideal example for analysis, from which can be derived general but more detailed, practically adequate criteria of inclusiveness that address the issue of moral interpretation. Section 5 provides three such criteria that recommend for inclusion in the scope of application of one's moral theory any agent who © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
